Looking for Match and Likely Schools and Chance Me on Reach Schools

[LeeMajors]

More of a general comment here, but I think parents who are almost at the end of this crazy season would agree that spending more time evaluating safeties and making sure that she would be happy (or at leas content with) them is a necessary insurance plan. I have seen that target lists have turned into rejection/waiting lists. I have even seen safety schools reject or waitlist amazing applicants.

There are so many new and unpredictable forces at play that relying upon stats or ‘what normally happens’ is just out-the-window at this point. Nothing makes sense right now. I will be telling my brother who has an up and coming junior to make a list of ‘Safety schools’ and a list of ‘Reaches/Unknowns’.

This is a good thread for getting up to speed with admission upheavals:

Is Class of 2026 An Outlier Year for College Admissions?

Is 2026 (graduating HS 2022) an outlier year in terms of number of applicants and/or applications at the top 50 colleges? Are we seeing essentially two classes years of students applying in the same year (the gap year students from the class of 2025 plus students in the the current year)? Does this account for the increased competition and application volume? Will standardized tests be back next year at many competitive colleges? Have the standardized testing policies at many colleges hurt applicants with high standardized test scores? Would students be advantaged in taking a gap year and applying next year? It seems classes prior to the class of 2023 (graduating HS in 2019) were significantly less chaotic and more uniform in acceptance prediction than the years since. Is this a correct observation?

Here’s another:

Parents of the HS Class of 2022

According to Jeff Selingo’s book Who Gets In and Why, it depends on the school. Colleges don’t like to admit that they add extra merit aid to attract an admitted student who hasn’t confirmed they will attend — but some do. Other schools might want to reserve their biggest awards for students they feel confident will accept and be great ambassadors and cheerleaders for the school. I think it depends on how badly the school wants the student, how much money they have available to offer, and their calculation of how much money would make the difference in the student’s decision-making. And not every school takes the same approach.

Learn from our mis-calculations!