<p>D is applying to six schools for which an audition is required; therefore it is virtually impossible to treat any of them as even a safety (she is academically well-qualified for all of them). So, behind that she is applying to ten other schools: three reaches, three likelies, and four safeties. Part of the reason she is applying to so many likelies/safeties is that she did not have time to visit/evaluate all of them.</p>
<p>S1 applied to 4 and S2 applied to 5. They both had about 15 they were seriously considering, but we had them cut the lists to a reasonable amount. We calculated our FAFSA EFC and ran several of the institutional calculators and read every sentence published by the colleges regarding aid and merit and knew pretty much what our costs were going to be and how things would play out both with acceptances and with finaid. The college S2 had that was known for great aid came through, but it was not his first choice and I had concerns that the aid would not play out that way for all four years (older brother graduating, our financial situation improving, etc.).</p>
<p>You really don’t need to apply to a boatload of colleges…fish where the fish are.</p>
<p>She has already done the one of Duke’s summer-long e-Studies courses (2 years ago) and tried to apply for their Institute of Human Genetics last year, but was too late getting in her application and it had filled up, so she is applying early for it this year. Thankfully, they are having 2 sessions of that class this year, so her chances of getting in is doubled. My younger daughter did a summer session/camp at Clemson and the differences were like night and day. Duke was rigorous where Clemson was more like a “camp.” </p>
<p>My daughter who is a junior has really been looking at colleges since she started getting info in the mail from them (back in 7th grade) and has really done her homework as far as which school offers the curriculum that would afford her the best education to ready her for her chosen field. She plans to get her doctorate, so she has a lot of school in her future. She has based her choices on curriculum, reputation (somewhat), size and location (not too far from home). She has some very different schools on her list - 5 total. Duke and Furman are her top two choices and we have seen both of those already…she loved both campuses, but something about Duke made it stand out for her. Her other options are UNC Chapel Hill (visited), Lander (visiting later this month - on the list because of its proximity to Greenwood Genetics Center) and Presbyterian (have not visited yet). These are all pretty close to us (Duke being the farthest away). She wants to be able to come home on weekends or holidays without it being a major trip. She really wanted to add Johns Hopkins to the list, but the location has kept her from doing it. I can’t remember the numbers off the top of my head, but it seems like there was a giant price difference between Duke and Lander. Honestly I had never heard of Lander until they sent her something in the mail, so who knows if they are a good school or not. There are just so many schools and its hard to narrow it down when you don’t know anything about them first-hand. I assume Duke and JHU would be a high reach, Lander low and the others matches and safety? </p>
<p>Thanks for your help with this.</p>
<p>Onetoughmom-what type of audition is required???</p>
<p>For young people who have nice grades and scores but also higher income parents, sometimes more applications make sense. We also searched for schools with merit aid, but were fairly limited because of my daughter’s wide-ranging interests (I think at application time it was physics, German, Japanese, and Russian). However, she did apply to eight schools and it was not a predictable group. </p>
<p>I asked my daughter to apply to one school becasue of its merit aid and that is where she is attending with a full tuition scholarship (Let’s Go, Pitt). What would have been her top two choices would have been high $$ schools where we would have been full-pay.</p>
<p>As far as distance, we live close to a Southwest hub and decided that a short flight would be a reasonable option. DD does not come home often, but she could come home much more often if she wanted to. Good luck with the search.</p>
<p>My son applied to 11 schools, including three Ivies, Washington U., Duke and MIT. Since he was National Merit, we asked that he go through all the different schools that had good NM packages and select one as a financial safety. In the end, he chose that NM school, because it has a wonderful honors college (he is in three different honors programs), gave him 65 credits for his APs and a chance to do research with the professor of his choice. </p>
<p>If money is a factor, do encourage your daughter to look for schools with good merit aid. My son could have gone to several outstanding, top-flight schools, but he hates debt. (It’s the economics major in him). He still went to an excellent school, but he will graduate debt-free. That’s the message that he conveys to many HS students, including his kid brother.</p>
<p>Gluckie, if your DD is competitive for Duke then she may want to rethink Lander. Their 75%ile is just north of 500 in each area (520CR, 550M, 510W). I am by no means a college snob but that is a huge difference in levels. They are relatively affordable ($28K OOS COA). [College</a> Navigator - Lander University](<a href=“College Navigator - Lander University”>College Navigator - Lander University)</p>
<p>And for merit aid you may want to look at this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html</a></p>
<p>The strategy for S is totally different than for D three years ago. She applied to NYU ED and a few EA schools…got into NYU…game over. Son is so waffley on what he wants. At first he wanted a large state (just not our state) school with the full school spirit/football thing. Nothing in the South or West Coast. Since his list included schools in 10 states, we decided to toss a big net as well because although some $700 in app fees in hefty…shelling out roundtrip air, hotel and expenses for 2 to visit 10 states prior to getting accepted would have REALLY been a fortune. Now he’s in 10 schools (3 more to hear from) He can prioritize…then visit. He’ll also take the visits and tours WAY more seriously!</p>
<p>I hate to admit it, but we applied to 19 schools. A year ago, I would have said S2 would apply to maybe 8 LACs that represented an appropriate selectivity spectrum of reach/match/safety. We made much the same deal with him as we did with S1 in 2008: get good scores, and we will send you to the best LAC that gives enough merit aid that we can afford it. But S2 kept hammering the standardized tests, and now his reach/match schools are largely full need/no merit schools. Unfortunately, we are in the financial aid dead zone–make too much $$ to get meaningful need aid, but no way can we afford $55k/yr. It is a perverse outcome: his good performance on tests/grades may have the good schools for him all the more unaffordable to us; i.e., he scored us out of the need-based schools.</p>
<p>So he applied to half the Ivies, two other major national universities, a spectrum of LACs, U of Alabama to use their NMF scholarship as the ultimate safety, and an obscure alternative school. I view it as taking whacks at the financial aid pi</p>
<p>I applied to 10, and I’m about to make that 11. If possible, apply to fewer than that.</p>
<p>D has applied to 8, in retrospect I think 4 would have been sufficient! Oh well, most of them waived the application fee as we visited! The only ones that didn’t were the SUNY schools.</p>
<p>Oldest S applied to 5 colleges, accepted to 4. He is currently a college sophomore and very happy with his choice. D applied to 4 colleges this year, 3 EA and 1 ED. She was accepted to all 4 and will be attending her ED school. Her twin brother has applied to 6 colleges. He has been accepted to one EA, and deferred from one (EA) and we are waiting to hear from the others. The trick for us was to figure out early on what each of our children were looking for in a college and then come up with a realistic list of colleges.</p>
<p>D1 applied EA to her fave school, got in before the deadlines for other apps, and ended the quest right there. D2 cast a much wider net in the research/consideration phase, at one point having a dozen or so LACs and small universities in contention. That list got winnowed down to 6. Two would be considered safeties (financial and academic) and the others targets, with one or two hard to call. She’s already in to one of the six, so the pressure’s off. </p>
<p>It’s so much easier if they’re not shooting for a reach dream school.</p>
<p>Many of her friends are applying to a lot more because of the UC situation-- that can add 3 to 8 to a California kid’s list!</p>
<p>It’s pretty easy to come up with 15 colleges…much harder to whittle down the list to the ones to actually apply. For my guys a few came off because they were going to be too pricey, some came off because they just realized there were others similar they liked better, some came off because of location, a couple came off because they just knew the odds of acceptance were way too low. My oldest was funny…he made a list and pinned it up in his bedroom. All summer between junior and senior year he would occasionally put a redline through a school. Sometimes I was sad because I’d spot a redline through one I liked, other times I was glad.</p>
<p>10 applications, including the UC app for 5 different UC colleges. The list is dominated by reaches, but there are 3 safeties and 4 matches. Like jshain’s S, my D is top 4% of her school and is automatically accepted into several of the UCs. D wants nothing to do with LACs and all schools applied to are compared with UC San Diego, which because of stats, she knows she is in. So, only reaches are interesting compared with UCSD.</p>
<p>I think that parents from the beginning should make it clear if there are any absolutes or very important considerations that need to be addressed.</p>
<p>Those can be anything from budget to location, majors, etc. It is unfair to give a child free reign, only to pull it back in April because a parent has finally figured out a budget or what is important to them.</p>
<p>So from the beginning, we told D that we wanted her to look at schools that would offer merit aid because we were not going to get any financial assistance. We were willing to pay above the cost of our in-state tuition but were hoping to bring a private school’s cost down to the range of out-of-state tuition.</p>
<p>We also told D that we wanted her no more than 5 hours away by car, which in our case took her up to Boston, down to DC and over to PA and OH.</p>
<p>We advised her to consider the % of Jewish population, since we believed that after growing up in a suburb that was 40% Jewish, a drop to lets say 4% Jewish might make her feel like the lone Jew on campus at times.</p>
<p>The good thing about these perameters were that they immediately narrowed her list down and after a few college tours she sent in 7 applications.</p>
<p>At our school, the counselors try to keep kids to ten or fewer, and we see generally very good results. One thing that always puzzles me are the kids who apply to all the Ivies - they are really not all the same at all.</p>
<p>It is an interesting question whether a counselor can actually impose a limit on apps. If so, by what authority? If I wanted to sent out 15 apps and the counselor capped it at 8, I would demand to see the regulations authorizing the counselor to impose a cap. With the common app these days, all the counselor has to do is enter the SSR, including the recs, into the database and then everything is on autopilot from then on out. I would raise hold h*** if any counselor insisted on limits. Again, once the counselor has complete the SSR and the teachers have done the recs, 90% of the college app process is done and you can (at least with the Common App) leverage that into at least 20 applications.</p>
<p>My son applied to six schools. He’s an auto admit at our flagships, so I guess they qualify as safeties. He is just waiting to hear about honors programs at those schools. He also applied to my husband’s alma mater which is a solid match as well as three common app schools that we consider to be reaches. None are Ivies…he selected all of his schools strictly on the strength of their programs in his chosen area of study. He’s competitive for the reach schools, but we’ve been to this rodeo before and know really great applicants are often declined. So we have no expectations and we’ve counseled him to be hopeful, but realistic. Also, it helps that our state flagship has an exceptional program in his area of study. </p>
<p>As far as parental involvement goes, my husband and I asked him very pointed, detailed questions about his goals. He’s a smart kid…answering those questions guided his decision process. Graduating with very little debt is one of those goals. He is also certain he wants to enter a graduate program in biomedical engineering. So he does see the wisdom of doing undergrad work at our flagship and spending the big bucks on grad school.</p>
<p>But we’ll see how it goes.</p>
<p>My oldest applied to 8. He was a top student and he was applying to places like Harvard and MIT that no one can count on getting accepted at. He basically had 6 reaches and two safeties. He got into two reaches (Harvard and Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science) and his two safeties.</p>
<p>My youngest, not quite as strong a student, but still aiming pretty high had planned to apply to nine schools, but dropped two of them when he got into one of his reaches Early Action. He also got into four schools. Two reaches, one matchy reach and one safety. </p>
<p>My bias is to ensure that the student has two choices they like in the spring, so I am a fan of finding two safeties you like. The best safety is a school you get into early - either via EA, rolling admissions, or the some sort of priority application process. As long as you have two schools you like (and can afford) I don’t think it matters how many schools you do or don’t apply to, though I think that particularly for reaches, your odds are much better if you take the time to put together an application that really is targeted at that school.</p>