<p>My DS has fallen hard for School A which is top top tier though not HYPS. He gets a dreamy, starry look in his eyes whenever he talks about it. It was love at first sight. While his stats are in line with average applicant, admission is by no means assured at this school. He is aware of this and the low acceptance rate.</p>
<p>So how can I get him to look away from this dazzling beauty and consider that life with one of the 'others' might actually be OK, and maybe even great, in case of a statistically likely rejection? When I suggest other schools for him to look at, he wanders around their website, listless and bored appearing, and eventually shrug his shoulders. Whatever, he says. If I can't be there, I don't really care where I end up. He really is like a lovesick puppy.</p>
<p>As long as he applies to a few others he’ll be fine-- the antidote will come quick if he gets rejected, he’ll still want to go to college. I’d see if I could get him to humor you and tour a few others, if you’re up to doing it, and even if his heart isn’t in it then if it needs to be later he’ll remember what he saw.</p>
<p>I was kind of in the same boat, and then once it came near time for a decision to come in the mail I was in a dead panic about what I’d do if I got rejected-- at which point the other schools I applied to didn’t seem so bad. Luckily I DID get in so it worked out, but any of the other schools would have done in a pinch, I had a reason to appreciate them all even if it paled in comparison to my dream school.</p>
<p>Back in the last century, I fell hard for a dream school. But, I never once thought that I was a shoo-in for admissions, and I had no idea whether that place would come up with enough financial aid for me. I applied to two other perfectly fine institutions as well. In April I had three acceptances, and three financial aid packages that made my parents’ out-of-pocket expense equal, and my loan burdens reasonable in their eyes. I was able to attend the dream school. If the admission or the money hadn’t been there, I’d have ended up at one of the other places and I wouldn’t have looked back.</p>
<p>I think that you need to have a money talk with your dreamer. Does financial aid matter for your family? How much debt do you consider to be acceptable? How close to affordable is school A likely to be? Then, you need to ask him what he will do if he doesn’t go to college in the fall of 2010. Is it really “dream school or no school” for him? What would his “no school just yet” plan look like? If he finds out that he doesn’t have a functional “no school just yet” plan, then maybe you can encourage him to locate a safety-type school or two. From there, you could move up to a couple of matches if he’d like. It is perfectly OK if his college list contains only the dream school and one home-state-public-U that guarantees admission based on his stats.</p>
<p>TxK, we will go on a tour, and he has seen several already. He’s perfectly happy to humor me, but it’s exactly that: he’s humoring me and going through the paces.</p>
<p>happymom: finances are not an issue with any of the schools, although I do think about how much easier it would be if he did go in-state. But we have a pretty lousy in state school and I would not want him to attend there except as a last resort. It’s not ‘dream school or no school.’ He wants to/will go to a school next fall, but it’s more a matter of feeling like I’m lining up schools 2 - 6 with minimal interest/input from him, and I’m the only one that really cares what they are. </p>
<p>I know he will likely be happy/fine where ever he ends up, its just that right now, it’s impossible to get him to look past ‘the One.’</p>
<p>If he can apply ED to his dream school, it will enhance his chances of admission. It will also let him know ahead of time if his dream is not likely to come true.</p>
<p>OP, if he’s willing to “humor” you by touring and eventually applying to the other schools, I’m not sure what more you can ask for at this point. As others have said, if he’s rejected from School A, those others will start to look pretty attractive in his eyes.</p>
<p>This is a tricky one - you don’t want to convey skepticism that he will be accepted at his dream school, yet he needs to be invested in a few other schools as well. My son planned on attending Duke for many years - he had very strong stats and pretty much everyone, guidance counselor included, told him he had a great shot at it. He applied ED and was deferred. To say he was devastated would be an understatement. He then had about 2 weeks to pull himself together and complete a few more apps. One of the most miserable 2-week periods of my entire life. Luckily, I had insisted on visiting a few other schools and had, at least in my mind, 2nd and 3rd choices ready to go. He ultimately was accepted by all of the other schools he applied to and is now very happy at Wake Forest. So, in the end it worked out - but our entire family was in misery from about December 15th - March 31st. When it comes to my younger son - I plan a very different approach - with no one school dominating the process. I would rather he have 3-4 schools tied for first place. I hope your son is accepted at his dream school and applying ED may help, but you both need to be prepared for any outcome. At the very least, submit a few other applications in the fall, so you don’t have the crazy December rush that we did.</p>
<p>^ Yes, that is the pool of other schools that we are looking at. Physics is where the future lies. The difficulty is not in coming up with list of excellent schools with excellent physics programs, or even good schools with good physics programs, but rather in getting him to be interested enough to investigate beyond a cursory look. </p>
<p>For example, we’ll be doing a week long tour of east coast, his reaction is ‘you figure out where we’ll go see.’ He is vetoing some schools so I guess that’s some engagement. I want to add, he’s not negative about the process, just that there is very little positive energy to go around below #1. Can’t imagine the interviews will go all that well: ‘your school seems nice enough, I guess I could come here.’</p>
<p>add: posted above late (daughter missed school bus and needed a ride) so bit out of sequence. Will apply EA. </p>
<p>Rockvillemom: exactly what I’m afraid of. So will ‘force’ him to get a few other apps together, ready to go Dec 15th, or earlier.</p>
<p>My S was kind of in the same situation a couple of years ago. He wanted nothing more than to go to UChicago and that had been his dream since about 8th grade. Nothing else would do. He applied early thinking we’d get the yes or no. He got deferred to the regular applicant pool. He was so devastated. It was the most upset I have ever seen him.</p>
<p>He fortunately had applied to a couple of others, one being his favorite high school teacher’s alma mater. They had accepted him with a huge scholarship, but he was still hanging on that he’d get accepted at Chicago.</p>
<p>Well, he got wait listed. By that time he had become to think more rationally and was happy to attend his second choice.</p>
<p>inhs, your son sounds a bit like my oldest. He really didn’t want to do the research on which colleges to apply. He knew MIT had good computer science, so that was his first choice, but he was just as happy to let me pick schools. I took him on a college visit tour spring junior year and he pronounced all schools “just fine”, huge (Berkeley), tiny (Caltech), and well groomed (Stanford). So in the end I decided visits were pointless for him at this point int the game, and gave him a list and he applied. In the spring when he had four acceptance in hand. (Wouldn’t you know it, none to the CA schools we had visited already!) He visited all four - the safeties came with nice merit packages, but ultimately it came down to Harvard and Carnegie Mellon. He really gave it a lot of thought, but Harvard could not make the case that it could provide the computer science education or milieu he craved. He’s now at CMU and has no regrets. He was much more engaged spring of junior year, when it all seemed more real to him.</p>
<p>Anyway, what I am saying is, it’s not the end of the world if your kid just applies to a bunch of schools and figures out in the spring once acceptances are in where to go. Alternatively, you can use the Northstarmom approach and figure a kid who is not doing the research on college applications isn’t actually ready to go to college. BTW my son told his Harvard interviewer that he hadn’t applied EA (which you could back then) and they didn’t hold it against him. My son actually only did two interviews - MIT (highly recommended) and Harvard (who called him to set it up.)</p>
<p>Neither my daughter nor her friend SuzyQ (not her real name) were at all interested in Ohio State. Not that they had anything against it - they both just thought, nah, not for me. Too close to home. To many kids from near home there. Columbus sounds boring. </p>
<p>Ohio State is great in both of the girls’ intended majors (and offered in-state tuition) we thought it was worthy of consideration. So, SuzyQ’s mom and I took the two girls on a road trip to Ohio State when school was in session “just to check it out.” Once the girls were sitting in an information session, seeing the campus, learning things they had never known about Ohio State, taking a tour, seeing very happy and animated students, scoping out a dorm room, seeing that the campus is big but the areas where their classes would be held do not include the entire campus??? They both thought they liked Ohio State just fine and could easily enjoy going there. Actually SuzyQ is in a special program there now! </p>
<p>I tell you this story because by going to Ohio State with two moms and two girls, we moms held back and chit chatted a bit with each other and kind of ignored the girls, letting them chit chat with each other and the tour guide - so there were none of the whispered comments-parents-sometimes-can’t-resist-making (“Isn’t that beautiful?” “That sounds like something you would love!”) that do no good at all and can actually bring out resistance or contrary remarks. The college certainly had enough to offer that two high school kids could look at it and say, Hey! this would be a good place to go. I tell this drawn out story to suggest that if you want your son to look a little more carefully at a college, it might be nice to tour it with an open-minded friend who is also slightly considering that college. </p>
<p>Also, let me pass on a tip from one of my mentors in college search and selection (her daughter was older than mine so they went through this all before I did): If there is a college you want to nudge your child into giving serious consideration to, make sure they get to spend a night in a dorm there.</p>
<p>Good luck. It would be great for your son to have a several colleges he loves.</p>
<p>Once my D fell in love with her Dream School there was no convincing her to go anywhere else. She did however apply to many schools, 11 if I recall correctly, as she understood that she could be happy at a variety of schools. Luckily it seems to have been a good fit (classes start tomorrow!) And luckily the financial aid part worked out. May you have equally good luck.</p>
<p>S1 fell in love with a particular school during soph year. Was bound and determined that was it. </p>
<p>What was really effective for S was to identify what it was he liked about that school, then to start identifying other places that had the same kind of vibe, program, philosophy, etc. From there he put together a terrific list of schools that really appealed to him and had what he was looking for. (S had some unusual criteria, which I have posted about in other threads. YMMV.)</p>
<p>We have encouraged S2 to follow the same process – once he finds a school he really likes, to identify WHY, and to find other places with similar characteristics. It opened his eyes to some great places that are off the beaten track but that would be really good fits for him. It also highlighted that some schools everyone raves about aren’t necessarily good places FOR HIM.</p>
<p>They only put places on their lists where they truly thought they’d be happy and challenged. It made a big difference in essays, too, as that enthusiasm really shines through.</p>
<p>OP, your son sounds exactly like me this time last year. I was determined to get into my first choice school, but my parents kept telling me to consider other universities. Of course, I was convinced I would get into my first choice school, and I thought all of this was silly.</p>
<p>The line that snapped me out of this was, “We aren’t going to stop you from attending such-and-such U, we want to be sure that you’ll have somewhere to go if you don’t get in.”</p>
<p>Make sure he knows that you’re pushing just as hard as he is for his first choice, and maybe he won’t be so listless when it comes to finding back ups. Also, it helps if you can find some schools that are philosophically similar to your son’s first choice, or encourage him to find some himself.</p>
<p>We did the same as CD. We’ll find out soon enough whether this strategy worked.</p>
<p>But in the back of my mind, I realize that we both love one school so much more than the others. Maybe it’s just because it has the earliest deadline that it feels like we’re so focused on it, that that’s where all the energy is being spent. But soon, he’ll move on to another app and maybe it won’t feel so lop-sided.</p>
<p>Be aware of the possibilty of “self sabotage” -either through just not putting effort into other applications or deliberately messing up an application, missing the deadline, writing a bad essay, not filling it out completey, that sort of thing.</p>
<p>My D told me about a friend of hers who did just that- left whole parts of the application to one school blank, it was a school her parents insisted she apply to, and she finally “applied” just to appease them.</p>
<p>I think this is where the GC needs to be given a heads up to encourage student to look at more schools. An email saying jsut what you said here, and telling GC not to say you think kid is making a mistake, but for the GC to use his/her own experiences and training to encourage the OPs son to look at other schools and have that conversation about eggs and the basket.</p>
<p>Both DDs had no merit aid schools as their #1 choices. I made sure they knew that finances played in part in where they attended school and that they needed to hedge their bets. Fortunately they are both happy with their #2 choice schools which they now attend (and from which they receive some merit aid).</p>
<p>If the FA offer is not enough, you say thanks but no thanks, and apply RD to other schools. But it can be a huge disappointment to be accepted and not be able to afford it. :(</p>
From the common app instructions: