Admission Secrets Colleges Don't Want You to Know

how do you just finished applying to college are you applying to college soon and wondering more about the college admissions process if so in this video I'm going to share with you some secrets that college admissions offices may not want you to know about the admissions process now college admissions like it or not is something of a game right it's not only a game for the students who are trying to game the system and get into it but it's also a game for the colleges because colleges have to compete for business ie applications in the marketplace there are rankings that come out and publications like US News and World Report is the most famous Forbes there are other lists the world's top 100 colleges there are these other lists that are out there that ranked schools and these rankings really impact how many applicants a college gets how much prestige that college has its ability to attract the faculty and just overall its ability to thrive and survive as a university if that ranking drops or if it rises that really can affect a school's overall kind of situation so if colleges need to protect that ranking and in order to do so they sometimes create particular strategies and I'm going to talk about some of what I think those strategies are today if you're wondering who I am my name's Brooke I've been coaching SAT and a CT prep for over a decade and a half I've squirted perfectly on both these names as an adult more importantly I've coached people to perfect scores and you can find out all my secrets of test prep in our online courses at super tutor tv.com the best a CT prep course ever the best SAT prep course ever you can check those out we also have two books for the ACC math section the best a CT math books ever so if you're looking for some math help they are the most comprehensive books I know of on the market that cover a CT math is really going to totally crush that test that could be your ticket so definitely go check those out if you're leaving for something totally free subscribe to remember super tuner tv.com slash subscribe and we will keep you in the know of anything we have going on here at super tutor TV and finally subscribe to our youtube channel and follow us on facebook on instagram on twitter we're on all of those platforms so you can find our page and we'd love for you to connect with us cool okay let's talk College Admissions so the first caveat that I'm going to say is that I have not necessarily interviewed actual colleges for why they do what they do but I see a correlation between these kind of behaviors and some surprising behaviors that have arisen as I've been working with students through this college process that I've come to know of through the personal experiences and my students and it seems to me that some of the motive is is colleges trying to play the game that does not mean that that is what motivated completely every college to do all of these things I am just saying what I see and then what the outcome is but I also think if it caught up their press office they're not gonna just say oh yes we're trying to protect our rank like that's not the response I'm gonna get from colleges right so I'm gonna point out some of these correlations to you guys I will say it with a grain of salt because there could be other motivations that I don't know about that are making colleges want to do these kind of things but let's get into it number one guaranteed transfer programs so what are guaranteed transfer programs and why might colleges be invoking them I mean when you apply a college do you think there's probably two outcomes right you either get accept it or you get rejected haha just kidding you can also get kind of admitted for something called a guaranteed transfer program well what it is is you get a letter from a college instead of getting an acceptance letter you get this letter that says we really liked you but we don't have room in our freshman classes fall but we have room for you either the second semester of freshman year or we have room for you sophomore year if you go to some other college you get a certain GPA at that other college hey we will guarantee that we will let you interaction you can come on down and we'll have you and that'll be all fine and dandy right why would a college do this why wouldn't a college just let you win I mean some people might say oh well they want you to prove your grades because they really liked you but you just hadn't proved your grades like that might be the explanation that a college gives you but I have students that I know and I've seen their transcripts and I know what kind of grades they had and they had pretty good grades and they still are kind of shoved into these kind of programs well what is it you if you guarantee a transfer to a student that admission doesn't count in your freshman admin rate right so if you're trying to pad yourself for the rankings and you're trying to rank higher on US News and World Report wouldn't it look better if say you were USC and your admin rate would say 12 something percent or 11 percent or something like that wouldn't it look better if that were your admin rate instead of say nineteen percent when it used to be like several years ago because then it'd be easier to climb the ranks because you look more exclusive and who doesn't want to look more exclusive when it comes to being in college so what this does is it helps schools fill their classrooms it helps schools graduate lots of students but without having to take them right away so that they can kind of pad their statistics it also helps them protect things like what the GPA of kids who get in is what the test scores are kids who get in is because they can just take the kids who are at the top and then the kids who they actually like and want to admit that might be slightly lower well they can still let them in but they can shovel them in in this other program and so they get them in but then they don't reflect that at all in any of their US News and World Report's reported freshmen admitted class statistics right number two and many huge numbers from the waitlist so another tactic that I see some schools using and it's not all schools but I see some schools doing is that they admit huge numbers of students for the waitlist if you admit kids off a waitlist where you make them wait to see where they've gotten in everywhere else before they then write you a letter of continued interest right to say hey I still want to go to your school hey I still want to be considered for your waitlist hey still let me it the kids you admit off the waitlist are already not accepted to all these other schools so you're probably the best thing they've got going or they wouldn't have written that letter and so the chances that that kid who was wait-listed is gonna go to your school if they write that letter and say hey I really still want to go here are a lot higher then if you just given an offer of admission to everybody in that waitlist pool right so that protects your yield it protects how many students decide to attend that have been accepted and so that's another statistic that goes into your rankings and things like that another thing that a waitlist does is it protects your admin rate right if you don't actually admit students and you just put a bunch of them on a waitlist you don't have to include that in your admin rate right number three another way that schools can kind of leverage themselves in this process is creating these large transfer programs now there's like a dual competing stories here on the transfer end one story which is usually the most popular story and the one that all the you know press people from every university are telling is the story that transfer programs help create opportunity for non-traditional students and for students who may come from less affluent backgrounds which is true because community college is a heck of a lot cheaper than almost every four-year university in the country so if you go to Community College for two years and then you transfer into a four-year university you're gonna save a ton of money so it's an option that a lot of students who want to save money do and you know what I am actually very thankful that there are large transfer programs out there I'm super thankful for it because I think there are a lot of students who when they're playing the game and they try to play this like test score game they're not SAT AC T people and that doesn't mean you're not smart or that you don't have awesome skills or that you shouldn't go to college right that's one kind of metric it's one way of thinking and this is creates a different pathway and that's really cool but what we find is that you look at a school like USC and you see their regular admin rate is is pretty small right and then you look at their transfer admin rate and it's more than double their regular admin rate so you can also see how again schools can kind of pad they're elitist kind of exclusivity with their freshman adamant rate by pushing a lot of the students into a transfer situation and that can help them look better right number four this is more of just something that's sad and this is using test scores as a proxy for wealth so again one of the other things that I mentioned at the beginning this video is not only your school's playing the game to try to get their rankings up they're also playing a game to try to protect how much money they have coming in my understanding of this is actually based off of reading articles I read an article about an interview with a former admissions person from Trinity College which is liberal arts college on the East Coast this is something that might affect schools that maybe are not necessarily as highly ranked as like your Harvard's are birds or things like that but that are looking to try to bring in enough money to make sure that the college budget was balanced right some schools are neat blind some schools are neat aware some schools say they meet a hundred percent of demonstrated need of the kids who are getting in but that doesn't mean that all these schools that are having these wonderful programs where they're trying to help everyone and and and pay for everyone's way as much as possible they have the resources easily to do so so one way that schools try to make sure that they can cover all their bills is by admitting students who they think probably have a little bit more money and can pay their own way one way that sometimes schools identify that is by using test scores as a proxy for wealth now it's true if you have high test scores and high grades and those correlate together you know you may be wealthy you may not be wealthy and maybe depend on what kind of high school you went to and how good of an education you got there but when you have these schools who have discrepant test scores who have these higher test scores and lower GPAs those circumstances tend to indicate wealth more often and some colleges use those kind of discrepant applicants and as a pool of when they get to sort of the last kids they're letting in to scoop into their sort of admin tile to ensure that they have enough kids who can pay their own way there you go it's a dirty trick that some colleges might play for better or for worse to try to play the game and play the system unfortunately you know we all have multiple pressures on us colleges have to pay their bills right they've got to play the rankings game because that's part of what you're buying into when you apply to these schools anyway and it's not always pretty and the motivations are not always pure and the policies sometimes can I think sideswipes some students because you didn't expect them to be coming your way but hopefully at least this gives you guys some insights onto some ways that the system works so that you're just at least a little bit more aware of what might happen to you or how you might be able to navigate the system and in any case I wish you guys the best of luck with your applications if you are applying do you know of any secret tricks that colleges have played on you do you have any circumstances like they guaranteed program that have happened to you but maybe you're there a little do it different and you want to talk about those feel free to post a comment below this video subscribe to our channel if you haven't yet subscribe to our mailing list super tutor tv.com slash subscribe and I'll see you guys in the next video thanks for joining us

Channel: SupertutorTV

Views: 172,911

Keywords: SAT, ACT, Brooke, Brooke Hanson, Hanson, prep, SAT prep, ACT prep, college, harvard, princeton, yale, supertutortv, tv, super tutor, admissions, high school, learning, tutor, tutoring

Id: -EByj-iAvdk

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020