And the Decision is...

As Greg has said, he's "99% sure" he's going to Georgia Tech. We've paid our deposit, submitted a prioritized list of dorms and notified UVA and U of Illinois that Greg won't be attending. The final 1%, and only remaining uncertainty, is his waitlist status at Stanford. I don't think any of us are expecting him to be accepted there given the long odds, but there's still a chance (and a few crossed fingers).

Greg made is final decision about a week before the May 1 deadline. He'd decided on GT preliminarily and intuitively by mid-April and was living with the decision. Since this is such an important step in his life I encouraged Greg to validate his gut feeling with a few more hours of research and a 'plusses and minuses' analysis.

GT was still the clear winner over UVA after this process. The big factors that swung in Tech's direction were the strength/reputation of GT's engineering program and its proximity to home. Early in the process Greg was more interested in getting out of Georgia, but apparently this feeling changed as the decision loomed. Greg was also interested in a strong liberal arts curriculum to pair with his engineering focus. UVA won on this point, but in the end Greg weighted this as less important than the engineeing curriculum.

Georgia Tech is a great school and I'm very proud of Greg's acceptance and his decision to attend. I know he'll have continued success and great college experience there.

April Fools: You're Waitlisted at Stanford

No, it's not as mean as the title suggests. Apparently Stanford and a bunch of other major universities (according to Greg) announced that they would publish application decisions on April 1st, and then sent them out a day early as an April fools prank. So yesterday Greg received this:

March 31, 2009

Gregory Matthew Cobb

Dear Greg,

We have just completed our review of applications for admission to Stanford for fall2009, and I am writing to offer you a place on our waitlist. Although we cannot offer you admission at this time, I want to assure you that any student we place on our waitlist is someone who has shown great promise, whom we would like to admit if space becomes available...

This is a good accomplishment for Greg and I'm very proud of him. Stanford put 5% of their applicant pool into the waitlist so this means Greg was in the top 12% -13% -- a nice accomplishment. We're both realistic about the chances of eventually being admitted there (slim), but that doesn't take away from the the positive recognition that this represents.

Unfortunately the same day as Greg was accepted at UVA, he was not accepted at Duke. This brings the final scorecard to 3 admits (Georgia Tech, University of Illinois, UVA), 1 waitlist (Stanford) and 1 'sorry/no' (Duke).

Dear Mr. Cobb

Today is decision announcement day at UVA and Duke :-)




March 26, 2009

Gregory Cobb
Roswell, GA 30075
United States

Dear Mr. Cobb:

Congratulations on your offer of admission to the University of Virginia! One of the greatest pleasures in being an admission dean is inviting distinguished and talented students to join our academic community. We acknowledge your achievements and express our confidence in your continued success. On behalf of the Admission Committee, it is my pleasure to extend this offer of admission to you. We have mailed you an official letter with important enclosures which you should receive shortly...

Greg W. Roberts
Dean of Admission

UVA Decisions to be Announced This Thursday

Dean J, the blogger from the UVA Admissions department announced their decision day with a video today.

Admissions Notifications Going Online

We're getting close to when admissions decisions are announced (roughly the start of April). MIT recently announced that they'd be publishing their decisions a couple of weeks early this year (for a very clever reason) and "exclusively on-line". Clearly this is the way all schools will communicate decisions in the future.

Greg heard from University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign several weeks ago. That acceptance was posted online, followed a week later by the 'big envelope'. Just today Georgia Tech rolled out their online notification system for the first time. Fortunately Greg was accepted there as well. He's now into both of his 'safety' schools. I wonder how we'll hear from the other three?

Update: I checked their admissions sites and here's how "the other three" seem to notify applicants:

• Stanford: will send an email to applicants after 5pm PT on April 1
• UVA: Traditional letters and status available on your personal application status page on their site.
• Duke: It seems like they email you with instructions for how to check online

Update II: ...and here's more detail from the UVA Admissions blog on when and how to see your decision.

2009, A Record Year for Select College Applications?

This is an admittedly unscientific sample, but it seems like the selective colleges have received a record number of applications this year -- and in some cases have blown away the prior records (which were probably set last year). To wit:

- Stanford reports an increase of 20% over last year, an all time high, and anticipates a 7.5% acceptance rate

- MIT's applications grew by 2,000 to 15,600, a new record.

- UVA reports "...that applications went up dramatically this year (we're up over 22,000 applications), probably due to our move to the Common App"

- Vanderbilt has "...received a total of 19,244 applications for the Vanderbilt entering class of 2009, the most ever received at Vanderbilt"

In UVA's case adopting the Common App had an impact. There's also the 'baby boom echo' effect. This is the peak year for high school graduates from baby boomer parents. So, lots of ambitious seniors applying for a fixed number of slots in the selective schools. But I'm scratching my head how these two factors, in the midst of the worst recession since the '30's, lead to a 20% increase in applications at Stanford (which has been using the Common Application for awhile).

If you have any theories on why this is, please leave them in the comments.

Have you heard any other 'record applications' stories. Please leave those in the comments as well.

Where did Greg Apply?

As long time readers of College Admission Forum know I've been sharing various aspects of my son Greg's college admission process over the past couple of years. Well, since it's late February of his Senior year we're almost at the finish line!

Greg ended up applying to five schools: Georgia Tech, University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign, University of Virginia (UVA), Duke and Stanford.

Georgia Tech and Illinois were his 'safety' schools -- colleges that he'll almost certainly get into. In fact he already received his acceptance notification from Illinois about a week ago. Hopefully we'll hear from Tech (in our backyard here in Atlanta) in the next couple of weeks. He took a Calculus II course there last semester and attends a science and technology magnet high school that has a close association with Tech, so chances are good that he'll be accepted there as well.

Between then and the start of April the tension will build. Stanford and Duke are definitely 'stretch' schools -- ones where Greg's (and in fact most everybody's) chances are slim. I just saw the other day that Stanford's applications are up 20% this year and that Stanford's expecting only a 7% acceptance rate. UVA fits in the middle -- a school Greg should have a good chance of getting into based on his credentials.

Compared to the common advice I've read, and recent trends, Greg applied to fewer schools than is typical. Most would advise applying to 2 or 3 mid-range schools, for a total of 7 or 8. But the other wise advice I've heard is to only apply to schools that you'd actually want to attend. And in Greg's case that was these five.

The UVA Admissions Chatroom Experience

Earlier this month I posted about how the University of Virginia Admissions staff was hosting an open chatroom session to answer any and all questions. I was intrigued by this new web-powered admissions activity, but alas, my schedule kept me from participating.

Well, it must have been such a success that they announced an additional session for tonight. This time I was able to join in.

Slight digression... I found out about tonight's session because Greg is interested in UVA so I monitor their admissions blog RSS feed. If I hadn't been watching closely I would have missed this opportunity. I stongly recommend you look to see if there are active admissions blogs for your target schools. If so you should visit them regularly or subscribe to their RSS feeds. I've found they're invaluable resources for learning about the colleges, and their admissions processes. (Now back to our regularly scheduled post on the UVA chat rooms...)

So how was it? Pretty chaotic and of marginal benefit in my opinion. This approach has potential but the way it was set up by UVA, and the technology they used, were problematic.

There were three chat rooms with between 25-45 participants each. It seemed like each room had just one admissions dean. This meant the poor dean was outnumbered at least 25 to 1. Questions were flying fast and furious. As you can see from the screen shot above there weren't that many lines for questions and answers so they'd scroll off the visible window in just a few seconds. You had to really concentrate to follow along. The deans did a pretty good job of answering most of them, but the questions were super random and the answers were brief and fragmented. If you had a very specific question this was probably a good way to get it answered immediately (vs. emailing it and waiting for a reply). But if you were just lurking, hoping to learn about what it's like to apply or attend UVA, it was less worthwhile -- at least for me.

UVA Admissions Chatroom Open House

The UVA Admissions blog has announced open sessions in their chat room tonight (Wednesday 11/5) and tomorrow night from 7-9 Eastern time:

We'll have students, faculty, and admission officers on hand to answer questions in a few different chat rooms. You'll have to register a username to participate and you can do that now or just before entering the chat. Hope to see some of you there!

Here's the link to register

This is another interesting way to answer applicants' questions and build connections to a college. I'm going to try and participate and will report back how it was.

[Update] I missed these sessions but was able to attend one a couple of weeks later. Here's the report on my experience.

Essay Advice from Admissions Directors

Greg is embarking on his admissions essay journey so I've gathered some advice from what I think is a really credible source -- admissions directors. These are the folks that have to read thousands of these essays every year. Who better to give advice on how to impress and stand out from the crowd?

Interestingly they all have similar suggestions in the articles that follow. These same points have been echoed by many other admissions directors during our college visits. This consistency, and the source, gives me great confidence in this advice. In the links below you'll learn:

• Show, don't tell.
• Keep the essay narrowly focused and detailed.
• Let your own voice shine through.
• Take risks. Make it interesting.

Writing an application essay is a hassle, scary and prone to procrastination. But these admissions directors point out that it's your best opportunity to talk directly to the admissions staff and to make the case why they should accept you -- instead of the thousands of other applicants with similar qualifications.

These are all quick, easy reads and I highly recommend you invest a half hour internalizing their advice before you embark on that outline and first draft.

John C. Conkright, Dean of Admissions, Randolph-Macon College

Parke Muth, Senior Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, UVA

Thom Golden Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions Vanderbilt - Part 1

Thom Golden Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions Vanderbilt - Part 2

Colleges May be Visiting Your Area This Fall

(updated with several additional schools including Northeastern, Rutgers, SMU, Tulane & Washington U. in St. Louis)

I just noticed a link on the MIT admissions site with their Fall travel schedule. MIT shows up here in Atlanta in mid-October. Here's MIT Admissions Director Matt McGann's overview of what will be covered. If you live near a major city it's likely that many selective colleges will be visiting this Fall. Check the admissions sites for colleges you're interested in to see if they'll be visiting your area. As another example, here's Carnegie Mellon's Fall travel schedule.

College Travel Schedules:

MIT
Carnegie Mellon
Vanderbilt roadshow schedule -- a 56 city blitz.
Duke
Stanford
Johns Hopkins
UVA
Cornell
Drexel University
Northwestern
Princeton
Purdue
Penn
Harvard, Princeton & UVA
Dartmouth
Columbia
NYU
Northeastern University
Rutgers
SMU
Tulane
Washington University (St. Louis)

MIT Admission Blog & Student Comments

As I continue to catch up on my admissions blogs this post from MIT demonstrates another benefit of following them.

It announces that MIT's online application is now live for freshmen, describes the steps to register and outlines the upcoming deadlines. By itself this would be very helpful for someone interested in applying to MIT. This information can probably be found on the MIT admissions web site, but it's here too, and it's concisely organized.

More interesting are the 146 comments to this post, largely from 'pre-frosh' -- high school students that are interested in applying to MIT. The MIT admissions blog is the most successful I've seen at building up an engaged 'community'. Many of these comments are trivial and unhelpful, but a subset enhance the original post. The blog also draws comments and answers to questions from current students. This conversation between the admissions department, pre-frosh and existing students add another resource to help better understand MIT, the school and its admissions process.

So, as you're reading admissions blogs for schools you're interested in, don't forget to look at the comments too.

While on the topic of this year's on-line applications, the UVA admissions blog announced the availability of the 2008/2009 Common Application and the UVA supplement a couple of weeks ago. If your Senior wants to get ahead, now's a good time to start filling out and applications for schools you know you're interested in (and/or the Common Application).

Campus Visits, Same ol' Same ol'

Greg and I have done 6 campus visits over the past year. Starting last summer with Emory and Georgia Tech, then on to Princeton, Vanderbilt, Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. We did Emory and Georgia Tech to kick-start the process, because they were in our back yard (and Greg will apply to Georgia Tech). For the others we happened to be in the area and they were schools he might consider.

Our main conclusion... If you just take the standard student-led campus tour, sit through the hour long admissions director's canned powerpoint, and walk around the campus a little on your own, they all seem the same. Same high academic standards, same selective admissions, same awesome students, same pretty buildings and amazingly, multiple acapella groups (no lie, four of the six tour guides showed us the cupolas and arches under which they performed).

So Greg isn't finding these tours all that helpful as a way of sifting through the colleges and has resisted investing the time visiting more. That said, we've convinced him to go on one more college tour in the waning days of summer, before school starts. Next Tuesday we head to Duke, Virginia Tech and UVA, all schools on his 'long list' and here in the southeast.

The thing I need to figure out, between now and then, is what we should do differently this time to make these three tours more informative and helpful than the last six were.