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<p>I understand that rationale and it is fine – but why would any student who would to attend Stanford or Yale want to cut off her options with an ED application to Barnard? If she has a realistic chance of admission at Stanford or Yale, then she would have a very strong likelihood of admission to Barnard applying RD (that is, for Stanford/Yale caliber students, Barnard is a “match” not a “reach”) – and Stanford would definitely offer much better financial aid. (And if she doesn’t have a realistic chance of admission to those schools… then why waste the application fee? I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be any reaches – I’m just saying that there is an intelligent way to look at reach schools and she should be focusing on those where she has a realistic chance of acceptance, even if there is no guarantee).</p>
<p>Anyway – I wish your daughter the best of luck with her college search. I understand that as it is early in her junior year, you don’t yet have all the information you would need to know what colleges may be realistic in a year – obviously that assessment will have to be made when the test scores and her junior year grades are all known.</p>