<p>I have so-so grades, and stellar SAT scores, and I want to maximize my chances for admission to a top school. I am upper-middle class, and my dad told me I can apply to as many schools as I want, because it is 4 years, 200,000 dollars, so what does 75 bucks here or there really matter? (yeah, I know, I'm blessed)</p>
<p>Anyway, my plan is this: Apply to a whole slew of top colleges, and hope I get into maybe 3 or 4. Does this sound like a reasonable plan, or should I focus on matches, safeties, etc?</p>
<p>I know conventional wisdom is 3 matches, 3 reaches and 3 safeties, but doesn't a pyramid make more sense?</p>
<p>Say: (this is my post-junior year list)
Harvard
UPenn(non-Wharton)
Columbia</p>
<p>Duke
Johns Hopkins
Tufts
Brandeis (double legacy)
UVA (IS)
William and Mary (IS)</p>
<p>VCU (IS)
JMU (IS)</p>
<p>And hope I get into 2 or so of the top two groups?</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to any safeties and my counselor thought I was crazy. I, like you are suggesting, applied to a “slew” of top colleges. I went 7 for 13. However, I don’t know how so-so your grades are and depending on how so-so they are, this strategy might not be a good idea. I had a 4.0 UW GPA and there were definitely days when I worried that I wouldn’t get into a single college. Not a good feeling.</p>
<p>The issue is, reach colleges are not necessarily a better fit. You don’t want to be in the situation of having to choose between two reach schools you didn’t really like, when you could’ve applied to a school you were interested in and probably gotten in.</p>
<p>^ If you are not willing to attend a school then it is not a safety. What happens if you ONLY get into that school? A safety is one you are willing to attend.</p>
<p>Since both your Parents (and I) went to Brandeis, you should go there (;</p>
<p>Seriously though, 2300 is pretty much good enough for all of these schools but what is your GPA and rank likely to be?</p>
<p>If it’s outside the top 10%, scratch Penn, Harvard, Duke and Columbia
If it’s outside the top 25%, scratch Brandeis and Hopkins and Tufts.
(no children of Brandeis grads should want to go to Tufts anyway)</p>
<p>Throwing money (app fees) at a situation and hoping for the best is rarely a sound strategy, (see BP & Gulf of Mexico).</p>
<p>Also, your pyramid seems to be bulging in the middle. Assuming your "A"s and "B"s translate to about a 3.7UW, then your profile will be competitive at a lot of your upper level schools; regrettably, competitive isn’t synonymous with successful. One trouble you have is the fact that you come from an over-represented state as far as northeast corridor schools are concerned; so you’ll be battling with a lot of other Virginians with similar profiles. All told, I’d guess you may get into 1 from Columbia/Penn (no Harvard), 1 from Duke, JHU, Tufts, and then everything on the rest of your list. Though the only schools I’d be comfortable about are from the “all the rest” category. </p>
<p>Erin’sDad is right, why throw away the app fees to those schools if you’re not going to be happy “throwing away” the $100K+ of IS fees. I suggest adding at least one non-Virginia safety.</p>
<p>No matter how good you are, you can’t guarantee admission into ANY of the top several colleges. 10% chance of acceptance times 10 schools does NOT equal 100% chance. You must find some safeties that you would want to go to. Following is a whole fleet of threads along the lines of “oh no, I didn’t get in, what do I do?”. Don’t be posting your own in 10 months!</p>
<p>@ soze, Just for clarification, my rank is in the top 10% (more like 8%), i know that doesn’t guarantee anything though.</p>
<p>@Erin’s Dad, </p>
<p>When I said I wouldn’t happily go to William and Mary and UVA, I guess I was being a little over dramatic. I know they are both great, cheap schools, and if accepted to either one or both, I would have a hard time convincing my dad that I should pay 50k+ to go out of state. I guess I just want to escape the bubble I’ve lived my whole life in. So, my safeties are either financial, or easy to get into, but both inside the bubble. I looked at Mary Mount Manhatten, Rutgers, and UCSD as safeties, but my dad pointed out that they are just as expensive being OOS, but not as good as VCU, JMU, etc.</p>
<p>@geek mom, I understand that any one college I have a slim chance of acceptance, but I guess I was hoping that if I applied more places, then I would have more shots at being “the oboe player the band needs?”</p>
<p>thanks for those threads, they definitely struck the cord you meant for them to (the extremely terrifying one)</p>
<p>:D Extremely terrifying for a day or two, then get down to the business of choosing from the hundreds of perfectly good schools in the country that aren’t a crapshoot to get into. Yes, the more places you apply, the more chance you’ll be just the one they need. But make sure the college is the one YOU need! You need more than a famous name; you need a school that will love you and that you will love right back. Also, if you’re applying to a whole slew of colleges, you can’t take the time to do the 4,317 supplemental essays well.</p>