Clinton Township Newsletter

2 5 N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 8 Maximize Your College Application Success ... continued from page 24 track of who has visited the school. If you live across the country they may not penalize you for not visiting prior to admission, however, if you do visit it is an indication to them of serious interest on your part. The admissions office for most schools maintains a database that records all 'touches', communications, visits, and calls from a potential applicant. This is very meaningful, especially for the higher ranked schools and those schools aspiring to a higher ranking, (which is all of them). The reason is that one of the criteria on which colleges are evaluated is their yield, the % of accepted applicants who actually attend the school. Yield is an indicator of relative desirability and preference, and colleges believe that multiple expressions of outreach, i.e. visits, communications, etc. are an indication of serious interest on the part of the applicant, and thus there is a greater likelihood that, should they be accepted to the school, they will more likely attend. Always plan to check into the admissions office when visiting a college, even if you cannot schedule a formal interview at that time. You'll be surprised how often the admissions office will provide someone in the department to meet and speak to you without an appointment. These visits/touches are all important. Try to always take a tour and attend an information session. You can gain a sense of other potential applicants and you get to interact with student tour guides. This interaction can be most valuable. Toward this end, I encourage you to also spend time on campus, have a meal in the student dining hall or at the student union. This will also give you a feel for the community (and the food – most is reasonably good in my experience). S i m i l a r l y , i t c a n b e v e r y m e a n i n g f u l t o communicate with a professor in your subject area of interest and ask about an opportunity to meet and sit in on a class when you visit the school. Professors will often communicate this outreach and interest to the admissions office. This communication to admissions is likely the norm, but even if not, it is a positive reflection on the department and the professor, and they will want to share it. It is also another expression of credible interest on the part of the applicant. Of course all of these touches, communications, visits, etc. don't only serve your application, they will also help you get a better feel for the environment and community, and help you make a better, more informed decision when you determine which school to attend. It is important to establish a relationship with the local or regional admissions officer who is responsible for college recruiting in your area, state, or region. The name and contact information for these individuals is often on the school's website, and, if not, you can normally get this information from the Admissions Office. These individuals usually represent the admissions office at the local college fairs and make scheduled visits to the high schools in their geographic areas of responsibility. Send them an email, find out when they will be visiting your school and/or in your area, try to meet with them, and introduce yourself at the college fair. These regional officers will be representing 'their' applicants to the admissions committee as a whole when the time to make acceptance decisions arrives. The degree to which they can represent that they 'know' you and your level of interest in the college can have a great impact. Remember, there are thousands of students with the same test scores and GPA as you. The more competitive the school and the more of a reach this school is for you, the more meaningful this relationship may be. When a school has a tremendous number of applicants they will often, particularly early in the application review process, look for reasons to eliminate candidates; later they look for reasons to admit them. Remember all contacts, including those to your regional admissions officer, are logged in the college's applicant visit/touch database and become important when evaluating the level of credible interest on the part of the applicant. Use discretion with your outreach and don't bombard the admissions office or regional admissions officer with a continuous onslaught of communications. Communicate in order to introduce yourself and express your interest in attending their school, schedule/confirm a meeting, and always send a thank-you note after an interview or meeting. Communicate when something new and positive has occurred at school or you have received some recognition. When you do send a note to a representative of the admissions office you do want to be sure to customize it for each school and I encourage you to do the research required so that you can reference specifically what it is about their school that is of interest to you. This will likely include mention of courses of study, majors, and /or programs that they have in your areas of interest. In your communications and in your essays don't reference the name of another school by mistake; this happens more often than you might think. If you are taking SAT subject tests I recommend taking them as close to when you take the course as possible. Also, unless you have already received the SAT or ACT score with which you are satisfied, I recommend the August test date before your senior year as a good one for the SATs. This will provide the score results in ample time to apply early action or early decision to schools. Also, you will likely have had the best opportunity to prepare in advance of the test during the summer months. Lastly, many of the top students may have already received a satisfactory test score and may be done with the exam; this may marginally affect the scoring curve. Absolutely complete your college applications to the degree possible during the Summer before senior year. The Common and Coalition Applications are available during the Summer. Completing the base essays (and those for any other schools to whom you are applying) should be done during the Summer. Many schools utilize rolling admissions; these applications and early decision/early action applications should be submitted as soon as possible. Only apply early decision if you know that this school is clearly your number one, and financial aid is not a consideration. Otherwise, I would apply early action, if offered, to each school on your application list. (Note certain schools may have related restrictions). For many students it is hard to determine the number of schools to which you should apply. I think the right number is different for each student, and depends in part on the schools in which they are interested. The number, on average, has continued to increase in recent years, (the standardization of the Common and Coalition apps has made it easier to efficiently apply to a larger number of schools). Of course most schools are generating revenues through application fees that help to subsidize their marketing efforts to attract more applicants in an increasingly competitive environment. In many areas, I would guess the average number of college applications for each student may approach 10; some students may apply to closer to 20 schools, and certainly those students who really know where they would like to attend college, may only apply to 4 or 5. The challenge in part is to create the 'right' mix of schools, i.e. if applying to 10 colleges, perhaps 4-5 are schools in which you are confident you fit well within their high probability of acceptance range for GPA and standardized test scores, perhaps 2-3 are safety schools, and 2-4 are reach schools. There are several interesting and fairly comprehensive websites that will position your academic statistics in each college's applicant pool and enable you to see where you fit, and your likelihood of admission based on history and relative to other applicants.. Many high schools provide significant analysis through the Naviance application. Keep in mind that the relative weight of key application components vary at many schools, i.e. some schools will place more weight on the essays or extra-curricular activities than others. Most schools will consider the GPA and standardized test scores (if they are required) as very important in the decision process. I think it can be extremely meaningful if you can credibly distinguish yourself with your essay(s). With regard to Waitlists: In my experience there is often a real opportunity to affect the ultimate acceptance decision. If you are waitlisted at a school that you would like to attend then it is important to let your regional admissions officer know immediately that if you get in off the waitlist you would very much like to attend their school. Note my choice of words; if this is absolutely the school you will attend if admitted, then you can be even more definitive. Remember, the yield statistic is important to these schools. They want to admit people off the waitlist whom they are certain will attend if offered admission. I also want to note that some of the top tier academic schools may only accept very few, if any, students from the waitlist in a given year. You can ask the admissions office what their recent history has been and what they anticipate for this admissions cycle. There are no guarantees that you (or anyone else) will have this opportunity. The student-athlete who wishes to play on the college team for their sport must invest significant time in outreach and communications to coaches. Positioning yourself with a college coach and managing t h e r e c r u i t m e n t p r o c e s s a r e s e p a r a t e a r e a s f o r discussion and not addressed in this note. Of course the other points in this note, albeit with different financial considerations for a scholarship athlete, apply for student-athletes as well. Following is a recent excerpt from an email sent by the President of Yale, Peter Salovey, describing what Yale looks for in a college applicant. I expect the essence of this note applies to many leading academic schools. "One goal of Yale's admissions process—forged through decades of experience and review — is to create a vibrant and varied academic community in which our students interact with people of different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Because our pool of applicants is extraordinarily strong, we are able to create this community while upholding the highest standards of academic achievement. Yale College could fill its entire entering class several times over with applicants who reach the 99th percentile in standardized testing and who have perfect high school grade point averages, but we do not base admission on such numbers alone. Rather, we look at the whole person when selecting whom to admit among the many thousands of highly qualified applicants. We take into consideration a multitude of factors, including their academic achievement, interests, demonstrated leadership, background, success in taking maximum advantage of their secondary school and community resources, and the likelihood that they will contribute to the Yale community and the world. This whole-person approach to admissions complies fully with all legal requirements and has been endorsed repeatedly by the Supreme Court."

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