A deferment isn’t a no. I hope she gets in!!
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I really needed to see this thread. We are in the thick of curating a list of schools to apply to now with D24. The very first school we toured is an academic and financial safety, and she liked it. We have looked at others since that visit, but none that she’s liked better (yet, anyway).
When people ask where we’ve looked and I mention this particular school, they are quick to tell me “she can do better.” It is annoying.
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Ignore them. We didn’t really discuss college visits and the like with folks for just this reason.
As I mentioned upstream, our DDs first three (and top choice) applications were to schools that were really sure things for admission for her. When people asked us about college, we politely said “DD is looking forward to sharing her final choice on May 1.” And we repeated that if necessary!
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If she likes it, it’s okay to be done. Not everyone applies to dozens of schools, lol. Most don’t. Just the type that come to forums usually do 
My kids were happy and content with one of the first schools we saw and would have been okay with being done. I thought they needed more choices. To see all the possibilities 
To have choices. I had them apply to three, and I wish I had just let them be done with the one. They didn’t need the ‘more’. I did. And so did all the ‘judgers’. Don’t get sucked into it. If the schools she likes is affordable, has her major and some others in case she changes her mind, and she likes it, that is the whole goal of the process.
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It IS annoying! When that happens to us next, I’m planning on using something like a quick 'elevator speech." A quick sentence or 2 with some informative blurbs for the Idiot Who Put Their Foot In Their Mouth. For example:
Foolish Person (FP): Where is Little Suzy applying to school?
me: Right now, her top choice is the Univ of Outer Mongolia.
FP: Huh, really? She can do better.
me: Well, you’d be surprised. Univ of OM has a really great yak agriculture program which has a 100% job placement upon graduation and Little Suzy is totally into sustainable agriculture and environmental studies, so it’s a perfect fit for her.
FP: Oh…um…wow. Interesting!
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Here’s my own personal example from a couple of months ago:
Parent of a kid from school (same grade as DD): So where is your DD thinking of applying?
me: Well, we’ve gone on tours at ASU & U of A and she likes U of A a lot better so far.
(we’re in the PHX area, and a lot of people in the Phoenix metro area act like living in Tucson for college is practically slumming it and like it’s SO far away, it’s amusing)
Other Parent: (scrunches up her face) Huh, so she wants to go to U of A? In TUCSON? That’s SO far away!
me: Not really. 2 hr tops from where we live, more like hour and a half. That’s nothing.
Other Parent: but it’s in Tucson. Why aren’t you sending her to ASU?
me: Because she said she hates ASU. Way too big.
OP: But why? What does she want to major in?
me: biology. Something pre-health/pre-med.
OP: But they have that at ASU.
(now I’m thinking, ‘OMG, give it a rest. Be like Elsa and let it go, lady’)
me: for the majors that DD is most interested in, ASU is actually not a good fit for her. She’d have to attend the downtown campus, which is a ‘heck no’ for her. And besides, U of A is a really great school. It has about 20,000 fewer students. It’s all in 1 campus instead of 4. It’s easier to be there w/o a car. Their honors dorm felt closer to everything than ASU’s did. And there’s public transportation AND a university-run shuttle to & from Univ Medical Center all day long, so if she got an internship or was helping out w/a research project at UMC or at the med school there, it’ll be easy for her to get there.
FP: Oh. But ASU…
me: Besides, U of A is ranked higher than ASU.
(I don’t care about ranking, but that parent was into it, which is why I mentioned it)
FP: Oh, that makes sense.
me: (I then make a ‘bean dip’ comment and we thankfully move on from 'why in the world would you send your kid to University X?)
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I like both @thumper1 and @sbinaz ideas of how to answer questions about your child’s school list and if “they could do better”.
We ran into those kinds of questions a lot when D20 was going through the process. So many people asked us why she wasn’t applying to schools like Northwestern, UChicago (yes we live in Illinois). My response usually was, “We don’t have $75-80k per year to pay for that. If you want to sponsor D20 and have that kind of money to share - I’m happy to have her throw an application in!” I always said this cheerfully with a smile, usually the other person would either laugh and drop the questioning or be horrified that those schools cost that much!
We were always really upfront with having a budget and sticking to it. I’m sure some people felt badly for D20 having parents not willing to pay for more expensive, most prestigious schools. But our openness with that choice made it really clear that those ‘better’ schools weren’t ever going to be on the agenda.
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Yes, I have an elevator pitch like that. It’s all about the amazing Formula SAE program (student built race cars) at Oregon State. Lots of schools have SAE but Oregon State’s is special, etc.
What’s sad, though, is that I have to trot out this elevator pitch every darn time I mention this school, because I always get the “Huh, really? He can do better.” It’s a fine school, really, and I shouldn’t even HAVE to mention race cars or yak agriculture!
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I got a lot of judgy comments about DD choosing a “party” school! It was so annoying, as if wanting to attend a school with a vibrant social scene was something to look down on. I know many, many, very successful people who attended “party” schools. I should have come up with my own elevator speech ;).
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The comment I remember most vividly was the year after D18 went to Utah and we ended up talking to a neighbor about her D19’s plans. Neighbor said scornfully that her daughter “wasn’t interested in anywhere like Utah” and actually her “dream school” was UCSB (we later heard that she didn’t get in). I was proud of myself for not pointing out that my D turned down a Regents scholarship at UCSB and instead limited myself to saying “well Utah is really good for dance”.
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I’ve been posting this all along the way, but for those who haven’t heard it:
D21 had really high stats: 3.98UW/4.7W, NMF, ‘full’ IB, and a recruited athlete. However, we are a ‘donut’ family who is full pay on paper but were clear from that day one that we couldn’t afford 80K/year for both her and S23, so we didn’t even let her apply to the most expensive schools.
Instead, we “made her go” (her words, but true) to a lower tier T100 LAC where she had a full tuition merit scholarship and which was great fit for both her sport and her rather obscure major.
She was REALLY unhappy her senior spring and summer as many of her best friends were off to Ivy’s, top LACs, etc., and people were surprised that she, too, wasn’t going to a ‘better’ school. She was literally in tears when we dropped her off for her first-year orientation. It was awful. It was the worst I’ve ever felt as parent.
Now, a year and half later, she loves it. She’s been on the Dean’s list every semester, is an All-American in her sport, doing great research (already planning to present it at state conference this spring), planning her study abroad, AND will have tons of $ left over for grad school (the deal was that she got to keep all her leftover 529$).
There are WONDERFUL professors and programs at schools everywhere. ‘Getting in’ to a highly rejective school is much more about status and bragging rights than the actual quality of the education (and I say this as an Ivy grad myself). And parents sacrificing their retirements or work-life balance to pay for schools they can’t reasonably afford is just silly.
Having said that, I know first hand just how painful it is to see your kid so unhappy their senior year when there is so much pressure (at certain schools, anyway) to go to a ‘top’ college. So hugs to anyone going through it right now, and keep reminding yourself that this too will pass.
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I really try to steer clear of these conversations with most people, but hard to dodge questions from the grandparents, the SAT tutor and my best friend. All of whom have given me the above response.
I have been pretty clear that I know D24 can likely get into more competitive schools, but I can’t necessarily afford to pay for them, and it was important that we have an academic and financial safety that she would be happy attending in our back pocket.
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Well…in my experience…folks like the grandparents had zero idea of the cost of college these days. And this was NOT a discussion I wanted to have with them. Anyway, it’s none of their business about our finances and what we would or wouldn’t pay for college (as an FYI, we were pretty much full pay at two pricey private universities…and we didn’t discuss the costs with them…at all).
I just think these discussions are because someone else wants to sort of control what you are doing. Thus my response. And yes…we said that to the grandparents as well.
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One grandmother offered to pay the difference between the less selective school and the far more prestigious school that my child had as her final 2 choices. She was disappointed when my child still went for the less selective school. Yes, we factored money into the decision but my child knew that we were fortunate to not have that be the decision maker. She simply really liked the less selective college more and she couldn’t have cared less about rankings.Grandma still doesn’t fully nderstand that rankings didn’t override everything else but she does recognize that my child chose a school that fits her perfectly and is thriving as a result.
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I have an elevator pitch too. Nobody in my circle (so far) has said D23 can “do better” but I have heard a lot of, “where is that?” or, if they’re from PA and so have heard of it, “how did did that end up on the list?” My blurb is basically it has a fabulous environmental science program and had everything else she was looking for. She really wants to be in a quiet, rural area. And it helps that she got their top scholarship.
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For our son it was always “Why not TX A&M?” Hard to just come out and say he hated that school since he was about 4. We would just answer that the school he chose had a great early admit to vet school so he only did 3 years undergrad, a great animal science program and that they gave us scholarships so it cost less than our in state. Not many comments after that. If so we would say how involved the faculty is with the students, that he loved the campus and the town, how he’d be living in a brand new dorm. Most gave up at that point! It was the right choice for our son!
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If any grandparent has the nerve to say something about prestige and costs at this point in the kids’ lives, after they have sat back and watched our sometimes really desperate scrimping and scraping for 20-odd years, I will cheerfully whack them with a wet noodle.
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Nodding my head in agreement to everyone talking about the comments from grandparents. Just this week, my DH told his mother exactly how much the full cost of attendance is now at an in-state university in our state.
Needless to say, she was floored. She thought that maybe the total COA was a few thousand per year.
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I will be the first to admit that I wanted my D23 to aim higher even after she fell in love with her “safety” school. However, in hindsight, I think she did a fantastic job finding her match schools and it’s been a pleasant admission cycle for her. She only applied to 7 schools. Of those, she got merit $$ from 3, accepted at 2 others, deferred from Michigan and still waiting to hear on one more. I think she will find many kids just like her looking for a balance between academics and a good social scene and it’s made her feel confident and wanted by these schools and like all her hard work in high school has paid off.
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Both of our kids had an EA “safety” so that we knew they would have a place to land but these schools were not what is often described here as a safety (100% chance of admit and affordable.) We figured that, if they didn’t get into their EA schools, then they’d have to reevaluate and look for other schools to apply to by the RD deadline. Both got into the EA school(s) with substantial merit.
The EAs they chose fit at least some of the things they wanted in a college. We had good data from our high school that showed our kids had a really really high chance of getting into these schools even though they had overall 50% acceptance rates.
Our S19 had Dickinson on his list and our D21 had Denver and Santa Clara and Furman. Did they want to go to those schools? Let’s just say we sort of used them as a little bit of a test to see how their apps read and I think neither of our kids thought they’d end up at those schools BUT I did a lot of research and felt that they could have been happy at them. They did not spend a lot of time thinking about these schools (being honest here!) but I told them they had to find schools that checked important boxes for them and these did.
They also had a lot of schools in the 30% acceptance rate range that accepted everyone from our school with their GPA and scores. To us, we felt we really were not looking at those as matches and more like other possible safeties (although I get that calling a 30% acceptance rate school a safety is not a good idea.) They got into all of them.
In the end, both did get into some of their reaches and attend them now but I do think they could have made those EA and safer RD options work. For the schools not at the top of their lists, they had specific things they would have loved about them (like warmer weather for D21 - would have been a huge plus!).
We also did not apply for financial aid so that made the process of list making easier as well.
So, all this being said, I do think it’s sometimes ok to go by your high school’s history when looking at what a “safety” really is. And to preach as much as you can and as early as you can that there are a lot of schools out there where your kids can be happy. BUT I do empathize with parents of students who just don’t find that perfect real safety where they think they’ll be happy. It doesn’t always happen no matter how hard you try.
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