Members of the Class of 2007 are anxious for graduation now that they have made their final college decisions. The Class of 2007 received 2,599 letters from 246 colleges and universities around the world. Students received 1,174 acceptance letters, 1,057 denial letters and 352 waitlist positions. The schools that accepted the most students from Andover were Boston University, with 44 admitted students; American University, 30; Johns Hopkins, 28; George Washington University, 27; Tufts, 26; Cornell University, 25; and the University of Southern California with 24. Although most students have committed to a school, there are still a few students waiting to hear about moving off of a waitlist. Over a fourth of the college applications submitted by Phillips Academy students were to Ivy League colleges. “I really think that the most important thing is to keep on going to see them, but also doing research on your own,” said Maura Mulroy ’07 of her experience with the CCO. Like most students who have been through the college process at Andover, Mulroy said that one really has to keep in mind what exactly he or she wants in a school, but at the same time, stay open-minded because “everyone here is so qualified, but a lot of it comes down to people’s specific strengths and what they have to offer.” Mulroy plans to attend Duke University next fall. Catherine Crooke ’07, who is taking a year off and will attend Columbia University in Fall 2008, said that although she had a positive college application process, she believes that it is when students are overly optimistic about being accepted at a school that they run into problems. “I think safety schools are really important, and I think College Counseling gives students a good idea of what schools they should be applying to…a lot of students think that they need to get into an Ivy League for the college process to be worth it,” said Crooke. Crooke said that College Counseling’s main focus is finding students schools that will make them happy and give them the opportunity to explore anything that interests them, other than just being a place with a prestigious name. “It’s important to realize that [the CCO counselors] are not the college admissions officers, and they are not the people who make the decisions,” said Abhishek Sripad ’07 after his experience with the college process. He said that Uppers need to realize that College Counseling is there to help advise them in the college process and help them choose schools to apply to that they have an opportunity to be accepted there. Students need to be more realistic and not expect that college counseling cannot have them accepted at every school they apply to. Sripad, who has chosen to go to Middlebury, said that his college counselor helped him create a list of schools that he really liked and could see himself going to, including his safety schools. Last year, the Class of 2006 filed 2,460 applications, with 1,050 granted admission, 946 denied and 327 waitlisted. Of the class, 33 students were accepted at Boston University, 30 at Trinity College, 25 at Georgetown and 24 at Brown University. The schools with the highest matriculation rates from the Class of 2006 include Harvard University, 19 students; Brown University and Yale University, each with 13 students; and Georgetown, MIT, UPenn and Trinity each with 9 Andover students. The Class of 2005 sent out 2,349 applications and received 1,053 acceptances, 884 rejections and 309 waitlist positions.
