@chris17mom I don’t that that’s the case but Balooney can verify. I recall him boasting a 35 ACT and high SAT 2s.
Congrats to everyone on their acceptances.
However, I want to address anything. Balooney, I don’t see how you can call the 4-5 schools you got into as “wildly” successful when you said your ACT 35 would guarantee you into the lowest 5 schools on your list. Your predictions did not match reality at all, and you boasted throughout your other thread. This just seems like saving face. Cornell doesn’t validate your approach, it validates your application to Cornell. After bragging and defending yourself throughout your original thread, I really don’t see how your results validate your approach if they didn’t even match your original expectations. With that said, congrats again.
I wouldn’t call shotgunning a “wild” success unless it allows you admittance to a school you otherwise would not have gotten into, or gives you above average results where you have a higher percentage of schools to choose from… So unless you wouldnt have applied to Cornell without shotgunning, I don’t see the approach as a success. I simply see that individual application as a success (but that’s still a great success). However, considering the crazy admissions issues concerning the UCs this year, I do think GOAT was smart to apply to many of them. On the whole, i dont see the benefit to shotgunning, but am happy to see everyone else is happy!
@Baloney1011 You had previously said that USNews top 30 was the cutoff for prestigious for your parents. The highest ranked school you got into was Fordham at 58 (Cornell is a conditional acceptance, doesn’t really count), so how did your family react?
Would you advocate this approach again?
It seems like the goal of your approach was to increase the likelihood of getting into an elite college and it seem like you failed in that regard.
I know you are happy about Cornell, but can you honestly say this was a success? I mean, I went through the thread and you were pretty confident that you would get into some elite colleges, but that didn’t happen. What was it like on Ivy day?
In my opinion, if you would’ve cut your list in half, you could’ve turned at least 2 of those waitlists into acceptances and maybe 3 or 4 of those rejections into acceptances.
Perhaps the 50+ supplements you wrote in a week were not all that great.
For future users, it makes sense to focus in on a few schools rather than spread yourself thin. 4/31 is no bueno.
The way to see if shotgunning “worked” is only if you give your lists of 6,10, 15, 20, 25 school choices from the onset. I just picked those numbers at random, and you can really just work your way up starting with one. If the schools that panned out were add ons after the basic groups, that measures sucess. If OP had just applied to Cornell as his one and only choice, and gotten that Cornell offer, he’d be in pretty much the same situation as he is now. He can find any open enrollment school, and if he does well there, he’d go to Cornell as a sophomore.
I knew a young woman for whom the many school approach worked, because her first list of picks all were WLs and denials other than her two safety/match schools. She then added a whole lot of reaches to her list after getting the accept EA from the two sure things, and out of twenty something schools, only got into the ones she last added to list, and they had selectivity and ratings right up there with her first choice schools to which she did not get accepted. She ended up at Colgate which would not have gotten an application from her had she not applied to mroe than 20 schools. Other than the two early accepts, only choices were #18 and two other schools in the 20 count.
But I also know a young man this year who was accepted to one of his first group of choices, so all those apps and choices were just a waste of money and time.
What is with all the schadenfreude on this thread? ^^^^ seems particularly mean-spirited. The admissions landscape for ORM/maj kids is different. A kid has to formulate their admission strategy based on who they are and their strengths and weaknesses. This was an ORM/maj. kid that was trying a different strategy. Bully for them. Have great success Baloney and Goat.
So being a shotgunner myself, I felt like I had to comment on this thread. Shotgunners are successful in my opinion, but it requires a lot of work. Writing 50 essays in 1 week is unwise. Shotgunners must plan and space out their essay writing.
I applied to 22 schools (not 31, but still a lot). 8 Ivies, CMU, JHU, Duke, Northwestern, Caltech, MIT, Northeastern, Stony Brook, University of Michigan, Berkeley, RPI, Adelphi, Georgia Tech, Stevens Institute of Technology.
I was accepted to:
Duke
Brown
Dartmouth
JHU BME
Adelphi
Georgia Tech
RPI
Stevens Institute of Technology
Northeastern (full tuition)
Stony Brook (full ride)
I was waitlisted at:
Columbia
Penn
Cornell
Yale
Caltech
Northwestern
CMU
University of Michigan
Berkeley
I was rejected at:
MIT
Harvard
Princeton
I would say I was pretty successful.
And, because I was WL so many places, I might have a chance of getting off one of the waitlists, and they are all top tier schools.
Bottom Line: Baloney wanted a prestigious school. He got accepted into one Ivy. That is a win in today’s college admissions game.
What a waste of time and money.
@foobar1 Hmmmmm not really… Conditional transfer doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi as an acceptance. It certainly wasn’t what Baloney wanted.
OP, are you satisfied with your results?
Shotgunning shouldn’t really be about picking X top schools without knowing if you’re truly qualified.
@Skrunch It seems like every time around this year people want to throw URMs under the bus…
how is the landscape different for ORMs? Am I guaranteed to get into the same schools Balooney applied to because I’m a URM. Sorry, but no. Balooney displayed a condescending and elitist attitude on his original thread and is now here saving face. His expectations did not match his reality yet he says his approach was “wildly” successful. It’s honestly just a fake and dishonest way to approach the situation searching for some self-confirmation. Im sure he’s extremely happy about his cornell acceptance as he should be, but that does not validate shotgunning, it validates his work and his application to Cornell specifically.
It seems that with all the shotgunners so far, they should expect a hefty amount of WLs
@cptofthehouse is basically best describing how I’d define a success or failure of shotgunning
IB43823, can you separate your apps into groups of 7, say 8 in the first group? If you’d just applied to 8 schools, which ones would they have been? Then what would you add, with the next group of 7? Then the last group of 7?That gives a good idea of how effective the strategy was.
Yup. Considering how the perceived URM leg up is due to widespread disadvantages and being significantly underrepresented in college student bodies that stem partially from racism still existing today, it’s baffling how those that bemoan their URM advantage don’t see the racial undertones in their statements (“they didn’t *deserve * to be admitted over me!”)
Which might make one wonder how much an effect this attitude had on his admissions results…
@TheAtlantic Not sure why or how I wasn’t humble enough to meet your rigorous standards, but no, I’m not “saving face.” As some other people have explained to you, had I not applied to 30 schools, there’s a good chance I might never have sent an application in to Cornell. Then I would have 0 good schools to go to.
@IAmTheGOAT has UCLA and I have Cornell, and therefore I consider both our approaches successes.
@irlandaise “Which might make one wonder how much an effect this attitude had on his admissions results…”
I’ve heard this statement over and over. It’s nonsensical. Colleges don’t have an all-seeing eye at their disposal that determines a person’s attitude. And I certainly wasn’t arrogant in my essays, if that’s what you’re implying.
Wasn’t implying anything beyond exactly what I said, if that wasn’t already clear.
I was one of the people most critical of Baloney early on.
FWIW here are my observations: 1. Plain and simple, he got into Cornell. He will graduate with an Ivy diploma. That was his goal, and he achieved it. 2. He had a significant obstacle to overcome–his crappy grades after returning from England. If he had applied to half a dozen Ivies, not Cornell, he would not have achieved his goal. IMO shotgunning worked for him. (I still don’t like this approach for 99.99% of applicants.) 3. I doubt that I am the only person who has noticed that Baloney’s tone has softened during the process. Whether it is maturity, or attaining some humility in the face of a mountain of rejections and WLs, it is there. 4. In the face of enormous criticism from posters he came back and provided his results, even if they weren’t quite as stellar as he had hoped. I wish Baloney great success in his college career.
Goat, congratulations on UCLA and your other admissions to outstanding schools. It’s a great accomplishment and I wish you all the best, as well!
We are probably shotgunners too, although my D did not apply to any Ivies. She had several free applications and we had a fee waiver for the others so it cost us nothing, well–we did have to pay to send test scores (ACT only) to many of the schools (8 schools were covered under what’s included when you take the test) and we did have to pay to send the CSS Profile to most (not all) of the privates.
Why did we do it? Because my D was fishing for merit aid. I personally feel like her results were EXTREMELY successful. Of 24 schools, she was rejected by just one (Tufts). Tufts was the school she spent the most time and effort on, ironically. She was waitlisted by 5 upper tier New England LACs, 4 of which she did not have time to visit or interview with (D got pneumonia which made us cancel our visit weekends). But she got accepted by 18 schools! These 18 were a mix of safety, match, and reach, and she got scholarships at the majority of them!!! And they vary in cost after scholarships, grants, loans, work-study, from absolutely free (full scholarship), to $41K per year. This is a huge difference and no telling how much they would really cost given our unusual financial situation.
She hasn’t decided where to go yet, but, it’s probably Wellesley, for less than half the cost of our state flagship. To us this is WIN WIN and we feel like we won the lottery, not only because it’s a great school, but because it won’t break us financially. Here’s the kicker: Wellesley was actually the LAST school she applied to. It was a last minute application on a day she wrote 6 other supplemental essays. So my recommendation is to go for it as well as you can. If you want to go to the type of school where showing interest is important, DO IT but if you can’t, apply anyway. You never know.
My second child will not be doing this because he is not the same type of kid. He’ll probably apply to 6 schools max,with no more than 2 essays a MONTH, and he will be happy with any of his choices or even community college. Whereas my daughter can pump out 6 decent essays in a day (she wrote a 15 page paper in one night this week!), he just doesn’t have it in him to produce like that. Every kid is different. Why judge each other so harshly? WHY?
There are as many ways to do this as there are applicants. To say someone else is wrong for applying to a bunch of colleges is a waste of your energy. Apply to as many as you want. Or not.
@Baloney1011 “had I not applied to 30 schools, there’s a good chance I might never have sent an application in to Cornell.”—> If this is true, then you should not be going to Cornell. You will feel the effects of a prestigious degree after you graduate, but it does not seem like you would be actually happy there for 3+ years of your life.
@Baloney1011 You came off as a total braggart and talked about how you were a sure thing for so many of your schools, though your results dont match your predictions. And now you want to hold up your Cornell Conditional Acceptance as proof your plan worked, when you didn’t even meet your own expectations.
I literally said myself that the program is only a success if you weren’t going to apply to Cornell unless you had shotgunned. Nobody explained it to me…If you could only apply to about 10 schools, would Cornell (or any of the schools you got into) have made that list?
And you might not have gotten into more schopls if you had applied to less places. If you filled out a FAFSA (im assuming you did) schools can see where else you applied. That likely could have been a factor for your high volume of WLs. So even if your answer to the above is a sincere “no”, that does not mean your approach did not work against you.
The fact that you heard it over and over again is kinda the problem by the way…