Tag Archives: College Admission

More prospective college students getting deferral letters

25 Feb

Many parents and students spend the junior and senior years of the child’s high school education preparing for the child’s entrance into hopefully, the college of their choice. Kristina Dell has a great article at the Daily Beast, 10 College Admission Trends about the difficulties students will encounter when applying to college. So, students and families applying to colleges will have to apply to more schools. College.Com  has some great suggestions for a good campus tour For many families, the expense of a college tour is very difficult considering they are having a difficult time even affording college. Kiplinger has some good suggestions about how to keep costs in check in the article Make The Most of A Campus Tour Many families cannot afford the costs of going to college out of their area, so they will be considering community colleges and colleges close to their home. See, College Tour Checklist, What to Look For

The College Board has a checklist for the college bound:

The Application

Parents and students can meet all the deadlines, complete all the forms, and provide all the supporting documentation required and still not be admitted to the college of their choice. Increasingly, students are being put on deferral lists.

Eli Clarke, Associate Director of counseling, private high school, Washington DC wrote the article, What Does it Mean to be Waitlisted or Deferred?

Being deferred can mean a wide variety of things. In most cases, the college has not completed its review of your file and is “deferring” their decision to a later date. Deferrals typically fall into two categories:

  • You applied under the Early Action or Early Decision plan and have been pushed back into the regular pool. This may be frustrating, but also has an advantage.  If you are accepted into the college/university under regular decision, you are not obligated to attend as you would have been if you were accepted under an Early Decision plan (Early Action is non-binding to begin with). You may feel free to consider offers from other schools.
  • You have applied under a regular decision or rolling admission and the college/university would like to have more information in order to make a decision about your application. In almost every case, a college or university would like to see more grades from the senior year or new test scores. If a school receives the information they want, they could admit you earlier.

Being waitlisted is unlike being deferred; the college has finished reviewing your file and made a decision to put you on a waiting list for admission.

  • Being on a waitlist typically means that you are placed within a “holding pattern” of sorts. The admissions committee may or may not admit students from the waitlist. And unlike a deferral situation, new information does not usually change a waitlist decision.
  • If you are placed on a waitlist, you can usually find out if the school has gone to their wait list in the past and if so, how many students they admitted from the waitlist. In some cases, your chances of eventually getting in are very good; at other colleges, waitlisted applicants are almost never admitted.
  • It is always wise to deposit to another institution and ensure that you have a place somewhere. Do not pin your hopes on a waitlisted college; this is the time to make plans with one of your backup schools.

Whether you are deferred or waitlisted, avoid the temptation to begin a flood of recommendation letters and phone calls to the admissions department. In almost every case, this can have an adverse affect on your chances for admission. Some institutions even state in the letters that they do not take any additional letters of recommendation or phone calls on the student’s behalf.  If the admissions office does need more materials, they are generally interested in concrete information (test scores, grades, etc.) rather than personal testimony or recommendations.

http://www.collegesofdistinction.com/component/k2/item/158-what-does-it-mean-to-be-waitlisted-or-deferred?.html

A deferral letter is not a “no” and it may provide the opportunity to look at other options for college.

In Like Me.Com has excellent advice which was posted in the article, How to Handle a College Admissions Deferral:

Here are some things deferred applicants should do to enhance the likelihood of admission and maximize college options:

1 – Carefully follow directions from the admissions department. You may be asked to submit mid-year grades, additional test scores or other information.

2- Review your college list and apply to other schools. For many students a deferral is a wake up call! Make sure you are applying to the right mix of schools including a sufficient number of colleges where there is a good or better likelihood that you will be offered admission.

3- Share updated information, and new accomplishments, with the admissions staff. While the admissions team is not likely to appreciate a barrage of disparate information promoting your candidacy, a well-written update letter and other carefully selected correspondence may be well received. Often the admissions staff will provide advice on desirable opportunities to strengthen your application.

4- Touch base with your interviewer and let the person know you were deferred.
Your interviewer may offer some worthwhile suggestions, or may even send a letter or email to the admissions office further recommending you.

5- Keep your grades up. Many colleges give strong consideration to first semester grades from senior year!

6- Consider submitting no more than a few letters of recommendation from people who can provide objective input regarding your abilities, character, strengths, etc. Check with the college first to see if these types of letters are welcome before pursuing additional recommendations.

7- Stay involved. Continue to be active in clubs, sports and other activities. Some colleges and universities are randomly auditing applications to promote honesty.

Finally, don’t panic or give up hope. Maintain a positive outlook as you pursue other colleges, complete applications and communicate with people from the college that deferred you.

http://www.inlikeme.com/advice/how-handle-college-admissions-deferral.html

Resources:

Colleges deferring more students http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-02-21/college-university-defer-more-students/53193738/1#.T0iIuEB39Bo.email

You Got Deferred. Now What?              http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/defer/?emc=eta1

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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The 1% is maintaining the status quo: Colleges return to early admissions

22 Nov

There is an “arms race” in education from granting more advanced degrees to colleges vying for top undergraduate students. One weapon to attract top students has been the admissions policy of “early admission.” There is a difference between “early admission” and “early decision” according to the College Board:

Early decision plans are binding—a student who is accepted as an ED applicant must attend the college. Early action plans are nonbinding—students receive an early response to their application but do not have to commit to the college until the normal reply date of May 1. Counselors need to make sure that students understand this key distinction between the two plans: binding is binding.

There are reasons why colleges prefer the process and why for a time top institutions like Harvard and Princeton abandoned the process for a time.

The Daily Princetonian described some of the issues involving the “early admission” process in the September 18th, 2006 article, An unfair process: Princeton should follow Harvard in dropping the early admission option:

Perhaps the biggest problem with the early admissions process is that it tends to favor wealthier students at elite high schools. Many schools — Princeton included — tend to accept a higher percentage of students who apply early. Yet, students in need of financial aid have a huge disincentive to apply early because it prevents them from comparing financial aid and scholarship options. At the same time, students from schools with more established college advising programs are given a head start in applying for admissions and are often more aware of early admission programs to begin with. As interim Harvard president Derek Bok put it, early decision programs tend to “advantage the advantaged.”

Early admission programs also hurt students because they encourage increased gamesmanship in the college admission process. High schools seniors are encouraged to choose the most selective school on their list of schools to apply to, instead of taking the time to consider which schools are really their best matches.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2006/09/18/15809/

Princeton did drop “early admission” for a time.

There are about 400 colleges which offer early admission The College Board also has an excellent time line for those who may be seeking early admission. Inside Higher Education has an article about the Harvard and Princeton decision to return to early admission. In, Surrender to Early Admissions Scott Jaschik writes:

In the fall of 2006, first Harvard University, then Princeton University, and then the University of Virginia announced that they would end programs in which applicants applied earlier than the regular deadline — and also found out months early whether they had been admitted. With those decisions by elite institutions, the many critics of early admissions policies thought that they had momentum to end practices that many saw as creating needless anxiety and favoring wealthy applicants.

That momentum never materialized — and other colleges and universities did not abandon their early programs….

Many colleges also reported that their early applicants were more likely than those in the regular pool to be white, wealthy and from good high schools. That’s not surprising, of course, since those who would need to compare financial aid packages from different colleges would be hesitant to pledge to enroll at one college before seeing all available aid packages. A series of articles — most notably a 2001 piece by James Fallows in The Atlantic Monthly — led to much hand-wringing at admissions gatherings about early admissions being out of control.

Even as educators talked about all of the downsides of early admissions, applicants from good high schools continued to apply early in greater and greater numbers — until Harvard and then others announced their shifts. In restoring early action, both Harvard and Princeton stressed that they believed they could offer an early option without placing any groups of students at a disadvantage.

See, Harvard and Princeton Restore Early Admission

Eric Hoover is reporting in the Chronicle of Higher Education article, The Flock of Early Birds Keeps Growing about the return of prestige colleges to “early admission.”

In 2007, Georgetown University’s admissions staff expected a flood, and it got one. The university received 6,000 early-admission applications, a 31-percent increase from the previous year.

The rise was striking, but not shocking. After all, three of Georgetown’s high-profile competitors—Harvard and Princeton Universities, and the University of Virginia—had eliminated their early-admission programs that year. Scores of eager, high-achieving students apparently jumped into Georgetown’s nonbinding “early-action” pool instead. More and more applications came each year after that, climbing to 6,658 in 2010.

But this fall would be different. At least that’s what Charles A. Deacon predicted after Harvard, Princeton, and Virginia reinstated early-admission programs this year. The two Ivy League universities adopted restrictive early-action policies that bar applicants from applying early to other private colleges. So Mr. Deacon, Georgetown’s dean of admissions, suspected that his university would see early-action applications drop by as much as 30 percent.

That didn’t happen. Georgetown’s final tally was 6,750 applications, a handful more than last year. “The question is, Why hasn’t the same change reversing the increase of four years ago occurred?” Mr. Deacon says. “It just becomes ever less predictable.”

Another early-admission season is winding down, and this one has a back-to-the-future vibe. The same three institutions that had won praise for abandoning their early-admission programs became symbols of application-saturation this fall. Princeton received 3,547 early applications—nearly three times the number of seats in its freshman class. Virginia, which has a nonrestrictive early-action program like Georgetown, received 11,417 early applications; that’s about 9,000 more than the university saw back in 2007, when it had a binding early-decision program. As of Friday afternoon, Harvard had yet to announce its total, but it’s safe to guess that the number is gigantic…

http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/the-flock-of-early-birds-keeps-growing/29334?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

CBS. News has early admission statistics in the article, Early Decision Applications Are Soaring: Here’s Why by Lynn O’Shaughnessy.

2011-2012 Early Decision Statistics

Percentage increase or decrease in early decision applications from last year:

  • Amherst College -5%
  • Bates College 4%
  • Brown University -3%
  • Bowdoin College 10%
  • Bucknell College 30%
  • Columbia University 8%
  • Dartmouth College 12%
  • Dickinson College 15%
  • Duke University 14%
  • Elon University -15%
  • George Washington U. 19%
  • Haverford College 14%
  • Johns Hopkins U. 14%
  • Lehigh University 14%
  • Middlebury College < 1%
  • Northwestern U. 26%
  • U. of Pennsylvania 18%
  • Pomona College <1%
  • U. of Rochester 0%
  • Sarah Lawrence 15%
  • Vanderbilt U. 30%
  • Virginia Tech <1%
  • Williams College 1%

2011-2012 Early Action Statistics

Percentage increase or decrease in early action applications from last year:

  • University of Chicago 18.5%
  • Emerson College 11%
  • Fordham University 8%
  • MIT 14%
  • Santa Clara U. 27%
  • Villanova U. 25%
  • Boston College 7%
  • Stanford U. 7%
  • Yale University < 1%

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37243644/early-decision-applications-are-soaring-heres-why/

“Early admission” seems to be one element of the growing income inequality in America.

Resources:

Harvard, Princeton return to early admission by Daniel de Vise http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2011/02/harvard_returns_to_early_actio.html

The College Board’s Early Decision & Early Action The benefits and drawbacks of applying early http://professionals.collegeboard.com/portal/site/Professionals/menuitem.b6b1a9bc0c5615493883234011a161ca/?vgnextoid=eb6ccf9a10494110vcm-02000000aaa514acRCRD&vgnextchannel=7c72247eb2814110VgnVCM200000121a16acRCRD&vgnextfmt=print

Debating Legacy Admissions at Yale, and Elsewhere by Jenny Anderson http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/legacy-2/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©


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