College Strategy - Not looking at Reach, Stretch or Safety

[elodyCOH]

Also there are still some highly selected schools that do offer merit award, although the slots are few. If I were in your shoes, I would still encourage my kid to throw in couple of reach just for fun and to see where it sticks for only a $100 each (application, test record, and transcription fees). And if your son got in and can’t attend, he can still brag that its something else, not his personal ability not able to study at that level. Maybe even a negotiation tool for getting some discount from your flagship U.

I don’t know that I agree with this. Applying and getting in to an elite school only to have to decline might just tarnish the good feelings he has about the schools that are affordable. We are not looking at second rate schools with poor reputations - these are nationally recognized schools. Our state flagship uses need as the primary factor for merit, so they really wouldn’t care what you get elsewhere. If they did, they’d do something about losing a HUGE number of their brightest students to other states. Our state universities have had a major drop in enrollment, largely due to state mismanagement of funds, vastly underfunded pensions, and extraordinarily high tuition costs for instate students.