Lack of potential rigor or even advanced class offerings may be more of a problem at a LAC (though, again, faculty quality runs very deep in the US; you won’t run out of profs who can teach you pretty advanced stuff unless you’re pretty far down the totem pole). You can find many research U’s (that aren’t all that difficult to enter) that are powerhouses in their field. And nobody says an undergrad has to be limited to taking undergrad classes.
Rigor does matter, but rigor can be found by a driven student (especially with MIT putting all their class material online, one can easily see if they and their class material meet a top standard or not and challenge themselves accordingly).
This is the BEST discussion I have ever read on CC. The whole idea of Reach/Likely/Safety is in a way preposterous. My DD (who attends an east coast boarding school) has been so caught up in rankings and prestige that she has neglected the idea of FIT (which, as most of us parents know) is more important than anything else. I too had issues with our GC and feel like I ended up doing the bulk of the background work on my own. Naviance is a good starting point, but IMHO, that’s all it is worth. If I had not done the recon myself, I think that my DD would have been in the same boat as the OP. Thank you to ALL the parents who chimed in on this thread…FANTASTIC insights!
It did not sound to me like OP’s D applied to those schools for prestige. With good intentions, they used a tool, Naviance, to help them identify which of the 3000+ schools in the country might be match or safety schools based on their D’s stats. This was a very reasonable thing to do. But (truly no judgement here, just a cautionary tale for CCers who will be in this boat in the near future) I think it is a mistake to rely on Naviance for this purpose. It’s a really good tool to help you get started and to gather some information, but it can’t tell the whole story. As a local, I can tell you that BU is absolutely not a safety for anyone, even the highest stats kid. With over 60K applications for fewer than 4K freshman spots, a HUGE number of very highly qualified applicants will not be offered admission simply because they cannot take everyone they would like to take. Who gets in and who doesn’t often has to do with demonstrated interest and yield protection, but also so many other factors not measured by Naviance.
As pointed out before, Naviance includes data that go back two years, and may not always reflect recent trends. Also, anyone with a statistics background will tell you that just looking at the data from one particular high school and concluding that no one with those stats from this high school has ever been rejected by a particular college, so this is a safety, is only significant if you are talking about hundreds or maybe even thousands of data points. Sometimes there just aren’t enough data points to draw conclusions. You can see trends, but trends can turn around pretty easily–especially since college admissions have gotten ridiculously selective. I agree that the GC really dropped the ball here, and better advice from her could have saved you all a lot of anguish. Our D18 is first in her class, 35 ACT, very high SATs/ECs, and her safety school was a great, nearby OOS flagship with an over 80% admit rate that doesn’t practice yield protection. Although she did get in ED to her first choice school (not an IVY), she was very interested in BU but was not at all certain that she would get in, even with a non-competitive major.
@3littlebirds I am so sorry you had to go through many weeks of torture, worrying that D was not going to get in anywhere, and so very happy that she now has at least two excellent schools to choose from, and may even have more by the end of next week. Congrats to your D, and best wishes to her wherever she ends up.
@3littlebirds - I was about to tell you to have a few adult beverages. It brought back the fear and anxiety I had. It seems like once you live through it once, you do better the next time. I feel like most of us here would be better gc’s than most of them out there today.
I didn’t realize until after the fact that my son really didn’t have any true safeties. He had some initial surprising decisions - accepted to one we thought was a long shot, deferred by what we thought was a slam dunk.
For my daughter - she could not really tell you if she wanted big, small, medium, north, south, etc. I had her find and visit a few safeties and then we put on another one just in case. She ended up with her final schools as different as could be. She was denied admission at one school out of 9, wait listed at another. So we had her do 3 slam dunks, 2 reaches and 4 in the middle. She was admitted to her safety in the first go round in the fall and that really was it for her - she loved that school and that’s where she’s graduating from this year.
Excited to hear how it all plays out, but at least you can take a breath and know she’s going to college!
For colleges that admit by division or major, can the high school set up the Naviance as if each division or major were a separate college? Seems like that would reduce the deception to applicants who are interested in a more selective division or major at the college.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to reach for the stars. Some offer the best need based aid and fabulous opportunities. But there is a lot of variance in the top schools, so hopefully the list is created thoughtfully. If someone wants to skip match schools and apply to only some reach schools and 2 auto admits, so be it. Many of us old timers remember Andison. He was a stellar student who got in nowhere and took a gap year. Ultimately went to MIT. No one wants to get in nowhere or have no financial safeties.
Some schools don’t show the Naviance data if there are too few data points. So dividing the colleges by major or school runs that risk. So anyone using the naviance data- caveat emptor.
I would hazard a guess that every single student going to college has a safety somewhere in their region or somewhere in the country - whether it be a financial safety, a strong major safety or a fit safety. The “safety” if you live in a high cost state like Michigan, may not even be the state’s flagship. Only 1 of my 3 had their “safety” in the state of Michigan since UofM is not a safety for anyone for a long long time. The other two had safeties (fit, finances and major) in other states. Way too often I hear “flagship” tossed out as if it’s an absolute safety…and it might not be. I can understand why the OP did not use the Illinois schools as “safeties” but certainly they could have found one - perhaps one with an rolling or early admission that would have eased their anxiety. It turned out fine for them with two acceptances so far, but it could have been not so fine. Classic Rocker Dad I love the quote and will definitely use that one somewhere someday.
It is entirely possible for some students to have difficulty finding any affordable safeties. For example, consider a college-ready but not top-end student from a poor family in rural Pennsylvania, too far to commute from home to any college or university.
The trouble with a kid like the OP’s is that she IS a match for the elite schools, as in her stats match those of most admitted students. You don’t need to be a prestige seeker to look at these stats and think, “maybe she should apply to HYPS.”
But the reality is more complicated. High stats kids get shut out from elite schools all the time, because of their giant applicant pools. It really is hard to stand out, even if you’re more than capable of doing the work once you get there, and are as qualified for admission as the other kids who apply. Thus, there really are no match schools for top students, only long shots and schools where they may be accepted if they make a good case in their essays and demonstrate their interest in some other way.
Several years ago, my D, who was a top student (sal, NMF, high SATs), was certainly a statistical match for Stanford (her only reach), but she didn’t get in. She was accepted to a slew of slightly lower tier schools and ended up at Wellesley, where her stats were probably in the top 10% of admitted students. Was she overqualified for Wellesley? No, and she could have been denied (and many with her stats are). If she hadn’t got into those other schools, you could easily say that she made a mistake in applying to them. There really is a luck component to this whole thing.
We make it worse on CC by castigating the kids who apply to a lot of elite schools and aren’t accepted to any, while congratulating the kids (who have the SAME stats) that do happen to get into an elite school. Having a true safety helps, but as the OP’s case demonstrates, there may be no such thing for the top student who may be rejected for yield protection reasons.
Actually, a top-end student should have an easier time finding safeties. Stats alone may earn an automatic full tuition or full ride scholarship at some less selective schools that will not waitlist such an applicant for yield protection.
But most top-end students do not want to go to schools like University of Alabama Huntville, Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical University, or Tuskegee University.
Using Naviance to predict future results -
Yes, be cautious with this… with the booming demographics and what seems to be kids applying to more schools every year, a school that seemed a sure thing based on the last 3 years’ results might no longer be this year. This happened to my oldest 3 years ago with UC Davis… based on Naviance from her hs she was a sure thing, but she got wait-listed. (It ended up fine - she had another several safeties and matches and got into most of those).
@Massmomm and @momofthreeboys, IMO, UIUC would have been a fine safety for an in-state applicant with those stats who can afford the in-state rate aiming to major in bio/chem. Around a 98% chance of acceptance, I would say, and UIUC is renown in a plethora of STEM areas.
And yes, IL has political/budgetary craziness, but note that even when the state didn’t have a budget for 2 years, UIUC did not abandon their tuition policy of fixing tuition for all 4 years at the rate you pay the year you enter. Nor did I hear of deep faculty/staff cuts there. IMO, UIUC is strong enough financially and has a strong enough brand-name to weather politically-induced crises.
Also, UIUC’s 75-25 percentile ACT range (as of a few years ago) was 31-26, so it’s not like the OP’s D would not have been able to find academic peers there.
In my own experience, parents and students reduce the chance of being not accepted anywhere by applying to those schools which send them the most school material throughout the application process. Few years ago, we started getting colleges and universities sending us school vouchers and large packages (40-50 pages about its school programs) right after D turned sophomore in HS. There were few of them that sent us material almost monthly. Some were reaches, some were matches, and some of them we had never heard of until then. I think these schools were thinking our D was a match to theirs too (so it wasn’t a one way street if she applied to theirs), so their admission offices had being targeting her to apply for a extended period. We ended up having her to come up a list of just 8 schools to apply (6 of them had sent multiple materials to her, with only the state flag U and one top reach being sending single or very few materials). D ended up applied ED to a school that sent her the most material (20+). It worked out for us.
“by applying to those schools which send them the most school material throughout the application process.”
Every year many students/ parents think that a college obviously “wants them” based entirely on the # of mailings received.
Those materials are nothing more than a marketing tactic, and are based entirely on a child’s PSAT and SAT scores. They are sent by Enrollment Management organizations .They are NOT sent by the college admissions offices. The Enrollment Management organizations are paid by colleges to increase the # of applicants and therefore their " exclusivity."
They are no different from mailers from car dealers or real estate companies or whatever that you may receive based on your zip code.
The marketing material students receive have NOTHING to do with Admissions decisions.
The fact that your DD applied ED was the main reason she was accepted.
Maximum 10 applications per child and no more than 3 applications from the same athletic league and this problem largely goes away. Makes kids really focus on what schools they want, as importantly what they can afford, and the colleges know they are receiving an application from a kid genuinely interested in attending.
^ Thats why at least one of their choices will have to be an in state public which they can afford. The chances of getting aid at their remaining picks are greatly increased as the universities/colleges receive far fewer applications.