My kid refused to accept any freebies at any of the schools we toured! Even when I pointed out that it they were free, she’d say, “Well, what if I don’t go here?” After some of the tours she was like “Glad I didn’t take the free shirt! I am definitely not going here!” lol!
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My son’s school (public) lists all the graduates and their post grad plans in the final newspaper. It’s opt in I think but all seem to do it, it lists military, trade schools, work and undecided as well as colleges (most go to college). I have no idea what my DD’s boarding school does, it’s her second year there. I have seen some Instagram posts of athletic commitments, and posts of kids congratulating friends (on commitment not acceptance).
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How would they even know where your kid applies to be able to limit it? My kid applied to 7 UCs and 3 Cal states which didn’t require a transcript or anything else from the counselor. For common app schools, they upload the transcript and school report once.
Our school does a big poster with the kids’ senior pictures and all the schools, military, etc… that stays up all year.
I don’t think that’s how it works, they need to send the letters of rec from teachers, letter from rec from counselor, and the transcripts. So you need the school for every app.
In any case every kid submits their list and discusses it and gets it approved.
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Yes, we are only 3 hours away and he has a soccer game that night. So it’s a worthwhile visit. Plus if he doesn’t get in, we can be there for support and discuss next steps.
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UCs and CSUs don’t require rec letters either. Nothing needed from school. For my son’s common app schools, the counselor and teacher recs and school report were just uploaded to common app once, then we assigned them to the schools. I just don’t see how a school would have any control over where or to how many schools a student applies.
Not many kids apply to UCs from our New England school. As to the rest, not sure what to tell you, we submit the list of schools through Scoir and the school does its part from there and they need to approve the list. Maybe there is a workaround and a kid in theory could just apply other places? Don’t think many would do that as you need the college counselors in your corner.
Yeah, I mean, in theory he could game the list, submit 20 schools and then submit outside Scoir to schools that don’t initially require official transcripts, and require nothing else before acceptance.
As it turned out, by the time he was still working on the first 20, he had some acceptances that meant he could discard others on his big list, so we didn’t get close to 20.
That doesn’t sound like gaming the system to me
The intent here is not to eliminate from your list those schools those schools that don’t require a LOR or transcript. I’m sure they really don’t care if you go rogue for those. It’s targeting the schools approach to top colleges in order to maximize their outcomes.
Exactly! So it is helpful and it pays to go along with the school.
Yikes! I feel like if a family is wiling and able to pay for application fees, they should be able to apply to any school they choose. Seems weird they need to approve the school.
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I’d like to hope my daughter is a good enough friend that she wouldn’t consider a friend “throwing it in her face” if they got into a school that she didn’t! Wow!
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I think you’ve missed or exaggerated the point. Simply gaining an acceptance at a school another student was denied was not suggested to be “throwing it in her face”. It’s about very public forms of celebration, not simply getting in.
In the age of social media, it seems reasonable to consider how such Instagrammable celebrations impact all our seniors. Some high pressure schools have to work extra hard to support their achievement-oriented student body through successes and failures; I applaud their efforts.
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And here I’m just trying to imagine the desire to apply to >20 colleges.
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Yeah, I thought it was crazy to apply to >20 colleges until my kid ended up doing just that. Since admissions is pretty unpredictable at our state schools (UCs and CSUs) he applied to a whole bunch of those. None of our in-state schools are good safety schools for him (highly likely admission AND sincere desire to attend)… so he needed a couple of OOS safety schools… and more than one of those, because of merit hunting. Then OOS non-safety schools, merit hunting. It added up to quite a few schools.
If we had only one or two state flagship schools, with highly likely admission and desire to attend, it would have been a different story.
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Well, you might recall, there were circumstances that made us worried about getting into any … 
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Same here, California can’t be counted on for desirable safeties. My D17 applied to 22 schools. 15 of those were Cal State’s and UCs. She ended up shut out of UCs, had great out of state options, ended up at Cal Poly slo. S23 applied to 7 UCs, 3 Cal States, and 3 out of state safeties. His list feels very sparse to me.
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For California residents, UC Eugene aka CSU Oregon is always an option. 
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Except it’s 57k a year and they don’t give financial aide to out of state applicants. 
One of my nephews went to U of O and loved it there, but it’s not exactly an affordable safety.
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