Anonymous wrote:We went to a couple of “open houses” where they offered a bunch of things in one day including time with representatives of the major….who did a really good job of selling their program and I think we what directly led to DC putting those schools on their list as safeties they would be happy going to.

this is a lot like Open Days in the UK. it's a way more robust program across all majors and departments and it's like 2 days a year. Not tours every 90 minutes 100 days a year

I teach at a university and I had wondered about a membership model, with a monthly fee, like the YMCA, where alums could take online classes, so many a year, to keep up with developments in their field. Also “family pricing to build brand loyalty. Send all the kids there and offer parents some online classes and charge one fee, maybe spread out over more than the four years the kids are there. Like you decide when they are ten that everybody is going to George Mason for undergrad and grad and sign in for some monthly ten year package or something.

I can understand why they might not want to do it, but I think more private colleges ought to have more articulation agreements with local community colleges. Reality is that a lot of the students who enroll as freshmen at second tier colleges aren't around for junior year. So, make it easy for kids who succeed at the local community college to transfer in.

Otherwise, kids who begin at public CCs are often locked into the public U system in that state because they know before they enroll exactly which credits will be accepted.

We went to a couple of “open houses” where they offered a bunch of things in one day including time with representatives of the major….who did a really good job of selling their program and I think we what directly led to DC putting those schools on their list as safeties they would be happy going to.

Anonymous wrote:I don't think EA is helpful.

I know some high stats kids who will apply for the early 'scholarship' deadline - at BC, for example. you get answers later, but it's a good way for colleges to pull strong apps in earlier.

I dont know why some less-competitive (but still strong) schools don't offer a "Late decision". IE, a deadline of March 1 and get an answer by April 1

There are rolling admissions schools who will advertise that they are still accepting apps - and will turn around decisions quickly

It’s not a mystery, it’s money! If the schools struggling to fill seats had the money to offer free admission to anyone who scored over 1500 on the SAT and had a 4.0 weighted GPA like Alabama does they would be very popular. The problem is that these schools do not have the money to do this.

Anonymous wrote:I wish there was a resource that collected all the cool, niche opportunities/experiences from smaller or lesser known schools. Like, not unknown school, but buried on VT’s website is an internship for Econ students to run athletics dept data. Susquehanna has alumni mentors for their luxury brand majors. Ohio U (not OSU) has Honors Tutorial College which sounds amazing for a kid planning on grad school. I think I saw that GMU has a partnership with Smithsonian for curation? None of these schools are highly selective

Kind of like that The College Tour show on prime, but searchable & without the annoying host.

Another great program at VT is for the data science students (major:Computational Modeling & Data Analytics) to be put on projects with professors across the university to apply different kinds of data analysis tools and techniques. DS did that and said went he went to interview for internships it was really all the hiring managers wanted to talk about.

For DD, who was looking at environmental science programs, one thing that quickly became important to her was some kind of off-campus ES immersion semester. George Mason has one with the Smithsonian and UMW students can do that too. Washington College has Chesapeake Semester, Juniata College has a field station semester, St. Lawrence University has Adirondack Semester.

I wish there was a resource that collected all the cool, niche opportunities/experiences from smaller or lesser known schools. Like, not unknown school, but buried on VT’s website is an internship for Econ students to run athletics dept data. Susquehanna has alumni mentors for their luxury brand majors. Ohio U (not OSU) has Honors Tutorial College which sounds amazing for a kid planning on grad school. I think I saw that GMU has a partnership with Smithsonian for curation? None of these schools are highly selective


Kind of like that The College Tour show on prime, but searchable & without the annoying host.

I don't think EA is helpful.

I know some high stats kids who will apply for the early 'scholarship' deadline - at BC, for example. you get answers later, but it's a good way for colleges to pull strong apps in earlier.

I dont know why some less-competitive (but still strong) schools don't offer a "Late decision". IE, a deadline of March 1 and get an answer by April 1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of schools have problems predicting yield even with the help of their expensive enrollment management consultants. Actual early results for "Early Action" would go a long way toward increasing that yield, as many students would not bother with RD apps if they didn't have to.

Schools that release "Early Action" in January and even February, sorry, there's nothing helpful about that for the applicant, beyond - maybe - giving them an answer a few weeks before RD results come in. Schools like UVA, yes, I'm looking at you, but there are several others, mostly publics that offer EA merely as a tool to spread out their application review.

What are your solutions for them getting through tens of thousands of applications before the holidays?

Have one deadline that doesn't pretend to give an "early" result. "EA" is misleading.

I mean, January and February ARE earlier when decisions come out in late March for a lot of these schools.

Not early enough to prevent having to apply to their entire RD list.