Well, of course.
But for D17 in particular, nothing was exactly a safety by your standards. She had to make big merit and had an odd combination of majors which limited school choice. For this reason, she applied to 18 or 19. In the end, she did get a prestige public full ride, turned down another, and turned down a Vanderbilt tuition scholarship.
S23 is in a different position as a different student.
I decided to edit as this is the EA thread, and I veered off topic too much!
Some colleges do have stated automatic admission criteria (including for each major, if applicable). Applicants who meet the criteria and can afford the college can consider the college a safety. An example is Arizona State University.
IMO the correct way of looking at a Naviance data plot (or CDS data) is to say “my kids’ scores/GPA will not immediately disqualify them” from admission. NOT, “my kids’ scores/GPA mean in some way that they “should” be admitted.”
I think that is a great way to think of it. If you look at SCOIR scattergrams for our HS, kids admitted to top school and kids rejected from top schools had essentially the same grades/scores.
My son has been admitted EA to a few “likely/safety” & “low target” schools, where parents of super high stats kids were deferred (or so they posted). I think at some schools this is a yield protection measure. For example, my kid is at the 75th%ile of these schools’ applicant pool & has gotten in with large merit – but he is clearly not Ivy material – their internal stats/records may indicate that he has a 50% chance of accepting this offer. However, a student with clear Ivy/T25 stats (your valedictorians; perfect SAT/ACT; 4.8 GPAs, etc.) may get deferred because these schools have past records that show that these applicants only say “yes” 5% of the time. Instead, they defer them & see if their app gets withdrawn due to an ED acceptance at a top tier school. In the end, however, I believe most of those high stats kids get in at the majority of the “likely” or “target” schools.
A quick point, and this has been a great thread-
If all more, mid-tier (let’s say for the sake of argument) schools below the top 50 in US News yield protect and the top schools are getting harder and harder to get into, is it possible that a great student somehow gets left high and dry b/c the AOs are overthinking or over analyzing their candidate’s preference? Also, what factor as already mentioned does financial aid and the need for a merit award effect the candidate?
I have seen some blatantly average candidates get into the Vanderbilt and Wake Forest of the world b/c they are full pay.
I do think there is a certain squeeze for kids that are above average, but require financial aid or merit aid and are applying to schools that focus greatly on their yield which is really most schools below your top 30 liberal arts and maybe your top 100 publics.
As a parent there are no schools that are saying you will be admitted, so we apply to more and more schools which causes a sort of runaway reaction which causes the schools we apply to to more and more protect their yield. It is definitely a conundrum!
Yes, I think that is the point of this thread? A high stats student might not be strong enough for top schools, but may be seen as overqualified for mid tier schools where their stats are too far above the average student there.
My son told me that the common view among his classmates (mostly high performing seniors in HS) is that “there is no such thing as a match school, only safeties and reaches,” with safeties generally being large public universities that admit a wide range of students.
Exactly this!
Add in that many of those students will also go for an SCEA long-shot, mostly likely not be accepted (statistically) but in the process miss out on EA designation at the privates which shows “interest.” It is all leading to high stats applying at even more schools just to have a shot at admission/merit at those mid-tiers which becomes a vicious cycle of yield issues.
As OP said, “overall system is broken.”
Disclaimer, my S23 only applied to 6, but with D17, a stronger candidate, we were in this group.
There are schools that are not holistic in admissions and admit by stats (GPA and/or test scores), so one does know whether they will be accepted or not before they apply. Examples: Iowa, Iowa State, Arizona, Kansas, Kansas State, U Mississippi, and there are quite a few more. Beyond these ‘rack and stack’ schools, many others have very high acceptance rates, where admission for many students would be highly likely.
It seems the issue is that some believe their ‘high’ stats student (and I put high in quotes because of the dramatic grade inflation we are seeing at the high school level) must go to a T50 or T100 school. There are 2800 or so four-year colleges in the US, and most of those accept most applicants.
I don’t understand why there is so much hand-wringing about schools like Case, Tulane, and the rest of the schools that defer many EA students. Just have your student build a reasonable, balanced list, and don’t forget the financial piece which for most students is an important constraint.
And to add to MWFAN’s excellent post- with all the moaning that the system is broken- each kid can only attend one college.
Period full stop. Yes you’ll tell me- this is obvious. But the posts about how a kid needs to apply to 12, 18, 30 colleges because “the system is broken” usually leaves out some extenuating circumstances- kid has a rock solid, affordable safety. Kid HATES that safety, so the parents-- out of love- help the kid come up with a list of 7 or 8 additional safeties (which may or may NOT be affordable) so the kid isn’t so miserable all winter.
But remember- kid can still only attend one school. Which means that if out of the 18 applications, only one is both a sure bet admissions wise AND affordable, nickels to dimes, that kid is going to that school. The other 17? Doesn’t matter if he gets in or not, he can’t afford it, he’s not going, at least he gets to tell his classmates “I got in to Highly Desirable College”.
But now the kid has contributed to the arms race/broken system. 17 other applications, increasing the pressure on the predictive models (will he or won’t he- if we accept him, will he accept us?", increasing the number of total applications out there which statistically reduces the admissions rates overall (numerator, meet denominator).
See? And still- this kid can only attend one college.
Now take this and spread it out over tens of thousands of HS students and you see why things like yield protection exists.
I am old enough to remember when most kids did NOT attend their dream college (that concept didn’t exist- that’s how ancient I am). Most kids were so thrilled to be out from the parental thumb (even the kids with permissive late 60’s and early 70’s parents) that if you were lucky enough to dorm-- at your state flagship, at a branch, at your state’s teacher’s college which was too far for your parents to drop by on a Sunday-- that the hair-splitting of “I want some Greek but not too much” or “I want outdoor activity but not rock-climbing or skiing” was not part of the equation.
I still think this post is not considering students going for the big merit awards. Not the auto-awards. For us with D17, it was not about saying “I got into BLANK college.” D17 was homeschooled all the way and most friends went to one of three smallish colleges. She wanted to win a full ride so as not to take loans.
Is your plan that everyone just pick a safety with auto full-rides (which for non-NMF are few)? There would not be enough spots for all those people if everyone did that. Someone has to compete for all the top merit awards at the schools that have them,(Fellows, Eminence, Jefferson, Duke, whatever they are called at each school) and those awards are not decided until March often, sometimes later. So it would be impossible to know if the school is affordable until then. It seems unfair to say only students whose families could afford full pay should apply for those awards.
We don’t believe in dream schools either. I don’t even take my children to visit until money is on the line (e.g. scholarship interview weekends, the offer has been made already.)
You can only go to one college, but the only way to know where you might win full merit (tuition, room and board) is to apply. Your post just doesn’t seem to acknowledge merit scholarships at both public and private are super competitive and can’t be known ahead of time. It also assumes parents want to make the children feel better by applying to a bunch of safeties. I live in small towns. I don’t know people like this. Truly. I mostly know middle class (household income $40,000-90,000 pre-tax) families with students who are trying to figure out how to get college funded when they don’t qualify for any/enough need.
I think the system is broken because the EA explosion is being used to fill classes, the whole process is occurring too early in senior year, but mostly because college is far too expensive. At many colleges a years COA is more than median US household income. That is the main part that is broken in my opinion. Everything else seems to flow from that.
But do tell me how a high stats student can pick only one mid-tier or high tier college and know it will be fully funded and somehow it is also considered a safety for that funding level? It is possible I just do not understand your explanation. The full-rides I experienced were unpredictable in their choices of winners and did not make decisions until mid-spring.
Outside of the SES levels common on these forums, isn’t it still most common for college students to commute to a nearby public community college or state university, simply because that is what is affordable?
Our pre-tax income has ranged as a family of 4 from $30,000 to $90,000 (that one amazing year!) over the past 15 years, and not in an upward direction but zig-zig. Yet we care. We know many others like us.
PS- I’m pretty sure that is not a normal SES for CC. Reading CC actually depresses me when people talk about their “budgets” per year for college, and it is more than our annual income- should note spouse has a terminal degree in field. The field is just poorly paid and service oriented. So is mine, but someone has to do these jobs.
I agree that students who are merit hunting typically need to apply to a higher than average number of schools. With that said I am not talking about applying to 20+ schools, there’s really no need for that, even for merit hunters. No way to do a good job on the many essays/other prep work that one would have to undertake to apply for all those competitive scholarships.
A student only needs one affordable safety that they would be happy to attend, and as UCB says, for many that is their local CC. The whole idea of ‘fit’ is relatively privileged…many, maybe most students don’t have the luxury of choosing the best fit because they have to choose what is affordable, fit be darned.
I agree with you here and just called having fit as a top criterion a “luxury” on another thread. I also agree financing ends up being the main thing especially for families under $150,000+ incomes.
I just disagree on how high stats students (the topic of this thread) can make college affordable. I don’t think those high stats kids who do have to choose by price (like mine) should all need to go to CCs. (And I went back to school to a CC and got an Associates degree at a CC many years after a distinguished undergraduate academic career, so nothing at all against CCs.)
Perhaps a better way to say it is that, for most college students, the most important aspect of “fit” is whether the college is affordable. Obviously, academic programs of interest are also at the top of “fit” criteria. For most college students, any “fit” aspects beyond affordability and academic programs are luxury options that they may or may not have.
Well, in our case, the local community college is about $10,000 a year, not great, in a sketchy urban area.
That describes our family and most of the kids in our HS. The vast majority attend our cheap, excellent in-state options or CC. This is true of most kids in this country.
Our kid didn’t apply to any reaches. Can’t afford them even if he gets in. He has a couple of friends that I’m a bit nervous about how they’ll feel once their all offers are in. They’ll likely end up at the state school as well, but may be disappointed about it (since all the other apps were to reaches and they’re not rich). I’m worried because I think one of them might have NO safety and only applied to reaches 
The whole point of him even doing a college “search” and applying to several schools was to be able to take fit into account. That is a luxury that we have been delighted to give him with our help on savvy college searching – because we can’t give him much money. For him, the money trumps everything, but given several affordable options, he then gets to pick one based on fit. He didn’t apply to reaches expecting merit, nor did he apply for any elite merit awards (Stamps, etc) because he’s not quite in that league. I don’t know what you define as “high stats” for the purposes of this thread, because CC skews way in the high stats direction.
We are choosing almost entirely by price, but thanks to all the help we’ve gotten here on CC, my son has a wonderful list of offers at excellent, affordable schools that are not CCs (though that would also be fine). They are not “top” schools though.
Same! CC skews wealthy, sometimes to the point that I wonder what alternate universe I’m living in. But there are plenty of folks here with average or lower incomes and/or budgets. And no, I would never pay for Ivy League! Because I can’t LOL (though probably wouldn’t even if I could). People of all financial means are so helpful here and learn from each other. They will help anyone find their “fit” based on any criteria. And everyone loves a deal!
Really, the depressing part of your quote is that families in the range you mentioned “don’t qualify with any/enough” aid. Perhaps the ideal would be if more colleges repurposed a proportion of their merit budgets in order to increase the scope of their need based program, thus aiming the recovered funds at families which make 40K-90K or whatever income the college deems as middle-class. Or if they limited their merit awards to families making under 150K or whatever. Sure, have merit awards but don’t offer them to upper income families.
I don’t actually know a ton about merit aid because my kid was lucky enough to be admitted early to a college with a generous need based package (though my zig-zaggy income falls in almost the exact same range). Nevertheless, I agree with you that the full price of college is unaffordable for middle income families (and even more unaffordable for poor families). If merit aid were capped at a certain income at the colleges to which your child is applying, they’d still be competing with thousands of other students for a spot at those colleges, but at least they wouldn’t be competing with all those students for a merit aid package as well; they’d just be competing with other middle-class and poor families. That might not alleviate much pressure, but maybe it would mean “high stats middle-income” kids would feel comfortable applying to “only” 15 schools instead of 20 (if they felt that the net price calculators were trustworthy).
A relative from NY area did this a few years ago. We tried to warn the relative mother, but she wouldn’t listen. She thought son was high stats and only applied to schools that are by definition reaches for almost everyone. He wasn’t even high stats by any definition even 30 years ago, but he was a solid honors student who would have had options with a normal college search that was reasonable. Instead based on her advice, he applied to 10+ schools and got in nowhere. From a high SES school (much higher than our family.). So he finished the school year in that competitive high school environment with NO college. Son is super nice and just listened to her. It worked out okay in that he is now at a SUNY and happy, but it was terrible to watch and terrible for him. It’s been five years and still upsets me.
We really tried to suggest a realistic list for his holistic self (tests, grades, background, school, region, interests) but she was having none of it. We had just gone through the process with D17, but some people won’t listen. She still blames the system and bad luck. It wasn’t.
She could have used CC, or other websites or books for sure to make a list of better fits! Here’s hoping she does for second child24!