@tamagotchi thank you! Best of luck!
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Probably best to use “safety” for 100% chance of both admission (including to major if applicable) and affordability, while using"likely" for 90+% or so. These would be estimated admission chance for the particular student, not overall admission rate.
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I am currently a Senior in High School, also from Texas, and have applied to the EAP at K-State. Do you remember how long it took after the deadline for them to reach out to set up an interview?
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I know we heard back some time in Feb because his interview was March 7. My guess is that you should hear soon. They are really nice and don’t mind if you call and ask a question like that. Good luck! My son has really enjoyed his time there.
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I wish I’d known about this site and this thread before we started our process this year. We went about this a bit backwards, with my kid starting with reach schools and dream schools and then adding others as we got wiser about the list.
Up until fall, he was not super excited about college. All of a sudden, he dove into the intense world of music school auditions. We knew nothing! We said he could go for it with schools he loved that are out of our price range, because we had no idea if he’d get scholarships. (I am jealous of those who can look at a GPA and a school’s acceptance rate and know something about whether it’s a match or “safety”. With music majors grades tell you very little about what’s a match or a reach. The reaches are reaches for everyone, in that it’s very subjective, and no one knows what scholarships may come for talent.)
Once I learned about this all, we went bass ackwards and searched for schools with music programs he would love, that he could probably get into and that we could pay for. A parent here on CC helped us find one. He applied, auditioned, and was accepted within a few weeks and is super happy about it as one of his two best options. Big smiles! I’m really grateful for CC, or we might be left with only one option (his other match). We’re still waiting for answers from a few super selective schools he would love, too, but I think he realizes now that there are many schools that would be great for him.
Looking back, I would have talked about that fact earlier. Today, he’s maxed out on applying to a lot of highly rejective schools and doesn’t have the bandwidth to apply to any others. BUT, he is happy, and he only needs one great school for him.
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It is great that this story ended well. I would caution parents to use such an approach. But you know your child better. If I would twist my kids’ hands that badly it could end up really badly. Your child needs to buy into the safety school. Otherwise, no merit money will pay for severe depression and apathy at school if the school will turn out to be a bad fit.
There are definitely many schools out there maybe not with full merit but partial merit that would not make a student to cry at first-year orientation. In my books child needs to be excited about college and not feel sorry for going to it even at the beginning.
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Fit absolutely matters. We were fairly certain that she would love her school once she gave it a chance, but just couldn’t/wouldn’t see this at first because she was so hung up on prestige and rankings. Otherwise, we would never have sent her.
Re: depression: surely you are aware of the sky-rates of depression and anxiety among students at highly selective schools. Attendance at one of these school certainly doesn’t protect against mental illness, and if anything may even make it worse. I highly recommend the book “What made Maddy run”. Maddy was very similar to my D21 other than that my kid wasn’t fast enough to be any Ivy recruit. But still, while our decision to avoid full pay highly selective schools was mostly financial, it was also partly because I suspected that D21 would actually be happier away from the pressure cooker environment at some of the top LACs where she was recruited (lookin’ at you, Swat).
Re: apathy: I will have failed at parenting if my kid turned out to be an entitled snowflake who pulled something like that (“I didn’t get what I wanted, so I’m taking all my marbles and am going home”).
Our guiding principle in parenting was to ‘prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child’. There will always be some bumps in the road, and I am well aware that my kid will have led a very charmed, privileged life if this is most adversity she ever faces. Happily, in the last two years she has matured enough to now see this well.
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I absolutely agree with all your points. I did not say that students need to run for Ivy (my kids never even considered any of them) or look for pressure cookers. I also said that your know your child better. However, your situation a bit reminds me a picture of a parent dropping a kid at preschool. Child knows that he needs to go, knows that it is right way to do, but cries because he doesn’t want to go. Given that we suppose to drop at college maybe not fully developed but adults and they go for 4 years that may determine their life, the situation should look different. Also given your daughter’s stats I would think that she could have many happy options that would not cost arm and leg. I would not want to be in your shoes and would not advertise this as a great way to approach college selection. With all people giving you “high five”, I wanted to point that maybe that is not the best way… Again, I am glad there was happy ending.
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I had a similar experience and would have given a reply like yours, but I was caught off guard.
A 75 yo lady began quizzing me on my kid and college.
Maybe I’ll tell the next stranger who asks that my kid is going to live the “van life.” That would horrify them enough to get some silence. 
But I’ll more likely say that we don’t have $280,000-320,000 to spend on college. Once people hear the full number, they usually gain an understanding of the costs at play.
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I agree it’s better to use a term like “likely” or “sure bet” instead of safety.
The idea that a safety isn’t good makes no sense. All it means is that the applicant’s stats are higher than a certain percentage of other kids. My 23 didn’t know that a year ago yet understands this now.
A teacher of 23 said they will spend 25 years paying off college. 23 has mentioned this several times and so is still considering a school that gave her a full tuition scholarship.
23 has matured a lot over the last 12 months. I’m glad I encouraged applying to sure bets. If 23 had their way, they would have applied to fewer and then felt bad they received no merit aid. They already felt bad after their high school posted on social media that a kid got $700k in merit scholarships. I told 23 they could have done the same thing if they had applied to schools that award that level of merit. But they wanted to apply to schools that don’t offer as much.
Social media and the comparisons there are not good for kids. And it does not help when the high school only celebrates Ivy and top 25 acceptances.
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@UpNorth2019 Our selection and process was in some ways very similar to yours, but D20 had her (multiple) “tears moment” before college search/selection really got underway when she finally understood our budget wasn’t aspirational and we were sticking to it. That was a ton of fun, lol.
Fortunately, I don’t come from the parenting school of thought that believes my job is to make my children happy, nor am I arrogant enough to believe I even have that power. I am definitely from the, “If you could make good choices at 17 regarding college you wouldn’t need parents at that point, as well as Love doesn’t mean always getting what you want” school of thought.
While I believe that everyone gets to feel the way they feel about circumstances, being sad about having the ability to go to college debt free because it isn’t your absolute first choice didn’t/doesn’t generate a ton of sympathy from me. As you said, if that’s the hardest thing D20 ever has to deal with, she will have lived an incredibly charmed life.
D20 couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t let her take student loans nor cosign loans, and at first wasn’t excited about the options we found that fit her criteria (did I mention she was 17?). It wasn’t until our third college touring trip that her attitude started to change a bit. We were visiting what would eventually become her college and she said, “If college was in (insert much preferred location) this would be my number one choice”. Location was what she gave up in her search - we told her, “You know, you can move to X location after college, we’ll even help with re-locating costs”. Funnily enough, now that she’s well into her junior year of college - she has a whole different plan regarding where she wants to live and what she wants to do. But the relocating budget is still available. 
She’s doing very well in her smaller pond. While admission to her school is less competitive than many highly selective SLACs, the rigor/expectations are high and she’s found the professors to be excellent, inspiring and supportive. Contrary to what many on CC think, there are a ton of other really smart, motivated kids at what many call safety schools. They also attend due to the merit aid the school offers.
D20’s really grateful to not have any debt. She has friends at her college (and elsewhere) who have taken on debt and they already are talking about the stress they feel knowing those payments are going to be waiting for them. She now sees how having to manage and minimize debt often leads to not having as many choices and options when it comes to internships and other opportunities.
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In some ways, I’m glad that I didn’t find CC until the very end of our college search. It probably would have helped us with older S and his merit search, but he wound up doing well and it would have much more stressful.
younger S (average excellent student with no strong idea of what he wanted to do) applied to 4 public schools, 3 in-state, 1 OOS. All would be considered safety to matches. UVA would have been the only one where I would have been surprised, but not shocked, had he not been admitted. This was based on the kids from our school who had been admitted in previous years.
His final two choices came down to UVA and JMU. UVA was more prestigious and more of his classmates went there. JMU had the specific major that interested him and gave him a scholarship. He chose JMU and should graduate in a few months.
Had he gone to UVA, he would not have had loans, but he would have had $0 at graduation. He would have been a mediocre/average student. I don’t know what major he would have been in or what kind of internship/job he might have gotten, but I suspect it would have been tough not being a top kid. He is not the type who thrives in that kind of environment.
At JMU, he loved his Intelligence Analysis major. He found good friends, has gotten near perfect grades, got a great internship that offered him a full time job right at 6 figures. And he will also have over $50K in the bank to help him get started. I can’t believe this is the same kid who used to complain all through elem/middle school how stupid school was.
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Being a bigger fish in a smaller pond worked well for one of my kids too. It is not all about the school’s prestige.
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Thank you @BeverlyWest , @beebee3, and @ClassicMom98 for sharing your stories! It is heartwarming to read about your student’s journey and gives me a positive outlook. There is so much focus in the news (and elsewhere) about prestigious institutions it is easy to lose sight of the many ways our kids can succeed. Our school list for S23 is/was full of ‘safeties’ (because of financial concerns) and I often wondered if we are not ‘ambitious’ enough.
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As those who have read my posts know…DD applied initially to three colleges all of which were safety schools…because she really liked these schools…a LOT. She toured 14 schools of her choice plus had to tag along with the trips we took for her older sibling.
Everything about these three colleges were viewed as terrific. She was accepted to two before Thanksgiving, and the other before Christmas.
We should have just stopped there. She asked if she could add a reach (rejected) and we did a parent pick that was nearer to home. Her three choices were far away and we wanted an option just in case she changed her mind. Those last two applications were a waste of time…and money.
There is nothing wrong with attending a sure thing college if it checks off a lot of boxes as these three colleges did for my kid.
We never looked at rankings….at all. Only found out well after the fact that the school she matriculated to actually was highly ranked in her region (this was back when they did masters colleges by region).
So…my free advice. Look for the qualities in the schools. What boxes are checked off for your kid. If it’s a sure thing for admission and the kid loves it…go for it.
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@beebee3 100% our experience! I held the line hard on budget and it was no fun, but totally necessary. DD’19 would get into an expensive school just because of things like they gave their dorm floors fanciful names. Or she wanted to go somewhere exotic. Told her she can live somewhere exotic when it can be permanent instead of moving out of dorms every year. Oh, and if you’re debt free, it will be easier to live where you want after college!
The school I steered her toward had literally everything she wanted on her super specific list. So I was not making her make a big sacrifice! And she met the top auto merit. But being 90 miles away and a pretty common destination for kids from HS made it seem undesirable and too ordinary to her. If it would have been somewhere else it probably would have been an easy sell. She came around throughout senior year and after joining admitted students FB and Snapchat realized it was going to be a bigger world than she had imagined.
In her first semester she sent me a letter thanking me for sending her there and keeping her out of debt because it was the perfect place for her. She now lives 4.5 hours away while BF does grad school, and can’t wait to move closer to home when he’s done. They are even thinking of returning to that college town her HS self thought would be so awful.
I’ve gotten flack on here before for pushing her to go there. And I admit it could have backfired if things had gone badly. But she had her head in the clouds, college funding was an abstract concept to her, and I wasn’t going to let her put her or us into financial trouble for her flights of fancy.
Sometimes mama knows.
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Anyone from Washington here ? If yes which safety will you choose from WSU and UW Bothell for CS ?
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WSU if you want a true college experience. UW Bothell seems to me like just a few buildings where you go take classes but not much of a campus and mainly commuters.
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I wanted to let you know that your views on parenting were good for me to read. Since I have a tendency to want to fix things, I’m constantly telling myself to listen more and see their sad emotions or tears as passing weather.
You’re right that our job isn’t to make a kid happy. The best action is sometimes no action at all.
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None of us have all the answers. Kids are different, parents are different. We do the best we can and I bet we all have some pretty great kids!
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