It’s going to be interesting to see how the tech downturn affects college choices here in Silicon Valley. When my older kids graduated HS in 2018, plenty of parents were prepared to pay up for OOS and private colleges. Average kids who couldn’t get into UCs or who looked down on Riverside and Merced ended up at Oregon or CU Boulder. And great kids who could have gone to UCB or UCLA paid up for Cornell or Georgetown instead.
Now it seems there’s more cost consciousness, and I expect more families to choose UCs, CSUs or community college this year. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see over-enrollment and housing challenges this fall. After all, two neighbors at big tech companies have been laid off in the last 10 days, and for those who haven’t, their stock grants aren’t worth as much any more.
I think we really need to start pushing a re-definition of what is an “undesirable” school. To me an undesirable school is one that isn’t accredited, and/or does not offer the programs you want to study and/or requires going into massive amounts of debt.
I think it’s fine to apply to reaches, in fact I encourage it, but people ought to not feel ashamed that they “only” got into the local state university even though they are top 10% in their class. If that state university is accredited, has the programs they want to study and is affordable, chances are they have really good students going there and some pretty cool professors and research opportunities as well.
My mom was insistent that my daughter apply to Yale and it was driving my daughter crazy. I finally got so annoyed that I took a screenshot of Yale’s Naviance page with all the red X’s and showed it to her. After that she stopped.
Well said. Unfortunately, we see this at our small private school. Every year an “average excellent” kid gets shut out due to the lack of a realistic understanding of the current college application environment… despite others trying to educate them.
I’m curious about your use of “competitive” here. It seems like it’s a synonym for “scores high on standardized tests”. But that’s not the entirety of what “competitive” means at any schools that use holistic evaluation for admissions and/or merit aid, which is most schools.
I do agree that it would be nice if students didn’t apply to so many schools, especially highly rejective ones. One thing that could fix that is better targeting of students/apps to schools that are likely admits and good fits for students. A big part of that process is having the viewpoint that those schools are great options and are not undesirable.
My spouse was a valedictorian in California, well before test-optional policies. They were also surprised about how much the UC schools cost, and that it was cheapest for them to attend a not-highly-ranked SLAC. I wouldn’t call it “undesirable”. They got a fantastic education at that middling SLAC and went on to get a PhD. Funny enough, I think it might have been their not-awesome SAT scores that prevented them from getting more merit aid at more “desirable” schools. They likely would have fared better with modern TO policies.
I wasn’t going to go there. LOL! But yes, students at my kid’s current high school getting 24 and 25 on ACTs, not submitting scores, and getting accepted to UVA. UVA would not have looked at them four years ago, when scores were required. Good or bad, that is just what it is.
A local valedictorian I know got in nowhere they applied. Completely shut out. Ended up at UC Merced because of the UC ELC guarantee. Not everyone would agree with me, but at this point in time, yes, I would consider UC Merced undesirable. I wouldn’t spend 150k to have my kid go there. My son also qualifies as ELC, but we don’t really consider Merced a viable back up, so we made sure to apply to out of state schools as well in case things go south in March.
This area can be tough on parents. It is what I like to call the ‘bs’ coming from a grandparent or even your own kid. It is like a game of telephone. A grandparent will tell you that they talked to such and such and that person said Sally Sue is going to this college or got a full-ride from that college. Or your kid talks to their classmates and Jimmy is definitely going to this expensive private school or Mary is going to this OOS flagship. You try to explain things to the grandparent or even your kid but no one wants to believe you. Then August rolls around the those kids in question end up going to totally different colleges.
I do think the worst part is when you do try to explain stuff or your reasoning why to a grandparent and they just don’t want to hear it or try to tell you that you are wrong. Yet you have done way more research and the grandparent hasn’t looked at a college website in years.
I agree with @DadBodThor that the bigger issue is what schools are regarded as “undesirable”. As I mentioned above, back in 2018, there was a tendency to look down on UCs compared to private and OOS options, and also sheer disbelief that people would opt for lower ranked schools with great merit. Hopefully that will change as money gets tight, but some parents who have already chosen to go private for high school might have a similar attitude about college.
My D18 chose a full ride at Utah over UCB and UCLA, Regents at other UCs and even merit at UT Austin, which many people simply couldn’t believe and were quite unpleasant to her at the end of senior year (especially given their preconceived notions about “red” states). But she knew that it was one of the top ballet programs in the country and that as a poor dancer, her 529 money would go a long way towards keeping her afloat after college.
In a lot of ways I think it would be better for everyone if applications were capped at like 8 or so (I’d say 6 really for 1 safety, 4 targets and 1 reach, but that might be too tight for most people). There’s no way to really enforce that, but it might slow down the yield protection and force kids to really think about where they are applying and why.
My Dd teacher (math and science) he quit his engineering job to teach- already told her class that there will be many lay offs and it prob will affect CS majors.
In the short term the bigger issue is that it will affect parents’ ability to pay for college in August. Those kids need to understand that what looked like a dream school in October might now be impossible to pay for.
I particularly worry about some students having to give up the ED choices they made in December if their parents get laid off in the next few months.
True. I also think that state universities should be tuition free for in-state residents (or rather funded by state tax dollars), so there’s always an option for every kid who wants to go to college. There should also be an option for technical trade schools as well.
It’s very true. My DD’s internship- one of the mentors told her just yesterday that he had to say no to his ED school - was way higher than what they expected cost wise based on their calculations. ED school released him from the agreement and he went to his state school which is a great engineering school. State school was the best option in the end for him- he got three major degrees - would have been very very expensive at a private school.
Those of you talking about people who sneer at your kid’s choices, I hear you! I was at an event talking to a woman 70+. She asked why 23 didn’t apply to this or that top 15-30 school.
I can’t believe how dense people are.
There would be two main reasons someone wouldn’t apply:
Can’t afford it
Doesn’t have the grades
A third would be “has no interest in the school.”
I didn’t know this woman and she probably wanted to hear herself talk more than she wanted to hear my answer. I came away from the conversation thinking she was rude.
I was VERY tempted to say, “Because I don’t have $350,000 to spend on college.” But I decided to be nice.
Community college is now tuition free in CA for anyone who completes a FAFSA. That’s a simple low cost option which far too many people ignore. And the reality is that even UC tuition is not that high, the main problem is the cost of living away from home in this state. This year instate tuition and fees at UVA is $18200, at UCLA it is $13800.
