<p>
</p>
<p>Where on earth did you get this notion? Please cite the post where I said that.</p>
<p>Even the high stats, full pay student who is targeting highly selective schools cannot limit applications to a small handful. Go to the HYP boards and look at the legions of kids accepted at one but not the other two, or accepted at H or Y or P but denied at Brown, Dartmouth etc. Results are unpredictable at this level. Kids who are aiming high must cast a wide net. Of course, if they had no chance to begin with, casting a wider net won’t help at all. But within the pool for students with a reasonable chance of admission to an elite, it is essential to apply to more than one or two.</p>
<p>^^This is absolutely correct. Both my girls were high stat kids with decent prospects of getting into to a high-end school. But which one(s) would accept them? No way to tell. So they both had to spray applications around to a half dozen or more high end reach schools in order to find The One. Both succeeded and enrolled at top schools that they love, but if they had limited their apps to only one or two high end reaches they might well have guessed wrong and applied only to those that ended up rejecting them.</p>
<p>There’s another psychological component to this entire business. Anyone else ever listen to Dan Ariely, or read his book “Predictably Irrational”? Ariely is a behavioral economist at Duke, and a very funny guy. He looks at econ assuming that people aren’t rational, and comes up with some interesting insights into how we function. One of his research projects is about how we love having choices. Not only do we love having options, we will actually give up certain gains in order to preserve having more choices. </p>
<p>Boy howdy, does this apply to the application game. Submitting an application keeps an option open, because there’s a chance a student can get in. Even if it’s a snowball’s chance in Hades type of app, even if it’s going to reduce the effort that a student can put into each app overall, even if it’s going to cost the parents $$$ to pay for many many apps. As a parent, I want to keep some (safety) doors open for my D1 because I’ve seen her interest in a couple of schools wax and wane. Safety A was a favorite, then dropped from consideration, while Safety B rose up to be a contender. Now their positions have reversed. They may reverse again within the year. Better in my eyes for her to be able to make that decision in April, looking at (one hopes) acceptances in hand, rather than forestall the choice in December by deciding not to apply at all. </p>
<p>A video, for those who are interested: [Predictably</a> Irrational Chapter 8: Keeping Doors Open](<a href=“Predictably Irrational”>Predictably Irrational)</p>
<p>I’m all about options, ST! And the whole “who knows what he’ll want come May” thinking is one reason I was glad his list had a variety of schools on his list. And, sure enough, even in the final days he still has widely varying options in his top three. I’m glad he has three affordable schools from which to pick.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, it isn’t. Not really. That’s true only if you think that the likely alternatives to the hyperselective “elites” are so significantly worse in some meaningful respect that it justifies an “elite-or-die” approach. And there’s really no basis for that. Once you leave Ivy-land (and Stanford, MIT), you still have selective institutions, but admissions are much more rational, especially at public universities. And in terms of educational opportunities, you simply don’t give much up – in fact, you may gain considerably in some areas – moving from Dartmouth or Brown to Michigan, Berkeley, WUStL, Hopkins, not to mention good LACs.</p>
<p>
YDS, were you able to get that confirmed for sure?</p>
<p>I think I read that on the website (except for the three who got for the arch program). jym, I’m going to PM you about a related matter! ;)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes but…Michigan and Berkeley are both at least $30K for the unhooked OOS student. I don’t know what you mean by “good” LACs: does that exclude Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Wellesley, et al? I certainly think that those elite LACs offer a superb education. They are also very, very hard to get into. WUSTL and Hopkins aren’t a walk in the park, either.</p>
<p>Because jym and I opened the door, thought I would post this, which I found in the Rice newspaper’s archives. This is about the fall 2009 class:</p>
<p>"In addition to the influx of extra freshmen, the number of transfer students was also slightly greater than anticipated, with 69 transfers instead of the expected 60 having matriculated this fall, Mu</p>
<p>It is so hard to predict from one years WL experience what the next will be. My s told me that last year (or possibly the year before that) they had to request that students voluntarily live in an old dorm that was supposed to be under construction “Will Rice Classic” because they had a much higher enrollment than they were prepared for.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because theoretically they can “escape,” but if the EA or SCEA is not “just” a safety but is highly desired, many students (as we’ve just told you) choose to dramatically reduce their college lists. It’s a pain in the butt to do trillions of applications.</p>
<p>As to one poster’s comments that students “have to” apply to so many, they “have to” because there’s been no comprehensive reform. That’s entirely the point that I, blue, Hunt, etc. are offering.</p>
<p>
Aren’t you the one who said four apps are enough for anybody? What would you tell the kid with top grades, stats, and scores who comes in and tells you that his dream is to go to a top selective school like Harvard or Yale? You look at his stats and see that he has stats similar to those who get admitted, but his chances are still in the single digits. Are you really going to advise him not to apply to a number of schools that are similar to those he wants?</p>
<p>I’m not sure why anyone with attractive options elsewhere would even bother with a WL. Hoping against hope under such circumstances smacks of far too much desperation and only serves to add more undue stress to a ridiculously long process. And that’s partly the point of applying to several schools: so that one has enough viable and attractive options to not have to care two cents about being on a WL somewhere. </p>
<p>Dealing with the system as it is - not necessarily how it ought to be - I think there are plenty of students who would serve themselves best by applying to a wide range of schools provided there is some genuine interest in each. As others have alluded, leveraging the laws and probabilities of larger numbers is often the only strategy whereby many students can maintain some degree of control over their own fate. Except for those with deep pockets, I see this as a natural response to dealing with the lack of transparency, total unpredictability, and the high motoring marketing machines admissions offices have become. </p>
<p>In fact, it’s the schools who are primarily responsible for ginning up so many applications in the first place. How are the students to blame? Because they fell for all the marketing ploys and promises of holistic evaluations insinuating that virtually anyone has a shot? Or is it that some people simply don’t like the idea of students trying to pull their own levers in a process completely manipulated by admissions strategists? </p>
<p>It’s absurd to think that colleges will employ any fewer shenanigans on their side of the equation by having counselors and the like arbitrarily limit the potential choices of applicants who are being subject to what amounts to a labor intensive lottery system. Neither students or their counselors are to blame for the current state of affairs.</p>
<p>“And in terms of educational opportunities, you simply don’t give much up – in fact, you may gain considerably in some areas – moving from Dartmouth or Brown to Michigan, Berkeley, WUStL, Hopkins, not to mention good LACs.”</p>
<p>Both S and H went to second tier LACs, and the education that they received was on par with or better than what I got at Harvard. Until I learned in depth about their experiences, I had assumed that Ivies and similar schools were by far the best places to get academic instruction, but I now know the truth.</p>
<p>What places like Ivies have that LACs don’t have is a much wider selection of courses. What the LACs have is on the whole better instruction and often higher requirements in terms of the amount of writing students are expected to do and the depth of the writing they are expected to produce. S, for instance, has to write an 80-100 page paper (the sole requirement of that course for the semester) for a required course for his theater major. I wasn’t expected to write that much for any course until I wrote my dissertation.</p>
<p>A top student in my area applied to U of Minnesota Honors program, MIT, Harvard, Yale and Princeton. He was rejected by UM honors program (limits enrollment to top X% of acceptances with a #'s cap by individual college), accepted at MIT and one of the others and rejected by the other two. Parents could fully fund the U of MN, but not the others. These were the only schools he applied to because the GC told him to cap it at 5. This child should have applied to more schools, but never dreamed he would be turned down by state flagship honors program.</p>
<p>Kajon, with the current unpredictability of acceptances, it is sad that a GC would make such a recommendation to a student of only applying to 5 schools.</p>
<p>Admissions are unpredictable across the board, not just at HYPMS. The schools mentioned like Brown are really hard to get into anymore. A top student who also has financial considerations needs to cast a wide net. You never know where you will get wait listed and financial aid packages vary widely. My daughter applied to 10 schools last year, we ended up with exactly one option that met all the criteria of being affordable, a place she really wanted to go to and where she was admitted.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is necessary that kids have to limit the number of applications that they submit anyway. It doesn’t make the process any more competitive because there are still the same number of students looking to go to college. It is just in this particular year where the number of applications increased that the schools got nervous about what their yields would look like, so they opted for conservative admission rates and big wait lists. Once the yields stabilize and the schools can again accurately predict how many students will matriculate we’ll see admission rates go back up to where they were.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This should be mandatory reading for every HS student, parent and counselor. This student basically applied to no safety schools. Yeah, he probably should have been accepted to U of Minn. honors program, but as in many areas of life, nothing is guaranteed. I’m sure there were some excellent options that this student missed out on.</p>
<p>A note from the nerve-wracking department. </p>
<p>In the Williams thread there was a student that applied to a couple of Ivies and a couple fo top tier LAC - no safeties. Figured that he would at least get accepted to one of them and, anyways, he would rather take a year off and apply the next year instead of going to a school that he would not be happy at. </p>
<p>Towards the end he had 6 waitlists and about 2 no decisions left. He had mentally planned to take the year off and apply the next year. It was not a fun situation to observe. Then one of the last two decisions camed in:
.
.
.
.
.</p>
<p>…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.</p>
<p>.
acceptance to Harvard…whewwwww…</p>
<p>this was one happy kid!</p>