<p>Second guessing my daughter's choices on where to apply. She didn't apply to any "reaches" as it seems she is a "match" for all her schools. I am wondering if we should consider encouraging her to throw out one last application to a reach school. We are not eligible for FA, but cost is an issue. Her stats: 2130 SAT superscore (1330 CR+ M); Band 4 Years (section leader); Art Honor Society 4 Years; Theatre Arts Set Design 3 years.. applications are in for:</p>
<p>Muhlenberg; Penn State U; Univ of Pitt; Lafayette
Syracuse; Fordham; Skidmore and Boston U.</p>
<p>You’ve chosen wisely. Your D will get a good education at any of them. You could reach out to a Georgetown or an Emory or Tufts if you wanted to, but perhaps you will want to have a good reason for any school you spend the money on. You don’t want to put yourself in a position where you have to say no to your D because of money just so that she could have a reach school.</p>
<p>My D has similar stats - 2140 (1410 CR+M), 3.7 UW, IB diploma. She has more reaches than your D, but honestly, I’m hoping she is admitted and chooses one of her matches/safeties. Her list - Swarthmore, Haverford, Oberlin, Denison, Dickinson, Muhlenberg, Miami University, UMD-CP, St. Mary’s (MD). She also considered Skidmore. I think she’s got a good list…good luck!</p>
<p>I had roughly similar stats and applied to all matches and safeties (and one reach, Emory, to which I was admitted). I wanted a lot of merit aid; I wanted to be a “big fish in a small pond,” so to speak, and the schools that had characteristics I really liked ended up being matches for me. (I didn’t know about financial aid as a first-generation student, and if I had, I think I would’ve applied to more elite SLACs in the Northeast.) I ended up going to a low match/safety that gave me a full scholarship.</p>
<p>6 years after graduation I’m at an Ivy League grad school. Sometimes I wonder what life would’ve been like had I gone to an elite SLAC or private university that I probably could’ve gotten into, especially being a low-income URM. But I can’t say that it would be demonstrably better. There are experiences that I can point to at my own SLAC that I don’t think I would’ve gotten elsewhere - and they’ve led me to be where I am now.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what your reservations are about your D, but I have to say - as someone who was definitely in the top 5% of admitted applicants at my alma mater, I still felt challenged and I still grew in tremendous ways at my undergrad. But the great part is that I was never super stressed out by my work and I had the time to do a lot of other cool things, including working as a research assistant for a professor. And I had FUN. And my experience and preparation was such that I got admitted to my PhD program directly from undergrad - and was the only one in my entire cohort - and got a prestigious national fellowship. My alma mater is similar in rank to Muhlenberg.</p>
<p>So…even if your daughter is in the top of her class at her college, she still can do really well in college and in life and grow and flourish in a lot of ways.</p>
<p>D had many people tell her she was aiming too low. We make enough money that we don’t qualify for financial aid, but not enough to afford a private LAC like D wanted to attend. We knew need-based aid was off the table, merit aid was her only hope. She did apply to one school that was a high reach, one moderate reach (mostly because of pressure to “aim higher”) and the rest were schools where we knew she would be well above the average student.</p>
<p>She didn’t get accepted at the high reach (which was just as well, much as she would have loved it we knew she wouldn’t get aid). The moderate reach she got in, but all they offered was a grant of $7k and loans. All of the other schools offered significant amounts of merit aid and most accepted her into their honors programs.</p>
<p>She’s now finishing up her freshman year at a school many on these boards see as a safety, but it’s one where she’s thriving. She’s got the small class sizes, individualized professor attention, and seminar and discussion based classes rather than lectures that she was hoping for. The honors program offers tons of perks and a peer group of similarly high achieving and motivated students. And best of all, as long as she maintains her GPA (which shouldn’t be a problem), she will graduate with almost no debt.</p>
<p>There’s no harm in sending out another application or two, you never know when you might hit the jackpot, but with the outrageous cost of schools, aiming for those schools that are great schools (and think about how many kids have schools like BU or Fordham as their unattainable dream reach school) but are affordable based on merit made perfect sense to us. We’ve always told our kids the best fit is the school that energizes and excites you, and allows you to thrive after graduation rather than being a slave to piles of debt.</p>
<p>OP, I didn’t elaborate on why I want D to ultimately wind up at one of her matches/safeties, but my thought process mirrors what both InigoMontoya and Julliet describe. It worked out for them, and I hope it works out for both our kids as well. Again, good luck.</p>
<p>You may get some merit aid from one or more of the private schools on your list.
More selective schools probably won’t give you any, and will be at least as expensive (even before aid) as the ones on you list. So from a cost perspective, you did not aim too low. It’d be different if you were eligible for need-based aid (in which case, more selective schools often are better).</p>
<p>No you did not aim too low. I keyed in on this:
More selective schools generally only offer FA. If you’re prepared to be full pay at a school like that then try to persuade her to add one. Otherwise it looks like a fine list.</p>
<p>the main concern is if a student attends a school with I aimed to low, that attitude of Superiority /arrogance will make it harder for them to settle into to the college “family” and may be a turn off to those around them who are very happy and excited to be at a particular school.</p>
<p>Fordham and BU are unlikely to provide you with aid.
The rest seem well-chosen since you need merit aid.
You can throw in an application to URochester (similar to Syracuse but “more prestigious”), to Dickinson or Franklin&Marshall (same thing, for Muhlenberg), to Lehigh (//Lafayette). She would qualify for Honors College and automatic half tuition scholarship at UAlabama but she has to apply for Dec 1 (fortunately if she’s got her Common App complete, she can just use that and I don’t think there’s an essay.) She can try to apply for Macaulay at CCNY, Baruch, Lehman… (check which ones include dorm fees - and I think it’s due Dec 1, too). If she likes big cities, Tulane (New Orleans), Agnes Scott (Atlanta), Lake Forest (Chicago), Macalester (Twin Cities), St Mary’s of California (San Francisco) would probably have merit aid.</p>
<p>I applied to three schools, all safeties or matches, I guess (though I didn’t think of it in those terms). When I mentioned one of the colleges to my HS’s college counselor, she seemed surprised that I was considering such a “low” school, but I had a shot at a very good scholarship there. My list was determined very, very strongly by merit aid. I applied to schools that I thought were a good fit and ended up somewhere with a full tuition scholarship that I really enjoy and have had a chance to really stand out and be challenged. (I keep finding that they have put my picture on various parts of the university website - really disconcerting to run across.)</p>
<p>If your daughter is happy with the schools on her list, I do not see anything wrong with not “aiming higher.”</p>
It depends why your daughter chose those schools and what your daughter is looking for in a college. You shouldn’t automatically favor a college just because it is the very difficult for the general population to be accepted at that school (a “reach school”). However, if the “reach school” offers a unique benefit not found at the other colleges or if your daughter favors being in a dorms/classes full of students with high stats, that is a different issue.</p>
<p>If you are looking for merit aid then you were wise to apply to schools where your D would be on the top of the application pool statistic wise. And my D is currently at Lafayette and my S graduated from Fordham and I can tell you first hand both of these schools offer great educations (and I’d imagine the other schools on your list do as well). If your D wants to throw in a reach school or two there is no harm as long as she understands in advance that finances and the availability of merit aid will play a part in the final college decision. If she is happy with the current list, then the list is just fine.</p>