<p>Calmom, I am curious about how many schools your D applied to and how many you think is appropriate as a general rule, if you have a number. Also, are you primarily concerned with kids applying to more than one or two of the top-ranked universities and/or LAC's because you think that they couldn't be a 'fit" (from both directions) at more than that? Or is this concern for all tiers? How about schools in different sections of the country? I think it would help me to understand how much we disagree, if we actually do at all, if I had more specific information about your point of view. Thanks.</p>
<p>I guess my problem with all of this is that it seems that for many people the goal is to get into an exclusive college, not necessarily get into a college that has the programs and experience that I want. If the goal is the former, then yes, you increase your chances of getting in if you apply to many more of them. But this is the thing that is causing all the problems. I think the idea that school #5 is a better school than #15 which is better than #25. If #25 is the school that you really love, do you really need to apply to #5? If there were no US News rankings, would you even really know this information? Is a school that only accepts 20% of its applicants really that much better than a school that accepts 35% or is the 20% school just a whole lot better at marketing? </p>
<p>This whole reach-match-safety thing is a little crazy. I suggest that rather than identifying schools this way at the beginning of the process, don't even look at this factor until you have selected a number of schools that you really like. If it turns out that you too many reaches on your list, then you will likely need to expand it to include a safety or 2. But it really is ok to have a list with no reaches on it. The focus on prestige is causing a lot of the problems with too many applications, but I realize I am squarely in the minority.</p>
<p>You know, Shennie, my son did exactly as you said...his initial list of schools was based on how well they fit him... his interests and personality, etc. Unfortunately, his first list consisted of almost all schools that have to be considered reaches by anyone. I think there were many reasons for this, but the biggest reasons were his interest in an intense intellectual environment and desire to be near certain urban centers. I assure you that prestige was not a factor for him. He didn't even look at the USNews list at all. He looked at several books that I had bought for him. We had to work very hard to find schools that fit him that were more in the category of match and safety. We visited many schools and that helped. He had to make several passes through lists of schools to find those that had higher probabilities of admission. </p>
<p>I guess I think that some kids will end up with a fit with more of those prestigious schools because of who they are. Some just want to go to a prestigious school because it is prestigious. I guess there are more of those. But if your kid, for good reasons, really wants certain schools with 'bad" odds, then I think you just encourage them to put together the best applications they can and hope for the best.</p>
<p>I agree with your method Atlantamom. I think it is the best way to approach the whole process. And yes, some kids will come up with a list of schools that are mostly reaches and will need to modify on that basis. But I also continue to run across kids and parents who's goals are to attend a "pretigious" school however they define that.</p>
<p>Shennie, you are so right about that. Certainly, those students clog up the admissions offices and increase the lunacy of this process.</p>
<p>I have been fascinated with this forum since I discovered it last fall. My wife says obsessed. Anyway, what a great place to quickly get an overview on so many subjects. Regarding this thread, whatever happened to the philosophy that my parents expressed to me in the mid 70s that you should try to get into the best college so that postgraduate life would be better? Sadly, that philosophy may explain the lottery cause & effect of this thread and why so many quality students apply to so many colleges when once upon a time 3 or 4 applications were adequate. My S applied to 9 schools, and got into Vandy & WashU as well as lesser ranked but not necessarily significantly less expensive or inferior colleges: Lehigh, Lafayette, Bucknell and hometown DPU. My concern is how can anyone really justify paying full freight at any of these schools? UNLESS, we rationalize that a top ranked college (arbitrary as they are!) somehow leads to a better college afterlife? And even then, I not sure the math ever catches up to these costs for the vast majority of college kids even if you assume a great starting job paying $50,000 a year. I think most of the Ccers recognize that best fit is an elusive term for most male & female teenagers. It may explain why 70% of college students change their major after freshman year. Yes, this whole system is goofy. Its become almost a chicken & the egg riddle. My one beef is that colleges have not been forced or felt the need to post their postgraduate statistics for prospective students and parents to consider as one criterion for selecting the college. While it would never be 100% accurate, or an indictor of future success, it would possibly open a lot of eyes to the reason you apply to a college(s) in the first place. Be it grad school in a specific field, a job, or joining some tribe in a remote part of the world. lol! Thanks for listening!</p>
<p>There is no justification to pay the full-freight if you must go into significant debt to do it, none. If you have the money and it's no big deal for you, well go for it; then it might be worth it, depending on the situation. But the debt with the interest: forget it. That is a trap for life and no undergraduate school can possibly compensate you sufficiently on the back end, given you could have gotten into med school, law school, or anywhere else from the state U if you did well.</p>
<p>And by the way, SDavis --I agree: postgraduate outcomes are missing from all of this. It is the black box we dare not find and decipher. Some studies have shown, and it makes sense to me, that where you go to school cannot predict success later in life. Having gone through the process and having seen how it works, as a person interviewing and hiring I would NEVER assume the applicant from the Ivy is more qualified than the one from the State University: And I say this having one son at an Ivy and another accepted at a prestigious LAC but having gone to a State U myself. I do not believe these "prestige imprimadas" are arbiters of ultimate ability and therefore, of success. My kids have need and I am not paying full freight. I would never consider going into debt for these schools. I agree that the "experience" of these colleges is much more pleasant for the length of the four years they will attend. I do not believe the schools mean my kids are better qualified than others, overall: The latter depends on what people can do, not where they went to school. Given that, to repeat, going into debt for the full freight cannot possibly be worth it.</p>
<p>Interesteddad has postgraduate stats. PM him or look for his posts on this subject. Yes, the information is available! We used it in analyzing schools.</p>
<p>Truth is, unless a student has a specific area of interest or talent, many schools will be perfectly appropriate, and offer the student a terrific education. This willy nilly applying all over the US really has no merit, since it doesn't show much focus whatsoever. </p>
<p>What is a student insterested in studying? Where does she/he want to be geographically? How many students? There are so many ways of narrowing, rather than just applying to 25 disparate schools, many of which have nothing in common with each other other than being well ranked by US News.</p>
<p>Atlantamom (re your post #121) I never said that the kid shouldn't apply to a lot of schools -- I said that there shouldn't be a reach-heavy or scattershot approach. </p>
<p>I also never said that the kid shouldn't apply to "more than one or two of the top-ranked universities and/or LAC's" -- I said more than 4 Ivies was pushing it. I think if you go back to my posts you will find that I advocated 9-12 schools with a good spread between safety- match - reach and I said that the spectrum really includes more than those 3 categories. I kind of see there as being 3 or 4 "levels" in the "match-reach" range, especially in this competitive process where kids are getting rejected & waitlisted at schools they thought were safeties. </p>
<p>Plus I also feel that if the school is a definite reach (as all Ivies are) and there isn't something special about the school that makes it particularly appropriate for the kid's learning style and needs, coupled with something special about the kid that is going to make the school sit up and take notice - then a kid does little to increase "chances" by adding more schools. </p>
<p>My kids both applied to a lot because financial aid is tremendously important to us-- and in both cases my kids got into their top choice schools but will end up going to their second choice schools because #1 didn't give the aid that they needed, whereas #2 was particularly generous in comparison to the rest. Both kids applied to and were accepted by 3 UCs. Outside the UC system, my son applied to 6 other schools, accepted by 5 (so 9 schools in all, 8 acceptances). My daughter applied to 9 outside schools, accepted by 6 (so 12 in all, 9 acceptances). </p>
<p>I think that for the outside schools my daughter chose, I would have classified them as follows:
A - 2 - near impossible reaches ("lottery"? schools)
B - 3 - reaches (admission possible but not likely)
C - 1 - difficult match (likely but not sure thing)
D - 3 - safety/matches (admission extremely likely)</p>
<p>I've given the letter categories just for purposes of reference here - they don't reflect her order of choices and we didn't define those categories during the process -- but you can see how they reflect a spectrum. Of the above she was accepted at 1 A category school, 2 B category, and all 3 of the D category. The C-category school waitlisted her, which came as a suprise.</p>
<p>Also, my daughter did have a situation like your son's, so I understand that. She wanted a large college or university in a larger urban center, and it's hard to find high quality, "safety" level schools in those places. Fordham was her New York safety -- NYU, Barnard & Chicago all big city reaches (on the A & B list) where she also ended up being accepted.</p>
<p>Thanks, Calmom, for the clarification. I think we really don't disagree much, if at all, about this topic. I agree that scattershot is not a good policy. My son would have applied to 4 Ivies and only 2 of them were at the top end of his preference list. The other 2 reaches were LAC's. That made 6 of 10, which was scary enough, I thought. Of the other 4, 2 had rolling admissions, which helped us to know whether he would need to add another match/safety before the admissions deadlines.</p>
<p>My son applied to 8 schools --it has worked out well for us, but after viewing all the financial offers, I think it retrospect we applied to too few and took on too much risk. </p>
<p>In the end he was rejected by two and accepted by six. But two of the six gave so little aid they were not feasible. Of the last four, only one was a true match (match-reach?) school and the others were match-safeties. As it turns out, the match school is a fantastic fit and gave great aid, but in retrospect I realize that school could have rejected him --easily. It was never a sure thing. He should have applied to more schools on THAT level to be covered. In retrospect I have to say that if you are concerned with financial aid, 8 is not enough --although luckily the 8 worked out for my son.</p>
<p>Actually, the financial aid front is trickier, because the top reach colleges tend to be the ones that guarantee to meet full need.... but they also define "need" by their own terms so it is hard to predict for anyone with a complex personal financial situation. </p>
<p>If there are "match" schools that do not promise 100% need, but also have the kind of standards and student body that will provide challenge for your kid.... you end up with a gamble in that they might or might not give sufficient need-based aid, and any merit scholarship that your kid gets is likely to be too small to meet need. </p>
<p>So the next step is to look for colleges that will give your kid a full ride, or at least a full tuition scholarship .... and for that you need to find a college where the kid is in the top 5 or 10% of the applicant pool. Which usually means that the college itself looks somewhat shaky in terms of academics - and (in our case) tends to compare unfavorably to the in-state publics.</p>
<p>But I do agree that if the student is fortunate enough to have his match or match-reach type schools also be among the tier of those well-endowed enough to be generous with financial aid then it makes sense to apply to quite a few, in part because those schools may also be willing to adjust their aid to match what another school offers. That was my son's basic strategy: apply to a lot of very similar LACs, including some he didn't really want to attend, in the hope that the best financial aid offer could be used as a bargaining tool to get more aid from the most favored choice school.</p>
<p>There's one intangible at Ivies and top LACs: the network that opens up for alumni after graduation. One pays full freight (if one must) for both an excellent education AND a lifetime of connections. This effect of this on the future of grads cannot be measured and displayed in stats tables.</p>
<p>You would be surprised at what connections are opened up at many of the schools that rank in the #20-#50 level on US News.</p>
<p>Calmom, your advice is well thought out, but what about the kid that does have some "sit up and take notice" stuff, and who wants a top university setting with strong sciences and the opportunity to do undergrad research, but with a good array of liberal arts courses as well. And let's say the kid wants a campus, and likes but isn't wedded to an urban setting nearby. So, according to your recipe, he can apply to, let say, Harvard and Penn and maybe Stanford, but should he leave out Brown, Princeton, Yale and Cornell because that's too many? Come on...those are all great schools for that kind of kid. And the truth is, no one knows, no matter what their attributes are, how much of a player they will be until the acceptances come in. So, once again, I must caution against making pronouncements based on the approach that worked well for a particular student.</p>
<p>I didn't make a pronouncement, I suggested a guideline. </p>
<p>Somehow it is ok on these boards for a kid to apply to 8 Ivies if it is a "lottery" and he doesn't stand much of a chance of getting into more than one or two, or maybe 3 or 4 -- but it is not o.k. for a kid to apply to all 8 and actually get in, and then be undecided but very happy & proud .... that kid is supposed to have pulled the others as soon as the Harvard EA admission letter came in. I just don't get it.</p>
<p>Actually, you did make a pronouncement...multiple times. And I don't even get the rest of your post, or what it has to do with this thread.</p>
<p>"You would be surprised at what connections are opened up at many of the schools that rank in the #20-#50 level on US News."</p>
<p>Well, yes, as those are still top schools. </p>
<p>The Ivy club is especially tight, though.</p>