<p>Okay, I'm going to play devil's advocate here. What about a kid who is a top-performing kid of Asian descent, with excellent but not "OMG" credentials in classical violin, who wants to go to school somewhere where the opportunties in sciences are excellent and where the students are high-acheiving, super-bright folks. This kid does not care about the social environment (liberal v. conservative, preppy v. alternative, etc.) and does care about the prestige of the institution because that kid wants to go on to graduate school to work with an uber-prestigious faculty member doing some type of cutting edge scientific research. This kid has 2380 SAT's and is valedictorian. Has some honors in the nature of INTEL and some research experience with a local researcher at moderate level university. Will have good and maybe super recs. </p>
<p>Shouldn't this kid apply to all the Ivies plus Stanford and other top schools for science -- say, John Hopkins etc?</p>
<p>I can see that some may think that if a person gets accepted to all or most ivies that he applied to then he is taking acceptances that could have gone to others.</p>
<p>but... on the other hand..</p>
<p>I can see applying to all Ivies since it really seems to be a "crap shoot" -- depending on whether you are the right puzzle piece that one (or more) Ivy is looking for. One year Harvard may need YOU and your uniqueness (major, stats, home state) and one year Yale may need you. The problem is that a person doesn't know this info BEFORE the ap process.</p>
<p>Momwaitingfornew - yes, those in the #20-50 range are still top schools, but their admissions practices are far more predictable. You start hitting schools that accept 40% or more of their applicants - and at around #40 or so you've got mostly schools that accept more than half of their apps. So it is much easier to figure out whether a school is likely to accept a kid -- and there is less of a need to send multiple applications to similar schools, at least as far as securing admittance. It becomes a lot rarer for a kid with above-range stats to be rejected at that point, and the whole match/reach/safety thing becomes easier to call.</p>
<p>Whereas from where I sit, applying to all the Ivies is a matter of ego, not fit. I think it would be hard enough to thread the needle on even four, say...Yale, Colulmbia, Dartmouth, Penn.</p>
<p>I agree with Calmom and TheDad. I think that kids should identify a couple of top 10 schools they really would like to attend, apply to those, and then concentrate on applications to schools that are more likely to admit them. It makes the whole process less stressful and gets away from students sending in apps to more than 10 schools. There are some pretty significant differences between the Ivies, Stanford and MIT. I think too many top students think that they can only be happy at one of the top 10 schools when in reality, if they move down a slight bit in the rankings, they will find several schools that can provide a challenging and in intellectual environment.</p>
<p>It's funny...I wonder if there are any parents of so-called "top-stats kids" who agree with these artifical limitations. And tell me, shennie, what are the "significant" differences between Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Penn, Brown. (notice I omitted MIT, as it isn't quite as strong in liberal arts, and Columbia, because of its core, and Cornell and Dartmouth, because they aren't near a city). Their similarities (other than geography) greatly outweigh their differences. And once again, even the OMG stats kid knows there are lots of kids like him/her around and can never be sure of getting into his/her top choice. And if he/she is willing to risk disappointment and take on the stress, that's certainly their choice.</p>
<p>
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Whereas from where I sit, applying to all the Ivies is a matter of ego, not fit. I think it would be hard enough to thread the needle on even four, say...Yale, Colulmbia, Dartmouth, Penn.
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You should try that argument on my D. You don't stand a chance:) She can give you an hour on every school on her list, with very solid reasoning. Every one had a program, department, or staff that she was interested in pursuing. Her interests were sufficiently broad that a number of areas in the humanities (languages, linguistics, pol. sci., history) were attractive. With the exception of a couple of schools (based on geography), she would have been quite happy to attend every one of them, and in fact was disappointed at having to turn them down. She ended up at Harvard because it gave her the broadest opportunities where some of the others would have immediately narrowed her focus. </p>
<p>Fit can mean many things. I didn't know, for instance, that MIT had a world reknowned linguistics department. She did.</p>
<p>As I suspected, no one has changed their position here. I am very interested in this debate because I volunteer in my kids' high school counseling center for a group set up by the PTSA to help kids with college planning. None of this applies to me personally now. My son will start college this fall and my sophomore daughter will not be applying to Ivies, etc. </p>
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sdavis writes: I think most of the Ccers recognize that best fit is an elusive term for most male & female teenagers.
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I beg to disagree. When splitting hairs between good colleges or considering whims that seem to change by the week it is indeed difficult to discern "best fit".</p>
<p>On the other hand, many aspects of what may be termed "fit" are stable and predictable parts of a kid & their personality. Some kids are eager to engage in conversations and debates, and a school with small classes and seminars is a better fit. Some kids benefit from the guidance of someone who's seen it before, and colleges that provide a faculty advisor for each student are a better fit than those without that system and that don't allow you to see a full-time professional counselor until your junior year (eg. some UC schools). Some kids are fascinated by science and attending a college with access to labs and research opportunities is a better fit. Some kids would go stir-crazy in a rural town and so colleges in these places are not a fit; for some, its the city that doesn't work. And so on.</p>
<p>The concept of "best fit" drives people to try to slice things to thinly, IMHO, but if you step back a level there are schools that are better fits for a given kid than others.</p>