<p>When applying to a college and a question on the application asks for the names of other colleges the student is applying to, how should this be handled? Do folks recommend that it be left blank or that all colleges be listed? On one hand, it might make the college realize that they are possibly "competing" for the student yet on the other, it might demonstrate that perhaps the student is applying to <em>too many</em> colleges. This is the first time my child is applying (early action to the school of choice) and am unsure about how to proceed. Thanks, in advance.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that it’s best to either not list any others or to list them in a way that doesn’t show clear bias. I’ve chosen to list all my schools when asked, but I do so in alphabetical order.</p>
<p>Welcom to CC! I am a long time poster and I asked this question a long time ago. Here is an answer that I got from “tokenadult”:</p>
<p>“Not wanting this to be construed as a statement of my order of preference, I am applying to”</p>
<p>a) “other colleges that appear to offer some of the same features as your college”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>b) “a varied list of colleges to ensure that I carefully consider what is the best fit between me and each college”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>c) “small liberal arts colleges with a focus on undergraduate teaching” (or whatever summary characteristic applies to all colleges on your list)</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>d) “a list of colleges developed according to policies of my high school counseling office”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>e) “[actual list] but this list should not be taken to be in preference order”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>f) “a list of colleges that I would rather not mention here, so that we take extra care to follow NACAC principles of good practice.”</p>
<p>Your own creativity can probably come up with some more choices. I do NOT see this question on many of the college application forms I have downloaded from the Web this year.</p>
<p>Edit: sorry, but the page above is no longer there.</p>
<p>One student mentioned that a college that he was applying to online allowed only fifty characters in its online form for listing other colleges that he was applying to. That would allow for lots of fun possibilities, such as </p>
<p>Q: To what other colleges are you applying? </p>
<p>A: [in online form:] I am applying to other colleges that share some of the great characteristics of your college, for example </p>
<p>List every college there is, or the most extensive list you can find.</p>
<p>Say you’re applying to Harvard and some local regional crap school (here it would be Eastern Michigan, it has an average ACT of 21 to give you an idea of the caliber of students there, find something similar near you).</p>
<p>List a bunch of religious colleges (which is only funny if the application is not to a religious school).</p>
<p>List fast food restaurants (with the implication that you’ll work there if you don’t get in). </p>
<p>List universities in 3rd world countries.</p>
<hr>
<p>Seriously, don’t do any of those. They’re all really bad ideas. But I thought it would be funny to post.</p>
<p>What I did for this question was I listed about 5 of the schools I was applying to but not all of the schools. I usually listed it if it were very similar to the school that was asking for the information. I applied to a very large number of schools, so that was why.</p>
<p>I see northeastmom has quoted my FAQ on the subject. I’ll check the link that she reports is broken. The bottom line is that you can do a lot of things with that question.</p>
<p>i just listed my colleges alphabetically
THey are all very similar, and you really there’s not one “better” than the rest
(then again, my list is all small LACs, it’s not like i’m applying to ivies)</p>
<p>Here’s an update to my FAQ to correct the dead link that northeastmom kindly pointed out: </p>
<p>APPLICATIONS TO OTHER COLLEGES </p>
<p>You could quote chapter and verse from the Statement of Principles of Good Practice of the National Association for College Admission Counseling:</p>
<p>and once you have done that, you could say, based on whatever is the truth, “Not wanting this to be construed as a statement of my order of preference, I am applying to”</p>
<p>a) “other colleges that appear to offer some of the same features as your college”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>b) “a varied list of colleges to ensure that I carefully consider what is the best fit between me and each college”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>c) “small liberal arts colleges with a focus on undergraduate teaching” (or whatever summary characteristic applies to all colleges on your list)</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>d) “a list of colleges developed according to policies of my high school counseling office”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>e) “[actual list] but this list should not be taken to be in preference order”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>f) “a list of colleges that I would rather not mention here, so that we take extra care to follow NACAC principles of good practice.”</p>
<p>Your own creativity can probably come up with some more choices. I do NOT see this question on many of the college application forms I have downloaded from the Web this year.</p>
<p>One student mentioned that a college that he was applying to online allowed only fifty characters in its online form for listing other colleges that he was applying to. That would allow for lots of fun possibilities, such as</p>
<p>Q: To what other colleges are you applying? </p>
<p>A: [in online form:] I am applying to other colleges that share some of the great characteristics of your college, for example </p>
<p>To sum up, if you are applying early decision somewhere, OF COURSE that college is your first choice, and you plainly signal to that college that it is your first choice by applying for a binding early decision program. But if you are applying for nonbinding early action, for rolling admission, or for regular action admission, no college should care much where else you are applying, and you are certainly not obligated to tell the college where else you are applying, especially not in a rank-ordered list.</p>
<p>S listed all, in alphabetical order (he applied to 7). D listed <em>almost</em> all - she is undecided as to whether to apply to one college, which happens to be DH & my alma mater, and the school her brother currently attends. I told her not to list it because a) other schools will pretty much assume that if she gets in there she’ll go there, and b) she hasn’t actually decided whether to apply there, because she doesn’t think it’s a good fit for her. Ironically the only school that actually asked D for this info is her ED school, so they have to know they’re her first choice anyway!</p>
<p>Pianomom12, is this your s that was considering a piano performance path? If so there are a few alternate means to handle this from a music major perspective especially from an audition driven process, including rewording some of the suggestions offered in tokenadult’s post along the typical aspects of performance based options. Schools with a specific level of quality or range of private instructors, peer quality or ensemble opportunities, or addressing "applying to schools with very specific focused programs (in collaborative, piano, piano pedagogy, etc). </p>
<p>Just another perspective knowing a bit of background from the list you posted in the music major forum.</p>
<p>Just make sure you include schools like Swigmore University and Maguire University in your list. Prinstone and UC Sunnydale are a couple others. Starfleet Academy is a little too obvious unless you’re applying to Embry-Riddle, so maybe list the Daystrom Institute instead. For a complete list of alternative colleges and universities, click the link and scroll down: [List</a> of fictional schools - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_schools]List”>List of fictional schools - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>^^^I wouldn’t recommend giving any “alternative” colleges and universities. You don’t want to come off as snarky. If you really don’t want to list the other colleges, just say so. Something like the “a varied list of colleges to ensure that I carefully consider what is the best fit between me and each college” suggestion would suffice. Making up names or writing Starfleet Academy comes off as thumbing your nose at admissions, which is never a good idea if you’d like them to accept you, IMHO.</p>
<p>We’re struggling with this question ourselves. As far as I can tell, the only school my son is applying to that asks this question on their supplement is also the one that’s closest to a safety (aside from UMass) among his choices. If we list all the other schools he’s applying to, it might well appear to their admissions people that our son is extremely likely to end up somewhere else. This isn’t necessarily true, though; it depends on exactly who else accepts him, what the financial aid picture is like, etc. Even though this school is less selective than most of the others, our son actually liked it a lot and might well choose it over some of the higher-ranked schools. </p>
<p>So we are worried about the implications of answering this question honestly, fearing it might turn a near-safety into an unexpected rejection. How realistic are those worries?</p>
<p>My planned response: “I prefer not to answer at this time, as it is irrelevant to my application. Please inquire again after May 1, 2010.”</p>
<p>I do understand the purpose of such questions, to judge the potential competition, but that kind of information is better collected post-acceptance.</p>
<p>I think some of this depends on the school that’s asking the question. When my son answered the question on his Rice application, he listed all the schools he was applying to (including Stanford, MIT, Cornell, etc) and not only was he admitted to Rice, he was offered 2 merit scholarships (amounting to 2/3 tuition). Some schools use it to assess whether they need to sweeten the pot to get you to attend.</p>
<p>Keilexandra, do you not worry at all about colleges responding negatively to that kind of answer? I guess I tend to assume that if a college asks a question on the application, and you decline to answer it, that will count against you. </p>
<p>blackeyedsusan, I hadn’t even thought of that angle; I was thinking only in terms of yield protection. Maybe there’s an upside to answering the question after all.</p>