ED is typically done for a reach school to boost chances of admissions. You can have her do early action to a safety (if available) or apply early to a school with rolling admissions to have an admit under the belt early.
Any other parents of Sophs and Juniors feeling discouraged and nervous based on what they are seeing
@mom2and I actually have looked at my D’s naviance, and tons of kids get into the “elite” schools, but their stats are super high. I’m not even worried about elite schools such as Ivies or Northwestern, for example. I just hope she can get into a good, solid school. Looking at Naviance is sort of helpful except some of the schools that she is interested in aren’t popular at her school so there isn’t as much info. A lots changed this year. Last year her grades were stellar, and this year she has some very high grades in some classes and a couple of B’s so far. This has led to a lot of reevalutating options. I guess the year isn’t over yet, so we shall see.
@citymama9 ^^
My D did ED too a match school, because it was her clear #1 choice. She truly preferred it to schools on her list that were slight reaches, so she made the decision to ED and it was a great strategy to reduce stress and also reduce the number of other apps she needed to submit
OP- big hug.
Now that my kids are done (even with grad school, thank goodness) and are well established professionally, and I’ve seen the trajectory of their friends- let me give you some perspective.
An academically/intellectually ambitious kid is going to be fine-- even if not top 20 or top whatever. A few B’s is not going to mean your kid ends up in community college (unless that’s the path you guys pick which is perfectly fine) as her only option.
Your friends who have kids who are NOT that interested in academics have much bigger problems. These are the parents who worry about kids flunking out in March of Freshman year because they’ve stopped going to class (their friends are too much fun), the parents who wonder if they should push the kid into college when it’s clear the kid isn’t interested or ready, etc.
One of my kids friends is a physician at a well regarded teaching hospital in his first choice specialty. We saw him recently. He was a solid B+ student in HS. His scores were good but not great. He went to his state’s flagship (was not accepted into the Honors college) and blew the cover off the ball. Majored in a humanities field which he discovered Freshman year (a fantastic professor really reached him and inspired him) and had tippy top grades in both his major (not at all science related) and the pre-med requirements.
And best of all- he LOVED college and med school. He wasn’t one of these kids who had been “gunning” since he was 8 years old. He did the activities he loved as a kid; he did the activities he loved in HS and college, he wasn’t particularly stressed about the journey and has ended up exactly where other kids who are on the treadmill and exhausting themselves with test prep are aspiring to be.
And no- his state flagship is not Virginia or Michigan.
Your d will be fine. A professor will inspire her (or two or three) and she’ll find her path regardless of where she lands.
@citymama9 My daughter ended up having a very good application process. She got into all 9 schools to which she applied and received merit at 8. She picked a strategy of matches and safeties, with one true reach (top 20 school with less than 20% acceptance rate) and other schools with acceptance rates at roughly 35-50%. Her stats were comfortably above the median. She also spent a lot of time on her essays and submitted her applications well before the deadlines. Supposedly timing doesn’t matter, but I always wonder if submitting two minutes before the deadline gives the impression that the college was an afterthought, especially for places that track demonstrated interest.
However, we became quite nervous as we began to hear stories of really good students being waitlisted or denied. Of the kids we know in this situation, most of the schools in question were ranked in the top 25 nationally and that’s when things become truly unpredictable. We also were a bit anxious because D favored LACs and with smaller entering class sizes; there are simply fewer seats available and many of those seats get filled in the ED round.
We followed conventional wisdom on CC - apply to a couple of EA/rolling admission options just to have an early acceptance or two in hand. Then the wait becomes a little less crazy making. We were seeking merit, so D focused on schools that weren’t at the tippy top.
We did not do ED because we needed to compare merit-based offers. However, if the NPC provides a number that works for your family and your child truly has a first choice, it can be a good option. That said, my D’s preferences changed somewhat over the school year. She ended up really loving Case Western after a campus visit and it is now among the final few, the other remaining choices being LACs. I could not have predicted this in October or November of last year.
I am very grateful that I found CC because it really helped to build a strategy that worked for our family.
I’m sure your daughter will have many options when the time comes!
A kid should ED to whatever school they really love and that is within the realm of possibility of getting in. I expect my son will do this. It doesn’t have to be a school with an acceptance rate in the teens. Kids ED to schools in all ranges of selectivity, if it’s an option. Note the key words, realm of possibility. 
Like Blossom, my kids are done with college. (Though perhaps not with grad school.) I’ve seen all sorts of outcomes. One kid who went to Yale is now tutoring and trying to make it as a rock musician. (Actually the tutoring company likes him so much they’ve given him a promotion.) The kid who went off to Princeton, had all kinds of health issues, including a loss of confidence, and still hasn’t graduated. The kid who turned down an Ivy for something stronger in his major is at his dream job. The kid who took off a year in the middle of his time at Brown due to burn out is now in Med School. The kid who didn’t get into MIT is now a grad student there.
There really are lots of good colleges there and fabulous professors even at many less prestigious ones. It is what you do at college, the connections you make, that is what will make a real difference.
Thank you to all the long-time posters (@blossom @mathmom @eastcoascrazy @thumper1 ) who are providing context for those of us who still have HS kiddos! Bless you for sharing your wisdom and perspective.
I have benefited a lot from this board and I guess time to give back.
I am an Expat and I work in a Fortune 500 company here in USA. My company has a 2 year program for new college graduates from selective schools. These kids do 6 months rotation for 2 years in different departments. At the end of 2 years, they are evaluated based on their performance. Company sends out evaluation letters to people who directly work with them.
After 2 years, some of these kids are selected and are put on fast track to become future Directors, VPs, Presidents.
I work with these new kids who are in the 2 year program. I work with kids from Princeton, MIT, Columbia but I also work with high achieving kids from less competitive schools like Rutgers, Penn State etc.
Let me be honest here. My company doesn’t really look at the school brand at the end of the 2 year program. And I have many times vouched for kids from lesser schools over top schools. Just last year, we picked a kid from Rutgers over a kid from MIT. This Rutgers kid is now in Europe in our company headquarters.
This is what I tell my kids. Be the best person you can be. Have a happy childhood. Love people and make people love you. Do the things you love. This college thing will figure itself out eventually.
Wow! Such great responses. I can’t thank you all enough for putting things into perspective and sharing your wisdom. I am feeling so much better than I did last night.
My kids are done with college, too. They’re 31 and 27. Both have good jobs in fields they like. They earn enough money to live on comfortably. They are pleased with the way their careers are turning out so far.
Neither of them went to Harvard or its equivalent.
One went to our state university, which was his first-choice college and very suitable for a student with his credentials. The other, who had better academic credentials, went to a school that’s generally considered second-tier elite (i.e., one of the places you go if you don’t get into Harvard).
But it’s not the names of the colleges that matter.
I think that what mattered most for both of them was not the colleges they chose but what they did while they were there. Both worked hard enough to get very good grades in college. Both chose their majors carefully and picked fields that were well-suited to them and likely to lead to job opportunities. Both found summer activities that were relevant to their academic and career interests. Both worked as undergraduate teaching assistants (tutors, really). One did undergraduate research and graduated with honors. The other made a special effort to take courses outside of her major that would enhance her attractiveness to future employers. And neither of them waited until after graduation to make plans for the future. They worked on their future plans extensively during the final year of college. One went straight into the workforce–into a job that she found through on-campus recruiting very early in her final year of college. The other went into a graduate program, which meant spending a lot of time during senior year preparing for and taking the GRE and filling out graduate school applications.
The point: Getting into college is not an end in itself. It’s a beginning. What you do during college and after college is far more important than the name of your alma mater.
I will also chime in and say that the fit of the school is so much more important than the “brand”. Loving the experience and growing as a person is SO much more valuable than the name on your tshirt/bumpersticker/resume.
Don’t let it make you nervous. Learn from it. If the plan is to apply to all top 20, then it should make you very nervous. But if you heed the lesson, your kid will have some good matches to choose from this time next year!
I feel sorry for a lot of these kids because the adults in their lives didn’t provide them with perspective or a sense of what options are available.
The truth is, in the US, there are many paths to a goal. Any goal. And even if one of your goals is to get a degree from somewhere prestigious, something it seems like people don’t advertise to high school kids is that there are a lot of elite grad school programs (and even undergrad pathways) where getting in isn’t the capricious crazy super-low-probability process that Ivy/equivalent undergrad admissions straight from HS is. With many of them, the rules are more fair (they just want the best talent in the field, or for some masters programs, the best talent who can pay) and admissions success is more under your control.
@citymama9 Your feelings are spot on. I just went thru this process for the first time with my son and wow! What a wake up call to the absolutely intense competition. If your full pay and do not need any help then you will be fine. But if you need to get some aid, then I suggest you only consider schools where your child will be one of the top students. A big fish in a small pond by going to a lesser school.
My 4.0 wgpa son applied to schools which had over 50% acceptance rates. Half were over 70% and he got only average aid which still made the cost too expensive. The kids out there are so smart it is scary. There are thousands of them from thousands of HS’s.
Good luck on your journey.
My goal with my DDs was to get them into a good value college. I wanted to maximize the strength of the school while minimizing cost. That can be done many ways:
- Having financial need and applying to schools that meet need
- Applying to schools where you are high in the % of SAT/GPA and get merit
- Apply to lower cost (perhaps in-state) schools
My DDs ended up at schools that met their criteria but at very good State Us/Colleges (both in and out of state)… SUNYBinghamton and The College of New Jersey.
Regionally people would say “oh! good school” even if you haven’t heard of them nationally.
It’s about making sure the school fits your kid and not impressing your friends.
Rule of thumb: If you read it on CC, about 10% of it is true. Just keep that in mind when looking at some of the posters.
@bopper: Agreed. A big problem, though, is that kids also want to impress their friends, and lacking perspective at that age, they think of college as a Big Deal.
There are great opportunities for motivated students at thousands of colleges across the country!
I found Frank Bruni’s book “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be” to be very helpful. D and I listened to it on audio, in the car, as we traveled for a college visit junior year of HS.
The sooner you can shake off the idea that only Top 20 colleges and universities are the “good schools”, the better.
We had one go to community college for two years and transfer to our state flagship. Our other one had her eye on going to an elite school, but we told her she had to take the big pile of merit money. She’s at an OOS state flagship.
So far, their lives are not ruined. 
I often think of the story of my brother. He was at best a B/C student in high school. He went to an easy admit but strong academically LAC. He almost flunked out freshman year. He slowly got his act together and in grad school made straight A’s. He is now at the tippy top in his niche field. There are so many paths to success.