Nervous Jitters from CA mom

CoramDeo7, one other thing…if getting a puppy or taking an art class or working more hours doesn’t do it, and you miss your son terribly, it doesn’t hurt to talk to a counselor. As you can see, posting online with strangers doesn’t always satisfy (though there are indeed many threads of parents commiserating about missing their kids).

My kids had serious health challenges and I went to a counselor to vent when they were first on their own. It was enormously helpful. I found one with a great sense of humor : )

Otherwise, I think you have signaled that you are done here!!! Good luck!!! If you think of it, let us know what happens.

Actually, a top-stats student should have the easiest time finding safety candidates, since top-stats means qualifying for a greater number of automatic admission and automatic scholarship offers out there. However, the “problem” often seems to be that such students and their parents, like many other students and their parents, think that anything that could possibly be a safety is “beneath” the student’s abilities. Or the student is picky in other ways.

^^^
i insisted that son apply to a safety he initially thought was likely beneath him. now that it’s crunch time, it does not seem so lowly to him anymore.

“I think this thread also illustrates what I see as a common problem: finding safeties for top-stats kids. It seems it does not scale proportionately as you move from the good stats kids to the great stats kids.”

IMO the best safeties for high stat kids who are also CA residents are the mid-range UCs - Davis, Santa Barbara, and Irvine.

Students need to be careful with treating UCD, UCSB, and UCI as “safeties” if their “high stats” are test-score-heavy. UCs tend to weight GPA more heavily than test scores. See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1903428-faq-uc-historical-frosh-admit-rates-by-hs-gpa.html (with handy table in reply #4 of that thread).

If the only definition of a safety is “auto-admit” then yes, but that is rarely the definition of safety I read here; most commonly it is “likely to admit and afford”.

My point was – and this might be a less judgmental way to state what you meant, requiring fewer “quotes” – that it does not proportionally scale to each student’s stats. So I guess in a way we agree.

^It is also problematic for kids who don’t want larger schools, since that is where the majority of the automatic merit awards come. For a kid who is shooting for ND or UM, having Miami of Ohio as a safety school is really not a bad deal. Not really those same opportunities for kids who are looking at the smaller LACs though.

“If the only definition of a safety is “auto-admit” then yes, but that is rarely the definition of safety I read here; most commonly it is “likely to admit and afford”.”

And that has your major. For someone like my D, a high stat kid who wants to major in Linguistics, or possibly Cognitive Science with a Linguistics focus (meaning ideally the school would offer both), options for an appropriate safety are even harder to find. Compromises have to made somewhere.

The top stats student also has the largest selection of automatic full ride merit scholarship schools, which tend to help on the affordability front.

CDeo7 I think everyone here is supportive and hopes your son is accepted to a top school. However the truth is that based on his relatively low math score and the lack of a hook it was quite predictable that he would fail to gain acceptance from that list. While it’s true there are many exceptions no experienced admission advisor would have ever suggested such a list. These threads are filled with stories about non-hooked students with 1550 M+V/ unweighted 4.0 who fail to gain admission to the schools on your son’s list. Even Rice and UBC are not safeties for top students. A 650 math score is below the average of non-hooks student at every one of those schools. A 1450 obtained by a 730/720 is viewed more favorably than 800/650. It’s probably too late now but a boy with these scores has a better chance gaining admission at the top LAC’s than the top universities for multiple reasons. But good luck and let us know how things turn out.

Coramdeo7, your kid sounds great, but in this nation of 350 million people, there are thousands and thousands of kids with those qualifications or even better. Thousands and thousands of those kids get rejected at each of the schools on your list every year. When a top school is accepting +/- 10 percent of its applicants, it is rejecting +/- five or six applicants who look similar on paper to every one it accepts.

You said" “Of the colleges he has now applied to, Harvard, MIT and UChicago were matched to him as ‘reaches.’ Duke was nearly so but upper end of match so we count it as reach. Williams, Amherst, Rice, UCBerkeley, and Northwestern were matches. So, we’ll see. 10 applications - 4 reaches, 5 matches and 1 safety.”

I’m sorry to tell you, but Williams, Amherst, Rice and Northwestern are reaches for him, and if you are out of state, UCBerkeley is a reach as well. He might well get in to one or more of these schools, but you CAN’T count them as matches. We have seen many kids at my D’s high school rejected from Amherst and Williams and Northwestern with the similar grades, a higher weighted GPA (more rigor) and much better SATs than your son has.

I hope it works out for your son, but you are seriously rolling the dice here.

@ThankYouforHelp

Good news…this kiddo is instate for Berkeley. But that still doesn’t make it a slam dunk.

@thumper1 is correct, Berkeley is not a slam dunk. 85,000+ applications will be sifted through to get roughly 14,500 freshman spots, 1/3 of those going to out-of-state/international students. The stats for many of these kids are INSANE. D has a floormate who was also accepted to Harvard but chose Cal due to $. That being said, Cal’s “holistic” approach to admissions (whatever that means) may be to your son’s benefit, as it won’t just be about test scores and GPA. I don’t think being homeschooled is enough of a hook these days, but who knows what the admissions gods will be looking for this coming fall?

OP, when the first acceptance comes in, you will be able to breath a sigh of relief - he got in SOMEWHERE (nothing to sneeze at - there have been stories of kids not getting into any schools, mostly because they didn’t assess their stats properly so as to correctly identify - and apply to - enough safeties and matches). Each generation wants their kids to do better than they did. With regard to higher education for your offspring, you will have met that goal and then some, regardless of where your son winds up - congrats!

“I don’t think being homeschooled is enough of a hook these days”

Is homeschooled a hook??

I want to say that for people who’ve been here awhile, every single year there is a student or parent who has no acceptances or only an acceptance that they cannot afford. What the kind people here are offering alternatives to that senerio. I know you didn’t want the conversation to go about the schools your S applied to. The posters put time into crafting and replying so that you aren’t the person who has no acceptances.

It may seem harsh to you. But to the posters here, they would like a happy ending. Which means a school that accepts him and that you can afford. It sounds like he found a safety and that’s great.

CDeo7 here is a short list of more likely match schools:

  1. USC
    2)Boston College
  2. Emory
  3. Wake Forest
    5)Grinnell
  4. Hamilton
    7)Colby
    8)Bates
    9)Colgate

None of these are safeties but admission to one of these is reasonably likely

@SAY - It’s January 26 already. How many of those schools – if any – are still taking applications?

I think this horse has been beaten to death, but as the OP already knows, current options are pretty much limited to what’s on this list: http:/ /www.collegesimply.com /guides/application-deadlines/.

Snaps to @deb922 and @SAY. I have nothing to add except my best wishes for your son. Frankly, you all sound prepared for any result.

I was just listing better matches. As you say the ship has sailed for this year.

They were good suggestions, certainly.