Free undergraduate admissions advice (1 Viewer)

[The_Man]

My son's school has students take a practice PSAT as sophomores, followed by the PSAT as juniors, and the SAT/ACT afterward.

When he signed up for that first PSAT, he put down our shared home email address. Ever since, I've thrown every piece of college-related email that has arrived into a separate folder.

Since the first email arrived in January of 2014 (midway through his sophomore year) through this morning, he's received 2,414 college-related emails. The volume of spam is unbelievable - obviously a lot of these schools work with one firm, as he'll receive a half-dozen emails in rapid succession, all of which are formatted exactly the same, and all of which have the exact same content, just with different school names written in.

No wonder kids don't look at their email. His college counselor told the students to create a separate email address for the schools they actually apply to, so that they know all correspondence they receive at that address will be stuff they want to see. One kid missed out on a scholarship last year because she didn't bother to open some of the college email she received because she thought it was just junk.

My son is applying to 9 schools. Over the last 2 years, he received a total of 19 unsolicited emails from those schools, and 5 of them didn't send him a single email; another sent 1. That means of the 2,414 emails colleges have sent over the last 2 years, 99.992% had zero impact.

Did he apply to BC? Based on his criteria seems like a good fit, with grandparents nearby.

Hi, Nigel.

He looked at BC but it was really too close to his grandmother's - virtually across the street (she lives off of Lake Street, right behind the end of the B line, if you know where that is and I'm pretty sure you do). Also the tour gave off a way-too-Catholic vibe, and this is coming from someone who got married at St. Ignatius on the BC campus.

I thought it would have been a good choice, but it gets back to the "fit" discussion, and he just wasn't feeling it.

 

[James Daulton]

My son's school has students take a practice PSAT as sophomores, followed by the PSAT as juniors, and the SAT/ACT afterward.

When he signed up for that first PSAT, he put down our shared home email address. Ever since, I've thrown every piece of college-related email that has arrived into a separate folder.

Since the first email arrived in January of 2014 (midway through his sophomore year) through this morning, he's received 2,414 college-related emails. The volume of spam is unbelievable - obviously a lot of these schools work with one firm, as he'll receive a half-dozen emails in rapid succession, all of which are formatted exactly the same, and all of which have the exact same content, just with different school names written in.

No wonder kids don't look at their email. His college counselor told the students to create a separate email address for the schools they actually apply to, so that they know all correspondence they receive at that address will be stuff they want to see. One kid missed out on a scholarship last year because she didn't bother to open some of the college email she received because she thought it was just junk.

My son is applying to 9 schools. Over the last 2 years, he received a total of 19 unsolicited emails from those schools, and 5 of them didn't send him a single email; another sent 1. That means of the 2,414 emails colleges have sent over the last 2 years, 99.992% had zero impact.

Did he apply to BC? Based on his criteria seems like a good fit, with grandparents nearby.

Hi, Nigel.

He looked at BC but it was really too close to his grandmother's - virtually across the street (she lives off of Lake Street, right behind the end of the B line, if you know where that is and I'm pretty sure you do). Also the tour gave off a way-too-Catholic vibe, and this is coming from someone who got married at St. Ignatius on the BC campus.

I thought it would have been a good choice, but it gets back to the "fit" discussion, and he just wasn't feeling it.

What's BC run for their average student? After grants and stuff.

 

[The_Man]

New SAT kind of an S-Show, based on kids who took it on the first sitting this weekend.

Speaking of S-shows, I didn't appreciate how the college admissions process would cast an ever-lengthening shadow over an otherwise very happy senior year for my son until we got deep into it. It wasn't the applications, which he did a good job of handling during the early fall. It's been the waiting and waiting, punctuated every so often by a gut punch which, as soon as he gets over, is followed a week later by another one.

Got deferred from his first choice right before Christmas, and the timing of that stunk as it left him with nothing to do during break except mope (after pushing "Submit" on the 6 or 7 apps he had lined up to go in case of rejection/deferral). Then he cheered up a little and even was happy when he got a late January acceptance into the honors program of a school he's definitely interested in - though we worry the financial aid might not be good enough there. Then he was nominated for a full-ride scholarship there, and made it to the regional finalist round before not getting it. Which made him depressed again, since we won't know until April if we can afford it.

Then he was named finalist for a full-ride at another school, and went through the interview process for that. But based on what I'm seeing today on social media, winners were notified over the weekend that they got it and he hasn't been notified. I'm not even going to tell him, but will just wait for the letter. Otherwise, he'll be bummed both now and later when the letter arrives.

The hard part is that he feels like he's let his mom and me down every time one of these things doesn't work out. The reality is that I think he's the greatest kid and am so proud of him every day, regardless of where he ends up going to college. Unfortunately, he's getting tired of the pep talks, which weren't that impactful to begin with and have now really lost their pop.

24 days until all the remaining schools announce their decisions. How I can't wait for this all to be over. We are a pretty chill family, and this has been way more stressful than I ever thought it would be.

 

[JaxBill]

New SAT kind of an S-Show, based on kids who took it on the first sitting this weekend.

My son took it Saturday and he didn't have any problems. Said it was very long but thought it went okay.

He gave a ride to a friend.  Both of them were taking SAT with essay. Friend was in different classroom.Friend's proctor gave out the wrong exam (SAT without essay) for one portion. They had to call supervisors over and that class had to re-take a portion of the test. Son ended up waiting in parking lot for an hour for friend to appear.

 

[JaxBill]

While it's easy to laugh at this, there are a lot of people who feel this way. One-half of my fiancée's family comes from some pretty serious money, and most all of 15 or so of her cousins on that side went to prestigious private schools - Penn, Georgetown, Syracuse, Fordham, Marquette, and others. We've always suspected that they had a negative perception of me when we started dating because I went to a state school (she also went to the same state school). Her aunts and uncles have said, pretty much verbatim, that "our kids are too good for state schools."

Just kinda an odd mindset to have in this day and age. If you've got a brilliant kid and can afford to send him/her to an Ivy, go for it. But sometimes an Ivy or other elite private school isn't what's best for the kid. I got into an Ivy and 2 prestigious private engineering schools and turned them down for a state school. I'm thankful my parents let me make that decision.

there's really no point to this post, just saying.

I also thought the UF question was funny because the in-state competition to get into Gainesville is borderline absurd.

 

[Tick]

How is testing out viewed?  My daughter is planning to test out of German 3 (and probably 4 and 5 eventually based on self-study) so she can take classes she's more interested in.

 

[James Daulton]

For those of you with kids close to applying for college, my daughter is a senior and she'll be applying to colleges soon.  I'll update the colleges she's applied to with her stats and whether or not she got in so you'll have some idea of what it takes to get in where.  She's strong in reading/writing and average in math so we're focusing on colleges that have good liberal arts/business reputations.  Her plan right now is business/marking/maybe law.  Her stats currently:

Class Rank:  29 out of 400

Wtd GPA:  5.1 (she's 4.0 on an unweighted scale)

SAT:  Reading 700, Math 540 (she's taking it one more time to try to get her math score up).

Colleges she'll be applying to (all around Maryland):

University of Maryland (where I hope she'll go)

Colgate (big stretch)

William and Mary (stretch)

Villanova

Bucknell

James Madison

Wake Forest

University of Richmond

Franklin and Marshall

University of Delaware 

George Mason

 

[chet]

Is there a paradigm shift as it relates to education?  I think today, people are expected to get a graduate degree before progressing to their lifetime vocation.  The caveat is that your undergrad school and degree is less important than it was 30+ years ago.  In fact, you should choose your undergrad school based on where you think you can get the best grades since that's the main metric grad schools use.  Am I off base?

 

[Tick]

Is there a paradigm shift as it relates to education?  I think today, people are expected to get a graduate degree before progressing to their lifetime vocation.  The caveat is that your undergrad school and degree is less important than it was 30+ years ago.  In fact, you should choose your undergrad school based on where you think you can get the best grades since that's the main metric grad schools use.  Am I off base?

I don't see any of that in industrial engineering right now.

 

[Instinctive]

@James Daulton

One word of advice after being involved in a TON of law school admissions stuff - a pre-law major of any kind in undergrad does not help you at all. Thought I would pass that on to you for your daughter. 

 

[The_Man]

Is there a paradigm shift as it relates to education?  I think today, people are expected to get a graduate degree before progressing to their lifetime vocation.  The caveat is that your undergrad school and degree is less important than it was 30+ years ago.  In fact, you should choose your undergrad school based on where you think you can get the best grades since that's the main metric grad schools use.  Am I off base?

I think this is pretty accurate - though it's not so much about picking the undergrad school that gives the best grades, as it is about picking the undergrad school that sets you up best for grad school. So that includes grades, but also might include the undergrad program's reputation/history of feeding kids into grad programs, and maybe most important of all - though probably not for you - going to an affordable enough undergrad school that you aren't burdened with too much debt for grad school. That's really the biggest shift I see - people are much smarter about the ROI of their undergrad degree. It used to be people would pay whatever it took to attend their "dream school" and now they're like - what's the cheapest undergrad I can get, since I'll have to take out grad school loans.

I think it's a much healthier approach, actually. Too many people took out way too much for dubious reasons, without ever thinking about the long-term impact.

 

[belljr]

I think it depends.  We picked my sons school, even though it was a bit expensive based on their co-op program.  It has a great track record for students gaining employment after the undergrad is finished.

Also, I noticed a lot of places here have it setup, that if you do your grad school at the same place as you undergrad they work it for free tuition.

I don't know if that entails being a T.A. or working on campsus.

But 2 guys here kids have gone that route

 

[James Daulton]

@James Daulton

One word of advice after being involved in a TON of law school admissions stuff - a pre-law major of any kind in undergrad does not help you at all. Thought I would pass that on to you for your daughter. 

Appreciate the advice.