Empower students & avoid the numbers game
By the time many seniors went to sleep last Friday night, they had heard from a number of the most popular (and most selective) state schools. Michigan, Wisconsin, Maryland, and a number of others were all released on Friday, January 27. By the time those seniors woke up the following morning, many well-intentioned bloggers had written what they believed to be really solid advice for those students experiencing the disappointment of rejection: “Want the schools that want you” or “love the schools that love you”.
Sure, that makes a lot of sense. Clearly staying in love with a school that rejected you is a terrible idea. But maybe falling in love with a school that is going to reject you is a mistake in the first place.
For months prior to applying, students have all the power. Colleges and universities are trying to catch students’ attention and spend millions of marketing dollars to do so. Until a senior hits the “submit” button, the student absolutely controls the process.
Instead of allowing selective colleges to entice you with their glossy pamphlets and their interactive emails, why not do your research well and make your own decisions? Take an honest self-survey about how you enjoy learning, what kinds of academic offerings will work best for you, and what social or extracurricular opportunities interest you most. You get to decide what schools go on your list, so make educated choices. Never rely just on the name brand and reputation of a school; do the research.
Those incredibly selective schools are sending out so many invitations for you to apply to their campuses because they want to increase the number of students who apply, thereby increasing their selectivity rating. Instead of playing that numbers game, students will become empowered as they do the research and find the schools that are a great match for their strengths. They can determine which colleges they love long before hearing yes or no.
Obviously, it is very easy to fall in love with the most highly rejective of colleges. No one would ever tell you that some of the most popular colleges in this country are not incredibly beautiful and don’t have amazing resources. Of course they do. However, the vast (VAST) majority of students will not get into those incredibly selective colleges. If you are applying to a college with under a 10% acceptance rate, that means that out of the hundred kids applying from your area, you have to be better than more than 90 of them. That means you have to have done incredibly well in all of your rigorous academic courses. That means that you have to be really good at something else too – such as a sport or a community service activity or research or, truth be told, most likely you’d have to excel at all of those. And even if you check all the above boxes and receive glowing recommendations from teachers praising your performance and your personality, highly rejective institutions are still a longshot for any student. There are not enough spaces at any of those campuses for every qualified student that applies.
The same holds true for those highly selective, previously mentioned popular state schools. Multiple students got deferred on the Friday, January 27th EA deadline and then accepted on Monday, January 30. That means that the application readers just kept going over the weekend and finally had time for another hundred or so applications. Dozens of colleges had record-breaking numbers of applicants (after last year’s record-breaking number of applicants). That’s the cyclical part of the college application process in the post-COVID world.
Too many students fall for the marketing: thousands are drawn in by the glossy pamphlets and the interactive emails. How could they not be? It feels like a personalized invitation to apply when it’s really an invitation to increase this college’s number of applicants while decreasing their selectivity percentage. And, yet, you don’t have to accept the invitation. You can politely decline playing the game the highly selective colleges want you to play. You don’t have to choose a college by focusing on perceived prestige or the bumper sticker. You can say, “No, thank you. I have done my research and want a smaller campus.” Or, perhaps you might think: “This is beautiful but not for me. I don’t want to be just one of many intelligent students competing for each opportunity.” Through careful research, you won’t have to fall out of love with the schools that don’t love you: instead, you can determine the schools that value what you bring to the table, resulting in a balanced list of colleges that are the best FIT for you.
