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<p>If it’s a perfect school for him, why would you have to “undo” anything?
You know, there is no law requiring anybody to attend the school with the highest USNWR score that accepts you.</p>
<p>Consolation: Would you mind sharing the name of that ungenerous safety? Did your S apply to the state flagship? It sounds like you didn’t have a financial safety, only an admissions safety.</p>
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<p>I don’t believe that it is as easy as you think. Not for a highly intellectual, gifted kid who has cruised through the most difficult HS course load, taking extra courses, everything at AP level, and so on. </p>
<p>Moreover your assumptions about “values” are insulting.</p>
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<p>Wrong again. Yale, at least, has superb FA. (I’m not familiar with Stanford’s.) We could “afford” Yale because they would have given us almost a full ride. We could not afford ANY school in the University of California system.</p>
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<p>blossom, I like your posts a lot and I even really like the one where the above statement came from, but the quoted statement does not make sense.</p>
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<p>No, the word was HAPPY to attend. Not proud.</p>
<p>HAPPY as in: the school is an intellectual fit.</p>
<p>Pride has nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>CAS75, he’ll be okay once this week passes; your life is not determined by senior year college acceptance! It sounds like he will excel in whatever path he takes,</p>
<p>However, if financial aid is NOT an issue, and he’d like somewhere other than his safety, a lot of good schools will have space after acceptances have been sent out. My friend’s son had the same thing happen but worse (NO acceptances) but he called up some schools where his stats were competitive and two very good schools said they would have room for him if he didn’t need financial aid. It might be easier this year since a lot of private schools might be needing full pay students. Private school guidance counselors usually have a lot of experience with this. Good luck!</p>
<p>Congratulations on the acceptance. Look at the cup as partially full instead of mostly empty. Take the opportunity to do REALLY well at Earlham. If things aren’t as your child likes, if her grades are stellar, she can apply to transfer at some point. OR complete her undergrad work at Earlham and look to grad school for a different school opportunity.</p>
<p>Pollyanna has left the building. No kid is going to be delighted with the prospect of attending his safety. But he should at least choose a safety he’d be willing to attend. IMO, the key in picking a safety (I’m a fan of two safeties) is to look for some of the same basic attributes that make the reach or “dream” schools so appealing – size, academic offerings, physical environment, campus culture, or whatever it is that matters to the student. For some students who are aiming high, the school may be an in-state or out-of-state public, especially one with a good honors program. For others it may be a less selective LAC or tech school where some merit money may be available as well.</p>
<p>Going to a safety can work out very well. But rejection stings, no matter how you slice it. At least initially, I doubt that many students are going to feel happy or proud about not being accepted to any matches or reaches.</p>
<p>My kids picked their safety schools FIRST and they were schools that they would have been very happy to attend if nothing else had worked out. I suggest this strategy. It’s easy to pick reaches…hard to pick safeties.</p>
<p>While it’s true that students will most likely not feel proud to be rejected from their matches or reaches, I disagree that no kid is going to be “delighted” with the prospect of attending his safety.</p>
<p>My kid loves his saftey, we love it and we’ve told him how proud we’d be for him to go there. I wonder if perhaps some of the problems with attending a safety is the parents attitude towards the concept. We don’t look at it as aiming lower, that there could not possibly be a safety worthy of him or a worse-case-senario.</p>
<p>thumper1, Wonderfully said. In fact, I’m going to add “It’s easy to pick reaches…hard to pick safeties” to the wisdom here at CC thread!</p>
<p>If your kid loves his safety, that’s great. A huge plus. I can’t say either of my kids “loved” their safeties, but both chose them carefully and seriously, and I’m certain that they would have had excellent experiences had they attended. We never sent the message that their safeties were beneath them. To the contrary, we emphasized the somewhat mercurial nature of college admissions, and talked up the attributes of their safeties. My daughter wound up at a match school that turned out to be a poor fit (she transferred, and in hindsight her original safety would have been a better fit) and my son got into his reaches.</p>
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<p>No kidding! I have spent the last two years trying to find the right safety for my D. In the process I have found a few good matches, but no safeties. Time is running out. If I haven’t identified one by August I am going to start a thread here asking for suggestions and I might even offer a reward ($100 or more depending on how desperate I am) for a suggestion that my D ends up applying to.</p>
<p>Add my D to the list of kids who loved their safeties. In fact, she loved it so much that she chose to attend it over all her match schools.</p>
<p>vicariousparent, you and me both!</p>
<p>wjb, When one of my kids was deferred ED by her top school, we spent several days visiting about half a dozen schools to which she was applying sight-unseen. On the way back home, she very quietly told me that if she didn’t get into the ED school RD (and she didn’t), she would be happy at any of those schools. When her decisions came in, she actually declined the offer from her academic safety to fly up because she was scared it would make her decision harder. It is possible to find a safety they’ll love-- but I think it’s helpful to have a kid who has a clear idea of what he/ she wants. What happens with a lot of kids (like another of my kids who did attend the safety) is they minimize something that would make the school a bad match.</p>
<p>Well, it sounds like there are some kids who do truly love their safeties. That sure makes everything easier. Not everyone will love their safeties, though. I venture to guess that most won’t. But they should at least like their safeties well enough to attend. And I agree that taking a serious approach and choosing well are critical in identifying “likeable” safeties.</p>
<p>Vicariousparent…the key is…the KID has to pick the safety. DD and DS identified school characteristics that they wanted. Then we looked together for schools that had those characteristics where they would be likely accepted. For DS, this was not easy as he had to audition for acceptance…there really wasn’t a “safety” in the true sense. BUT for DD…as it happened, her top three choices would have been viewed as “safety” schools for her by most people. AND her safety was actually an “ultimate” safetly.</p>
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<p>Sure, but in some cases the parent has to do some initial scouting around and put them under the kid’s nose. Many kids are not enthralled with the prospect of looking for safety schools, and basically won’t do it. If your kid is willing to expend effort doing so, be happy! 
My S picked his safety–after I suggested a number and he rejected them all for admittedly rational reasons. His GC was of no help whatsoever, and never suggested any despite repeated pleas. I think she just assumed that he would get into one of his low-acceptance-percentage “matches.”</p>
<p>thumper1: My kid will PICK each and every college she applies to, and eventually, attends. She is doing her own searching for colleges on Naviance, with the help of her college counselors at school. My role in the search process is to be her ‘research assistant’, digging up interesting information (on CC and elsewhere), sending it off to her by email, for her to research further. She is the one who will give the college a thumbs up or thumbs down.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that what SHE is looking for is a rigorous academic experience, good professors who teach well, smart and intellectually stimulating classmates who love learning, a friendly social environment but not a ‘party’ atmosphere, and strength in her particular areas of interest and extracurriculars. For a variety of reasons she would prefer that it not be too small in size, which makes most small LACs less appealing. These requirements are HER priorities. I have scoured the landscape for a college that meets these priorities and yet would qualify as a ‘safety’- as usually defined on C.C. There are plenty of reaches and matches but no safeties. I am (and she is) open to suggestions.</p>
<p>vicariousparent: What are the top choices, and what are the most attractive aspects of those choices? Your D will also have to compromise on some of those priorities–which THREE, and then which ONE, would she choose when forced to narrow it further?</p>