Page 2 - KnightTime News Winter 2019

KNIGHTtime News
GUIDING YOUR COLLEGE PROCESS
By Bea Hodavdekar
Things I often wonder about:
Who decided oysters were edible?
Why don’t people ever say goodbye when hanging up the phone in movies?
Why is there so much misinformation around the college admission process?
While I can’t answer/do anything about the first two questions, I think I can tackle the third question. There are a couple of reasons behind
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS!
the spread of misinformation; for instance, people often think there
is a playbook or secret formula that will get them into the college of
their dreams. The truth is, however, that neither of those things exist. The admissions landscape is a fickle thing and what worked for a student one year may not work for someone else the following year. Along similar lines, I think data is often misused
or misconstrued; there is so much context behind the numbers that it is
next to impossible to provide blanket admission statements. A typical example is when colleges publish average admitted GPAs (an example might be 4.78). If you’re at Menlo, you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute. There’s NO way I could ever get that GPA at Menlo!” And you’re right; there is absolutely no way you could ever get that GPA at Menlo,
but what you can get from Menlo College Counseling is the context for a GPA average at a particular school.
With this in mind, I decided to solicit questions from our own community to provide clarification around the college process. Here we go:
“Does early decision make you more likely to get into a college?” This is a great question! The short answer is: It depends. Menlo College Counseling keeps track of admission data, which has shown that applying early decision (ED) can help a student in the application process. We also track the schools that admit 50% or more of their applicant pool during ED. The final piece of information that we track is the academic profile of admitted students during the ED round; that is, the average admitted GPA and standardized test score for that particular round of admission.
2