<p>When I saw the thread title here I thought it was going to be about romantic entanglements! Oh, well. My D actually fell in love with her safety and chose it over her matches and reaches. Her senior year was blissfully stress-free..... and now that we're rapidly approaching her launch into college, I'm afraid of the OTHER kind of heart-break. She and her first really serious boyfriend have decided to date other people in college, and although she seems resigned to the situation, I can't help but feel hurt for her!</p>
<p>Back to the topic of the thread though - sure, let your S apply anywhere he wants to. You can't shield him from disappointment, but you can help him be resilient. Resilience is useful, both in college admissoins and in romance....</p>
<p>sorry if this has already been said, but make sure when a safety is calculated that you look at the acceptance rate as well as at the score range. </p>
<p>The fact that your studen't's scores are in range is only part of the equation. Check Pitzer for a good example. Their CR SAT range is 570-680, Math 550-650. that would appear to put Pitzer in the safety range for many students here on CC. However, their acceptance rate is 26% and I wouldn't consider any school that accepted fewer than half of the applicants a true safety. I may be more conservative than the averge person on this point but better to be conservative and have someplace to go in the fall than overly optimistic and be aced out everywhere.</p>
<p>I echo the advice to apply early to schools that offer rolling admissions and apply EA to as many as possible. Having a couple of choices in the bag is a great way to go into the winter.</p>
<p>One of the old CC mantras is "love thy safety".. have your son love thy safety to a point that if it were the only school that her were to be admitted to, he would still be happy to attend. Also unless this safety is a financially feasible option for your family, it is not a safety. As long as he has one of these on his list, everthing else that happens is essentially gravy.</p>
<p>Overall, I think that your job is support and to be supportive of your kid during what can be a very stressful process. All he can do is show his best self in the application process, and then let it go an let the process play it self out. </p>
<p>You also need to stress to him that he is not defined by what school he is admitted to or where he decides to attend. He is not a failure if he is not chosen for admission to hot school, reach for everybody school as the net-net is there are not enough seats for all of the great students who are applying. The worse case scenario is that he does not have to live and die by the acceptance (if it is not really what he wants, he only has to stick it out a year and then look into the transfer process).</p>
<p>After all has been said and done, his gift will make room for him and he will end up where he needs to be. If he does not apply, he has a 100% chance of not being admitted.</p>
<p>Re MIT admissions:<br>
Years ago Icalled to inquire about admissions for my very intelligent son.</p>
<p>The admissions counselor I spoke to at MIT informed me that just about everyone who applies can do the work at MIT.</p>
<p>So to admit, they have to look at ECs. She said they are itnerested in the unusual. For instance, a girl I know was accepted. Her mom thinks it was due to student council, whereas I KNOW it had to have been her competing in Irish dancing at the world competition in Ireland. She was in Irish dancing since she was 4.</p>
<p>Ready him for rejection. Basically get him to love his better bets and help him appreciate/understand why not _____ University. Just make it so that he really appreciates if he gets into whatever selective school and get him to kind of push it back a little. Sure, he can like it. But if he loves it, he'll be heartbroken if he doesn't.</p>
<p>My parents did this and it worked quite well. =]</p>
<p>I agree with what one poster said about not sharing your selected schools with family members, friends and neighbors. That said, it is REALLY hard to avoid this. Everyone is very curious and asks many questions...especially if they know they're dealing with a top student. We tried to change the subject -and would get "Oh come on, just tell us where he applied - I'm sure he's Ivy material right"?
Well meaning family members certainly CAN make things more difficult "Oh - of course, he'll be accepted by X."<br>
So during the big week, our son had to share a few rejections along with many successes. Of course the rejections were schools that many uninformed family members thought were a "shoo in." This didn't help things...
So, yeah, apply to those reaches. But do what you can to limit the influence of 'clueless' family members and friends.</p>
<p>As everyone else has said, the formula is no different now, really, than it has ever been: reaches, matches, safeties. </p>
<p>But I think everything needs to be bumped up a notch. Maybe there should be two more tiers added for this admissions climate:</p>
<p>1 -- if wildest dreams came true
2 -- reaches
3 -- should be matches
4 -- definitely are matches
5 -- safeties that I really, really like and that address all my educational needs</p>
<p>If you steer him away from risking rejection, he may always wonder if he reached high enough. I would hate for my fear of their rejection to be the reason one of my kids didn't chase their dream. The key is to support high aspirations but keep high expectations in check. Good luck.</p>
<p>"It's entirely possible (actually it's become quite common) for someone to be accepted into Harvard or Yale, waitlisted at WashU and JHU, and rejected at Georgetown and Tufts."</p>
<p>This is true, and one thing to take from it is that you shouldn't let anybody tell you that you are applying to "too many" reaches. Obviously, there is a limit to how many applications a kid can reasonably prepare, but limiting reach applications to just one or two is not a good strategy, in my opinion. I know a student who applied to ten very selective schools, and the state flagship as a safety. She got into the safety and three of the selective schools. If she had applied to fewer selective schools, she might be on her way to the safety.</p>
<p>Heron, if there is such a school per your #5, why do you want to apply anywhere else?</p>
<p>Either I totally misunderstand the concept of a safety school or it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over rated. The school you for sure could get in is unlikely the school you really really like.</p>
<p>From Dad II: "The school you for sure could get in is unlikely the school you really really like."</p>
<p>I've said this ad nauesum in other posts, but here goes: The school my daughter really really likes IS her safety, and that's where she's heading this fall. She is blissfully, thoroughly, deliriously happy to attend this school - and she got into much reachier universities.</p>
<p>Money was not a factor, but yes, she got plenty of merit money at the safety.</p>
<p>One way or the other he is going to experience some highs and lows in the search/admissions process. Hopefully though, there will be more highs that lows so that his heart ends up in good shape. Whether it is not getting a scholarship or not getting accepted at a desired college, something will not go as you hope. In the end though, things usually manage to end up OK.</p>
<p>The whole reach/match/safety terms confuse me at times, so I usually view the process as affordable & not affordable. Make sure your son knows what places might work out for your financial situation and what won’t. You never know until you get back the financial aid offers, but you should have a pretty good idea.</p>
<p>If finances are not an issue, go for it and apply to reaches and high reaches. The student will either get accepted or rejected. It's no big deal. What is a big deal is when the student gets accepted and wants to attend but you realize you can't pay the $45,000-$50,000/yr. costs because the student doesn't qualify for financial aid or merit money. My suggestion is--if you're not going to qualify for financial aid and your kid's academic stats are not in the ball park for getting Merit money, rethink the idea of reaching too high. Would you rather he get accepted and then pull the rug from under him because of finances or would you rather he focus on schools that are a good match regarding finances, academics, and personal feel of the campus?</p>
<p>Dad II, I'm thinking that for many kids there is the HYP dream, then there are the other high tier name-recognition schools that compose other reaches/matches. The appeal of this prestige/reputation/name-recognition is -- as well all see here again and again -- virtually irresistable for many, many kids, not to mention their parents! A great safety school might be one that is a lesser or little known school that still meets the needs, but doesn't have the high profile and the wow factor. I guess I would say that we all have educational needs than can be met in various combinations by a variety of different schools. One large Ivy can be famed for it's international relations department, but a little-known school can send virtually all of it's IR graduates off to Ivy grad schools, for example. The safeties can be a way to think outside the box. Safeties can be a way to get creative, and can it might take a lot of research to find one that is a good fit, but I think it's often possible. So I disagree with you there, but agree that it can be hard to find.</p>
<p>At my son's safety school almost half the student body had unweighted GPAs over 3.75, 95% were in the top quarter of their class, the middle 50% of math SAT scores are 650-730, verbal 600-690. But they accept almost half the students who applied and they told him by November that he was in and would be getting merit aid. We'd have happy if he'd gone there. You can find good safeties if you look for them.</p>
<p>^^We are fortunate to live in California, where the mid-rank UCs (Davis, Irvine, and Santa Barbara) make perfect safeties for a high-end kid. They are excellent schools that can take them anywhere, and a high stats kid is almost certain to be admitted.</p>
<p>Agree with the above: my son chose UC schools as both his reach and his safety and I know he would have been truly happy at either the first or last on his list. As it turns out, he chose to attend a different school that, at the beginning of the process, we would have never predicted he would pick.</p>
<p>I made the same mistake as Calmom. My response to the capricious nature of college admissions led me to (over) warn my son that he may not get accepted. That made him feel like I did not have as much faith in him as he would have liked. It is a difficult balance, but I have FINALLY learned to let the other guys (admissions, employers, etc.) be the ones delivering bad news to my kids. Meanwhile, I am their biggest cheerleader and promoter. At the end of it, they remember my support and any disappointment is saved for the people/insitutions that did the disappointing. My new motto is, "I'm sure you can do anything you put your mind to honey. They would be lucky to have you."</p>
<p>The problem with all these discussions is that few of them have any basis in relevant emprical data that could help guide you.</p>
<p>If you can, I would attempt to get access to a rank ordered listing of students and their acceptances that shows their GPA and also their SAT scores. You need to have the most recent two years, ideally. You then need to sort the list by both GPA and SAT (or ACT).</p>
<p>Doing this will let you see whether your son's scores and grades matchup to each other as compared to the rest of the students around him. If there is a disparity, make your list using the ranking on which he is lower....in other words, if his grades are lower than his scores, use the grade ranking list. If his SATs are lower, use the SAT ranking list.</p>
<p>Now, look at say 10-15 students with better grades, and 10-15 with lower grades than his. See where they were accepted. Look for patterns of multiple students being accepted. That will give you some idea of schools willing to accept boys from your school with grades (or scores) in his range. Make logical adjustements from there if he has other factors which cause him to be outstanding in extracurriculars, or maybe the other type of adjustment in your sights if he is more couch-potatoish. </p>
<p>Dont' rely solely on your counselor or anyone else to let you know what matches or reaches are. The data is usually there if you are willing to do a few hours of work assembling it. We didn't have the Naviance sysem when my older son went through this, but I think it can be used as a check on whether your thinking is correct or not after you go through this excercise. </p>
<p>I really think this is a much better way of doing it than simply comparing his scores to the percentile ranges at various schools. When you do it that way, you really don't know what proportion of people with those scores were rejected, since you don't know the application pool pattern.</p>
<p>I am with you all here in worrying about the heartbreak - but is it mine for him or his I'm more worried about?? ARGH! Because he is interested in a music specialty (jazz) and there are very few schools with great jazz programs and even fewer great liberal arts schools with great jazz programs, well, basically my son has one safety and six reaches and nothing in-between. There is a very very very real possibility of his only getting in to the safety, and he's just starting to see that. "What if I don't get in anywhere?" - Saturday night.... He is GREAT at his instrument, but usually only 1 or 2 are accepted out of 20-ish applicants who audition at any given school. When this talent/passion comes from his soul, its even harder to imagine the heartbreak of rejection.</p>
<p>So, we are really being vague with friends and community members about where he is applying, at his request, and I don't have any problem telling people that. I have given talks to parents groups (as a college center volunteer) about parents' roles in the application process, and I always advise them of two things: (1) Don't let the college discussion define your relationship for the next, so exciting, bittersweet year and (2) Ask your child how much they want you discussing where they're applying. I really do think you can keep this info on the quiet by simply telling friends/family/ whoever isn't the absolute closest to you that your child wants to keep it private. It's a much easier conversation to have than the one with your child who has been rejected, that the entire surrounding area knows he/she has been rejected. Yes, you have to deal with rejection and I embrace that successes are sweeter when you know what disappointment is. BUT I also don't think that public disappointment is a necessary part of that equation.</p>
<p>From what we've observed, the big heartbreaks this season happened to kids with (1) naive parents with inordinately high expectations, and/or (2) naive teachers/counselors with inordinately high expectations. I think the real train wrecks are in families or high schools where the adults think that just because the kid tests in the 99th percentil, is in the top 10% of his class and is relatively involved in activities he/she is a shoe-in everywhere. I know it seems strange from the perspective of a CC subscriber, but there really truly are folks out there with that mind set.</p>
<p>So I'm not worried for the OP's son. He has an intelligent, wise parent who is appropriately anxious. He'll be fine.</p>
<p>My only real advice is to not get bullied into applying to just six or eight schools. If he wants to get accepted as high as possible in the rankings (and we can argue the merits of that attitude elsewhere), then he should certainly shoot out his application to as many such schools as possible. At a certain level of qualifications, it does turn into something of a lottery. Buy a lot of tickets. The common app is a beautiful thing.</p>