Myth #18
“A couple of months ago, my top choice college sent me a letter encouraging me to apply. Plus, I just had a great interview with the local alumni rep here in my town. She said my application looked very good so I think I’m in!”
OOOhhhhhhh! This is one of the most dangerous traps for any impressionable teenager to face. If you were applying to college 25 years ago, you were certainly justified in having that reaction and you were probably correct. That’s not the case any more. Unfortunately this myth continues because the parents of most applicants recall their own experience. The rules have changed.
In this case, you can blame something called the annual US News & World Report ranking of America’s colleges. You probably have a copy at home . . . if not you should get one. It’s a great short cut guide to colleges. It absolutely isn’t what it claims to be, which is an accurate ranking of colleges, but it is a wonderful quick reference if you’re looking for an address or telephone number or basic stats about a college. As an aside, whoever designs the issue must have had a student apply to college because they solved the single greatest problem of the application process. You’ll discover that when you have dozens of college brochures and letters and pamphlets and notes spread all over the house . . . you can’t easily find anything. US News & World Report prints its college issue in a different bright color every year! It might not be the best guide but it’s the one that you’ll find first when you’re searching.
Back to the myth. A few years ago, for some unknown reason, the US News & World Report college rankings caught the attention and interest of families across the country. Ranking colleges one by one is basically nonsense. The differences and appropriateness of styles for any individual student makes a general ranking impossible. And in fact, that’s probably why the issue has become so popular. Ranking colleges for the interests of any particular student is so overwhelming a task that people were looking for a ‘magic bullet”. Suddenly, you didn’t have to take the time and energy to rate the colleges that would be best for you. Instead you could spend $10 and get the results of a reputable and scholarly magazine that had done all the work for you.
Of course it isn’t true but it’s very tempting to believe. Worse, while the colleges publicly criticize the rankings as inappropriate, privately they work as hard as they can to maintain or improve their position on the list. US News & World Report publishes the metrics they use to prepare their rankings. Naturally, colleges spend a great deal of effort trying to improve the specific areas which are used to create the rankings.
One of the most important factors used to determine where your college ranks is the number of applications you receive. If you receive more applications but you continue to send out the same number of acceptances then your “selectivity” score skyrockets and your overall ranking improves. So, when you hear college officials discuss how difficult the admissions process has become during the past few years because of the dramatic increase in applications, please keep in mind that they have been working day and night to fuel that increase!
In the past, if a college sent you a letter encouraging you to apply . . . it was a very good sign. Today if a college sends you a letter encouraging you to apply, it’s still a good sign but now it’s a better sign that the college’s expensive list serve software to identify potential applicants is working well. In the past, that recruiting letter was an indication that you might very well be on an inside track to acceptance. Today, it’s more likely an effort to build the college’s application pool and not necessarily any indication that you’ve made it to a short list at the admissions office.
As far as the comments from the alumni rep, don’t put a great deal of faith in those either. The importance of alumni reps as a marketing tool has grown during the past few years. On the other hand, at most colleges the importance of the alumni reps for their specific input to the decision making process has substantially declined.
So the signals our mythical applicant was relying on to feel so confident were both good . . . but in a much broader and less specific sense than anything most parents experienced when they were applying to college. The college experience will take four years. That’s a long time . . . about 10% of your adult life. Do everything you can to bolster your application until the day you receive a final decision. When you open the acceptance letter or see it on the web, then you can finally back off . . . but not a minute before!
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