<p>There's tons of advice on CC saying "Love thy safety." The trouble is my kid doesn't love the one he has on his list. He doesn't hate it either. He is also rejecting ALL suggestions of new safeties to add. And wouldn't you know it, financial aid is very important to us. I'm worried that he will never find one he likes. </p>
<p>Knowing him the way I do, I'm sure he's thinking that since he likes two (one a match and one a reach) on his list of just three, he would be happy attending either one. Therefore he doesn't think he needs to worry about the safety or even add any more schools period. Even though I've explained the money situation over and over, I don't think it's sinking in.</p>
<p>Any suggestions on how to go about this? Do most kids eventually find safeties they love?</p>
<p>I think it varies. My older son I think would have been reasonably happy at his safety (a techie school that just isn’t quite as high powered as the one he attended). My younger son loved his safety and if he’d been surer of his major might have given it more serious consideration. I think he would have been happier there, he’d have had great internship opportunities (especially term time) and he’d probably have gotten great grades. So he might in fact have been better off attending in some ways.</p>
<p>Both my kids chose safeties that had excellent offerings/good reputations in their probable majors, but that were a little less excellent overall. We didn’t have trouble with safeties, we had trouble with matches!</p>
<p>Tell him the budget you have and tell him he MUST apply to a school that he is willing to attend and will fit that budget. Have him do the work to find the safety…then there are no excuses. After he identifies that school, then he can add whatever he wants. Make sure he understands that the budget is the budget…so figure out what that number is and stick to it. He’ll find one…or he’ll be sitting at home come the fall. Make sure he understand that, too. And yes, kids can find a school they are willing to attend that will fit the budget. If his match school is pretty certain and you know it will fit the budget hopefully they have EA or rolling, then if for some reason he doesn’t get in, he can have a few more in his hip pocket. But let him pick. There’s nothing wrong with applying to three schools if one of them will work out and it’s pretty certain there will be an acceptance. My oldest only applied to 4 and one of those four we asked and was a parent-pick.</p>
<p>Have you been firm about things in the past or do you tend to cave-in? I ask because he may not be taking the budget seriously if you’ve not been firm in other areas.</p>
<p>If your son pushes this to the end, are you willing to say “No college this year?” If so, tell him that. Tell him you will not cave-in last minute to co-sign loans or whatnot. This is serious, get him on the same page.</p>
<p>Our kids have found safety schools they love. Our son has 2 safety school on his realistic list at #1 and #2. He is applying to his dream school with a single digit acceptance rate so that is technically #1 :D.</p>
<p>DD isn’t applying to any reach schools, financially or academically. She hasn’t found any academic reaches that are good fits for her and her safety schools have much better med school acceptance rates than the 'better" schools she looked at so it’s a win/win for us!!</p>
<p>The short answer: yes, it is possible, and in fact, my D made the decision last month to go to her safety instead of borrowing money (within the Stafford limits) to go to a school she would have preferred. </p>
<p>One strategy might be to find out what your child likes about the preferred schools, then look for a safety that has pretty much the same things. Of course, if the answer is “a school that will impress my friends,” that may not work. </p>
<p>Otherwise, I agree with the advice upthread: let your child know what the budget is, educate him or her about the likely FA picture, and turn the task of finding a safety over to the kid.</p>
<p>Not so worried about safeties from an admittance point of view - should be able to manage that. But how do you find a financial safety when strong preference is for small school ie no in-state publics and you will not qualify for any need-based aid (we all know that what schools say you can afford does not necessarily match your actual ability to pay and makes a lot of assumptions including second mortgages etc)</p>
<p>PAMom, check out the thread for schools that give good merit aid, as well as looking at schools like CTCL. If you D or S is in the top 25% of the admitted students, there is a chance for merit aid. What are the expectation for merit aid? 1/2 tuition, 3/4 tuition, full tuition? DS received merit aid from plenty of Midwestern LACs with less than 2,000 people.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t have been happy at any of my safeties - by definition, the one thing I searched for was a high concentration of very smart students in my top choices (I turned down places like Stanford and Cornell because they admitted too many students without regard to academic ability). No “safety” level schools met that requirement.</p>
<p>Agree - we will look for schools where his stats put him in higher % of students. But probably need to consider several as none will be guaranteed.
We will not need full tuition assistance but I feel that a school would need to be pretty special for us to pay 50K+ per year. Could we pay it - probably yes, but would it be smart - we don’t yet know if he will need assistance with post graduate studies.</p>
<p>Yes. My son never was aware of tiers, safety vs. reaches, and such. We just discussed schools that he might be interested in. He never looked at guide books. He did look online to read about schools that we mentioned to him, or that he heard about (ie: through mailings, GC, friends). </p>
<p>The school he is attending was a safety school for him. I was concerned that we might be making a mistake sending him to a safety school, but I don’t have regrets and he has no regrets either.</p>
<p>^LOL. I don’t think you have to LOVE your safety. But I think it helps if there is* something *you really like about it. It could be something as silly as being near really good ice cream, it could be one great professor, it could a gorgeous campus, a wonderful city, a great D and D club.</p>
<p>If you can name me a school where the average SAT is >2100 with an intellectually focused student body, where studying on a saturday night is not an anomaly, will provide nonstop challenges to a kid who self studied for a 5 on Calc BC, and has acceptance rates >70% (or whatever is required to qualify for safety), then DS would have loved that ‘safety.’ </p>
<p>Anything short would have been a disappointment so no real life ‘safety’ fit the bill. We don’t know that he would not eventually have been happy attending his ‘safety’ which actually would have been an extension of his not-at-all challenging HS, but no way he was going to ‘love it’ up front while visions of MIT and Caltech were dancing in his head.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry so much about feeling the “love” beforehand. Just make sure there are some solid, reasonable “likelies” on the list. In my experience with my own kid and observation of others, interest in the possible options develops naturally if and when others prove impossible.</p>
<p>My D didn’t love her safety until she visited it. Once she did the visit she knew she could be happy there even if she didn’t have any other options. She didn’t end up selecting her safety but we were relieved knowing that if she had to…it would be ok.</p>
<p>ihs-I can’t imagine that your DS would feel too superior to the students at Rose Hulman. I imagine that he would be even discover that he wasn’t the smartest or most driven on that campus, and that he would be challenged in a nurturing environment.
That is really why finding a safety is so important. It IS often harder to find a place that meets most of the criteria of a reach so that fit is not sacrificed. I always feel bad when I read about people who apply to all these reach schools because they love small class sizes, discussion based learning, then they throw a large state school in as the safety. Surely with a little research there could be found a small school with smart driven students that is affordable so one need not sacrifice fit for cost.</p>
<p>Probably would, MizzBee. The average SAT score at Rose is only 1840, well below the 2100 cutoff ihs specified. (Actually, the 75th percentile is below 2100, too).</p>