Admissions Blog

Notre Dame Accepts Only 17% Early Action As Record Number Apply

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Admissions.Blog

University of Notre Dame saw the number of students who applied via its Restrictive Early Action (REA) plan skyrocket this fall. A record 9,683 students applied to Notre Dame Restrictive Early Action in 2021. In 2020 7,744 students applied to Notre Dame Restrictive Early Action. That represents an over 25% increase in just one year. Those applying to Notre Dame Restrictive Early Action have until May 1 to deposit and were able to apply to other colleges with Early Action programs but they were not allowed to apply concurrently via other colleges’ binding Early Decisions plans.

Yet, despite far larger numbers of REA applications to review, Notre Dame only accepted two more students REA in 2021 than it did in 2020; Notre Dame accepted 1,673 REA applicants in 2020 versus 1,675 REA applicants in 2021. This means that Notre Dame’s Restrictive Early Action acceptance rate dropped from roughly 22% to 17% in just one year, which helps bolster Notre Dame’s place in the realm of hyper-selective U.S. universities.

Meanwhile, a full 30% of REA applicants were accepted without submitting scores from the ACT or SAT. This is a huge change from just two years ago when scores from either the ACT or SAT were required of all admitted applicants. A full 46% of REA applicants to Notre Dame in 2021 applied without submitting test scores.

Unusual among many other selective U.S. universities, Notre Dame also shared that of those students accepted Restrictive Early Action in 2021 there are roughly even numbers of Asians/Pacific Islanders (12%), International students (12%), and Black students (10%).

Notre Dame released REA admissions decisions on Thursday, December 16, 2021, at 6:42 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, in a nod to the university’s founding year of 1842. Of the admitted student pool, 1,204 high schools are represented, including 43% public, 40% Catholic, and 18% private. A full 26% of accepted students indicated intended majors in the College of Arts and Letters, 22% in the College of Engineering and School of Architecture, 24% in the Mendoza College of Business, and 28% in the College of Science.

Typically, Notre Dame admits between 1,600 and 1,800 in its REA pool and a larger number in its Regular Decision pool, which this year has an application deadline of January 1, 2022. Last year, 1,768 students who were deferred during the REA round eventually earned admission during the Regular Decisions admissions cycle. This year, 1,599 REA applicants were deferred.

Tulane Early Action Admit Rate Plummets to 10%

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Admissions.Blog

Jeff Schiffman, Tulane’s former director of undergraduate admission, may be gone, but elements of his transparent approach live on as Tulane has recently shared some interesting data points relating to its Early Decision and Early Action admits for its undergraduate Class of 2026.

Decisions for Tulane Early Decision applicants were released on November 22 and decisions for Early Action applicants will be released on Monday, December 20 at 5:00 p.m. EST. According to Owen Knight, Tulane’s Director of Admission Engagement, the university expects between fifty-five and fifty-eight percent of next year’s freshman class to be comprised of Early Decision students. Due to the fact that Tulane over-enrolled last year and saw a twenty-five percent increase in the percentage of students accepting the offer of admission over the previous year, Tulane will be admitting a jaw-dropping 1,650 fewer Early Action (EA) applicants this year. This will speed up a trend of EA at Tulane becoming hyper-selective, especially relative to how the admissions plan used to be at Tulane prior to Tulane bringing back ED a few years ago.

As a result, Tulane anticipates marginally more offers of admission for deferred students and Regular Decision applicants than in the past. The overall admission rate for Early Action applicants is just ten percent, which is half the EA admission rate in 2017.

Overall, Tulane is planning for its Class of 2026 freshman class to be roughly 1,750 students.

Forty-six percent of Tulane’s Early Action admitted students for the Class of 2026 identify as BIPOC, which is a 70% increase, over twenty-seven percent of students who identified as such in 2017.

Knight also notes that Early Decision II is currently available through January 12 for students who are starting a new application for admission or for students who have already applied Early Action. Students who have already applied may switch to EDII via their Green Wave portals.

How to Avoid Bad Pre-College Programs

Posted on December 6, 2021 by Craig

Not all summer opportunities for high school students are created equal! Learn how to select pre-college programs or other summer activities that will help your chances of college admission.

January Application Deadlines Are Just a Bad Idea

Posted on November 7, 2021 by Patrick O'Connor

The story is worth hearing, and even listening to again. You came home from college for the holidays, and Mom or Dad was preparing the traditional roast. You’d somehow eaten this dish a thousand times without ever seeing it prepared, so you were horrified and fascinated to watch them lop off a half pound or so from the back of the roast and toss it in the trash—perfectly good food. You composed yourself enough to make asking why they did this sound downright casual. “My mother made it this way” was the response—and it was just too convenient that the mother in question was also in the room. “That’s right” she added, “and my mother made it the same way.”

The resolution of the issue had to wait until Sunday, when great grandmother joined the family for dinner. Seated at the table with the roast right in front of everyone, the sensory elements were perfectly aligned to ask the question- why cut the roast? “I learned to do that from my mother. The pan we had was too small for a full roast, so we always had to trim it to size.”

And there is the fascination. No other generation had the same limitation of pan or oven, but the roast trimming continued without questioning or consideration for three generations.

It shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to consider just how many implications this tale of roast trimming exist in college admissions, and nowhere is that more clearly the case than with application and notification deadlines. Long before any kind of Internet presence, January 1 was an application deadline for hundreds of colleges. Remarkably enough, this pre-high tech deadline didn’t make much sense even back then, since the deadline was a postmark deadline, but post offices were never open on New Year’s Day—in fact, depending on how small your town was back then, post offices across smalltown America were hard to find open after noon on the 31^st.

Postmark deadlines are now a thing of the past, but there are other issues to consider with January 1. A clear number of high schools close for the holidays around December 23 if not sooner. This leaves most students largely on their own to put the finishing touches on the first major, multi-component task they’ve had to negotiate in their young lives—that, or it compels counseling offices everywhere to assemble some makeshift effort to offer support here and there at a time when counselors most need a break of their own. (Although there was one high school who was floating a “guarantee” that every counselor would check their email every day of the December break, thus denying everyone a chance to rest and recover. Talk about a happy new year…)

Even the efforts to offer some kind of support over vacation can miss the mark, especially for students who are the first in their family to apply to college. I am not a disciple of the “applying to college is rocket science” school, nor do I believe young people learn much about deadlines by treating them like they are amorphous, when they are not. Still, given that this is the first major multi-tasking activity most young people have that has a fairly big consequence attached to it, it isn’t unreasonable to hope the deadline would permit them the chance to have counsel—and even more important, face-to-face support—to complete the task, something a finger-wagging “just plan ahead” overlooks in a brazen, cold way. If we then add on the fact that nearly every admissions office is empty and unavailable for student support on January 1^st, it’s easy to see every director of admission with carving knife in hand, ready to lay waste to a couple of pounds of perfectly good applications, all in the name of “we’ve always done it this way.”

At the risk of sounding like someone who has never run or even worked in an admissions office, the answer seems simple—this is a practice that needs to stop. The easiest alternative would be requiring all materials to be submitted by the second Tuesday in January, a time when even the most luxurious of December vacations is over, where students have had time to seek the help they need, and everyone has had time to refresh their energies in a meaningful way. Doing something challenging doesn’t mean it has to be inhumane, and the family man in me suggests that, for as much as I value the lessons learned in applying to college, there are more important things to consider over the holidays, like developing a strategy for a successful entry in the annual family gingerbread building contest. This is the final holiday of youth, and it deserves recognition, and space, as such. It’s possible to do that and develop a strong college portfolio, given the right deadline.

This isn’t the only deadline that could use some attention. November 1, November 15, and May 1 all landed on a Sunday last school year, leaving students with a couple of days to do the best they could with what little they knew. Again, this is especially true for students whose family has no experience applying to college. Since these students tend to come from urban and rural schools where counseling ratios are typically astronomical, it’s easy to hope colleges would want to nurture applications from these populations, rather than throw more barriers in the way of these talented, but raw, applicants.

There are many other facets of the college application process where roast trimming can apply, especially when considering every facet of the application is easier for students who come from a background of wealth. This aspect seems easy enough to start with, since its effects are easy enough to understand. Let’s put the January 1 deadline and its impact back in its sheath.

College Admissions Interview: Dress for Success

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Craig

There is something special about meeting someone at for an interview – especially later in the day or in the evening. If you find yourself scheduled for an interview with a college on your list, you’ve got to rise to the occasion style-wise.

The Ideal Size & Composition of Your College List

Posted on August 28, 2021 by Craig

How many colleges should be on your college list, and how many of these colleges should be safety schools, target schools, or reach schools? Use the guidelines to keep yourself organized and focused.

Two Great Reasons to Get Your Degree in England

Posted on August 12, 2021 by Craig

If you know what you want to study in college and want to earn a high quality undergraduate degree without having to take courses you aren’t interested in, it makes a lot of sense head over to merry old England ASAP! Find out the two reasons I am so keen on Americans (and any other students for that matter) earning their degree in England!

Make sure to visit this location on your college tours!

Posted on August 10, 2021 by Craig

Dorm rooms – especially those visited on college tours – all look quite similar. Dining halls are increasingly “Gucci,” while science labs look like science labs. Try spending some of your time on campus visiting a place that is far more important than all of those mentioned above!

To The Media: End the College Application Nightmare Stories

Posted on August 3, 2021 by Patrick O'Connor

It figures that August 1 landed on a Sunday this year. What used to be just another beach day took on special significance a few years ago, when Common Application chose August 1 to launch its updates for the coming school year. It’s exciting to be sure, but with a hint of melancholy, as a few overly enthusiastic parents use the occasion to tell their high school seniors “Summer’s over”, while the seniors meekly head towards the nearest computer, even on a weekend, muttering “But what if I don’t want it to be?”

Happily, more than a few colleges agree with the seniors. While there was a stream—OK, a torrent—of colleges Twittering students on Sunday to hurry up and apply, more than a few colleges said “Start today if you want to, but our deadline isn’t until January. Take your time.” I had planned on thanking each of those colleges for posting such a message in the face of application mania. I’m pleased to say there were too many to do so.

But this is just the start, and here’s hoping more colleges get on board. The last two years of schooling have left this year’s seniors in pretty bad shape. Day after day of waking up to find out if school is in person, online, both, or neither may have left them flexible, but it has also left them exhausted. Students who fit every element of one (and certainly not the only) likely college-bound profile—from the suburbs, in a college prep curriculum, with two well-off parents who went to college—are saying out loud they just don’t think applying to college is worth the hassle. That’s not because of the Delta rebound; it’s because their last couple of years of school have left them unsure of themselves and their ability to control their destiny. Since any college admissions rep will tell you the key to a successful application is to let the student drive the bus, this is a huge problem.

Part of the solution lies with us. August is peach and melon season in Michigan, a time when very rational people who never eat fruit feel a swelling in their taste buds that can only be satiated by interaction with produce that is truly a little slice of heaven.

This same thirst wells up in the media every August, but it isn’t for fruit—it’s for stories about the confusing, terrifying, uncertain world of college admissions. With a new crop of high school seniors every year, journalists eagerly seize on their newness to college admissions, highlighting profiles of bright young people who find themselves flummoxed over how to apply to college, and when to apply to college. Curiously, these stories rarely display a student’s confusion over where to apply to college, since the media only covers students who are considering the same 25 colleges ever year that admit about 5 percent of their applicant pool. “She’s a National Honor Society president, but she can’t get her arms around Yale’s application.” Of course, these same students would be equally baffled by using a plumber’s wrench for the first time, and they easily get the hang of this college thing two weeks into the process. But apparently, that’s not the point. The very first time they do something new, they don’t completely understand it. My goodness.

The impact of this approach to college application coverage can’t be understated. Thousands of students have already had to give up most of their summers at the insistence of parents who have caught the angst early, eager to make sure that college essay sparkles, unaware that the number one cause of weak essays isn’t underwriting, but overwriting.

Parents who haven’t been on their seniors about college since Father’s Day read these August articles and panic, fearing their child is now “behind”. They plop their senior in front of a computer screen and tell them they can’t come out until an application is finished—for a college that doesn’t even start reading applications until January 10.

Parents whose children really understand themselves, and had no intention of applying to these schools, now feel their child is “losing out” on something, and suddenly insist that an application or two to the Big 25 is a good idea, “just to see what happens”, even though their student is well aware of what will happen.

This brand of media attention has never served high school seniors well, and it’s likely to make matters even worse for this year’s seniors, who are looking to gain their footing after two years of scholastic uncertainty. In the interest of their well being—or, to use a phrase that is on the verge of becoming unimportant due to its overuse, their mental health—how about a few less media stories on the impossibility of getting into college and its excessive expense, and a few more stories about the 75% or so of colleges who admit more than 50% of their applicants, and the many colleges who are forgiving institutionally-based student loans? Could the media finally discover the urban and rural colleges whose buildings have not a hint of ivy that are turning around the lives of students who didn’t have the opportunity to take 7 AP classes in high school, students who are shining academically? How about the students who are making community college work, earning a degree that costs less from start to finish than one year of Harvard, all while the students typically work about 30 hours a week?

It’s certainly true many people turn to the media to read stories that will fuel their dreams—that’s why so many people follow the Olympics, and replay the video of the woman who was reunited with her dog after two years. But stories about the uncertainty of the college selection process don’t feed students’ sense of the possible; they nourish their nightmares. They’ve had enough of that these past two years, and may be headed for more. The best thing the press can do for them, and for our society, is to admit there are more than 25 good colleges in this country, and wake the students to a better vision of how to apply to college, other than run a gauntlet that, at the end of the day, is largely of the media’s own making.