Feeling frustrated because my daughter’s current list of where she may apply is in my mind too big - 20 colleges/universities.
However, I am challenged when it comes to deciding what should be axed.
Her stats: SAT 1550, SAT Lit 780, Math II, Chem, and Bio pending - expecting 780-800.
IB Diploma will be predicted at 43-45 I believe.
She will either be ranked 1 or 2 in her class.
She will have amazing recs from teachers who know her very well and have said she “makes them a better teacher”.
ECs - varied, show comitment, include long service project. No major awards (we live outside the US).
If match is where your stats fall between the 25%-75% percentiles and a reach is any school that accepts less than 15%, all her “match” colleges are actually all extreme reaches for everyone.
So if all your “matches” are “reaches” and all your “safeties” are protecting their yield by turning down overqualified candidates…how do you limit your list?
How many of the twenty has she visited? Fit and location is often an easy elimination factor for kids. Are you looking for merit tuition discounting or need based aid? Another elimination factor might be majors. The two safeties should be colleges that that the kids are willing to attend and hit all the basic needs: financial, academic major, willingness to attend, admission certainty.
I think it is easy for kids to have a list of 20 but much more difficult to start parsing and eliminating to come up with a reasonable list. If you are picking safeties that aren’t a sure bet then they aren’t safeties.
If you want to limit…limit. Applying to more schools won’t increase her chances of getting accepted to any one…but you know that.
Pick at least ONE rolling admissions school...and apply as soon as their application goes live. This should be a school with good acceptance chances, and affordability...where your kid would attend. That acceptance (hopefully) will come in quickly...and the kid will,have the safety school wrapped up.
I suggest two of these…because it’s nice to have choices.
Are there any early action schools on the list (not SCEA or REA...but just plain old EA? If so, get those applications done by mid October for the favorites of that group. Those acceptances will likely be in by beginning of January.
Have your daughter ask WHY each school is on her list. Some kids apply to all of the Ivy League schools, for example...and there really is no good reason for this...except,that they are Ivy League schools. im not saying your kid is doing this...but look carefully. Dartmouth is very different from Columbia...in just about every way I can dream up, for example.
Have your daughter make a list of the criteria for each school...majors, locations, costs, size, etc. have her study each school she currently has on her list...and make sure they meet her criteria...or most of them. If not...have her explain why that school is on the list at all. Maybe some will come off.
Costs...it's not free to apply to these schools...and send the Profile, and pay for SAT or ACT scores to be sent as well. For some families...there is a limit on how much they are willing to spend. That application expense money could be used for other things...maybe your daughter hasn't thought of that.
She has great stats, but she also needs to understand that for her elite schools…so do almost all of the applicants…and the vast majority do not get accepted. So, she needs realistic options. Every student needs to cast a broader net than just top 20 schools…because they can be a crap shoot…as you know.
She is going to do well in the admissions process. Unless she really wants to do the work required for that many apps, and you want to pay for that many, I would just tell her she needs to narrow down, barring the need for merit aid. Which schools is she most interested in? Those stay. A good rule of thumb is 2 safeties, 4-6 matches, 2-4 reaches, including a couple of super reaches. 12 schools, believe me, is a LOT of work. Supplemental essays take time. If merit aid is a consideration, then of course she needs to prirotize those schools. If she has seven reaches, that’s too many, IMO. It’s easy for kids to add reaches, but reaches ideally should be within the realm of possibility. If her list has ten reaches including HYPSM and the like, she needs to think about what is really appealing about those colleges other than the prestige.
Believe me, as she starts filling in apps, she may start realizing she actually isn’t that interested in some colleges. Let those colleges fall off the list. She will end up investing time and energy that may be better used elsewhere. One regret I have for my D is that she had lost interest in a couple that she was sure she wouldn’t attend, but did the essays and interviews anyway, which was wasted time. If the list is balanced, she is going to get into enough schools to have good choices.
ETA: She needs to take acceptance rate into account. Her stats matching on paper does not guarantee anything when a school is in the region of 25% acceptance rates and below. Schools with acceptance rates in the teens are, IMO, high reaches for all, despite stats.
If finances are not a concern the safety can be any rolling or EA college anywhere that meets her major and fit criteria like location, size, kids etc. where she will be admitted. For the high stat kid that can also garner an academic scholarship which is a bonus. For my #2 environmental science kid that was a good strategy overall and he actually picked a safety based on that unis strength of major which yielded him quickly a good post college job side by side with kids from more selective unis. Don’t think of safeties as throw sways.
I would not get too hung up on worrying about schools rejecting her because she is “overqualified” unless she is clearly not that interested. There are kids of her caliber at pretty much every school.
If you visit any of the 20 and she feels less than excited about it, cut it. But as everyone points out, any school that is highly selective will turn down lots of high stats students, including those who “should have gotten in” based on scores and grades, so definitely have a few solid matches/safeties in there.
Have you run the NPC on all?
With these stats, the way to consider reaches, matches, likelies, safeties is to look at acceptance rate - I’d say up to 20%= reach, 20-30%= match, 30-35%= likely, more than 35%= safety. You want at least two from each of the last three categories and express interest starting now (fill out request info form, correspond with admissions, visit if you can, Skype interview. The likelies and safeties will be especially important in that respect since with her stats they’ll know they’re merely backup.)
I agree that applying EA is going to be very important. Top public universities like Michigan and W&M would be likelies, UMD, tOSU, Penn State, UF would be safeties, as long as there are no budget concerns.
(Could she consider UCSB’ CCS?)
If there are budget concerns, Pitt, UMD, tOSU would all be possible. Look into Benacquisto for Florida. In addition, most women’s colleges would likely offer need based or merit aid, as well as other top LACs.
Since you don’t have an instate flagship, the substitute is to find excellent honors colleges within Universities that are well-known for the subjects she’s interested in.
Top honors colleges include honors versions of dozens (if not hundreds) of general classes, special honors seminars, opportunity to do research/a thesis, honors housing, special resources and advisers, support for national fellowships and research conference travel. USC Columbia, Penn State Schreyer, ASU Barrett are examples of this.
So, out of the 20, (using definitions above) keep 2 safeties, 2 likelies, 2 -3 matches. Have her so these first.
All others are reaches, so the culling will happen based on the supplements. At some point, she’ll get tired of writing supplements.
If you are out of the country and visiting 20 schools is impractical, you can list them here and posters who are familiar with them can help you identify issues that might eliminate some or add more safety options.
One thing both of my kids did was to apply to some non-binding and/or rolling admission schools that they liked. They both got into two match/safety schools they liked by December. This helped limit the applications because in December they only applied to schools that were preferable to the schools they had already been admitted to (it took out a number of safety school applications and some match applications).
@momofthreeboys - Unfortunately we are too far away to do any visits before applying - we do plan a trip after acceptances have come in to make a final call. For places we are unfamiliar with we are relying on the Fiske guide to help us judge “vibe” and “fit.” I think her safeties would be safeties any other year. However, this focus on yield seems to have made it more difficult to predict even safeties.
@twogirls - we have run the calculators and are on top of the finanical implications of the list. She has a few that do offer mert scholarships and she has a few that do not. We are prepared either way.
@thumper1 - thank you - I think the rolling admission idea is great - will have her start looking to see if that is a possibility. I agree - having that in hand would reduce/eliminate the need for many of the other applications. She has one Ivy League school (Yale) chosen because of the strength of programs offered, and also because she has familiarity with the campus from having grandparents nearby. She is debating SCEA there or EA at Chicago and MIT. If any of those are an acceptance…she would be done with the process.
@Lindagaf - yes, that was my question - when “match” schools are “reach” schools for everyone…it gets more complicated to filter the list.
@MYOS1634 - thank you for that breakdown - very helpful. I have been hammering on the "express interest’ issue because we are so far away but I will reiterate your point that it may be MORE important even for the safety schools.
Her priorities:
She wants to "swim with the big fish" - so academic rigour is of utmost importance.
Diversity.
Urban or near urban center. (Not a must have but a strong preference).
She is very open to women's colleges because of the unique opportunitiy they provide so they are on the list even if not very urban.
Strong science/bio program (thinking about medical research as a career option.) (And for those follow - this is a BIG change from the economics programs we thought she would be looking at based on last year's interests).
Not interested in South or Southwest. Would prefer NE all things being equal.
While we would love merit aid (who wouldn't) it is not a requirement.
Thank you ALL for taking the time to reply - will be taking many of your points into consideration as we move forward in the process!
CvAlle- there’s a woman’s college like Wellesley which has shuttle bus service to Cambridge (to take MIT classes) and gets you within spitting distance of Boston, and there’s Smith which has a cute town but really is not near an urban center. That helps you narrow down. There are colleges that are rumored to protect yield (Tufts, Wash U) but the easy workaround is a couple of emails to your regional admissions rep with specific questions about particular programs which show that your D is truly interested in the college. And there are colleges which may not have 100% of the incredible rigor but are so big, deep and wide that she will be able to find her people quickly.
Agree that if you post her list we can help you trim- maybe not to 8 but certainly to 10 which is much more manageable.
My daughter had similar stats, but instead of just looking at top schools, she narrowed down universities as follows:
big merit scholarships (She could get into some top universities and did get into one of the two Ivies she applied to, but her dad – my ex – had the resources to pay and wouldn’t pay for it. The Ivy “scholarships” are based on the income AND assets of both parents regardless of marital status. Paying full price for an Ivy was not in my budget.)
SNOW!!! (I write it that way, because when she filled out a questionnaire in middle school on what she was looking for in a college, that is exactly what she wrote. She grew up in Atlanta and dreamed of living in a snowy place her whole life. By the time she graduated from high school, it was still a priority, so everywhere she applied was in the top half of the country.)
science (She knew she would pursue either computer science or a life science major, and she wanted lots of opportunities to conduct research as well. The lab resources and reputation in the sciences were important to her.)
We also visited some universities, and she discovered that most cities under 300,000 are way too small for her, having grown up in a metro area of 6 million. She wound up at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a metro area of 3.5 million, and she even considers Minneapolis-Saint Paul a small metro area lacking in diversity (her only complaint). Your daughter’s own upbringing will greatly affect how she perceives a place.
Based on your description above on your’s daughter’s current list of 20 universities, it sounds like she has made the selection based solely on their reputation and ranking, and that is why they are all highly competitive reach universities. Here is what to do:
ADD a couple of safeties in terms of admission (admit over 50% of applicants, e.g.) and affordability (either because tuition is low or she is a strong candidate for big merit scholarships).
REMOVE universities that do not meet her personal criteria for a livable place.
If she hasn’t thought through what is a livable place, then she really needs to do this. My daughter considered weather, size of university, types of student clubs and organizations on campus, housing options, nature of surrounding areas directly next to the university as well as the entire metro area, public transportation options, access to major airport for fast and economical flights home, etc.
Stats don’t get you admitted. They can get you or keep you in the ballpark. So those matches may not be matches actually.
You don’t say much about EC’s or the long term service project. Top schools are assembling an interesting class, and it is really all about how an individual applicant will contribute to the whole. The most selective schools value talent and “character.”
I can’t imagine a list of 20, but then again my kids applied to 2-4 schools (one also applied to a couple of conservatories). We visited every single one beforehand. Though we did tours and info sessions, we also hung out on the green, in the dining hall, library, bookstore and anywhere we could get the “vibe.” My son also stayed overnight in a college or two.
I would try to get it down to 8. Distance and cost can be prohibitive for visiting, but if there is any chance of a trip to the Northeast, I would do it. She can whittle down her list that way, and get a real feel for the schools she applies to. She can also interview on site where appropriate.
Don’t worry so much about the yield issue. (Not all schools will assume you would pick an Ivy over them anyway.) You don’t need so many safeties. Make sure every school on the list is a place she would love to attend.
For women’s colleges, is Barnard on the list? Wellesley? Sarah Lawrence? Clark U. (coed) gives merit for service and is an interesting school. (See Colleges that Change Lives website, which you might want to check out anyway.) Of course we could suggest many schools if we knew her interests, and you can also communicate via PM if privacy is a concern.
I agree about applying to a rolling admissions school that will accept her by December. My daughter had one that accepted her in October. As suggested, 2 applications will give her choices. I received advice from the Class of 2015 group- “parent picks.” This means that the parent can choose 1-2 schools to add to the application that the student may not necessarily pick… but that meet all/most of the qualifications that the student wants.
Does your daughter have any “must haves” or “must not have”? For example-
Urban/suburban/rural
Greek life
Size
Organizations on campus, involvement etc
Etc…
@blossom Wellesley and Smith both on the list! She did a summer camp at Wellesley years ago so has a good feel for the campus.
@mommyrocks - I agree there are maybe 2-3 that don’t fit her preferences in terms of urban/close to urban.
@compmom - her ECs include: drama related (performer and stage design throughout HS/ selected to be the student director of the school play/ started a forum theatre group to do street theatre on important issues); diversity related (started a club at her school for discussion of issues of race/nationality/gender); is one of the student participants in a new social work program helping kids from wealthy schools volunteer in a productive manner in the poor government schools in our area- created content for lessons, created social media re the project, created video and materials to train kids to go into the classrom) - plus more typical stuff like MUN. She also has some medical related as she was looking at some accelerated BA/MD programs so she has done an internship with a medical company as well as some interesting shadowing.
@twogirls - really her wishes are in the list I posted above - urban/diverse/science program/New England.