OT: Connecticut College

[superjohn]

We live in New York and she applied to Geneseo and Binghamton as her ’safety‘ schools, even though both are very good. She had originally intended to apply to Buffalo as well, but made an error with the common app submission and applied to Buffalo State by accident…

A lot of schools went test-optional this year and between that and the class of 2025 kids who took a pandemic gap year, this year was a horror for applicants. So many good schools were flooded with applications and they simply did not have the ability to process them - a lot of kids did not get into schools they should have waltzed into and schools really put a lid on aid because they knew they could.

It was a truly poor experience. Generally, the advice is to have a well-balanced resume, good grades, etc. - in reality, none of it matters. If your kid sunk hundreds of hours into something on his resume and some other kid spent three hours, it’s going to look the same to the admissions rep who spends 20 seconds on each. Basically, they are just going to want to a) protect their stats and b) protect their yield and c) collect as much in application and tuition fees as possible.

I feel for any kid going through high school, going through the college process, and going to college these days.

We all had it way better.

 

[Doctor Hoop]

Daughter graduated from Union last spring. Very good school, underappreciated. Don’t know about Connecticut College, though.

 

[upstater]

We live in New York and she applied to Geneseo and Binghamton as her ’safety‘ schools, even though both are very good. She had originally intended to apply to Buffalo as well, but made an error with the common app submission and applied to Buffalo State by accident…

A lot of schools went test-optional this year and between that and the class of 2025 kids who took a pandemic gap year, this year was a horror for applicants. So many good schools were flooded with applications and they simply did not have the ability to process them - a lot of kids did not get into schools they should have waltzed into and schools really put a lid on aid because they knew they could.

It was a truly poor experience. Generally, the advice is to have a well-balanced resume, good grades, etc. - in reality, none of it matters. If your kid sunk hundreds of hours into something on his resume and some other kid spent three hours, it’s going to look the same to the admissions rep who spends 20 seconds on each. Basically, they are just going to want to a) protect their stats and b) protect their yield and c) collect as much in application and tuition fees as possible.

I feel really bad this happened.

And worse: it's not going to get any better.

Why? Because average SAT scores skyrocketed since they only counted the SATs from the top 60% of admittees. If they go back to testing required, those SAT scores will drop. So will the rankings in USNews.

Next, applications seemed to triple at the top schools. Why? Because a bunch of kids who otherwise wouldn't apply to these schools tried their luck applying without tests. And many schools took 40% of these kids. We're not going back though because whatever school decides to go to test required will see a huge dropoff in applications. Which will crater their admissions rate. Which will crater their rankings. It is madness all around.

To top it all off, we're barely past the number of students we had in 1969. we won't open seats at the top colleges. For the same reasons as above.

 

[EnochRoot]

I think the question that begs to be asked (yet again) is why the hell isn't Fishers Island part of Connecticut instead of New York?

 

[alphasigko]

The kid is in the last stages of decoding where she will go to college…

She’s basically going to choose from a pair of current Big East schools, (thankfully, she’s tossed Providence), a former Big East school and Connecticut College/Holy Cross/union as small school picks.

I didn’t go to Conn College when she visited, so have no insight into the place. I am a little concerned that a kid who goes to a high school with 4,500 kids is going to be out of place at a college of 1800 kids.

Anyone familiar with the place?

For what it is worth my son went from the largest HS in CO with 3,600 students to a small college in Santa Barbara. He found comfort in the fact that he was not just a number there but that there was more personal attention from the professors in the smaller classes.

 

[Fishy]

I feel really bad this happened.

And worse: it's not going to get any better.

Why? Because average SAT scores skyrocketed since they only counted the SATs from the top 60% of admittees. If they go back to testing required, those SAT scores will drop. So will the rankings in USNews.

Next, applications seemed to triple at the top schools. Why? Because a bunch of kids who otherwise wouldn't apply to these schools tried their luck applying without tests. And many schools took 40% of these kids. We're not going back though because whatever school decides to go to test required will see a huge dropoff in applications. Which will crater their admissions rate. Which will crater their rankings. It is madness all around.

To top it all off, we're barely past the number of students we had in 1969. we won't open seats at the top colleges. For the same reasons as above.

Some will go back, some won’t.

The biggest issue this year is that kids really had no way of knowing where they belonged. We know a brilliant kid who is going to Binghamton because everyone else turned her down - top 15 in a class of 500, high ACT, great extra curricular. She didn’t get into her top schools and her safeties waitlisted her to protect their yield. Dreamed of being a doctor and now has to launch that bid from the cheap seats.

Worked insanely hard for four years and the payoff was a school she could have gone to without spending one late night studying. Good friend of our daughter’s dream school was BU. BU was beneath her but this year, they deferred her, wait listed her and then offered her a spot with $0 aid. Their crime was being in the class of 2026 and being in a demographic that the schools did not mind beating up on.

If I am going to offer kids advice…..do not have a dream school. Treat the private schools as the effectively for-profit outfits that they are. When a school talks about their holistic approach to reviewing applications, they are lying. (Villanova was huge on that….knowing what I know about the randomness of a Nova acceptance from kids in our high school, I assure you that it is all crap. They had no real standard. Friend of my daughter got in with zero actual extracurriculars, higher rated friend got waitlisted with good extras. Tufts was the same.)

Pay attention to how the schools treat you when you visit. There are no guarantees, but the schools that went out of their way on visits tended to be the ones who seem to do a more thorough review of an application. Also, give the state U the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Fishy]

Daughter graduated from Union last spring. Very good school, underappreciated. Don’t know about Connecticut College, though.

Good to know.

We visited Union on the absolutely worst weather day of the year last fall - it was raining sideways and made 32.1 degrees so that it was just barely too warm to snow.

But we know some folks who went there including her swim coach who graduated last spring as well….the merit aid is great and I would like having her within 90 minutes of us.

I don’t express an opinion to her about some things, but holy smokes, that campus felt so small to me.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

As someone else said, a humanities degree is a commitment to grad school. The major is much more important than the school. State school STEM majors are bumping up on six figures right out of college while humanities grads from very good schools are struggling to find good jobs.

 

[Doctor Hoop]

Good to know.

We visited Union on the absolutely worst weather day of the year last fall - it was raining sideways and made 32.1 degrees so that it was just barely too warm to snow.

But we know some folks who went there including her swim coach who graduated last spring as well….the merit aid is great and I would like having her within 90 minutes of us.

I don’t express an opinion to her about some things, but holy smokes, that campus felt so small to me.

Very small campus, but with Schenectady winters that’s actually a good thing. And MIT is leading the charge reinstating an SAT requiremen.

MIT and the SAT

Q &A with Dean of Admissions

 

[husky429]

I feel really bad this happened.

And worse: it's not going to get any better.

Why? Because average SAT scores skyrocketed since they only counted the SATs from the top 60% of admittees. If they go back to testing required, those SAT scores will drop. So will the rankings in USNews.

Next, applications seemed to triple at the top schools. Why? Because a bunch of kids who otherwise wouldn't apply to these schools tried their luck applying without tests. And many schools took 40% of these kids. We're not going back though because whatever school decides to go to test required will see a huge dropoff in applications. Which will crater their admissions rate. Which will crater their rankings. It is madness all around.

To top it all off, we're barely past the number of students we had in 1969. we won't open seats at the top colleges. For the same reasons as above.

I'm probably not supposed to be pro-testing because I'm a school teacher... but I really think it's ridiculous that they don't require them. I think the same for grad programs that drop the GRE.

The big argument I always hear is that the tests are biased. 1) I've never seen a kid do badly on the SAT that was clearly smart, 2) I HAVE seen kids with really tough backgrounds that didn't do very well in school punch above their weight class in the admissions process and change their life. The risk is the rich kids getting tutors to do better on the test and such. I agree but I think the risk isn't as great as with rec letters, extracurriculars and grades.

IMO recommendation letters and extracurriculars are a hell of a lot more biased than the tests are. I've taught hundreds of really smart kids who juat didn't have the time to do extracurriculars. Or kids that aren't going to get great recommendations because they're shy and have eccentric hobbies or something. Grades are also inflated to hell at rich white kid schools.

Grades don't mean anything anymore. Anyone can get credit for extracurriculars if you spend an hour after school once a semester. Sign me up for the only objective measure of student performance we have left.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Very small campus, but with Schenectady winters that’s actually a good thing. And MIT is leading the charge reinstating an SAT requiremen.

MIT and the SAT

Q &A with Dean of Admissions

Most of the top STEM focused schools seem to require it. Carnegie Mellon basically requires it, as does Purdue. Both schools require an essay explaining why a student didn’t provide a test score for any student applying Test Optional. The heavy STEM programs just need kids that are smart enough. There is no bs-ing your way through MIT's or Carnegie Mellon's freshman calculus classes. And if those schools want to take kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, they need to identify and provide remedial assistance out of the gate or they will lose those kids. They need the test.

I expect most state schools to ultimately folllow the lead of MIT for STEM majors. A case could be made that writing samples are more important for an English major than a good SAT score, but there is no substitute to a strong test score for an Engineering or Math major.

I think Test Optional policies do a few things for the schools, all of which are bad:

1) Convince kids that have no chance to apply to super selective schools "test optional". This serves to drive down acceptance rates at competitive schools and make them seem even more exclusive, which helps them in rankings.

2) drive the average SAT scores up which helps them in the rankings. This has gotten so bad and so obvious that US News is actually adjusting how SAT's impact rankings for schools that have a lot of TO admissions.

3) select more students from privileged backgrounds because the prep and wealthy suburban high schools have bigger grade inflation than middle class and disadvantaged high schools have. There is research on the grade inflation at preps and wealthy suburbs over the last 20 years.

4) enables the schools to hide legacies and rich kids who are screwups because those kids won't hurt the admit stats if they apply TO.

I can actually respect test-blind admissions policies like the University of California, even if I disagree with them. Schools are welcome to use any policies they want for admissions as long as those policies are consistent. Test Optional is total bs. Either the test matters or it doesn't. How does making it "optional" make any sense at all?

 

[Giddyup5]

I am the team doc for Conn College and so this is purely based on my experience with the student athletes.

Overall I think it is a great academic school and many the strengths and weakness have already been covered. I wanted to mention a few things not yet stated from my experience.

I was incredibly surprised by the diversity of the student body. I figured most would be New England kids but there are students from all over the country. In addition, students from many countries abroad which again was a little bit of a surprise but I think helps provide a great cultured experience.

Everyone plays a sport. It might be crew or track, but they encourage you to stay active which I love.

Many kids after their freshmen year live in Groton/Long Point. Beautiful area to live in though as some posters mentioned you arguably miss out on the summer months.

I continue to be impressed by the quality of the kids. I’m sure many schools can boast this, but every student is incredibly polite, well mannered, and articulate. They all seem to have a reasonable plan for their future, many with internships all set up. They speak with a quiet confidence that I do not always see in college kids.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I address it above, but I want to re-emphasize that the right major is more important than the right school. Put another way, a Computer Science or Engineering major from Central Connecticut is going to get a good job upon graduation. I am not as confident about a literature major from an IVY or NESCAC school.

A middle-aged poster saying they know someone from an NESCAC school that did really well is not a great benchmark for today's world. We grew up in a completely different era. I am sure we all knew plenty of screw ups from our days at UConn whose degrees may have said "English" or "History", but they really majored in partying and smoking weed, and still went on to be very successful. That is harder now in a society that is so tech heavy and doesn't have the big corporate training programs like there were when we were graduating from college.

Banks don't need to hire Ivy League humanities majors and drop them into a training program any more because schools like UConn churn out so many excellent Finance and Accounting majors that show up the first day of work ready to be productive. Even majors like Marketing have become much more specialized and technical, and a Marketing major from any decent school has a HUGE advantage for those entry level jobs over the liberal arts school graduate.

There are 50% more STEM grads every year than there were 20 years ago, and that number is growing rapidly. A lot of jobs that would hire smart kids with any degree 30 years ago now require STEM majors because they can. There are a lot of STEM majors.

Computer Science is the most in-demand major at colleges right now. The Computer Science programs at Illinois and Washington are more competitive to get into than most NESCAC schools. Even UMass has a highly competitive Comp Sci program. These CS kids are going to be graduating into a world where every large and mid size company is transitioning into a technology company. They will have their pick of job offers.

I know many people who showed up at Wall Street in the 70's through 90's and weaseled their way onto a trading floor. Corporate finance was more exclusive, but back then the trading floors had plenty of kids that made millions on street smarts and their ability to ingratiate themselves to their bosses. Those days are long gone. Goldman and Morgan Stanley need math majors to design algorithms, not some clever Lit major who is good at taking the temperature of the market. The algorithms will do that for them.

My advice is to get a STEM or business degree from any school. Come out of college with a definable skill, or build a time machine to go back to an era where definable skills weren't necessary for college grads.

 

[BPT2Storrs]

Reading through this thread is somewhat depressing. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what college admissions and higher education will look like in 20 years. I firmly believe it will be drastically different than now. The current process and cost is not sustainable. I had no idea that many schools dropped standardized testing requirements, did not know that kids were applying to schools completely out of the realm of possibility, etc.

$60-$80k per year for private schools? It’ll be well over $100k in a few years. That’s unreal. At what point does someone say to themselves is there a better investment? What does someone have to make at entry-level, mid-career and at the height of their professional career to justify those costs? What is the likelihood they will reach those numbers? I understand if your going to be an engineer, doctor or lawyer but let’s be real with ourselves not every lawyer or engineer is pulling down outrageous salaries - it depends on a lot of other factors.

We need to have a serious conversation with ourselves of higher education and career paths. There is currently a college for everyone yet we know that college is not for everyone. We know that college graduates are struggling to find jobs and student loan debt is a huge issue. We also have a several shortage of certain types of professions, many that don’t require a 4 year degree. That shortage then leads to higher costs for everyone. We need to advocate for trade schools, but IMO we need to let businesses know that many jobs they hire for require on job training and experience and not a degree.

Downvote away but in general higher education has become nothing more than a money grab.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Reading through this thread is somewhat depressing. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what college admissions and higher education will look like in 20 years. I firmly believe it will be drastically different than now. The current process and cost is not sustainable. I had no idea that many schools dropped standardized testing requirements, did not know that kids were applying to schools completely out of the realm of possibility, etc.

$60-$80k per year for private schools? It’ll be well over $100k in a few years. That’s unreal. At what point does someone say to themselves is there a better investment? What does someone have to make at entry-level, mid-career and at the height of their professional career to justify those costs? What is the likelihood they will reach those numbers? I understand if your going to be an engineer, doctor or lawyer but let’s be real with ourselves not every lawyer or engineer is pulling down outrageous salaries - it depends on a lot of other factors.

We need to have a serious conversation with ourselves of higher education and career paths. There is currently a college for everyone yet we know that college is not for everyone. We know that college graduates are struggling to find jobs and student loan debt is a huge issue. We also have a several shortage of certain types of professions, many that don’t require a 4 year degree. That shortage then leads to higher costs for everyone. We need to advocate for trade schools, but IMO we need to let businesses know that many jobs they hire for require on job training and experience and not a degree.

Downvote away but in general higher education has become nothing more than a money grab.

If I knew of a way to short sell the entire industry, I would short sell higher education today. It is where traditional media was 25 years ago, on the edge of a cliff and tipping over. How much longer can schools sell an aura of exclusivity to get families to shell out $300k+ for worthless degrees?

 

[husky429]

Reading through this thread is somewhat depressing. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what college admissions and higher education will look like in 20 years. I firmly believe it will be drastically different than now. The current process and cost is not sustainable. I had no idea that many schools dropped standardized testing requirements, did not know that kids were applying to schools completely out of the realm of possibility, etc.

$60-$80k per year for private schools? It’ll be well over $100k in a few years. That’s unreal. At what point does someone say to themselves is there a better investment? What does someone have to make at entry-level, mid-career and at the height of their professional career to justify those costs? What is the likelihood they will reach those numbers? I understand if your going to be an engineer, doctor or lawyer but let’s be real with ourselves not every lawyer or engineer is pulling down outrageous salaries - it depends on a lot of other factors.

We need to have a serious conversation with ourselves of higher education and career paths. There is currently a college for everyone yet we know that college is not for everyone. We know that college graduates are struggling to find jobs and student loan debt is a huge issue. We also have a several shortage of certain types of professions, many that don’t require a 4 year degree. That shortage then leads to higher costs for everyone. We need to advocate for trade schools, but IMO we need to let businesses know that many jobs they hire for require on job training and experience and not a degree.

Downvote away but in general higher education has become nothing more than a money grab.

I would never recommend that someone go into 300,000$ of debt or more for a college degree. SLACs are going to be hammered because of it in the next 20 years. Especially the ones not as highly ranked at the NESCAC schools unless they can start offering more aid.

UConn at 35,000 a year is an absolute steal in comparison, and plenty of kids are going to get aid on top of that. My fiance went to UNC for her undergrad and paid 16k a year with some aid, including room/board/fees. Went to the law school for 20k a year too. She graduated with a law degree from a (vomits) highly ranked school for half the cost of a 4 year degree at NESCAC schools.

I don't think that small class sizes is worth paying 2.5x the cost unless money isn't a concern.

 

[SubbaBub]

The merit aid is substantial - essentially makes Union and Conn about half the cost of Nova or Georgetown. Holy Cross and Syracuse are somewhere in the middle.

So basically, $30K for Binghamton/Buffalo instate, $40K for Conn/Union, $50K Syracuse, $60K Holy Cross and $80K Georgetown/Nova.

The college admissions process right now is horrible. It’s a meat grinder for these kids.

IMO, Buffalo gives you the most bang for the buck by a good margin. Binghamton is a hellhole. Nova is the best school on this list unless she is looking for a career in law or political science, then Gtown.

No objective reason to consider the compromise schools in the middle, none provide a better education/employment opportunities than UB at the price and none of them touch the two BE schools in terms of prestige/networking.

 

[Exodus]

The kid is in the last stages of decoding where she will go to college…

She’s basically going to choose from a pair of current Big East schools, (thankfully, she’s tossed Providence), a former Big East school and Connecticut College/Holy Cross/union as small school picks.

I didn’t go to Conn College when she visited, so have no insight into the place. I am a little concerned that a kid who goes to a high school with 4,500 kids is going to be out of place at a college of 1800 kids.

Anyone familiar with the place?

I graduated from Conn College in 96. Played basketball for Glenn Miller there for 3 years and soccer under Bill Lessig for 4. Was one of the best decisions that I have ever made in my life. Could have gone to a larger D1 school to play soccer, but obviously not basketball. For athletics, I got the best of both worlds and I received a first class education. The campus has a large school feel because it’s fairly spread out and the grounds are meticulous. The facilities and faculty are are top notch, and continue to improve every year as the endowment continues to grow. Yes- the student population is fairly small, but there are benefits to that as well. Small class size, your own room after freshman year and personalized career and post graduation guidance. I could go on- but again, it was perfect for me.

 

[Exodus]

Purely anecdotal, but everyone I’ve ever met who went there is a huge stiff lacking any semblance of a personality.

Thanks.

 

[runner11]

Reading through this thread is somewhat depressing. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what college admissions and higher education will look like in 20 years. I firmly believe it will be drastically different than now. The current process and cost is not sustainable. I had no idea that many schools dropped standardized testing requirements, did not know that kids were applying to schools completely out of the realm of possibility, etc.

$60-$80k per year for private schools? It’ll be well over $100k in a few years. That’s unreal. At what point does someone say to themselves is there a better investment? What does someone have to make at entry-level, mid-career and at the height of their professional career to justify those costs? What is the likelihood they will reach those numbers? I understand if your going to be an engineer, doctor or lawyer but let’s be real with ourselves not every lawyer or engineer is pulling down outrageous salaries - it depends on a lot of other factors.

We need to have a serious conversation with ourselves of higher education and career paths. There is currently a college for everyone yet we know that college is not for everyone. We know that college graduates are struggling to find jobs and student loan debt is a huge issue. We also have a A shortage of certain types of professions, many that don’t require a 4 year degree. That shortage then leads to higher costs for everyone. We need to advocate for trade schools, but IMO we need to let businesses know that many jobs they hire for require on job training and experience and not a degree.

Downvote away but in general higher education has become nothing more than a money grab.

The future is people buried in student debt trying to scrape by in service economy jobs.

My take is if you can get into a Georgetown tier or above, do it, or if there is a specific program geared towards your future career, great. Otherwise go public.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Some will go back, some won’t.

The biggest issue this year is that kids really had no way of knowing where they belonged. We know a brilliant kid who is going to Binghamton because everyone else turned her down - top 15 in a class of 500, high ACT, great extra curricular. She didn’t get into her top schools and her safeties waitlisted her to protect their yield. Dreamed of being a doctor and now has to launch that bid from the cheap seats.

Worked insanely hard for four years and the payoff was a school she could have gone to without spending one late night studying. Good friend of our daughter’s dream school was BU. BU was beneath her but this year, they deferred her, wait listed her and then offered her a spot with $0 aid. Their crime was being in the class of 2026 and being in a demographic that the schools did not mind beating up on.

If I am going to offer kids advice…..do not have a dream school. Treat the private schools as the effectively for-profit outfits that they are. When a school talks about their holistic approach to reviewing applications, they are lying. (Villanova was huge on that….knowing what I know about the randomness of a Nova acceptance from kids in our high school, I assure you that it is all crap. They had no real standard. Friend of my daughter got in with zero actual extracurriculars, higher rated friend got waitlisted with good extras. Tufts was the same.)

Pay attention to how the schools treat you when you visit. There are no guarantees, but the schools that went out of their way on visits tended to be the ones who seem to do a more thorough review of an application. Also, give the state U the benefit of the doubt.

The experience you describe in the thread was the same as ours applying last year. Most of the deferrals were the class before that. It was test optional everywhere last year too, and applications ran some 3X-4X normal at most popular schools. I think that made it a complete crapshoot. BU gave my daughter deferred admission for this upcoming year, but she liked Northeastern better anyway. Fordham gave her solid merit, but Fordham was straight up closed. Gated shut. The visit was that they allowed you to walk the grounds for 30 minutes. I do not think they saw the applications other schools did. Had to assume it would be mostly remote.

Also agree on the same HS thing, getting into BC out of a Catholic School in MA is ridiculous, the stats of the kids from her school were far higher than the average, because they all apply. I noticed the different treatment too, UVM was exceptional. Loyala of Chicago was as well. Some schools really wanted her. Others like UConn and BU were frankly overwhelmed with visits and had to manage under pandemic rules. It couldn't be easy.

You daughter has several good options. Are you going to do follow up visits to narrow the list before May?

 

[aburks41]

I am the team doc for Conn College and so this is purely based on my experience with the student athletes.

Overall I think it is a great academic school and many the strengths and weakness have already been covered. I wanted to mention a few things not yet stated from my experience.

I was incredibly surprised by the diversity of the student body. I figured most would be New England kids but there are students from all over the country. In addition, students from many countries abroad which again was a little bit of a surprise but I think helps provide a great cultured experience.

Everyone plays a sport. It might be crew or track, but they encourage you to stay active which I love.

Many kids after their freshmen year live in Groton/Long Point. Beautiful area to live in though as some posters mentioned you arguably miss out on the summer months.

I continue to be impressed by the quality of the kids. I’m sure many schools can boast this, but every student is incredibly polite, well mannered, and articulate. They all seem to have a reasonable plan for their future, many with internships all set up. They speak with a quiet confidence that I do not always see in college kids.

I live in Groton Long Point during the summer months, there's a house down my street that is always rented by Conn college kids. I've talked to them before and they love it. It's also a few minutes away from Mystic which has all the fun bars and restaurants.

 

[husky429]

The future is people buried in student debt trying to scrape by in service economy jobs.

My take is if you can get into a Georgetown tier or above, do it, or if there is a specific program geared towards your future career, great. Otherwise go public.

That isn't the future--it's already happening. Anyone who didn't have mommy and daddy to pay for college and listened to their guidance counselor about how great SLACs are is screwed unless they're able to get into a fully funded grad school of some kind (and they're still screwed 5 years later, lol).

 

[BigTenFan]

Most of the top STEM focused schools seem to require it. Carnegie Mellon basically requires it, as does Purdue. Both schools require an essay explaining why a student didn’t provide a test score for any student applying Test Optional. The heavy STEM programs just need kids that are smart enough. There is no bs-ing your way through MIT's or Carnegie Mellon's freshman calculus classes. And if those schools want to take kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, they need to identify and provide remedial assistance out of the gate or they will lose those kids. They need the test.

I expect most state schools to ultimately folllow the lead of MIT for STEM majors. A case could be made that writing samples are more important for an English major than a good SAT score, but there is no substitute to a strong test score for an Engineering or Math major.

I think Test Optional policies do a few things for the schools, all of which are bad:

1) Convince kids that have no chance to apply to super selective schools "test optional". This serves to drive down acceptance rates at competitive schools and make them seem even more exclusive, which helps them in rankings.

2) drive the average SAT scores up which helps them in the rankings. This has gotten so bad and so obvious that US News is actually adjusting how SAT's impact rankings for schools that have a lot of TO admissions.

3) select more students from privileged backgrounds because the prep and wealthy suburban high schools have bigger grade inflation than middle class and disadvantaged high schools have. There is research on the grade inflation at preps and wealthy suburbs over the last 20 years.

4) enables the schools to hide legacies and rich kids who are screwups because those kids won't hurt the admit stats if they apply TO.

I can actually respect test-blind admissions policies like the University of California, even if I disagree with them. Schools are welcome to use any policies they want for admissions as long as those policies are consistent. Test Optional is total bs. Either the test matters or it doesn't. How does making it "optional" make any sense at all?

I agree with everything you wrote. I look at many of the STEM schools as high tech trade schools...but more expensive. Most kids going to these schools are focused on getting a tech job even before they graduate.
It's just a different environment than many Liberal Arts colleges- not better or worse

The other big thing changing the admission process is the common application.
Kids are applying to 20 schools with no intention of attending many of them
That causes the acceptance percentage to go way down and keep out some highly qualified students. Schools that were getting 10000 applications 10 years ago are now getting 40000.
At the end of the day... The motivated kids will succeed no matter what their choice is

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I agree with everything you wrote. I look at many of the STEM schools as high tech trade schools...but more expensive. Most kids going to these schools are focused on getting a tech job even before they graduate.
It's just a different environment than many Liberal Arts colleges- not better or worse

The other big thing changing the admission process is the common application.
Kids are applying to 20 schools with no intention of attending many of them
That causes the acceptance percentage to go way down and keep out some highly qualified students. Schools that were getting 10000 applications 10 years ago are now getting 40000.
At the end of the day... The motivated kids will succeed no matter what their choice is

I am not so sure about your last sentence. One of the issues with student debt is kids borrowing mountains of money to get worthless degrees. I don't know if I would recommend a kid borrow $300k to get an engineering or CS degree from MIT or Carnegie Mellon undergrad, but it is at least worth a discussion. I would strongly recommend AGAINST a kid borrowing that much money to get a literature degree from an NESCAC school. A kid can read literature on their own time, they don't need to pay someone $75k a year to teach it to them.

It is interesting how powerful the traditional liberal arts schools are in framing the debate on the value of higher education. Calling STEM or business schools "trade" or "vocational" programs harkens back to a different era where the kids (mostly sons) of the wealthy and upper middle class met kids from similar families before heading out to jobs secured by family connections. That world started to end in the late 70's, and it is mostly dead today. Yet the liberal arts schools keep using that language to justify their entire business model, which by any objective measure is failing.

The publics aren't much better off. As someone else pointed out, the class sizes in the humanities at public schools is similar to that at the expensive privates, because kids do not want to take those classes any more. The problem is that the humanities departments are staffed as if it is 1995, with a lot of aging, tenured faculty that do not have many students to teach, while 100+ kids are packed into an engineering lecture hall.

 

[upstater]

Some will go back, some won’t.

The biggest issue this year is that kids really had no way of knowing where they belonged. We know a brilliant kid who is going to Binghamton because everyone else turned her down - top 15 in a class of 500, high ACT, great extra curricular. She didn’t get into her top schools and her safeties waitlisted her to protect their yield. Dreamed of being a doctor and now has to launch that bid from the cheap seats.

Worked insanely hard for four years and the payoff was a school she could have gone to without spending one late night studying. Good friend of our daughter’s dream school was BU. BU was beneath her but this year, they deferred her, wait listed her and then offered her a spot with $0 aid. Their crime was being in the class of 2026 and being in a demographic that the schools did not mind beating up on.

If I am going to offer kids advice…..do not have a dream school. Treat the private schools as the effectively for-profit outfits that they are. When a school talks about their holistic approach to reviewing applications, they are lying. (Villanova was huge on that….knowing what I know about the randomness of a Nova acceptance from kids in our high school, I assure you that it is all crap. They had no real standard. Friend of my daughter got in with zero actual extracurriculars, higher rated friend got waitlisted with good extras. Tufts was the same.)

Pay attention to how the schools treat you when you visit. There are no guarantees, but the schools that went out of their way on visits tended to be the ones who seem to do a more thorough review of an application. Also, give the state U the benefit of the doubt.

If they were holistic prior to the pandemic, they were probably really holistic. But there are only a few such schools.

BU is one school that admitted 40% of kids as non-test takers.

 

[8893]

@Fishy , should your daughter decide to attend Connecticut College, be sure to frequent the Dutch Tavern, a classic joint.

It's your kind of place. Great for a good, basic meal; watching any soccer, baseball, basketball or football game; a classic pinball machine; a proper pint of Guinness; and an absolute lack of pretension, so strong that you will be ignored if you show any yourself.

 

[upstater]

Very small campus, but with Schenectady winters that’s actually a good thing. And MIT is leading the charge reinstating an SAT requiremen.

MIT and the SAT

Q &A with Dean of Admissions

MIT can afford to do it. Many schools won't. Northeastern is at 7% acceptance rate. Think they're ever going back? Not until USNews drops acceptance rates as a criteria.

 

[upstater]

I'm probably not supposed to be pro-testing because I'm a school teacher... but I really think it's ridiculous that they don't require them. I think the same for grad programs that drop the GRE.

The big argument I always hear is that the tests are biased. 1) I've never seen a kid do badly on the SAT that was clearly smart, 2) I HAVE seen kids with really tough backgrounds that didn't do very well in school punch above their weight class in the admissions process and change their life. The risk is the rich kids getting tutors to do better on the test and such. I agree but I think the risk isn't as great as with rec letters, extracurriculars and grades.

IMO recommendation letters and extracurriculars are a hell of a lot more biased than the tests are. I've taught hundreds of really smart kids who juat didn't have the time to do extracurriculars. Or kids that aren't going to get great recommendations because they're shy and have eccentric hobbies or something. Grades are also inflated to hell at rich white kid schools.

Grades don't mean anything anymore. Anyone can get credit for extracurriculars if you spend an hour after school once a semester. Sign me up for the only objective measure of student performance we have left.

I agree with most of this except for your point about the GRE.

They are largely useless for us. A kid applying to grad school shows much more proficiency in their research and project. GREs don't tell us much at that point. A 23 or 24 year old is already professionalizing if they want to go on.

 

[upstater]

I address it above, but I want to re-emphasize that the right major is more important than the right school. Put another way, a Computer Science or Engineering major from Central Connecticut is going to get a good job upon graduation. I am not as confident about a literature major from an IVY or NESCAC school.

A middle-aged poster saying they know someone from an NESCAC school that did really well is not a great benchmark for today's world. We grew up in a completely different era. I am sure we all knew plenty of screw ups from our days at UConn whose degrees may have said "English" or "History", but they really majored in partying and smoking weed, and still went on to be very successful. That is harder now in a society that is so tech heavy and doesn't have the big corporate training programs like there were when we were graduating from college.

Banks don't need to hire Ivy League humanities majors and drop them into a training program any more because schools like UConn churn out so many excellent Finance and Accounting majors that show up the first day of work ready to be productive. Even majors like Marketing have become much more specialized and technical, and a Marketing major from any decent school has a HUGE advantage for those entry level jobs over the liberal arts school graduate.

There are 50% more STEM grads every year than there were 20 years ago, and that number is growing rapidly. A lot of jobs that would hire smart kids with any degree 30 years ago now require STEM majors because they can. There are a lot of STEM majors.

Computer Science is the most in-demand major at colleges right now. The Computer Science programs at Illinois and Washington are more competitive to get into than most NESCAC schools. Even UMass has a highly competitive Comp Sci program. These CS kids are going to be graduating into a world where every large and mid size company is transitioning into a technology company. They will have their pick of job offers.

I know many people who showed up at Wall Street in the 70's through 90's and weaseled their way onto a trading floor. Corporate finance was more exclusive, but back then the trading floors had plenty of kids that made millions on street smarts and their ability to ingratiate themselves to their bosses. Those days are long gone. Goldman and Morgan Stanley need math majors to design algorithms, not some clever Lit major who is good at taking the temperature of the market. The algorithms will do that for them.

My advice is to get a STEM or business degree from any school. Come out of college with a definable skill, or build a time machine to go back to an era where definable skills weren't necessary for college grads.

There are plenty of studies that show the exact opposite of this.

Business degrees are the refuge of the big partiers.

There have been studies that show through exit surveys and final assessments that the least was gained in business majors.

One caveat for the studies is that the results may be a corollary for the type of kid that takes business courses. Social, partygoing, etc.

We're always told in the Humanities that the classes are too hard (admissions, administrators tell us this) so students are driven away.

I do take your point about STEM.

But the rest of the college looks at Communications and Business in a different way.