College Counselor Corner

Welcome Back! It’s a new school year and hope, excitement and good intentions fill the air. It’s also that time of year when US News and other publications come out with their updated college rankings and a lot of students, parents, grandparents, etc. like to look at these rankings to determine what the “best” colleges are. Columbia University went from #3 to #18 in this year’s rankings because they got caught reporting false information and numbers to help their rankings. Is the quality of education, facilities they have and opportunities they provide any different than last year? No. However, some will think they are getting a worse education because they are 15 spots lower in the rankings. I’m not defending Columbia at all. I wish they were taken out of the rankings for what they did. I’m trying to prove the point that the rankings are useless. My advice- don’t pay attention to these rankings because they are manipulated and “gamed” by the colleges. How? Let’s dig a little deeper.

I’ve been asking my juniors in class, “how do you know whether a college is “better” or one of the “best” schools? A few of them came up with what I think are the top 4 reasons but most could not.

1. Admission Rate– If it’s really low (<20%) then that means they take the “smartest” students and if they have the “smartest” students they have to be one of the “best” schools, right? I guess that depends on how you define “smart”. Also, let’s keep in mind that colleges can control their % acceptance rate. Here are just a few examples. First, they never accept significantly more students year after year because if they did, their acceptance rate would go up. Second, they don’t build more dorms and increase their freshman class size because if they increased their freshman class size, their acceptance rate would go up. Third, they market to students who have no chance of getting accepted and tell them they should apply because “they don’t just take students with perfect scores and are at the top in their class”. This is a lie because outside of athletes, students who come from influence and if you fill a big need, you pretty much have to have all A’s in the most rigorous courses at your school. Plus, over 93% of incoming freshman at the colleges with the lowest admission rates, are top 10% of their class. These colleges spend millions of dollars marketing to students who never had a chance of being accepted, because they need 40,000 + applications so that they can deny 95% of them.
2. Rankings- For those that think the rankings are an accurate reflection of how good a college may be, you are the ones that keep the rankings alive. For those of us in the college counseling profession, we despise the rankings because we know it’s just perception, not reality. For additional thoughts that I have regarding rankings please read my posts titled “Perception vs. Reality in College Admissions” and “View College Rankings With Skepticism”. You can also read how an actual college “gamed” the rankings to boost their application numbers and perception here.
3. Cost- Is true that if something is more expensive, it is better quality? Yes. When it comes to goods and services, you obviously have to pay more if the product you are buying was made with better quality materials that cost more. We also know that a lot of products get priced higher because of a “shinier” cover or case or a “sleek” new look even though the product is the same. When it comes to college costs, when you are paying more tuition for one school over another, what are you really paying for that’s “better”? I understand it costs more to live in a city than the suburbs or the country, but we’re just talking about tuition, not room and board. The answer is…not much. The majority of four year colleges have similar dorms, meal plans, major options, nice recreation facilities, nice academic buildings, etc. I know that some schools are larger than others and therefore have more resources but my point is that for what a college student needs and even wants in order to have a successful and enjoyable college experience, the overwhelming majority of colleges provide an excellent education on a nice campus with nice facilities. So what are you paying for when Harvard (without any financial aid) is $100,000 total per year and University of Pittsburgh is $30,000 per year? You are paying for their “reputation”, their “name” and I guess the opportunity you have to say you “went to Harvard”. This is exactly the reason Mark Salisbury started TuitionFit. I would encourage you to check out what TuitionFit is all about.
4. Who You Listen To– In the majority of college planning meetings that I have with students and parents, when they think that the higher ranked colleges are “better”, most of the time it’s because one of the parents went to one of these schools and they believe their success in life is due to the fact that they attended their alma mater. I also meet with parents who say they don’t want their child to think they should attend their alma mater because it wasn’t the “great” experience they thought it would be. I often hear that there is a lot of pressure and anxiety students feel on a daily basis to “keep up” or succeed at a highly competitive admission college. I understand that this isn’t true for everyone though. It’s when a student or parent tells me that their neighbor, friend, co-worker, etc. told them that a certain college is better so therefore they think so as well that frustrates me. Nobody should form an opinion about a college without doing research for themselves and understand what all of their options are. First, know what environment you may thrive in spiritually, academically, socially, emotionally and then look for colleges that fit what you need. Don’t apply to a college because it’s more “popular”, “well known” or your friends and family think it’s “better”. If you are looking for websites that will provide you with very helpful information about any college, go to CollegeData.com, College Scorecard, or College Board Big Future.

When seniors apply to college they are encouraged to apply to a “balanced” list of colleges. Typically, this means applying to a few “reach” colleges (less than 30% admissions rate), “target” colleges (between a 30-60% admission rate) and “safety” or “likely” colleges (60% or higher admission rate). Colleges in each of these categories can vary depending on the student applying and how they have performed academically and/or test scores they have received.

The problem is that a lot of seniors begin the college application process having already determined in their mind what the “good”, “better” and “best” colleges are based on others opinions (friends and family), social media, rankings (read my view on college rankings here) and what they’ve read online. Many have spent little time researching other colleges that they maybe haven’t heard of but could be a great fit for what they are looking for. Why? Because if they haven’t heard about it…it can’t be a good school, right? The problem with this philosophy though is that they just eliminated 85% or more of the colleges in the United States.

What makes a school a “safety” school on your list of colleges that you are applying to? You have a greater than 60% change of being accepted. When you look at Temple University’s admissions profile in SCOIR, you see their acceptance rate is 71%. This lets you know that Temple could be a safety school for a majority of students. If you look at Temple’s Common Data Set here, in section C11, in order for Temple to be a “safety” school on your list, you want to be at a 3.25 (on a 4.0 scale) or higher because if you add up the percentages of students that were accepted and enrolled who had a GPA of 3.25 or higher, you will get 67.65%.

More than half of the colleges that were included in this study admitted two-thirds of their applicants!

THE MOST IMPORTANT COLLEGES THAT YOU APPLY TO WILL BE YOUR “SAFETY” SCHOOLS! Here are a number of reasons why and some resources to take advantage of in order to discover some great “safety” college options.

1. Depending on your major, “safety” colleges could have a better program than a “competitive admission” college.

If you believe in rankings, you should know that colleges get ranked according to specific criteria that has nothing to do with what majors are offered or how reputable that school may be for a certain major. Having met with college admissions counselors and visited colleges for over 20 years now, I know that there are colleges that have great education, journalism, engineering, computer science, nursing, political science and math programs (just to name a few) that aren’t in the top 100 colleges in the rankings, but their specific program would be ranked in the top 25 compared to some of the colleges at the top of the rankings. Who knew that Taylor University has an EXCELLENT journalism major, Purdue University is now of THE BEST engineering programs and Asbury University is one of the TOP broadcast journalism programs in the country. I could go on and on, however, you wouldn’t find out this information if you didn’t meet with college admissions reps that visit our school, attend college fairs or online events and ask questions or just put in an hour here and there and doing some research. It’s hard to go online and search for this information because the most competitive colleges will spend A LOT of money making sure their name pops up first in many of the ranking lists. Here’s a tip: When searching through rankings, write down the first 3 colleges you come across that you haven’t heard of as much and spend 25-30 minutes researching each of them. These could be great “safety” college options for you!

2. “Safety” colleges will pursue you!

This goes back to Jeff Selingo’s “Buyers and Sellers” list of colleges that is in each of your SCOIR Drives. The “seller” colleges are the more competitive admission colleges that don’t need to do much to get you to apply. They know that as long as they spend a lot of money staying on top of rankings and sending out bulk emails getting you to think you should apply, they have you and you are easily convinced to apply. The “buyer” colleges are the ones that need to intentionally recruit to get them to apply. They will visit high schools, send more personal information in the mail, pay for students to visit them in-person, and offer merit scholarship money. Take advantage of these opportunities to get to know if a certain college is a good for you! The “seller” colleges make up over 80% or more of colleges in the United States! Their admission rate is higher because only students apply to their school because they want to go there! They don’t get the 10,000-15,000 more applications each year because seniors just thought they’d “give it a shot” or “just tried” even though they know they aren’t getting in.

3. Being a “big fish in a small pond” is fun and provides different opportunities.

A blog post I wrote back in 2017 titled “Would you rather be the “head of a chicken rather than the tale of a Phoenix?”, explains everything you need to know about this point. I know there are opportunities to land great internships if you were attending a highly competitive admission college but I also know that a lot of times the big reason you end up getting hired because of the school listed on your resume.

4. Every college is going to provide you with the opportunities to succeed.

I have yet to visit a college that I thought, “they don’t seem to care about their students”. EVERY college I have visited, every college admissions counselor I have talked to and (almost) every alum I have chatted with, care for their school, love working there or enjoyed their experience there, and they are there to do whatever they can do give the students at their college the same experience. Sometimes I hear that students have more friendly and caring interactions at a “safety” school they are applying to compared do the more competitive admission college. At least in my experience, the tours at colleges who have over a 50% admission rate have been different than those with less than 30%. Why? Because the competitive admission colleges don’t need to spend intentional time with you. They just need your application to keep their admit rate low to stay on top of the rankings. They don’t even need to offer in-person tours anymore. They’ll just wait for you to ask questions, come to an online info session or come to their campus for a tour because they know you’ll do these things because you think you have to in order to “up your chances” for admission. The colleges with an over 50% admission rate? They’ll email you personally, send you intentional info and even some small swag in the mail to get you to visit their campus, offer to pay for some expenses to visit, have you meet with a professor when you are on campus and even give you a meal ticket.

5. Your “safety” colleges will award you the most merit scholarship money.

This is just a fact. The more competitive admission colleges don’t even have merit scholarship money because they promise to “meet full demonstrated need” (which they get to define by the way). Over 55% of students at the most competitive admission colleges PAY FULL PRICE! That’s over $80,000 a year! Because of what? The name of the school? The bragging rights with family and friends? Believe me, if you have significant financial need, can get accepted at a highly competitive admission college and will only pay significantly less than full price, by all means, go! However, for 96% of applicants to these colleges now, that’s not the case. Having financial need can hurt you at these colleges (read Jeff Selingo’s book titled “Who Gets In and Why”). Colleges with over a 50% admission rate will offer merit based scholarship money to applicants who have good grades and/or test scores. They have to in order to get the best students to come to their school. And these colleges may offer more if you ask the right way. Click here to read a great blog post about a senior’s decision to attend UPITT over Northwestern.

Below are a few resources for further reading on the importance of applying to “safety” colleges:

“Reach, Target and Safety Schools: Don’t Slip When Creating a Smart College List”

“Perception vs. Reality in College Admissions”

“Should You Pay More than $66,000 a Year for Northwestern University?”

Get to know more possible “safety” schools:

Stuart Nachbar has his own website titled “Educated Quest”. He has visited many colleges and writes school profiles based on these visits.

There is a show on Amazon Prime titled “The College Tour” and it has completed it’s 4th season. These are great 30 minute tours of many “safety” type colleges.

Whether we like it or not, we’re headed into a new “state” of college admissions. Unfortunately, this “state”, “era” or “phase” is not going to advantage the seniors applying to college UNLESS they start applying to a broader list of colleges.

What’s the concern?

Let me reiterate that the concern isn’t on the college side, it’s on the student side. A lot of the “name brand” colleges are continuing to get more applications over the last two years coming out of the pandemic which is “gold” to them. Why? Because the more applications they get, the more students they can deny, the lower their admission rate gets, which makes them seem more desirable (which isn’t true since nothing changed at their school the last two years). It also lets them give out less merit based scholarship money since they can convince more students who were accepted to pay more since they are now more competitive to get in to.

How did this happen?

There are a few factors that led to this. The first was when the pandemic started, all schools went test optional, so now a senior can apply not needing to send a test score to the college and try to get accepted solely on grades, courses, extracurriculars, essays and letters of recommendation. More seniors applied to the competitive or moderately competitive admission colleges because now some of them, who have pretty good grades and weren’t great test takers, could see if they would get in. This rise in applications was expected in 2021 and most competitive admission colleges received 20% or more applications.

Second, colleges have made it easier to apply to colleges now, especially through the Common Application, so instead of seniors applying to 6-8 colleges on average, now they are applying to 10-12 colleges. I have nothing against applying to 10-12 colleges, but in doing the math, if millions of high school seniors are applying to 10-12 colleges now, that’s millions more applications going to colleges which creates this issue in the first place. If you think of how a lottery works, people get all excited when the amount gets higher and higher that you can win, but in order to get that amount higher, more people need to buy tickets. The more people that buy tickets, the less your chance of winning becomes.

Third, and the biggest issue of all, is the perception that the colleges in the top 50 or even 100 of the rankings give to potential seniors, getting them (and their parents) to think that they are “better” or will set them up for future success more. The 10-12 applications that seniors are now completing, are really to the same 50 to 60 colleges, really driving up their numbers and allowing them to deny more students.

What should seniors do moving forward?

DON’T BUY INTO THE HYPE! What do I mean by that? As soon as you think you need to go to a college because they are “known”, “better” or “prestigious”, you just bought into the hype that these colleges want you to and now they have you applying to their school, along with others, driving up their application numbers even higher. I’m not saying you shouldn’t apply to a few of these colleges if you take a look at their admissions profile and determine that you could be competitive for admission when you apply. The frustrating thing is that over one third of the seniors that apply to these colleges, have less than a 1% or no chance of getting in. So basically, they just bought a lottery ticket.

THERE ARE PLENTY OF GREAT COLLEGES THAT NEED APPLICANTS! I visited four colleges with my junior daughter over spring break and 3 of them were colleges I would say need applicants and one is part of this “hype admission train” barreling down the tracks. I don’t mind mentioning them here but I know this is my daughter’s college planning journey and not someone else’s. We visited Anderson University, North Greenville University and Furman University. All great schools with admissions rates over 60%. I know my daughter would get an awesome education and be cared for, prepared and enjoy her experience at each of these colleges. All three of these schools would give significant merit scholarship aid to my daughter to encourage her to come. I would recommend they colleges to anyone out there. AND THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF COLLEGES JUST LIKE THESE!

We also “visited” Clemson University, which is a great school as well, however, they keep receiving 30% more applications and now their admission rate for out-of-state students is getting below 30%. They’re so “desirable” now, we couldn’t even get a tour and they didn’t have one available all through April (even though we walked in the Visitors Center when we were there and nobody was in there with 6 people sitting at the welcome desk…hmmm”). My daughter realized on the self-guided tour that she would have just as great of an experience at one of the other three schools above and pay less than half of what we’d pay for Clemson.

What’s a solution?

There are a few changes that colleges and the Common Application can make, but they won’t because why would they if they are benefiting greatly and have such an advantage over the applicants? These include admitting more students (which would make their admit rate go up), eliminating Early Decision (which would mean having to admit more in early action and regular decision and makes their admit rate go up), the Common Application can limit how many college apps a seniors can complete on Common App (which hurts their bottom line).

There is something you can do!

1. Only apply to colleges that you know you will be competitive for admission. For example, if you don’t have all A’s and didn’t take all or almost all of the most rigorous classes at your high school, you probably aren’t going to be accepted at any colleges with less than a 10% admit rate…so don’t apply. Move on and apply to more colleges with a 20% admit rate or higher.
2. Find some colleges that have a 50% admit rate or higher and apply to 3-4 of these schools. These colleges will give you merit scholarship money to come to their school.
3. Only apply to 6-8 colleges total. Choose a couple of “reach” colleges, a couple of “target” colleges and a couple of “likely” or “safety” colleges. If you want to apply to a couple more “target” or “safety” to see what merit aid you may get, then great! However, don’t apply to more “reach” colleges thinking the more I apply to the more chance I have of getting in. You are just entering into the “lottery” at all of them. Go ahead and apply to the few you think are a better fit and put your best foot forward.

I have not visited a college yet (and I have visited many colleges), that didn’t offer so much to all of their students and were very excited for any new student to join their campus. I know that whatever college my daughter attends, she will have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of, clubs and organizations to join, classes that will challenge her and professors that will provide her with a great education.

The problem becomes when people in society today think that certain colleges, who have built their brand by marketing well, made their name more desirable and worked their way up the “flawed” US News and World Report rankings, are “better” than others because that’s what they hear others in their “sphere of influence” say and people they talk to on a daily basis also believe. It’s dangerous if we make decisions based on other people’s opinions and perceptions. If seniors understood the plethora of options they have, how they can make wiser financial decisions when it comes to staying out of debt after college, and know that at almost any school they will have plenty of opportunities to succeed, then we can end this “era” in college admissions and enter a new era that benefits the student more than the college.

With any business, there is a company that is providing a product and the customer who is wanting to purchase and use this product. This is also true of colleges. There are over 1,400 four year colleges in the Unites States and they each need to convince high school seniors (and current students) to attend their school year after year for them to be successful businesses. As the customer or buyer (if you relate it to buying a home) in the college application process, there are important tasks you should take advantage of before you choose where to go to college. This is especially true from the financial perspective.

1. Ask for a Pre-Read from the Office of Financial Aid.

By law, every college must have a net price calculator on their website. Some colleges have invested a good amount of money to make sure theirs is accurate. Some colleges just have the basic one they have to put on their website to fulfill the government’s requirement. Something I learned this past fall, however, was that many colleges will do an independent pre-read of your financial information and give you as accurate of a number as possible to let you know what you could expect to pay. If you are expecting some financial aid from the college you are applying to (this means you expect to complete the FAFSA), then ask each college your senior is applying to if they would do a pre-read of your finances and let you know what you could expect to pay. If they don’t do a pre-read, ask why. Colleges need to be more transparent about what you should expect to pay before you commit to apply and attend their school.

2. Never take the first scholarship offer as the final offer.

If I’m a college and many decisions come down to the almighty dollar, would I throw out more money the first time I give a scholarship offer than I have to? NO! I’m going to offer a lower scholarship amount and see if an applicant comes back to me and asks if there are any opportunities for more money. If you think about it, most seniors the college gives scholarship offers to, don’t even end up attending anyway. If a senior contacts a college after being accepted and is looking for additional merit or need-based aid, then we know they are more interested in attending our school (which is something they are looking for) and now the college can pay more attention to them and possibly see how they can work with them. However, I am going to put an asterisk on this point. This isn’t true for every college. The more applicants a college gets and the more they can deny, the less financial aid you are going to get. If you want to know what some of these colleges are that probably won’t offer additional aid because they don’t have to, go to the Buyers and Sellers List of Colleges in your SCOIR Drive that was put together by Jeff Selingo. The “Seller” colleges are the ones that won’t offer any or very little merit-based scholarship money and the “Buyer” colleges are the ones that will. These “Buyer” colleges typically need to pull in as many strong applicants as they can and they do this by providing you with merit-based scholarship money.

3. Ask “nicely” for additional financial aid

I get the question, “how do I go about asking for more financial aid/scholarship money?”, a lot, which is great. My answer to this question is always, “imagine yourself on the other side with the money”. If you have money to give and a friend comes up to you and asks for it, how would you like them to ask? Would you like them to say, “hey, you have plenty of money and I need more, please give me some”. How about, “my friend and my uncle gave me this much money and you could to, so please give me more money”. If I’m the one with the money, I’m thinking, “who do they think they are? They’re acting like they just deserve our money after we already gave them some”.

First, it’s great to recognize the scholarship money you already received and be grateful for what they have given you. “Dear ____, I am really excited that I was accepted to _____ and so grateful that you have awarded me a scholarship for _____.”

Second, the reason you are writing them is because you have a definite interest in attending their school than some of the other schools on your list. Make them aware of this. “At this time, _____ is one of my top choice schools (if it’s your top choice let them know) and I am really excited to possibly attend. I would love to (enter here a few things you are looking forward to contributing to or participating in on campus).” This is showing great demonstrated interest which is very important to many colleges.

Third, ask if there are any other additional merit-based scholarship opportunities that you could apply or are eligible for. Then you will need to wait for a response. Please give it a week but you probably will here back sooner.

Fourth, and this depends on their response. You may hear back from them and they will say, “thanks for asking, but unfortunately the scholarship offer you received is our final offer”. If this is the case, I would politely write back and say thank you and that you will continue to consider attending their school along with the other college options you are considering”. If you receive a response back that let’s you know there are other scholarship opportunities to consider or that they can offer you ______ more of merit-based scholarship money, then write back to them and be very thankful.

4. BE PATIENT

I know it can be difficult to see other seniors making decisions to attend a certain college. You can think that you are behind or you just want to be done with the whole college application process. Nevertheless, being patient can pay off! You don’t have to make a decision until May 1st! I have even seen seniors get a little bit more merit scholarship money from colleges who were told earlier there wasn’t any additional money because the yield (how many are accepted compared to how many commit to attend) numbers are always changing until May 1st (and sometimes even after). You may have been in the “middle of the pack” when they were determining scholarship amounts in February, but in April, based on numbers they weren’t expecting, you have moved to the top 25% of accepted applicants and therefore, would be in line for more merit scholarship money. You never know, but if you’re patient, at least you let the process take its course. If you commit earlier, they really have no reason to offer you any more merit scholarship money. Why would they? You’re already coming.

My career as a college counselor began in 2001. I was “drinking from a fire hose” back then as I learned the profession. College counseling isn’t an occupation you can really train for. They don’t teach you how to apply to a college and understand financial aid in college. I still remember the first workshop/seminar I attended for college counselors at San Francisco University High School. It was an AP workshop but they had a one-day session called “A-Z for College Counselors”. I still remember how helpful that was and how excited I was about being a college counselor after that all-day workshop.

The experience you gain as a college counselor is critical and then how you use it to counsel future students is most important to your career. There have been changes over the years as colleges add/remove application deadlines, change testing policies, the addition and growth of the Common Application, the popularity of college rankings and acceptance rates dropping each year, but the perceptions that were made regarding college admissions back in 2001 are pretty much the same today.

Quite honestly, it’s these perceptions that us college counselors (high school and college admissions) are always trying to change in our student’s and parent’s minds. It’s not easy though and for some, their perceptions will never change because it’s been engrained in their minds as “truth” from a past experience or from their family or friends. It would certainly make us counselor’s job’s easier though if students and parents knew, understood and believed the reality versus these perceptions about college admissions.

PERCEPTION- Going to one of the “best” colleges (highest ranked) leads to more success and money.

Reality- There are no “best” colleges because success (and money I guess if you think success=money) is determined by the opportunities you take advantage of, connections you make and the hard work, diligence and effort you give. I’ll refer to the “best” college issue in the next “perception” but one question you have to answer is, “what is success”? As Christians, we are to make sure we use the gifts, talents and abilities God has provided us with. If we do this and pursue a field of study in college that we know to be within our giftedness and strengths, and you have a desire to be a continual learner in that field, you will be successful. You will be paid an appropriate amount of money when you work in that field because you should be good at it for all the reasons mentioned above. God will provide for you and you will live contently whatever this amount you are making. The problem comes when people think they have to make “X” amount to be happy. This goes against what scripture says. Please read this blog post from Tithe.ly called “Bible Verses About Money: 9 Biblical Principles of Money and Possessions” to see what I mean. Alex Chediak also writes two great articles titled “Choosing Your Major” and “Vocation Plans” that I would encourage you to read.

PERCEPTION- The higher ranked a college is the “better” it is.

REALITY- Colleges spend millions of dollars “gaming” the rankings and they are not to be trusted. The colleges that find themselves at the top of college rankings make sure each year they stay there by how they approach their admissions process. They spend millions of dollars marketing themselves to “every” student so they can get 30,000+ applications and deny 95% or more of them. They then create this “dog eat dog” world where they create the “perception” that the “best” students come to our school so high school students and their parents think they need to go there to “get ahead” in society and be “more successful” than other people for the rest of their lives. They also get parents to think that if their child then goes to one of these “best” colleges, their reputation will somehow be “better” and they will seem like more “successful” parents. Did you notice all of the quotation marks I had to use in the last three sentences? That’s because all of the words used within them are opinions, not facts. Also, what rankings are you using? I counted just today that there are 15 different college rankings out there with different methodologies. Which one is “true”? The fact is, there are hundreds of great colleges out there and you need to find the one that is the best fit academically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and financially. Look at these acceptance rates for the fall of 1989.

PERCEPTION- The lower the admit rate, the “better” the college.

REALITY- Colleges that have low admission rates spend millions of dollars marketing themselves to students who have no chance (<1%) of getting into their school so they can “convince” them to apply anyway because they “don’t just take student’s with 4.0 GPA’s and 1600 SAT scores”. This may be true, but in most cases, it’s the athletes, kids of famous people or those that give a lot of money to the school who could have a GPA lower than a 4.0 or 1600 SAT scores. If you are not a student in the above demographic, you pretty much need another outstanding “hook” or have a 4.0 GPA and 1600 SAT score…and they still may not accept you if you do! The majority of the times, it’s all about what they are looking for and not what you are bringing to the table. What’s the big difference between a college with a 5% admission rate and a 65% admission rate? The college with the 5% admission rate tries really hard to get as many applications as possible from students who have no intention of going there so they can deny more. The college with the 65% admission rate only get’s students to apply their school that intend on going there so less apply which means their admit rate is higher. There’s a way colleges also manipulate application numbers by counting seniors who just start the application but don’t finish it but I won’t get into all that right now.

PERCEPTION- Higher test scores mean a better chance of being admitted.

REALITY- This is a half-truth because having test scores in the top 50% range of what a specific college gets from their applicants in a particular year is a plus. However, in this “test-optional” world we live in now, test scores have been de-emphasized in the admissions process and more emphasis has been placed on the courses a student takes, the grades they receive in these courses and the involvement and impact they have made in their school and local communities. After this year, most colleges will have admitted a number of seniors into their freshman classes who never submitted test scores. As they get more comfortable doing this and realize that they can still bring in a well-rounded, successful and intelligent class of students, this will de-emphasize the need to know test scores even more. Before the pandemic colleges were already beginning to re-evaluate the need to require a test score from applicants because the way that testing exposed an equity gap in regards to income and opportunities available to certain students. Click here and go to page 7 to view the income demographic that send scores to colleges the most this past year. It’s the wealthier families that can spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on test prep and in a way “control” their results. If you are a great test taker, definitely let a good test score benefit your application. However, if you are not or you don’t perform as well on the test as you think you should have, you don’t need to stress anymore because you still have plenty of options…as long as you were diligent and did as best as you could in your high school courses!

PERCEPTION- Where you go to college for undergrad still matters even if you know you need to go to grad school.

REALITY- While not always the case, if you know you will need to earn a Masters (and possibly Doctorate) degree in the career field you are pursuing, it’s not the college you earn your undergrad degree at that matters, it will be the grad school that you attend. So why do people put so much emphasis on undergrad? Because of perception, reputation and falsehoods they have believed. There are so many great colleges and universities that would be a better financial fit and you would pay a lot less to attend. If you know you will also need to pay $50,000+ for grad school, why spend a fortune earning your undergrad degree. Click here for a good read on this topic from The Atlantic. Also, here is a great example of a student and her parents who lived through this decision and how successful she was in the end. My Supreme Court SAIL class also talked to Sarah, a clerk for Justice Kavanaugh. Sarah gave great advice herself, based on her path to where she is today, to not put that much emphasis on where you attend college for undergrad.

PERCEPTION- If I think I have “need” and I get accepted to a “100% meet need” college, I won’t have to pay anything.

REALITY- The overwhelming majority of parents do not want to pay more for college, but they are able to pay more than they think. Each college that says that they meet 100% need, is going to determine what your EFC (Expected Family Contribution) is for their school and it will most likely be different for each college you apply to. Typically, if one parent in the household is earning a steady income and/or there is money in assets, home equity, savings accounts, etc., these will drive up your EFC pretty quickly. You need to determine if you would rather pay $25,000 a year at a competitive admission college because you think the “name brand” school is worth the extra cost, or you could attend another really good college, get merit and need based financial aid, the sticker price is lower to begin with, and still have a great experience. What you should be most concerned about is ROI (Return on Investment).