The application for one school my daughter is applying to asks for a list of the other schools she has, or will, apply to. Is there any advantage or disadvantage to saying “none” or listing some other schools? (The true and correct answer right now would be “none, but almost certainly some, if I ever get off my butt and write some essays, and if you don’t come through with a ‘yes’ and a whole bunch of academic money,” but that’s not one of the choices. 
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the conventional wisdom is 1) it’s unethical to ask 2) but what choice do you have besides look obstinate? 3) list a few schools of lesser “prestige” than the target school – leaving the impression that it’s the most prestigious and your kiddo would definitely attend if offered.
I call it constructive omission. It’s none of their d**m business, to be frank.
Well, that wouldn’t be hard, since it’s probably true in this case.
Your reaction is the same as mine; I guess my real question is, what are they going to do with this information anyway?
Does the school in question use “level of applicant’s interest” in admissions? (See its common data set, section C7, or the admissions tab on its entry on http://www.collegedata.com .)
If so, then that school is trying to find out if the applicant is using it as a “safety” (i.e. if the list of other colleges is made of those more selective than the school in question), so that it can reject or waitlist the applicant based on the assumption that the applicant will be admitted elsewhere and attend elsewhere.
On the other hand, if the list only includes other schools generally seen as “less desirable”, the school in question may decide that the applicant is not worth offering merit scholarships (or preferentially packaged financial aid) to, since s/he will attend anyway.
If it’s possible to do so, I think I’d have her put “undecided at this time” or something along those lines.
@ucbalumnus, according to collegedata.com, level of interest is “considered.” (I note that GPA is “very important” and test scores are “important,” which should work in her favor. Thanks for the suggestion to look there.) It’s definitely not a safety for her; it’s likely the most selective school she will apply to.
It may be unethical, but Rice definitely asks this question and then also has the student sign at the end that all of the information in the application is truthful. This makes the analysis more complicated for us since my son knows most of his list (at least with respect to his reach schools). I think they’re clearly fishing for information regarding whether they are being used as a backup option. My son will be listing all of his schools, several of which are what I would call equivalent highly-selective schools (e.g., Hopkins, Northwestern). Who knows what they’ll do with that information, but I was pretty ticked when I saw the question. If I didn’t think that the school would be a really good fit for my kid, I’d tell him not to apply on general principle.
Also keep in mind that there used to be an issue with the FAFSA revealing the names of schools also being given access to the form – they’ve talked about fixing this ridiculous breach of privacy, but I don’t know that they actually did it. Saying “undecided” if you apply on the early side would be much safer than providing a partial list and having them see a different list elsewhere.
I have an option to use the Common App for this school instead - do the Common App schools see which others are on the application?
In the CommonApp, there is no place where you have to list the other schools you are applying to. However, the school may ask that in its supplemental questions.
I had my son list peer schools to the school that was asking. In other words, we let them know that he was interested in schools that they considered to be their biggest competitors. The schools he listed were all colleges he was planning to apply to so the ‘fudging’ was just in not mentioning the more selective and safety schools. We talked about including one statistical high reach on the list, don’t remember what he decided to do on that.
The college that asked was a Common App school. The question was simply listed in the school supplement area. So you probably won’t avoid it there.
FWIW, he was accepted to that school with a nice merit offer to boot.
I don’t think so. I think how colleges access FAFSA information is different from how the Common App uploads applications. I think there are a number of threads on CC about the FAFSA issue (essentially, all schools could/can see the student’s list of who should get the form or at least the first 10 entries), but I’ve never seen anything to suggest that the Common App.releases any information beyond the actual application. The Rice question is in its supplement to the Common App., so you would need to see whether your school has its own supplement to the Common App. that might still ask that question.
Is there a way to see that before submitting the Common App?
Also: Is there seriously no auto-quote function here?
I am 90% sure that FAFSA has fixed the issue with other schools being able to see who else is listed on FAFSA. I’ll see if I can find the thread on that.
Re FAFSA, colleges can no longer see what other schools kids are applying to.
When FAFSA school lists were shown to colleges, some colleges interpreted the order of listing as the applicant’s preference order; schools that used “level of applicant’s interest” may have taken the relative position of themselves in the list into account.