Which Colleges Offer Early Admission Programs?

Early admissions is a complex and constantly changing game. In recent years the cast of characters has grown significantly, with more and more colleges entering the competition for the best students. But still the true rules of applying early are rarely known to students and their parents. In the interest of leveling the playing field, we devote this article to uncovering the mystery of early admissions.

Five major points emerge here and are furtherelaborated in the chapters that follow:

1. Elite private colleges overwhelmingly employ early admissions programs.
2. The system is confusing because the rules and deadlines differ from college to college.
3. Students from advantaged backgrounds are the most likely to apply early.
4. Most early programs are of modest size, but many are substantial, and some have even grown to the point that they leave relatively few spots in the class for regular applicants.
5. Almost every college with an early program admits a higher proportion of early applicants than of regular applicants. At many colleges this creates a concern about the availability of regular admissions slots.

Which Colleges Offer Early Programs?
Currently, only one-third of all four-year colleges in the United States offer early admissions programs.1 Yet almost all of the most selective private colleges have such programs. (This figure measures selectivity using the average SAT scores of current students. Other measures of selectivity, such as the U.S. News rankings, produce a similar pattern—the higher the ranking, the more likely that the college is to offer an early program.)
Almost all colleges offer one of two early admissions programs:
Early Action (EA) or Early Decision (ED). Early Decision, which requires early applicants to commit to enrolling if admitted, predominates at the most selective colleges. Early Action, which allows early applicants to apply and enroll at other colleges in the regular process, is most common at the least selective colleges. A small number of colleges offer both programs.

Public colleges, which primarily cater to in-state students, usually at dramatically reduced tuition, operate in a less competitive environment than do private schools, with strong built-in demand. Their natural response is to adopt admissions practices that are different from those of their private counterparts. For instance, a survey conducted by the National Association for College Admissions Counselors in 2001–02 found that private institutions were about three times as likely as public institutions to offer early admissions programs.

Many public institutions offer rolling admissions programs and publish standard admissions criteria based on thresholds for grade-point average and SAT scores. For students who meet these criteria, the admission thresholds serve as a form of Early Action they guarantee admission before the regular application deadlines.

The public institutions that offer early admissions tend to offer Early Action, and some of these programs are quite extensive. The few public institutions that offer Early Decision tend to be the socalled public Ivies that compete for top students nationally, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of
Virginia, and William and Mary.

The policies of most colleges are relatively stable, though some add or change an early admissions program each year. For example, among the “Top 50 Universities” and “Top 50 Liberal Arts Colleges” named by U.S. News, only four changed the status of their early programs from 1997–98 to 1998–99, and each of these four colleges simply added either Early Action or Early Decision in 1998–99 to complement an existing program.
Read More : Which Colleges Offer Early Admission Programs?

The History of Early Admissions

The current early admissions system is the product of a multitude of decisions by colleges, applicants, and other participants, such as parents and counselors. College admissions is like an ecosystem, with some short-lived and some long-lived species. The students, who pass through briefly, merely respond to the environment they encounter. The colleges, by contrast, reside in the system for many years and play a major role in shaping the environment.

The colleges set the rules in the admissions game, with individual colleges changing their policies to gain competitive advantage over their rivals. They have several goals—attract applicants, admit the best, and then induce them to enroll—but relatively few instruments, primarily admissions decisions and financial aid packages, to achieve them. Since 1954, early admissions programs have proved to be an enormously successful way for colleges to compete with one another.

The purposeful actions of colleges may also prove harmful in the rapidly changing admissions environment. Sometimes colleges simply make mistakes, and in other instances, a policy selected by a college to accomplish one particular goal proves to serve another once applicants and other colleges respond. For example, early admissions programs were designed, in part, to reduce stress for some applicants by guaranteeing admission in the first part of senior year in high school. What no one anticipated was that these programs would grow to the point where applicants felt pressured to apply early. Although terminology has changed over time, colleges have always used early admissions programs for strategic purposes; the motivations and results have remained similar over time. In a story of déjà vu all over again, today’s debates about the benefits and costs of early admissions programs echo similar debates from more than thirty years ago.

Admissions from the Seventeenth Century to the Mid-1960s 
For more than three hundred years—from the founding of Harvard in 1636 to the end of World War II—college admission was remarkably stable: virtually all academically qualified applicants were accepted. 1 As the 1952–53 report of the Harvard Admissions Office explained: “Until very recent times Harvard, like most colleges, followed essentially a simple laissez faire admission policy. We admitted those who applied and met the admission requirements.

There was no surplus of qualified candidates and no effort was made to persuade students to come to Harvard.” But there was a catch: the definition of a “qualified candidate” eliminated the vast majority of high school students. Before World War II, most colleges administered their own entrance exams. A number of elite schools, mostly in the East, used the examination written by the College Entrance Examination Board (now known as the College Board) to screen applicants for admission, though some applicants were exempted from the exam. These tests focused on subjects routinely taught by preparatory schools, such as Latin, but beyond the reach of many public schools.

In the 1930s and 1940s, twelve prestigious boarding schools sent an average of two-thirds of their graduates to Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. These twelve schools supplied nearly 30 percent of the entering students at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale in both 1930 and 1940. Public school students made up between 14 and 26 percent of the student body at Princeton and Yale during this period. At Harvard, where 20 percent of the students commuted, somewhat more students were from public high schools.4 Most students, particularly those at boarding schools, applied to only one college, were admitted, and then enrolled.

In 1932, for example, Yale admitted 959 of 1,330 applicants (72.1 percent), and 884 of them (92.2 percent of those admitted) entered the college.5 Among these students enrolling at Yale, 29.6 percent (262 of 884) had fathers who had attended before them. The percentage of alumni children in the entering class reflects the remarkable degree of social segregation of that period. Yet some admissions processes were also designed to ease entry for public school students.

For instance, Harvard instituted a policy known as the “top seventh” or “New Plan” in 1911 to guarantee admission to students in the top seventh of the class at approved schools, including a number of highly regarded public schools.6 Even in those early days, colleges competed fiercely for at least some applicants. Eastern colleges found themselves under pressure to relax their examination requirements, in particular the Latin requirement, from alumni who had moved to the Midwest and the West. Few high schools beyond the East Coast even offered Latin. (Latin was not approved to meet the foreign language requirement in California, for example.) Arthur Hadley, the president of Yale from 1899 to 1921, summarized the problem for his college: “The point is that we are not getting men from the high schools of the West . . . The Western boys who come to Yale are mostly going to preparatory schools in the East. That is a serious thing. It means that we are getting somewhat out of connection with the public school system of the country; not in the West alone, but in the West first, and probably in other places afterwards.”

Harvard jumped ahead of Yale with two innovations. First, it waived the Latin requirement for students in the sciences who enrolled for a Bachelor of Science degree rather than the traditional Bachelor of Arts degree. Second, Harvard’s New Plan, introduced in 1911, opened the door still further to public school students by waiving the entrance exam requirement entirely for those with sufficiently strong grades at certain high schools, and relaxing the exam requirements for all students.

In response to Harvard’s new policies, Yale relaxed its examination requirements slightly. This response was not sufficient, and so in 1916 Yale introduced its own New Plan. Thus began a consistent pattern that continued into the twenty-first century. Elite colleges, such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, regularly altered their entrance requirements to gain an advantage in the competition for applicants. Once one college moved, others responded. In the early twentieth century the jockeying was over foreign language requirements; since World War II, competition has been primarily in the realm of early admissions programs. The second half of the century saw significant growth in the number of college applicants.

When the GIs returned from World War II, they flooded the colleges. Many soldiers had interrupted their studies. More important, the GI Bill entitled veterans to attend college at government expense. The number of veterans who wanted to go to college, and also could afford to, exploded. By the Eisenhower years, 1952–1956, when the GI bulge had long since passed through the system, Harvard received 3,500 or so applications per year, roughly three times its prewar levels. And the Baby Boom generation waited in the wings.

In 1956 Benjamin Fletcher, the president of Smith College, spoke of the “‘tidal wave’ of students now in elementary schools who will soon be pressing for admission to the colleges.”10 Fletcher’s statement foreshadowed sentiments heard often today. Even in the late 1950s, admissions officers responded with “mixed feelings,” or perhaps crocodile tears, to each new increment in applications: “The staff was stretched to the limit to take care of the burden of interviewing, correspondence, and folder-reading; and the number of good candidates who had eventually to be disappointed in their hopes of entering Harvard was painfully large.”

As applications increased, colleges moved to more selective admissions practices in order to limit the size of entering classes: “For the first time we can, within limits—and in fact we have to—consciously shape the make-up of our student body instead of allowing natural selection or laissez faire to determine it.”12 Eugene Wilson, the dean of admissions at Amherst, echoed this sentiment in 1959: “For generations prior to the last war, the central problem of admissions at Amherst and similar institutions had been one of recruitment— finding enough qualified candidates to fill each entering class. Since 1946, however, the central problem of admissions has increasingly been one of selection—picking the ‘best’ candidates from a great excess of qualified applicants.” At that point, it was common for liberal arts and Ivy League colleges alike to receive four applications for each spot in the entering class.

Applicants could no longer be confident of admission to a particular college, so they spread their applications to a bevy of colleges. As a result, many applicants were admitted to more than one school, presenting colleges with two new problems: luring the best students to accept, and managing the size of the freshman class in a world with uncertain matriculation rates. Within a decade of World War II, the Admissions Game had become vastly more complicated. Dean Wilson lamented, “No longer does an admissions committee select an entering class.

To-day [sic] the admission committee selects candidates who by their ‘yeas’ and ‘nays’ determine the composition of the entering class.”15 Yield rates, which represent the percentages of admitted students who matriculate to a given college, fell to between 50 and 60 percent for top colleges. 16 As a result, competition to attract the top applicants stiffened. 17 Until 1952, the College Board required students to list a topchoice college as part of the exam registration process. Once this practice was abolished, almost concurrent with the rise of multiple applications, colleges faced the significant danger of over- or undershooting the desired size for the next entering class.

In 1955 Amherst enrolled 306 students, 56 more than its desired entering class of 250. Predictably, college administrators found a way to blame their problems on the applicants. Admissions officers decried “ghost applications,” “admissions letter collectors,” and even “shoppers” (who applied to multiple colleges to increase chances of receiving a scholarship to one of them).19 They labeled students as selfish if they did not withdraw applications to other colleges immediately after learning of admission to a likely top-choice school. In 1958 Reverend Miles Fay, the dean of admissions at Holy Cross, wrote that predicting the size of an entering class was an “educator’s blind man’s bluff,” forcing colleges to adopt “an egregiously oversimplified rule of thumb . . . ‘capacity plus one-third.’”20 Safety margins of this scale were unacceptable. In the mid to late 1950s, colleges realized that they could manipulate the timing of the application process to their own advantage.

At first, colleges tried to gain an edge on their rivals by sending admissions letters to applicants before their competitors did so. Williams, for example, tried to preempt Ivy League colleges in this manner.21 An applicant faced a very hard choice when one college required an answer to its offer of admission before other colleges even sent acceptance and rejection letters: “This candidate could find himself with three equally cruel options: (1) accept his ‘second choice’ and prematurely withdraw his application to his ‘first choice’ as required; (2) accept the second choice, put down a deposit (up to $300) without withdrawing from his first choice, and then forfeit the money if accepted at the favorite; (3) turn down the second choice and stake everything on getting into his favorite, which may mean ending up with no college at all.”

Today, more than forty years later, students confront a variant of this problem when they decide whether to apply ED, which requires them to commit to one college before receiving an admission decision from any other college. The process continued to move forward in time until 1961, when a consortium of leading colleges agreed to adopt uniform dates for application deadlines (January 1) and notification (decisions sent to applicants in mid-April with a deadline of May 1 for selecting a college). The Boston Sunday Herald underscored the need for standardized “mail-out” and “candidate’s reply” dates: “Up to this year some colleges, including Amherst and Williams, required definite commitments from admitted candidates in early May—often before the large schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton had even mailed out their notices.” Seeking competitive advantage, some colleges, including Wesleyan, preempted the common mail-out date.

As the Herald noted, “such schools are often willing to assure qualified candidates of acceptance several months before formal notices are mailed, if the students withdraw other applications.” These programs, in effect a delayed version of Early Decision for regular applicants, were the precursor of today’s Early Decision programs. Currently offered at such colleges as Haverford and Wesleyan, Early Decision allows applicants to apply at the regular deadline, while making a commitment to matriculate if admitted.
Read More : The History of Early Admissions

College Admission: Knowing When to Do What

Everybody knows that getting into college today is rarely effortless. But it’s possible to reduce the stress level if you use this cheat sheet. Here’s a list of what teenagers, and in some cases their parents, should be doing beginning in the freshman year of high school.

Freshman Year
Enroll in strong college prep courses. These classes can prepare you for the workload that awaits in college. College admissions officers want to see that you’ve taken challenging courses. In fact, colleges
routinely put more weight on grades and the strength of your high school’s curriculum than they do on standardized test scores.

Meet with high school counselor. Find out what classes you
need to take during the next four years to satisfy, at a minimum, the
requirements of your state universities. Also ask about academic
coursework that private schools might require.

Get extra help. If necessary, find a tutor for difficult subjects
and/or attend summer school.

Volunteer and join. It’s easy to become cynical when contemplating
what extracurricular and volunteer activities are best. A

teenager should not get involved in something simply because it might
grab an admissions officer’s attention.

Colleges aren’t necessarily going to be impressed if a teenager
simply joins a bunch of high school clubs. They often are excited about
kids who show initiative and leadership abilities. This most definitely
doesn’t mean that a child has to get involved in student government.

Far from it. Kids should try linking their extracurricular activities to
their passions. My daughter, for instance, had been playing soccer
since third grade, so it was a natural fit for her to become a soccer
coach for a kids’ recreational league. She also earned money as a soccer
referee for several years. In addition, she turned her love of arts
and crafts into a volunteering opportunity by creating scrapbooks for
assisted living facilities.

Read, read, and read some more. Being a strong reader can
not only make a teenager a better student, but it can make it easier to
perform well in college. Reading may also lead to higher scores on the
SAT, which now places a heavier emphasis on reading ability. Reading
comprehension is not something you can cram for in the weeks leading
up to the test.

Sophomore Year
Consider taking the PSAT in October. Juniors typically take
this pre-SAT test, but at plenty of high schools sophomores do as well.
The test can provide an idea of how your child might fare with the
SAT. By getting an assessment early, there is plenty of time to address
a child’s weaknesses.

Take SAT Subject Tests. If a teenager is interested in schools
that require SAT Subject Tests, he or she should try to take the relevant
subject test right after completing the high school course. SAT
Subject Tests are available in such courses as U.S. history, chemistry,
mathematics, foreign languages, and molecular or ecological biology.

Most schools don’t require these extra tests, but those that do may
want scores in one to three subjects.


Keep reading! The College Board has compiled a great reading
list for high schoolers, 101 Great Books. To obtain the list, type that
title into the College Board’s search engine at www.collegeboard.com.

Begin researching schools. Books, such as Fiske Guide to
Colleges and The Princeton Review’s The Best 366 Colleges provide an
overview of many brand-name schools, but the vast majority of
colleges and universities aren’t covered.

An online resource that covers more territory is College Confidential
(www.collegeconfidential.com), which maintains countless articles
about choosing colleges, paying the tab, and many more topics.

The site also hosts forums on colleges and universities across the country.
Parents and students can post questions about individual schools
on the forums and share their impressions of institutions after they
have visited.

Another resource to generate more ideas is the College Match-
Maker, located on the College Board’s Web site. Also check out the
federal College Navigator at http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator. You
should also visit school Web sites, attend college fairs in your area, and
talk to your guidance counselor about potential schools.

Visit schools. The summer between sophomore and junior year
can be a convenient time to begin checking out schools. The visits
may help motivate a teenager after he or she sees what hard work can
lead to.

Create a filing system. Once you begin accumulating college
marketing materials, you’ll need a place to organize it. Create file folders
for each school that interests you.

Junior Year
Continue researching and visiting schools and taking challenging
classes. Many students and teachers believe this is the hardest
year for the college bound.

Study for the SAT. An inexpensive way to prepare for the test is
to buy a test prep book, which you can find at just about any bookstore.

A wonderful (and free) test prep resource online is www.Number2.
com. What I especially like about Number2.com is that it dispatches

e-mails to parents that contain a weekly progress report breaking
down how many questions the child tackled, how many he got right,
and how many minutes or hours he spent on the site.

Another delightful—and unique—site is FreeRice (www.freerice.
com). Every time a visitor to this site gets a vocabulary word right, the
site’s advertisers donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nation’s World
Food Program. Since FreeRice was launched in the fall of 2007—by
a dad helping his kids with SAT words—the site has generated donations
of 19 trillion grains of rice.

An expensive option is an SAT prep class, which can cost $1,000
or more. Check to see whether your high school provides free SAT
preparation.

Register for the SAT well in advance. You’re taking a risk if you
expect to sign up for the SAT a few days before the test. The test slots
fill up, and even if you do waltz in at the last minute, the test will cost
more money. You can check SAT deadlines by visiting the College
Board’s Web site.

Take the SAT test. A good time for many juniors to tackle the
SAT is late winter, early spring. If your child is studying Algebra II as
a junior, consider delaying the test toward the end of his or her junior
year since this level of math is included in the test.

Consider the ACT. Some students perform better on the ACT,
while others experience greater luck on the SAT. Both test many of the
same skills, however, differences exist. Unlike the SAT, for instance,
the ACT includes a science section, as well as trigonometry questions.

The SAT places a greater emphasis on vocabulary, and it imposes a
guessing penalty.

Estimate financial aid need. Use online calculators at
FinAid.org and the College Board’s Web site.

Write thank you notes. After visiting a school, send a note if you
spoke personally to an admissions officer, professor, or coach.


Senior Year
Use a calendar. The more schools you apply to, the crazier it’s going
to get. The only way to keep track of college admissions and financial
aid deadlines is by writing it all down on a calendar.

Work on applications. In the summer months, before the senior
year gets underway, focus on applications and essays. It’s just about
impossible to overestimate how time consuming these tasks can be after
school starts.

Get a head start on recommendations. A lot of teachers and
guidance counselors are inundated with requests for recommendations
after Thanksgiving. Ask teachers for recommendations in
September, October, or even earlier when they will be less harried. At
some private schools, teachers write recommendations in the summer
months before senior year begins. Thank teachers who help with a gift
certificate to a place like Starbucks or Barnes & Noble.

Retake the SAT. With deadlines looming, time is running out to
try the SAT again if you aren’t happy with your scores. Many schools
will mix and match SAT scores. For example, suppose you received a
higher score on the critical reading section and a lower math score
during the first try, but the scores were reversed when taking it again.

Many schools will select the highest scores among the two tries.
Complete the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE. Mostly private
schools use this online form to determine eligibility for financial aid
that doesn’t emanate from the federal government. You can register to
use the PROFILE by visiting the College Board Web site. Some
schools want this form filed before January 1.

File the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
Submit the FAFSA, which will be available online at the beginning of
the new year, as soon as possible after January 1. If you don’t have all
your tax documents ready, submit an estimated FAFSA. You can submit
an estimated PROFILE too.

Evaluate admissions offers. After the admissions verdicts and
financial aid packages are in, families may need to do soul searching.
Parents and students should talk about the financial implications of attending
different schools.


Take Advanced Placement tests. If you’re doing well in
Advanced Placement classes, take the appropriate AP tests that are
administered in May. With high scores, you may obtain college credits.

Contact the also-rans. Write or e-mail the schools that didn’t
make your final cut so they can extend offers to other students.

Send in the deposit. For most schools, the deadline for mailing
in the enrollment form with the deposit is May 1.

Don’t slack off. Even after you receive college acceptances, you
should keep your grades up in the last semester. Colleges can rescind
offers.

Explore lenders. Not all lenders are alike. When comparison
shopping, don’t limit yourself to the lenders on a school’s preferred
list. Use federal loans first. Private loans should be your last option.

Register for Selective Service. Young men won’t be eligible for
federal financial aid if they haven’t registered.

Find a summer job. Get a head start on paying those college
bills.


Action Plan
• Don’t wait until your junior or senior year to begin preparing for college.
• It will be easier to avoid trouble by following a timeline like the one in this chapter.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price

Waiting An Answer From College Admission

You might have heard the rule about not calling for two days after the first date so you don’t seem desperate. Others say you should call whenever you feel like it because, hey, you’re being yourself. College admission “rules” for waiting are just about as hazy.

So now, you’ve sent everything off into the vast beyond. Your applications have gone, along with the magnum opus of an essay, supplements, rec letters . . . now you can relax, right? Right?? Wrong. Now you’ll sit, looking at the clock and calendar, staring as the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and weeks tick by, wondering if things got lost in the mail or cyberspace, wondering if you said the right thing in the essay, wondering if The College Board really sent your scores and not some other kid’s who never spent all those hours doing practice tests at the kitchen table.

You really should take a deep breath. If the college is missing something, the admission offi ce will send you a notifi cation saying so. Don’t be alarmed if you receive a postcard or email saying you didn’t send something when you know you did. Often, with the amount of paperwork admission offi ces receive, there’s a normal delay in processing.


Many times, students have called to learn that yes, the transcript did, in fact, arrive. If the college still insists that it didn’t receive anything, don’t worry about this either: the folks there know this happens. (And, though you don’t need to say this to them, more often than not, the item was lost in the mix right at the admission offi ce.) Find out what the missing item is, politely express your concern since you did send it, and then let them know you’ll be sending along a copy immediately. You did keep that copy we talked about, didn’t you?

While you wait, remember a few things:
1) Stay in touch with the colleges you’ve applied to. Remember, with the Common App and electronic applications, it’s easy to apply to too many schools. How will a college know whether you’re really interested or just applying there “in case . . .”? One of Lynda’s advisees, a sweet, bright girl who was a terrific student and an excellent writer, applied early to a very long shot and regular decision to a few good, small liberal arts colleges—all good matches.

After she was deferred by Fancy-Pants U, she fi gured that her targets would work out. She was a well qualified applicant for all of them, despite her rather modest standardized-test scores. Then came the first week in April. The news was not good; she was accepted at only one school and wait-listed at another. Lynda called a friend in the admission office of the college where her advisee was wait-listed to ask what the deal was. The informative reply was that because the student had never visited, never done the optional interview, never introduced herself to the rep, and never even phoned or emailed to ask a question, that the
admission offi ce assumed the girl was not really interested in the school. Lynda knew otherwise, but it was too late. The student had feared seeming too pushy and hoped that her application would speak for itself.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, another of Lynda’s advisees, a young man with great personal charm and only reasonable grades and scores, never missed an opportunity to make contact with his colleges. He sought out the reps at fairs, made sure to remember their names, wrote thank-you notes after visits and interviews, and generally made a positive—and lasting—impression on everyone he met. Even so, we were pleasantly surprised when he was admitted to his fi rst-choice college. Interestingly, the rep from his most impossible, longest-shot school told Lynda that although there was no way the student could be admitted there, he thought he’d be a great guy to hang out with. (Whatever, right?)


2) There’s a difference between staying in touch and making ridiculous overtures in an attempt to win over the admission office. The personal note to the officer you met with during your visit is a great idea. But gifts? Not so much.

Admission reps have told us crazy stories about things applicants have sent in an attempt to make an impression. One student sent a cake with his face on it. “We were at the point of admitting him,” the rep explained, “until the cake came . . . then we just couldn’t.” Another student sent a box of balloons with (yep, get ready for another face story) her grinning mug on each. “By the end of the week, we had all these half-deflated balloons with this girl’s crumpled face floating around the offi ce, and it was just sad.

It sort of reminded us of her defl ated hopes.” Then there was the kid from the steamy south who mailed an air conditioner—that’s right, a whole air conditioner—to Stanford’s admission office, explaining that he wouldn’t need it in Palo Alto’s perfect climate. Needless to say, he’d have been better off keeping his cooler!
Many stalkers and creepoids think they’re “in love” and that they just need to convince the other person. In relationships or in college admission, persistence might pay off sometimes, but obsessive clinginess never does.

3) Keep up with your activities and your sports. Have fun with your friends and family. Have a life!

4) DO NOT come down with the dreaded “senioritis.” As a senior, you might feel like you’ve earned some down time. You haven’t. You’re still a kid. “Senioritis” should belong to those seventy and older. But here’s the scenario: a student will receive an acceptance from any one of the colleges she’s applied to, and suddenly,
she acts as if nothing else matters. School’s over; she’s finished.

Cruise control from there on out. But hold on. Because of the increased levels of competition, colleges are keeping a closer eye on their admits than ever before. Every year, a student or two in our senior class will receive a letter explaining that the university is sad to notice that so-and-so’s grades have dropped, and that, for the fi rst semester, the student will be placed on . . . (gulp) . . . academic probation. Every now and again, an acceptance will actually be rescinded. The point is, while you may be able to relax a little more once things are sent, you’re still a student, and going to high school is still your job.
Read More : Waiting An Answer From College Admission