SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 2016
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NATION one of the deepest wait lists in the country and uses it aggressively. The school invited more than 9,000 applicants to its wait list last year, and wound up with 5,119 names. Ultimately, it offered admission to 518 of those students. Not all accepted, but the school met its enrollment goal. Bischoff said that it is vital not to admit too many students through regular admission. In 2012, the university overshot its enrollment target by 30 percent, leaving the school to scramble to find beds for hundreds of unexpected arrivals and to schedule more courses. “That’s bad,” Bischoff said. Now, Case Western doles out regular-admission offers conservatively and plans on filling about 10 percent of its class through the wait list. Bischoff said that he starts making offers from the list in late April. “We love our wait-list kids,” Bischoff said, noting that their academic profile is as strong or stronger than the overall entering class. “It’s not that these are sub-par students. These are terrific, terrific kids.” When the school pulls from the wait list, he said, “we’re making some kids’ dreams come true.” Sometimes, schools activate nearly their entire wait list. Penn State admitted 1,445 of its 1,473 wait-listed applicants in 2015 to its main campus, a year after it waitlisted no one. Ohio State let in everyone from its list in 2014 (239 students) and again in 2015 (304). Meanwhile, wait-listed students everywhere are spending April, and perhaps part of May, in high suspense. Sally Ancheva, 17, another Washington-Lee senior, was admitted to UC-Berkeley, UCLA and U-Va., as well as Stetson University in Florida, with a scholarship. She said she was wait-listed at Harvard, Stanford and Chicago. She recalled getting the Stanford decision in late March: “A part of you always thinks it’s going to be a yes.” But she was realistic, ready for a no. The “maybe” caught her offguard. “I wasn’t prepared for that. I took it like a rejection. It was very tough,” she said. Now, she is reiterating her interest to her wait-list schools and trying to stay flexible. “I’ve come to peace with the whole thing.” n
KLMNO WEEKLY
Moms turn to crowdfunding to pay for maternity leave BY
P ETER H OLLEY
K
ieri Andrews is an expectant mother, but when the 24-year-old Texan gives birth in a few weeks, caring for a newborn baby will be the least of her concerns. Andrews’s job, as CBS affiliate KHOU reported, doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, meaning she has to find a way to survive six weeks without income. For a woman who lives paycheck to paycheck, the impending financial challenge has turned a joyous moment in her life into a terrifying one. “I’m pregnant — sorry,” she told the station, wiping tears from her eyes. For Andrews, a potential solution exists. At a time when it’s become common to turn to crowdfunding to help pay for funerals, medical expenses or creative business ideas, some pregnant women are hoping alternative finance can offset the lack of support they receive from employers. “We’re not trying to get anything out of it other than just making sure I have a place to live with my kids, you know,” Andrews, who is seeking $2,000 on GoFundMe, told KHOU. “Anything helps, anything helps,” she added. San Francisco just became the first city in the nation to require employers to offer six weeks of fully paid leave for new parents. And yet, only 12 percent of U.S. private-sector workers have access to paid family leave, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. “Two decades ago, the Family and Medical Leave Act broke new ground by establishing some rights to parental leave, but it is limited to 12 weeks of unpaid leave and available only to employees in medium and large firms,” Jane Waldfogel, a professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work wrote last year in an opinion piece for The Washington Post. As a result, mothers in the United
States continue to take much shorter leaves than those in other countries, and fathers typically take a week or less. At the same time, child costs continue to rise. A two parent household making more than $61,000 a year will spend about $16,000 on child-related expenses during their baby’s first year of life, according to a U.S. Depart-
work. Others are worried about getting enough time off that they can recover without being forced back to work with health problems. Their stories are often brutal, candid and desperate. They are people like a woman who identifies herself as “Megan,” a married mother of five with another on the way who works
KHOU
Kieri Andrews, an expectant mother, is hoping crowdfunding helps her finance maternity leave. Without it, she has no idea how she’ll survive.
ment of Agriculture estimate. To raise money on sites like GoFundMe, GiveForward, YouCaring and Generosity, users can expect to pay a one-time fee. On some of these sites, users are not subject to goals or deadlines, allowing them to keep a large percentage of the donations. On GoFundMe, the phrase “maternity leave” returns nearly 1,500 results. The “Today” show reported that GoFundMe has a total of 6,000 fundraising campaigns that mention the words “maternity leave” or “child care,” which have raised more than $9 million collectively. Dozens more can be found on YouCaring as well. It’s not uncommon to see women asking for modest donations, sometimes a few thousand dollars, sometimes far less. Requests often include money for diapers, formula, clothing, rent and other monthly bills. Sometimes, women are only seeking a donation that might allow them to take a few days off
overnights as a security officer. “I’ve found myself in a position where I will now be unable to stay home with my newborn nor have time to heal after the whole intensive labor that we as women have to endure. This is both heartbreaking and stressful knowing I can’t come up with the money to stay home any other way then asking for help.” And then there’s Nicole Ritchie, a 24-year-old woman from Roanoke, Va., expecting her first child, who works at a salon that doesn’t offer “benefits, insurance, or paid maternity leave,” according to Self magazine. After hearing about other expectant mothers who had success raising money online, Ritchie started raising money several months before her due date, the magazine reported. She said her goal is $1,200 — enough to cover six weeks of bills — and so far she’s raised $500 from 16 people in nearly a month. n