Admissions Blog

Undergraduate Admissions Uncensored

“If things are broken at elite universities, things are broken, period.”

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Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

If you can read only one thing this year that encapsulates the current state of life at far too many American colleges and universities, and thus, life in America, read this intense and amazing essay by writer and Yale graduate Natalia Dashan. This essay is a window into the life those chasing admission into selective colleges and universities can expect – whether they realize it or not.

More: “The Real Problem At Yale Is Not Free Speech” via Palladium Magazine

Boston University to meet 100% of student need

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Boston University’s Associate Vice President for Enrollment & Dean of Admissions, Kelly A. Walter, has announced that BU has a new, expanded financial assistance program, affordableBU, that will meet 100% demonstrated need of any admitted first-year student who is also a U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident.

“We understand that now, more than ever, students and families expect a return on their investment when choosing where to apply to college. BU pledges to deliver that…” continued Walter. BU applicants’ financial need is determined based on both the FAFSA and CSS Profile™. Once BU has determined what a family’s expected contribution is, the university subtract that from the full cost of attendance. The difference, what BU refers to as “calculated need,” will be made up by financial aid.

Many selective colleges and universities meet 100% of demonstrated student need for domestic students (BU is now in this group); however, others don’t. Only a rarified few do for international students as well.

If you are interested in BU, be sure to check out its deadlines for when financial assistance applications are due, for the coming year.

Penn reveals new supplemental essay questions, other admissions changes

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Penn’s campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania announced today that its supplemental essay question in search of a 650-word response by applicants is no more. Students applying during the 2019-2020 admissions cycle for Fall 2020 admission will be asked two new questions instead:

  1. How did you discover your intellectual and academic interests, and how will you explore them at the University of Pennsylvania? Please respond considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected. (300-450 words)
  2. At Penn, learning and growth happen outside of the classroom, too. How will you explore the community at Penn? Consider how this community will help shape your perspective and identity, and how your identity and perspective will help shape this community. (150-200 words)

Students are still able to write up to a grand total of 650 words in their responses to these questions; yet, with the changes, applicants will now have the challenge and opportunity to deliver two distinct messages in response to two distinct essay prompts.

Also announced today is a new policy that would have kept both U.S. President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump (who both transferred to Penn’s Wharton School of Business as juniors) from ever attending or graduating from Wharton.

“From cycle year 2019-2020 forward, Wharton and Engineering will no longer accept external junior transfers. The College and Nursing will continue to accept junior transfers…We have made this change in consultation with our academic partners across campus. The curricular pre-requisites for transferring into Wharton or Engineering as a junior are both specific and extensive. As we reviewed Wharton and Engineering transfer applicants, we consistently saw that most applicants were unable to take the coursework necessary for a seamless transition into these schools. We hope this change will help applicants focus on the schools and programs that best align with their interests and preparation, and that allow them to successfully transition to our campus.” wrote Eric Furda, who currently holds the title of Dean of Admissions at Penn.

Ironically, earlier this month this site pondered how Ivanka Trump got into Penn back in 2002 and whether or not she would get in again today. It’s clearly a sore point with the powers that be at Penn these days that the current president of the U.S. and one of his top assistants both graduated from Penn. Whether or not this Penn admissions policy change has anything to do with the university’s current “resistance” to the leader of the free world is purely a matter of speculation.

Additional interesting tidbits shared by Furda this summer include:

-Penn will allow applicants to self-report test scores – as long as they are not athletes or international students. This means that certain students will simply be trusted to honestly report their highest scores on their applications and only send in official corroboration of their scores if they ultimately get into and deposit at Penn later in the admissions cycle.

– Penn is passive-agressively encouraging its IB applicants to take Math Analysis HL instead of other new math offerings rolled out recently by the IBDP.

– Penn will offer both regional and virtual information sessions during the year ahead and all of these will be listed here.

Remembering Tom Weede, and Calling on the Next Tom Weedes

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I could tell this was not going to be a typical meeting with a college representative.  He walked into my office with absolutely no hurry, as if this was all he had to do all day, and talked about his school from the heart, not from a memory-committed checklist of things someone else told him to say.  When I asked questions, he left a space between when I stopped talking, and when he started his answer, never once referring me to the school’s website, or the college catalog.  This was clearly a guy who knew his school as well as he knew his middle name.

It was also notable that he didn’t talk about his school in some theoretical abstract.  We do that a lot in college admissions, where we talk about a college in the third person, like it’s some kind of god.  He mostly talked about the students at his school, what they were doing, what they liked about being there.  He knew that’s what makes the college experience work for a student—who you go to school with.  He wasn’t going to waste my time reciting scores and rankings, because Rugg’s could tell me about scores, and rankings were, well, pretty pointless.  If you have time to talk with someone face-to-face, the conversation should be a giving of self, not of data, and that meant talking about things that mattered.  What matters most in college is the students.

After he said everything he thought I should know, he got up and gave me his card.  As I recall, he said something about how he’d like to hear from me, but the university had made it kind of hard to get hold of him, with a student aide and a secretary standing between him and every incoming call, but he urged me to persist.  After he’d left, I read his card, and realized I’d just spent forty-five minutes talking to a Director of Admissions who had made a cold call to my high school.

That was my introduction to Tom Weede, who passed on earlier this month, leaving this world and our profession all the poorer.  The outpouring of loss has come from all circles of our field, and it all contains one common message; Tom was the rare person who not only felt you mattered; he made sure you knew you mattered.  He trusted you with his opinion, and trusted that you would step up and let him know how you felt in turn, even if you saw things differently.  His advocacy in the profession was focused on students, and when he engaged you in conversation, you felt, as George Bailey once said, that he knew you all the way to your back collar button.

Tom’s come to mind quite a bit this summer, and not just because of his passing.  I’ve been besieged by a number of students and parents flooding my office with requests to make college plans, and they’re all ninth and tenth graders.  One father called and insisted he had to meet with me right away, since his son was a junior, and had no college plans at all.  The student’s name wasn’t familiar to me, so I looked him up.  Turns out he was a sophomore, but since his father called the day after school was over, calling his son a junior made things sound more important, I guess.

That’s the kind of month it’s been.  One parent wants to meet to talk about “college strategy,” another one is convinced his ninth grader’s chances at graduate school are already shot because the student has no plans for this summer.  It’s easy enough to get caught up in the mania the media is peddling as college readiness, but it’s never hit the ninth and tenth graders like this before.  Worse, it seems to be hitting their parents, and too many of them are succumbing to the herd mentality of college angst, abandoning their post as sentinels of their children’s youth.

If there’s any remedy to this, I’d like to think it’s the calm, listening voice of the Tom Weedes that are still with us.  Tom did most of his preaching to admissions officers, and none of us were smart enough to ever ask him if he’d thought about saying this to kids and families. Since similar voices are doing the same thing, it’s time to ask them to broaden their scope, before SAT flash cards become the in gift for bar mitzvahs.

Voices like Ken Anselment, Heath Einstein, and Tamara Siler do a very nice job of reminding colleagues that that the college selection process is all about the kids. What’s needed now is for them to share their insights with a larger audience, giving kids permission to be kids. It would be a great way to honor Tom’s memory.  Better still, it would be the right thing to do for our world.

Denison’s Overall Acceptance Rate Drops to 29%

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Beautiful Granville, Ohio, home to Denison University

Alison Slater, Senior Assistant Director of Admission at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, about a half hour outside of Columbus, is shedding light on the first-year class that Denison will be welcoming to campus in Fall 2019.

Denison experienced “another record number of applications this year,” which resulted in an all-time low admission rate of 29 percent, according to Slater. Particularly notable is the fact that Denison will be meeting full demonstrated financial need for all members of its Class of 2023 – including admitted international students.

Slater added that Denison’s “Class of 2023 is extremely diverse and enhances a student body that is now 18% first-generation, 22% domestic multicultural, and 14% international. Our student body represents all 50 U.S. states and 56 countries, and the incoming class boasts middle 50% test score ranges of 27-31 (ACT) and 1200-1410 (SAT).”

Meanwhile, on Denison’s campus, the brand-new, 108,000-square-foot Michael D. Eisner (former Disney CEO) Center for the Performing Arts is now open. Denison’s dance, music, and theatre departments moved into their new home recently and look forward to putting the center’s new technology to good use.

While Denison’s name and location may not be as well known as its peer institutions further north and east, it’s certainly worth a visit for students interested in a strong liberal arts education. Clearly, an increasing number of students are getting this message.

How did Ivanka Trump get into Wharton?

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Recently, Tucker Carlson of Fox News asked on his evening program, “How did (CNN host and child of a former Democrat Governor) Chris Cuomo get into Yale?”

The answer to this question is important for all Americans to know for the reasons Tucker Carlson explains in his monologue.

Yet, just as important, if not more important, would be for Americans to get answers to the following two related questions:

  1. How did Ivanka Trump (who is obviously the most powerful woman in America right now by virtue of her personal and professional proximity to President Trump) get into Penn’s Wharton School of Business in 2002 – as a transfer student no less?
  2. Would Ivanka still have gotten into Wharton with the same qualifications if she had submitted her transfer application after her father made his famous escalator speech announcing his run for president in 2015?

As thousands of rising high school seniors around the world embark on completing their college applications for “selective” American colleges over the weeks ahead, the answers to the above two questions would be clarifying and important for these young people to know.

Update: The powers-that-be at Penn changed their admissions policy just a couple of weeks after this post was published. The change, had it been implemented in years/decades prior, would have meant that Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump both would have been denied admission to Penn. Learn more here. 

Ivanka Trump and family pose between Locust Walk and Jon M. Huntsman Hall on Penn’s campus in May 2004

When should I start working with my college counselor?

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Many high schools don’t provide proactive college counseling to students until the end of eleventh grade. That’s not going to work for you!

Don’t wait until your school gets around to it. Find out when to assertively approach your college counselor by watching this Thorwback Thursday (TBT) classic.

Details on Hamilton College’s Diversity Overnight

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Mia Rogers, Senior Assistant Dean of Admission and Director of Diversity Recruitment at Hamilton College, wants high school counselors and rising high school seniors to know that Hamilton now offers two Diversity Overnight programs for high school seniors who may not otherwise have the opportunity to visit and experience the Hamilton campus and community.

According to Rogers, “Academically competitive students from ethnically diverse backgrounds, who are first-generation to college students, and those from families with limited financial resources are encouraged to apply…This year’s program dates are September 15-17 and October 27-29.”

Hamilton College has just under 2,000 undergraduates and is located in Clinton, New York. Those students who take part in the programs arrive on Hamilton’s upstate New York campus on a Sunday and return home on Tuesday. Hamilton covers direct expenses associated with the visit to campus, including air/train tickets to and from the student’s home state, ground transportation to and from campus, meals during the visit, and on-campus accommodations with assigned overnight hosts in Hamilton residence halls.

Rising seniors interested in this opportunity must complete the online application and share their unofficial high school transcript and self-reported standardized test scores in order to be considered. The priority deadline to submit an application for a Hamilton Overnight is August 2, 2019.

University of Alabama, other colleges, open applications on July 1

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University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Off to the races! The 2020 application for the University of Alabama went live on July 1. Those students with questions about the process of applying to the increasingly-popular-with-out-of-state-students public university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama are encouraged to contact their UA Regional Recruiter.

Yet, it’s not just aggressive Alabama that is attempting to fling open the doors of its Fall 2020 first-year application in the dead of Summer 2019; the Coalition Application, too, likes to be strong out of the gate each summer by going live on July 1, one whole month before its larger competitor, the Common Application, which is available to rising seniors on August 1.

Yours truly, upon hearing about design and functionality upgrades to the 2019-2020 Coalition App, tried to create an account to review the application this morning, but never received the verification email to complete the process of creating an application. I then asked for the verification email to be resent. Still nothing. I looked in my inbox, I looked in my spam folder, I looked under by bed – but it was nowhere to be found. So, an official review of the 2019-2020 Coalition App will have to wait until a later date.

(Update: about an hour after publishing this article, the writer received two verification emails from the Coalition Application, which permitted access to the application; a review of the 2019-2020 Coalition Application will be forthcoming in this space in the near future)

Other colleges either never take their applications down or have also made available their 2020 application before Independence Day. Notable names in this category include Georgetown University and Wake Forest University.

University of Florida to Finally Accept Common Application

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Gainesville, Florida is home to University of Florida.

Charles Murphy, University of Florida’s Director of Freshman and International Admissions has made news that is sure to boost University of Florida’s first-year application numbers, make UF more selective for first-year applicants, bring smiles to the faces of high school counselors across the country, and keep high school seniors on edge later into this upcoming year’s admissions cycle.

“Starting with the 2019-20 application cycle, the University of Florida will accept both the Common Application and the Coalition Application. As you likely know, we have exclusively taken the Coalition Application the last few years, and look forward to continued partnerships with Coalition for applications and programming aimed at promoting access and student success. We are still finalizing some internal logistics with the Common Application, so you will not yet see this information updated on our admissions website or the Common Application’s website. However, that information will be updated as soon as possible once everything is finalized.” Murphy shared.

Murphy went on to add that starting during the 2019-2020 admissions cycle, UF’s admissions notification date will move back to the last Friday of February, which for the upcoming admissions cycle is February 28, 2020. In recent years, UF has notified applicants of their admissions decisions in early February. According to Murphy, UF already enjoys “consistent year to year increases in application volume,” and with the acceptance of the Common App, UF will certainly need the extra weeks in February to review what will surely be the biggest increase in applications UF has experienced yet based on how other colleges’ first-year application numbers have increased after joining the Common App.

UF’s one first-year application deadline of November 1 will remain the same as in past years. High school counselors have not so much enjoyed having their students apply to UF in recent years, as the university has most recently been a Coalition Application exclusive college, which means it accepted no application other than the Coalition Application. The Coalition Application, while a good idea in theory (it was created to promote equity and access and to serve as a strong and more user-friendly counter balance to the Common App), turns out to be an increasingly wretched application in practice, as its functionality and usability has taken a nose dive with each passing admissions cycle. This is saying a lot because the application was never as user-friendly as behemoth competitor Common App (approaching 1,000 members) or the small but seamless Universal College App (in an inexplicable funk with only ten members). In fact, the Coalition Application is so horrible to use from the perspective of applicants (I had one student fly into an uncontrollable rage this past year when trying to navigate her Coalition Application, while another student I was working with at one point pushed his chair back from the computer where he was working on the Coalition Application and proceeded to just look out into the distance in what seemed like a catatonic state for at least four minutes after becoming completely stupefied by the application’s interface) that I purposely won’t link to it in this article for fear that doing so would encourage students to use it. High school counselors have been increasingly befuddled by how to advise students to navigate the Coalition Application, which seems filled with trap doors, dead ends, and missing links.

Sadly, University of Maryland, College Park and University of Washington will remain Coalition-exclusive colleges for the upcoming admissions cycle. Meanwhile, University of Virginia and Dartmouth College have quietly made clear that they will stop accepting the hot mess that is the Coalition Application for the 2019-2020 application cycle, though both institutions did not use those words – or any words, actually – in making the change.

With so many colleges now accepting the Common App for first-year college entry admissions, UF can expect a lot more unserious apps coming its way, which, trust me, is just fine with UF because it will allow UF to increase its selectivity (UF will get to reject a higher percentage of students than ever before) and perceived prestige (though prestige, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder). It will also allow UF to turn away more Florida residents who often get to attend the institution for little out-of-poket money because of Florida’s generous Bright Futures scholarships, which are funded by players and addicts alike of the Florida Lottery.