<p>My D would rather not tell a college she's applying to which other colleges she's applying to. She's afraid the college will deduce, correctly, that it's her safety school and be less likely to admit her. Is she obliged to tell them about any of the other colleges, or all of them? Can they find out which colleges she's applying to? (they're a Common App school). Thanks!</p>
<p>Is she obliged? In my opinion: absolutely not. </p>
<p>To me, it’s akin to negotiating for a new car or new home purchase. Not all info needs to be shared. I would advise my kid to list colleges close in “selectivity” to that particular school. Anything else, while desired by the college, is proprietary to your family. Just like the new car salesman wants to really know how high I’m willing to go. It’s in my best interest to hide that as much as possible.</p>
<p>Can they find out? No.</p>
<p>Thank you. That was my take on it too, but I wanted another perspective, and was concerned that they could find out.</p>
<p>Like I said, I can totally understand why they want full disclosure from us – it’s in their school’s best interest. But I won’t apologize for the adverserial position we are placed into during this time.</p>
<p>I think the buying a new car or a new house analogy is apt.</p>
<p>I agree with T26E4 (as I often do). I think it takes a bit of chutzpah for a college to ask.</p>
<p>As it happened, when my daughter was applying to colleges, the only university that asked her this question was kind of in the middle of the pack, selectivity-wise, so she answered. But we all resented it, and we thought it was none of the university’s beeswax. And if circumstances had been different, I would have had no qualms about her withholding some information.</p>
<p>I totally agree with T26E4… but these are our children that are applying to college and we want them to be as honest as possible/we have taught them that honesty is the best policy… so then what does one answer??? How do they work around this question without telling a “white lie”??</p>
<p>^I didn’t have a problem having my kids give an edited list of schools when asked this question on applications (they were never asked in an interview) because it is an inappropriate question to begin with. The school should be assessing the candidate on the qualities presented in the application, not on who the ‘competition’ is.</p>
<p>I like the idea of the edited list. In my D’s case, there is only one other on that level; the rest are more competitive. So maybe we’ll have to come up with some others. I don’t like the white lie aspect either, but I do feel it’s inappropriate for them to ask.</p>
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<p>Please understand, NewHavenmom, that I have no intention of criticizing your parenting when I say what I am about to say.</p>
<p>I haven’t talked about the world that way with my kids since they were in elementary school. Both as a parent and as a middle- and high-school teacher, I think it’s important to explore with teenagers the reality that the world is a lot more complicated than the aphorisms we taught them when they were little. If we don’t explore the gray areas and moral ambiguities with them, they’ll explore them on their own. If they explore them on their own, they might reach conclusions we’d rather they didn’t reach, and they might even decide that everything adults have taught them in the past is a load of oversimplified rubbish.</p>
<p>There are lots of inappropriate questions that a teenager shouldn’t have to answer honestly for just anybody. A classmate asks you, “What did you get on the history test?” or “Are your parents rich?” or “Are you a virgin?” or what have you. In my opinion, if it’s not possible to avoid answering such impertinent questions, it’s morally unobjectionable to answer them in a way that’s less than completely honest. In this case, a college asked a teenager a question that’s really none of the college’s business, and the teenager cannot simply deflect the question. I have no problem, then, with the teenager’s being evasive.</p>
<p>Tell everyone your family college plans at your own peril. Seriously my DTR told her two best friends about a school she was applying to and they applied and were accepted and my DTR was NOT! That went over well in our house. I begged her not to blab to friends about her plans but just about in every case both of the friends would do whatever MY DTR was planning/thinking. It was like some crazy adolescent loop or program that I as the parent could not hack. Girls…YIKES!!!</p>
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<p>In the situation where an honest answer would be risky (i.e. the college is thought of as a safety but is one of those which does not want to be used as such), drop the college from the application list (because it is not a safety) and replace it with a true safety.</p>
<p>I saw this question on another thread, and I believe the discussion moved to the FAFSA, and the fact that one will eventually list all the schools applied to on the FAFSA, if applying for potential aid. That being said, perhaps applications for admittance are already “sent from the student / received in admissions / decisions sent to the student from admissions” prior to filling out the FAFSA, and since the FA office receives the FAFSA, admissions won’t see it and base admissions decisions from it.</p>
<p>I am new to this process with a DD’13, but who’s to say that when our kids send in an application they know, for sure, 100%, to which schools they will apply? Some kids change their minds seemingly on a whim. I would probably go with similar schools when listing where else they apply; no need to list them all, simply because it may or may not happen. Just my two cents.</p>
<p>Questions like this are unethical. You deserve to be judged based on your app, not on the adcom’s guessing at why you might be applying to some other schools. And if they just want the info for benign purposes,there are plenty of ways to gather than information anonymously. So feel NO obligation to give your complete list, or even an accurate list. Use the question to your advantage. (1) Look up some of their close competitors and list 2 of them, along with a safety since everyone expects to see this. (2) Be sure to list a slightly more desireable school. (3) Leave out the very selective schools.</p>
<p>Here are the reasons. Some schools are believed to reject you if they think you’ll get into more prestigious schools that you’ve applied to in order to keep their yield up. Google “tufts syndrome” for more info, although Tufts denies they do it these days. So don’t list those very selective schools! For (2), this is for financial aid. If they recognize they’re the most prestigious school on your list, they may very well reason that you’ll dig a little deeper in your pocket to attend and may give you a downgraded FA package. By contrast, if they think you’ll get into their slightly better ranked competitor they may try to sway you with a better than average FA package.</p>
<p>I really have to wonder why schools ask this. Ad coms are not stupid. They know people play games with this, and that lists change for reasons our2girls said as well. They’ve also gotten pretty sophisticated at yield management. I’d bet they know based on your application whether they are a safety for you or not, and also how likely you are to attend based on their past history with applicants like you. For these reasons, I don’t think it matters much what you put down.</p>
<p>On the possibility that it does matter, however, perhaps you be better off putting down only very selective schools so the adcoms at the safety see you have a high chance of getting rejected everywhere and therefore a better chance of choosing them.</p>
<p>Yikes, I hate this trying to outguess each other game the schools create by asking this question. I think in our case the college is a genuine safety (i.e., she’d be OK with going there even though it won’t be her first choice), whether or not the college wants to be that, so I wouldn’t replace it with another safety just because it doesn’t like being one. All students are told to apply to one or two safeties, so the schools must know students do this.</p>
<p>How about "I am just starting the application process and “your school” was first on my list.</p>
<p>How about just putting “Undecided”? I saw this suggestion on a thread about this subject a while back.</p>
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<p>But the point is, such a school cannot be a genuine safety because it may reject students who are otherwise obvious admits in the name of yield management. Even if the student wants to keep the school on the application list, it should be viewed as a match at best, not a safety, which means that a true safety that does not ask such questions or care about “level of applicant’s interest” needs to be found.</p>
<p>What if you put “none”, I know a girl who only applied to one school. She applied to the school, an ivy league ED and got in. </p>
<p>I think that the undecided answer works best. Its non of their business. There is so much pressure for the kids as it is… and then they have to play this cat/mouse, switcheroo game… I think it stinks.</p>