Thank you! Some websites are unclear but he’s called some of the colleges to double check the self-reporting policy and all (so far) are fine with self-reporting on the common app and they said they will ask for official scores upon admission and/or acceptance. So thinking maybe it’s just schools like Harvard or MIT who might require official scores immediately. This is great because it saves us money! Can’t recall how much it is to send scores but it adds up fast when you have 14 schools!
My son doesn’t really have reaches on his list. Maybe 1 could be considered a reach (Case Western), but the rest are equally split between safeties and targets. He 1) has no interest in the more annoying aspects of trying to attend elite schools, and 2) is chasing merit. He’s visited nearly all of the schools on his list and would be happy to attend any of them (tossed out a couple he didn’t like so much). He considered Notre Dame and liked his visit but decided it wasn’t worth applying.
I suspect many seniors nationwide leave off the reaches, but CC would skew more toward including reaches. I was surprised that my kid’s HS Naviance showed so many apps sent to famously elite schools (almost no acceptances). I’d guess that’s a US News kind of effect. And that the 1 or 2 kids who go HYPSM from his school every year make all the other kids think they have a shot. As is the case in many schools. But I noticed that there were hardly any apps to incredible schools that are less famous. The kids that applied to the less famous but high-ranked schools tend to get in (I suspect because they target them judiciously).
One of his (very smart) friends visited and is applying to a bunch of reaches. He has yet to hear of any less selective schools on his friend’s list 
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We have struggled with a balance of reach, target, safety. Being in California with a kid who wants to go to a big research university and stay close to home, he wants to go to a UC or cal poly. At this point I consider all the UCs reaches, cal poly a target, and everything else on his list a target or safety he doesn’t really want to attend. I will be so relieved when this process is over!
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Some people don’t get this. UNC-CH is possibly a likely for your student based on historical outcomes. UPenn was a likely for my D17 and her friends due to their circumstances and it’s a possible for my S23 only because of similar circumstances.
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For all those schools that have ED they know where they stand with you whether you ED to them or not. Possibly some of this ‘using them as a safety’ is expressed in ways that they do find important like fit and authenticity.
True, CC makes one forget that the modal number of places college-bound HS seniors apply to is one.
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It’s interesting to hear about friends’ college lists. We hear of some kids who are only applying to very reachy sounding schools, and the backup plan is a gap year. We also received that advice from some friends’ parents (“have him apply to the best schools, and if he doesn’t get in, he can take a gap year”).
Most of the friends seem to have a more balanced sounding list that is appropriately tailored to their interests, though. Whew.
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that gap year idea is such snobby advice. I am all in on gap years, IF that’s what a kid wants. But to do a gap year just because you didn’t get into the prestigious top whatever tier- that’s just buying into this broken system.
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I didn’t feel comfortable having any further discussion with these parents about the gap year backup plan, because even though the kids are friends of my kid, the parents are just acquaintances. But this advice definitely seems to be going around in some circles at our kids’ school. I don’t know how well it works for the kids and families, but I agree that it seems snobby. I got the feeling from my kid that he was wondering whether his safety and likely schools might not be worthy enough to attend, if other kids/families would prefer a gap year.
Most students who explicitly took a gap year in 2020 didn’t enroll in college the next year. (ETA: Reversing previous trends—but then again, a much higher proportion of students opted for a gap year in 2020 than in previous years.)
The much-discussed gap year often turns into gap years, if not a gap lifetime. That’s less likely for high-income individuals, but they aren’t immune to the effect.
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Accurate. I would not allow a gap year unless there were a really solid reason. All the kids I know who take a gap year end up not going back or struggling to go full time. I would be fine with my kids taking another path, law enforcement, military, etc… but not taking a year off with the plan to go to college later.
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My son considered applying to one Ivy or an extreme reach like U Chicago or Northwestern. But last year’s application/admission cycle rubbed us the wrong way. Seems they turned up the volume on marketing & had some questionable methods of increasing yield (waitlisting over-qualified candidates, etc.) Going test optional led to SO MANY more students applying than usual and I read too many heartbreak stories of tippy top kids getting rejection after rejection* even from some of the schools they deemed “safeties.” We just didn’t want to buy into the hype and figured the price tag would be too high anyway. To be honest, he did take a close look at some of those schools and they didn’t check enough boxes of what he wants in a school. He prefers a collaborative setting vs. competitive, many lacked diversity (at least lower than he thought it would be) and some just didn’t have the vibe he wanted. With the all the “extras” required to apply, he decided to pass. He is applying to Northeastern & Case Western which represent his “challenge” colleges and Fordham might be on that edge too, although I think he’s fine since they look highly on the National Hispanic Merit Scholar designation and even often a full tuition scholarship he can try for.
As far as gap years, I feel they can be great when done for the right reasons, but just because you were rejected from a big-name school and want to try again the next year (which, let’s face it, will be just as tough the second time!) is not a good reason to take a gap year IMO.
*I was on another college site last Spring and my heart broke for a mom who said her child was rejected from every college she applied to (7 total-all top 20 colleges.) She was reaching for the stars with her list, for sure, but she had near perfect stats and EC’s and they were even a full-pay family. Just devastating. She ended up scrambling to apply to and get into her state flagship, which she did, but was deflated, depressed and embarrassed as her friends all had several acceptances, albeit to lesser known schools.
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Our family thought a lot of the same stuff yours did re: applying to major reaches. There were multiple reasons that all added up to our son just not feeling it was worth it or like something he was really interested in. Since there were so many schools he was enthusiastic about, it wasn’t hard to drop the reaches off the list. But he’s going for engineering, where there are so many great places. I could see it being pretty different for a different kid or major, but it seems like my kid’s friends are either just applying to a couple of state schools, or are going gonzo on reaches. I wish they realized there’s a whole bunch of wonderful schools in between to consider more carefully!
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Well, it turns out this piece of advice, to use your SAR to input data into the CSS Profile, doesn’t work out that great for us! We used the IRS retrieval tool for our tax return, and for all the information the FAFSA got from that to it just says “Obtained with retrieval tool“ and doesn’t tell the actual numbers.
Looks like we are going to have to dig out the tax return and carefully and put those numbers in manually for the profile.
Oh yeah, that’s right. Bummer!
Luckily for us (or not) - last year our accountant had an ID theft situation that resulted in the IRS issuing all his clients PINs or something and because of this, last year was the first year the DRT didn’t work for us. So we actually have a visible FAFSA to crib off of, at least to get hints as to what numbers go where this year, since nothing’s really changed.
They don’t get in to the highly rejective schools they applied to, so they take a gap year, and then what??
Apply to the same schools and get rejected again…? (And then what…?)
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We have a family friend and their kiddo talks about doing a gap year, but there isn’t any plan behind it; we sense that it’s more about not having to make a decision about “what’s next.”
And I am certainly not one to say that everyone should go to college - there are so many fantastic paths to take! But I worry about kids blurting out “gap year” because for some it’s a socially cool option that can sometimes mask not being able to (or not wanting to) consider or decide what to do after June.
If asked, I try to encourage kids who are planning to attend college after a gap year to apply to college now while they’ve got the momentum and support network of school, and then defer for a year. Otherwise I do see situations where the gap year sometimes becomes too daunting for these kids to move through and beyond.
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My son hopes that the talk of “gap year” is just bravado, and that the friends actually have a more complete college list.
I agree about the gap year potentially becoming multiple gap years. I see that happening with my cousin’s son (currently on gap year without a plan for the next step).
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Even if you talked to the AOs at the schools listed above, they wouldn’t tell you that they do such a thing. 
It certainly happens, but often these students are hooked in some way.
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As acceptance rates at many schools continue to drop, more and more likelies are likely to become reaches. At some point, few would be able to distinguish them anyway.
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