<p>The problem with limiting applications is that the whole process evolves over time. Mine have changed “majors” as the year has gone on (particularly a problem if it changes to engineering); have changed what they think they want (when talking with peers, graduates, and other parents); have thrown sports in the mix (adds some; eliminates some; some with/some without); changed with visits; have been told all the top is chancy; have thrown finances in the mix----- and I am not even talking about “fit.”</p>
<p>So, either make a choice blindly or act like assessing the colleges matters; given that the assessment changes as more information is gathered. On top of that, August’s senior is a different person than December’s.</p>
<p>JohnAdams: Right. But my point was more subtle than that. Princeton (I think) doesn’t particularly care that this or that applicant would prefer Harvard or Yale, because if Princeton accepts him there’s a good chance he will come there, and once he comes there he will love it and become a lifelong Princeton fanatic like you. It’s not that Princeton doesn’t accept 20,000 or 200,000 kids who love it, it’s that Princeton, in accepting 2,000 kids or so, doesn’t necessarily accept 2,000 kids who love it. Yet.</p>
<p>This is in response to the people complaining about students who apply to colleges they don’t love, and “take places” from applicants who desperately want those colleges. The colleges encourage that, because they don’t want a class with identical tastes coming in, they want to pick and choose from among the best students, period.</p>
<p>It’s common to see kids complaining “I wanted to go to X, and I got waitlisted. I got into Y where my best friend wanted to go, and she got turned down there. But she’s in at X.” That may not be random; that may be deliberate. Both X and Y want people in their classes that aren’t obvious fits with X or Y, respectively. Or, put another way, I would guess that a strong student who is highly intellectual, interested in musical theater, and obviously never goes outdoors unless forced to, is much more likely to be accepted at no-fit Dartmouth than at perfect-fit Yale.</p>
<p>rodney: I have very limited sympathy for the kid who wrote that op-ed. If the waiting is the hardest part, and she wants finality, it’s completely in her power to walk away. If she isn’t walking away, it’s because she would rather hold on to what’s effectively a lottery ticket and a little ember of hope. Fine, but stop whining.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the number of schools a kid applies to relates rationally to the *kind *of school he’d like to attend. If he’d like to attend a highly selective school, then it’s sensible to apply to more than two or three. As you can readily see on CC, there aren’t that many students who get accepted to six Ivies and similar schools–it’s much more common for them to get into one or two (or none, of course) and be rejected or waitlisted at others.</p>
<p>Also, in looking at this stat from Vanderbilt as an example:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Fewer than half of those offered a spot on the list took it–you have to suppose that all those people who declined the list took it as a compliment and moved on. For those who stayed on the list, I can’t see any downside other than the psychological one. While that’s real, it seems to me that the answer to that is education and information about what the waiting list really means.</p>
<p>“Or, put another way, I would guess that a strong student who is highly intellectual, interested in musical theater, and obviously never goes outdoors unless forced to, is much more likely to be accepted at no-fit Dartmouth than at perfect-fit Yale.”</p>
<p>This is a really insightful comment. I’m sure it has some validity to it.</p>
<p>I know this has been discussed, but it’s really a no-brainer for every private college, minimum, to have an EA option. This enables FA students to apply without anxiety as well. Before you throw off that idea as not making an appreciable difference, anecdotal data here on CC at minimum would dispute that. When an EA (or SCEA) school is a reach school, for example (or high match), most students seriously begin reducing their lists. If you have a “lock” on one school that you can easily see yourself at, that is not a compromise to your academic needs, goals, and other kinds of fit, there is no need to apply to 14 other schools. You can, and hopefully, will, limit yourself to other similar schools which you may need to apply to for FA reasons, and which (hopefully having done the research about this) you can reasonably expect will provide similar FA offers. (At the point of EA acceptance, the focus of your list switches to FA-competitive schools, assuming that the EA school has at least academic competitiveness as a feature.)</p>
<p>I agree with epiphany. My son applied EA, and while he didn’t hold his other apps until the EA decision, he withdrew all of them after the EA acceptance. If more schools had EA, it would simplify the process.</p>
<p>Post 146:
Ditto here. List switched from 12 to 10 to four (including the EA). Four reaches, so that she could compare 4 different campus cultures if need be with visits/re-visits, and four possibly different-enough FA offers. And we needed the max in terms of FA offers.</p>
<p>A few posters have placed responsibility on the guidance counselors - saying that we should limit the number of applications students send out. Again - we cannot do that legally - we’d be sued in a heartbeat. You have no idea how demanding some of the parents we deal with are. If their kid wants to apply to 20 schools to be sure he gets a prestigious admit, than that is what they are going to do. Believe me, we have no say in the matter. If we did, I assure you there would be some limits in place.</p>
<p>Agreed that if there had been an EA option at ds’s most desired schools (desired for academics and good FA), he would have applied to fewer. As it is, he applied RD to one school, it moved him into the EA round and took him. This is a school we hadn’t yet visited and was not known for good merit aid, so the EA acceptance really had no effect.</p>
<p>I’m with youdon’tsay. A diverse list of schools does not necessarily imply a lack of research or hyper-focus on rankings. Much is made on CC of the urban-rural distinction, for example. For neither of my kids was that an important factor unless it was a true extreme (eg. the school in the town whose only excitement is the Wed. farmer’s market). Some kids just aren’t that picky about location, weather, architecture, etc. My son wanted strong academics and to feel that he’d like the students at the school. He thought he’d prefer an urban environment, though, but ultimately was not accepted by the urban schools anyway so luckily he didn’t limit his list based on that criterion. (The JHS principle at work perhaps?)</p>
<p>I also agree that asking a student to limit applications can backfire because of how that student can change so much between the time that list is complied and April of senior year. And sometimes our kids make surprise decisions that don’t line up with their stated preferences. So either they changed their minds about what they wanted, or else there was some je ne sais quoi element that grabbed them about a certain school, and suddenly the other details mattered less. Having a good number of choices allowed for this “miracle” to happen. That happened to my D; she did not end up choosing the school that matched her preferences best on paper.</p>
<p>This is simply nonsense. My kid applied to 11 schools, all of which appealed to him for different reasons. He was WL by 2, rejected by 4 (at least one of which was less selective than all that accepted or WLed him), and accepted by 5. The FA offers varied by over $20K. The FA from his safety was so low that it was laughable.</p>
<p>If he had applied to 4 schools there is an excellent chance that he would either have been rejected everywhere, or that he wouldn’t have gotten enough FA to go. </p>
<p>Draconian pronouncements of this type are all very good if you have $200K in your picket per child, and a kid who would be perfectly happy to go to your local branch of the state U.</p>
<p>In fact, it is very unwise of a kid to narrow their focus to just a few schools, especially when most of those schools accept fewer than 20% of applicants.</p>
<p>BTW, if S could have applied to a few schools EA, he very likely would not have applied to 11 schools. But his #1 choice was SCEA, and he applied on those terms, so other EA apps were out of the question. (And no, there was no reasonable financial safety with rolling admissions.)</p>
<p>rockvillemom: “A few posters have placed responsibility on the guidance counselors - saying that we should limit the number of applications students send out. Again - we cannot do that legally - we’d be sued in a heartbeat. You have no idea how demanding some of the parents we deal with are.”</p>
<p>It’s not just demanding parents. In some states, such as New York, there are state laws that prohibit high school’s from limiting the number of colleges a student applies to. </p>
<p>I think Consolation hit it the nail on the head: Students are applying to more colleges these days because financial aid offers are all over the place. In my family’s case, my daughter applied to 11 colleges, and was accepted to 9 of them. However, the financial aid offers varied by more than $34,000 a year. That’s why students are applying to so many schools – everyone is following the money!</p>
<p>Anyway, why should a counselor have the right to limit applications, even if that were desirable? Should they also be able to limit the number of jobs a student applies for? Counselors’ authority begins and ends at the school’s front door; their job is to help students achieve their educational goals, not limit them.</p>
<p>I agree, although I do sympathize with any kid who didn’t achieve the expected results - it’s hard at any age, especially when you’re young.</p>
<p>The general tone of this thread is that the college waitlists are disingenuous. How is it any different from an applicant applying to 15 colleges or more? Both strategies aim to maximize results. I don’t see any problem with either side, as long as that’s how the game is going to be played.</p>
<p>This is perfectly true. I’m sure it sometimes happens. But so what? If the student who once thought s/he “really, really wants to go school A” but has now bonded with school B and isn’t willing to drop school B and go to school A after getting off school A’s waitlist, then that kid didn’t really, really want to go there as bad as s/he once thought. Circumstances have changed and School B looks like the better choice now, and that’s where s/he is going. </p>
<p>Counselors need to *counsel *students. That’s why they’re called counselors.</p>
<p>You all are missing my point.</p>
<p>If counselors were doing their jobs, they would be counseling students on appropriate schools. If your counselor doesn’t know his/her head from his/her elbow, s/he is in the wrong job. It’s difficult for me to believe that 15 schools is “right”.</p>
<p>And for those of you saying “but my kid has changed majors and desires since last August, that’s why s/he applied to 15 schools”, well, why stop there? S/he’ll change a dozen more times through sophomore year. Why not apply to 45 schools, 15 each year (as a transfer), “just in case” s/he changes his/her mind?</p>
<p>If you go with the argument “my my son MUST apply to 15 schools because there’s a financial factor thrown in”, then your son should be focusing on financial safeties.</p>
<p>Finally, if you all can’t see that applying to 15 schools is perpetuating the waitlist dilemma, then knock yourselves out. Apply to 30 or 40, and whine away when your son or daughter is placed on 25 or 35 waitlists. I’m sorry, but I just have no sympathy here.</p>
<p>Just like the writer in the Times op-ed, if you don’t like the waitlist, whining about it won’t get you any further. Go forth with an acceptance (which, presumably you LOVE, because you applied there!) and don’t look back.</p>
<p>^^ I’m sorry, I know I’m being harsh in my posts. I’m not trying to be harsh, but the waitlist whining gets out of hand, and I think it can be avoided by merely taking control of the situation.</p>
<p>I don’t believe waitlistees are the victims they are made out to be. And I don’t think college waitlists are the second coming of The Devil.</p>
<p>Okay, I think I’ve spoken my peace. I’ll stop on this topic. :)</p>
<p>I heartily concur with epiphany’s post #145, (but would note that many on cc have been against early admissions in general, including EA). Indeed, reflect back on all the props that were thrown towards Harvard when it dropped EA.</p>
<p>Comprehensive reform is what is needed:
(1) Early application and notification options (EA, EDI & EDII with FA escape clauses)
(2) Possible match systems with participating consortia
(3) FA transparency, predictability, and some way of ‘standardizing’ or making this “platformed,” so that college lists can be created with levels of funding in mind.
(4) When the above, possibly placing limits on the # of Common Apps.
(5) A sense of responsibility from students as to which schools are suitable and mutually fitting, which are not.
(6) Responsible adults reducing the lottery mania and guiding the students toward responsible decisions.</p>
<p>All parties have a part in creating this and sustaining W/L’s, and all parties have a role in reducing it, i.m.o.</p>
<p>I’m kin of with healb…I also am a huge fan of EA. The college admission process lasts a year or more and that is just too long. Have the kids get their apps in, get decisions, make a choice in December and return senior year to an academic year instead of one long march to college or flip it around and have no colleges accept applications until December and get it over by April. Shorten the cycle and limit the apps to 10 would “cure” many of the problems.</p>