@prodesse:
“It’s all very well to talk about safeties, reaches, and matches, but for a high-stats student nowadays, there ARE NO matches, only safeties and reaches”
True enough if you don't want to look outside the US and outside of niche circumstances
(CS at UW-Madison; design at Cincy & RIT; a boy applying to Vassar; a girl in to STEM applying to one of several elite tech institutes or women's colleges like Bryn Mawr; ED to some elite LACs with 40% or higher acceptance rates like Middlebury, Vassar, Williams, Grinnell).
Honors colleges typically aren't nearly as hard to get in to as Ivies/equivalents.
Most of the kids accepted under these binding ED1 rounds are recruited athletes, legacies, or superstars. Don’t let the high acceptance rate deceive you.
@PurpleTitan - Yes, we are using several of those good strategies!
The current admission rate at Williams, Grinnell, and Middlebury may be higher for ED, but you can only apply to one school ED. For RD, Grinnell is 20% and the others are below 18%. Better than Princeton and Pomona, but still in lottery territory.
It wasn’t 36, but a girl I know whose older siblings went to Harvard and UPenn applied to as many as she could. I think it was around 20? But she applied far and wide, stretching herself thin due to insecurity.
There is no need in my opinion to apply to more than 10, maybe 12 if it’s pushing it
I don’t think there is not match schools for high stat applicants. There are certainly schools with 30-80% chance even with perfect stat not just safeties and reaches. There are just a lot more safeties.
I know someone who applied to 20. BUT he’s from CA so applied to most of the UC schools, and also applied to a number of UK schools. For both of these “systems” you’re just ticking boxes.
If someone is applying to 30+ schools, are they using more than their fair share of the GC’s time and resources? At my kids’ high school, the answer would have been no because al the GC did was make sure the transcript was complete (same amount of time for every student) and then you ordered the transcript ($2 each) and sent them in yourself.
I also think they are wasting the time of a lot of admissions officers. If the student REALLY going to go to school #23? How about #29?
Another thing is the rejection. It’s hard to get 20 rejections.
Just as a quick note, my classmate didn’t apply anywhere EA or ED, so she didn’t benefit from any differences in acceptance rates or priority deadlines. Makes the situation even more puzzling…
@twocollegekids Our school uses a system called Naviance, which has us mark our acceptances once we get into schools so that our counselor can update our school profile. This is what allows my classmate to rack up “reported” acceptances for the school digital board for everyone to see.
Even if high-stats kids don’t have “matches”, how does one reasonably apply to 36 colleges, most of which are reach schools for everyone? I feel like the girl in question fell victim to the idea that she could try and win the lottery of college admissions in order to guarantee a spot at a school that would somehow match up to her sister’s Harvard pedigree.
Please let us know when the results roll-in. I think her strategy will work – she will be admitted to at least a handful of the 36 schools, if her stats are high indeed.
If you have reasonable reaches, matches, and safeties on your list, why does it matter to you how many college acceptances your classmate “racks up”? Neither of you can attend more than one.
Do you think we’ll ever reach a point in the future where we say “enough is enough” and this college admissions madness gets out of hand? Because it’s already absurd enough, and I don’t think the lottery game for schools like Ivies and other elite, super selective schools will slow down anytime soon.
How many schools did you (or your kids) apply to, and what was their reasoning for doing so? I’m almost regretting not applying to more colleges than I did. Obviously, I still think 36 colleges is absolutely insane, but I’m trying to get a sense of where others stand on this.