Competitive college applications – evaluating your chances of getting into the college of your dreams
The college's competitive level compared to your attributes. Let's assume you've followed previous advice and have a preliminary college list that consists of schools where you can see yourself as a challenged and satisfied student on the way to a degree in four or five years.
At this stage you need to make an evaluation of your academic performance: your subjects, the level at which you are taking them, grades, and scores on admission tests. You also should evaluate what admission people call "the personal side" - your achievement, talent, service to others, and character traits.
Now comes the hard part, making a rough comparison about how your credentials compare to the selection standards of the colleges on your list. There are some Web sites (like Collegedata.com) that do a halfway decent job of this. Even better, your high school guidance office may have a software program that plots the GPA/SAT scores of recent graduates in relation to whether or not they were accepted at various colleges.
The next step is crucial — reorganizing your initial list (most likely adding and subtracting schools) based on your chances of being accepted. I like to see a college list sorted into five "how you compare competitively" categories. They are:
Match. Your record is similar to that of the typical admitted freshman – you have a 40-60% chance of being accepted.
Strong Match. Your record is somewhat better – a 60-80% chance.
Weak Match. Your record is somewhat weaker – a 20-40% chance.
Solid Safety. Your record is a lot better – a greater than a 80% chance.
Long Shot. Your record is a lot weaker — less than 20% chance.
Here is my suggestion on how to look at your results once you determine which of your colleges go into which of the categories.
- With any luck (and good college planning), you will find yourself with at least a couple of schools in each category. Generally speaking you should have the majority of your schools in Match, Strong Match, and Weak Match.
- If you don't have the majority of your colleges spread among Match, Strong Match, and Weak Match, it is time to expand you college search until this is the case. These are your core schools. Match is most important, but there are good reasons to have schools on either side of this category.
Having a college or two in Long Shot is optional. Most students will find that their so called dream schools end up here. This is OK, but you do not want to have schools in Long Shot at the expense of your core schools.
Solid Safety. Typically when a student first comes up with a college list there are very few or no schools here. But this is an important category for two reasons.
First, your admission chances are very high, and you should apply to a few schools where you have a strong chance of being admitted.
The second reason is related to the theme of this article - how the nation's current economic problems are likely to affect the college-going process. My definition of a Solid Safety is that you have an 80% chance or better of being admitted. As a general rule, colleges that give merit aid (sometimes known as tuition discounts) award them to the top 20% of their applicants. It is therefore likely that you will get a "price break" at these colleges. When it becomes time to decide where to attend, cost considerations may become very important and sensible college planning is all about having options at the end of the process. Some of your Solid Safety schools may end up being the ones with the lowest bottom line cost.
Much has been written lately about how the current economic climate will affect the admission standards of colleges. I prefer to reserve judgment at this time and wait a year and see what happens. The conventional view is that students will start looking for less expensive schools, moving down the price ladder from four-year privates to four-year publics to two-year publics to delaying enrollment altogether. If this turns out to be the case, where the tuition is high there would be fewer applicants along with a lowering of admission standards. Then, as the reasoning goes, where the tuition is lower, applications would increase and admission standards would tighten.
However, I'm not so sure this will happen. I believe what will happen is that students will expand their college lists to include more less expensive schools, either based on lower sticker price or the likelihood of receiving aid. More students will apply to a greater variety of schools, with bottom line cost becoming an increasingly important factor in list expansion.
If this turns out to be the case, the $64 question is, when it comes to making the final decision on where to attend, will lower cost tend to move a second or third choice school ahead of #1? In a better economic climate, #1 might have held its position since it is easier for families to rearrange their finances (perhaps drawing from savings or taking out a home equity loan) to come up with the money to pay the bill. Nowadays it is more difficult to predict to what extent cost considerations will modify past behavior. This uncertainty will make life difficult for admission deans. Based on historical data they usually can accurately predict freshman yield (the % of students who say yes to their offer) so they know how many applicants to admit in the first place. My guess is that they will admit about the same number as usual, even though they have a hunch that their yield might decrease. If actual yields for the class of 2009 do decrease (particularly at more expensive private colleges), then more and more schools will end up going the their wait lists. Increased wait list activity could well be the first sign that family financial pressures are influencing admission decisions more than they have in the past.
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