<p>My S’s scores and grades made him a plausible applicant to elite schools. He applied to one financial and academic safety, which has an excellent program in his prospective major, and which he would have been delighted to attend. His other schools were four match/low reaches, and two high reaches. He got into the safety and one of the others. It all worked out fine as far as he was concerned. However, he did not mind being denied by the majority of schools he applied to. If he had been a less confident person, he might have found the wave of rejection at the beginning of April emotionally difficult. When it’s his sister’s turn, I’ll perhaps encourage her to apply to a few easier schools so she has a choice and feels wanted.</p>
<p>"Brown has fraternities and sororities:</p>
<p>About Greek Life | Brown University Greek Community</p>
<p>So does Princeton:</p>
<p>Princeton Alumni Weekly: Q&A: Princeton’s sororities"</p>
<p>In principal…true…BUT…Brown has two sororities. Not the type of Greek Like D is looking for and Princeton University does not recognize the Greek System on its campus and therefore there are no houses and all meetings occur “underground.” (Not like scary underground, but they are not allowed to use University resources to have meetings, etc.) Because of that, she is uncomfortable with that.</p>
<p>I second the USC idea. My daughter was admitted with a full scholarship including airfare (we’re from NY) based on merit not need. We were blown away. Of course she didn’t go there but still, it was a nice offer and a great school for her, just a little too far away (6 hours by plane) with too much of a time change (3 hours).</p>
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<p>Maybe I am misreading, but why is she applying to any other colleges? Doesn’t this describe her excellent in-state option - except she will have to experience a few of those seasons on between semester trips with her sorority sisters - which you will be able to afford since you aren’t paying for a private school. 
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<p>Again, maybe I’m not understanding, but right now you have a child who will be very happy to attend UT? One who will be happy with her choice next year if you don’t do any further college search/apps? You are trying to find elite privates that are as good a fit? And trying to find time for the application process in her already too busy schedule? Once you go down that road, you may just possibly end up with a very unhappy child 
What is the point of risking it in this particular case? Maybe I am missing something?</p>
<p>My suggestion (unless either you or she feels more strongly about another college than I have read) is to just apply UT and concentrate on gathering the sorority recs for next year. JMHO based on my reading of the situation.</p>
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<p>Right now she has the option to choose as her first choice UT and not worry about it any further. Not many on this board are in such a nice position.</p>
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<p>LOL, I’ve tried to get my D to bite on something similar but she hasn’t bitten yet. She visited 11 schools. An academic and financial safety is her #2 choice. #1 is probably an academic safety but she has to do the common app, essays, recs, and re-test to try to get more money. I’ve tried to tempt her with “if you go for your #2, you’re already done” but she hasn’t gone for it.</p>
<p>alh…I hear you loud and clear. I wish it were that easy…but there is something, and I can’t put my finger on it that will not allow her to only pull that trigger (her dad and I would be happy if she would) The pressure is not coming from the homefront that is for sure. She has this need to apply elsewhere and I don’t know why. She was having her Senior Picutres taken this weekend and I was surprised to find she had brought a UT shirt with her because she owns a shirt from all the other colleges too…from visits, etc. She said she just figures that is where she is destined to go. So why all the fuss? I HAVE NO IDEA. I think she wants to cast the net and see if she catches anything. Rejections? She will role with them…it is just how she is. I just think she does not want to play the what if game and needs to know that she gave it the ole college try…haha. I think this is why is so confusing to me and why I just wish it would all go away.</p>
<p>Definitely keep the list short, for your sake and your kid’s.</p>
<p>My son applied to seven schools. In retrospect, he never could have gotten into one of them and never would have considered attending two of them. We could have reduced the time and stress by 43% by striking those three from the list immediately. This would have taken the whole application process from “excruciating” to merely “a big pain”, and when you’re fighting a nasty bout with senioritis, that makes a huge difference.</p>
<p>for all that we are supposed to have completed our research by the time its time to do apps, sometimes kids still learn more and change their minds. </p>
<p>If there is no huge cost to doing a couple of apps besides choice 1, why not? I mean who knows what issues might come between now and May?</p>
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<p>Then let her find the schools. She can talk to the GC at her school for ideas. In the meantime…get the ones she is interested in NOW completed. If others turn up, fine…if not…well that’s fine too.</p>
<p>If money is no object, any of the Big Ten flagship universities have football and Greek life and honors programs…and four seasons.</p>
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<p>This sounds like my kid who had one safety (UT-Austin) and 4 reaches. Got accepted at UT-Austin and one reach. We wanted our child to apply to more, but no go.</p>
<p>Any of these are good options, but it is nice to have choices. You only get to do this once, why only apply to UT and have her wonder if she should have cast a wider net later in life? There really is a difference between Big State U and smaller schools, it would be a shame if such a talented student didn’t leave her option open until the end.</p>
<p>The USC suggestion is a good one. I will expand on the Tulane suggestion. She will no doubt get a personal app invitation. Super easy, no app fee. If she gets it in by early October and marks it EA she will be in by mid October most likely. With her stats, she will get an immediate $25,000 scholarship and an invitation to the Honors Program. She can then fill out the application for the Deans Honor Scholarship, which is guaranteed full tuition for 4 years. Nice weather most of the school year, excellent academics (despite suffering some from the arbitrary formula USNWR uses to rank, Tulane actually has the 27th highest average SAT scores among research universities), strong Greek system, Div 1 sports (although granted the football and basketball teams are not great), etc.</p>
<p>But one thing that might make it somewhat unique is their Creative Scholars Program. This is a program specifically allowing non-science majors to get an early acceptance to med school, and they don’t have to take the MCAT. They fulfill the premed requirements in their first 2 years, but they major in any non-science they want. It could give her a lot of freedom academically.</p>
<p>If she likes Brown try Tuffs and Rice. I don’t think schools are match schools anymore but kids who like Brown usually like these schools.</p>
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DS has a list of 8. Were it up to him, he would probably only apply to 2 of them - and one of those just to see if he could get accepted. We really, really want him to have more than one option next spring, and also hope he will get good merit aid somewhere, so we are insisting he cast a larger net. I’m beating my head against a brick wall, and maybe next spring he will be at his 1 choice anyways, but he can never say that we didn’t try to give him as many options as possible.</p>
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<p>Those of us in Texas really are lucky. </p>
<p>If my son did not want to leave Texas, he would not have applied anywhere else. But he wanted to get to the East Coast, which was going to require merit aid and so we formed his list accordingly. </p>
<p>Best of luck to your daughter.</p>
<p>xaniamom, I agree that it’s wise to apply to more schools in order to ensure options that are good both educationally and financially. We had the luxury of having a top choice that was also a financial safety, so we could keep the list short without risk. Alas, not everyone’s in that situation, and so applying to more schools makes sense.</p>
<p>If our IS flagship had auto-admit or EA/ED and my D could have found out early, she would have been done. Unfortunately currently (they are considering adding EA) they do not have EA/ED or auto-admits so she created a wide net and cast it. In the end everything else was an afterthought once she got into our IS flagship where she chose. Had she not gotten in to the flagship though I honestly don’t know how it would have turned out but she did have choices, in fact more than she needed. I know better for my next 2 and their planning process though!</p>
<p>Perhaps U Mich in Ann Arbor? It does seem crazy to apply to another state’s public school when your D is already an auto-admit to UT, but hey, it’s a suggestion (says the parent in CA whose D is applying to a few OOS publics). I also agree about USC, though that’s more like two seasons than four. 
Rochester is another match if not safety; they can be generous with merit aid. </p>
<p>Will she apply to Plan II?</p>
<p>“Will she apply to Plan II”</p>
<p>Yes! If she is lucky enough to get in Plan II life would be sooo good!</p>
<p>As long as your DD is fine with her safety you don’t have to apply to more colleges.
In our case DD was of the view that each of her match is better than her safety and each of her reaches are better than her match.</p>
<p>So she had a first list and a reserve list. Reserve list was suppose to kick in if her EA results had been negative.</p>
<p>I think 5 applications now a days when many colleges uses common application is on the lower side. If she manage her time well then 10 colleges are not too many to apply.</p>
<p>As a student, I think it’s one thing to say in retrospect that I should have saved my energies by not applying to X or Y school because in retrospect I could never have gotten in/would never have chosen to attend, but I think the emotional and occasionally financial realities of the matter are different.</p>
<p>This thread made me think about my own admissions process, which as an international student was vastly different from the norm, but the basic rules still apply - love thy academic and financial safety and go from there. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any financially and academically safe option that was also a good overall fit and I was very close to ending up at my last choice (a local school, very decent academically but didn’t have my desired major and wasn’t a great fit - for convenience, let’s call this School A).</p>
<p>I applied to four schools, and without boring all of you with the details, let’s just say that in order of preference, they were NYU, UT, USC and School A; in order of admissions difficulty, they were USC, NYU, UT, School A (100% admissions safety); in order of financial feasibility, they were School A, UT=USC=NYU (all three so financially infeasible that I would have required external merit scholarships that would have effectively made all three equally financially viable - in the first place, I am in the unusual position of having such merit scholarships available to me; I should correct that - there is one such scholarship available to me, and I was blessed enough to get it).</p>
<p>When I applied, I told friends that I was applying to USC “just in case”, which was true, but really as good as “I’m applying to Harvard even though I know I’d hate it there and couldn’t afford it, because Academic Reach and Safety might not come through”. Looking back, it was panic talking - I figured applying to USC, at the expense of 50% more effort, might increase my chances of getting into some school preferable to School A by maybe 5%. </p>
<p>I also seriously considered two other local schools (both financial safeties with my desired major, but academically and socially even poorer fits than School A). I ended up applying to neither, because I figured I would prefer to attend School A over them, even at the expense of my preferred major.</p>
<p>I see now that out of the four I applied to and the six I considered, only three were ever really options for reasons of overall fit (NYU and UT) and finances (School A). Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t expend the effort or energy to apply to those two additional schools and wish I hadn’t bothered to apply to USC, but hindsight is 20/20 and what I recognize as the irrational fear of a lack of options now, I saw as hedging my bets then - except it was more like buying a lottery ticket “just in case I don’t get my paycheck”. I should have stuck with just the two U.S. schools and the one local school, because I knew even then that the others were not ever going to be options regardless of whether I was admitted or not.</p>
<p>However, I realize it is easy for me to say this, because things turned out all right for me in the end, and because financial aid wasn’t a factor (though finances were). I recognize that I took the course of action that seemed most prudent at the time based on what limited information I had, and if what I did seems irrational now means that there were emotional factors in play. I would argue that those factors are no less valid than the rational ones, because if they affect a student’s feelings towards schools he/she is considering, his/her stress and anxiety level, etc. then they need to be addressed and acknowledged like any other factor.</p>
<p>P.S. if I sound familiar to anyone, yes, I’ve posted on CC before under a different name. For better or for worse my admissions process was highly unusual, so I am unfortunately extremely easy to identify.</p>