Well, just reading posts above, many of these kids apply to schools that they basically have zero chance of getting in through ED as they are looking up, not leveling.
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I actually just read the other day, a kid state that he was a CEO of something when listing his stats for an acceptance. I could only laugh and roll my eyes and wonder how he got in with that on his app. A made up title for a self-created (mommy and daddy funded? Non-profit no doubt because there was no description at all of what it was that a teenager could possibly be a CEO for)
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DD23 has made her choice, and itâs one we are all happy with. However, sheâs stopped checking her portal and she has 4 decisions left (2 last Friday, 2 this week). I guess she doesnât want to invite more stress and I donât want to force this issue, but it seems at some point, she should check.
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I agree with almost everything hereâŠexcept perhaps the, âWe should know better,â part. If a parent comes on here in spring of junior year or fall of senior year, then they will certainly hear about what the realities of college really looks like. For those families, I agree with you, the parents should know better and are leading their kids into a lot of potentially avoidable disappointment.
But for families who trust their high schools (most of which have very limited resources for college advising), or their recollection of what the college application process was like for them 20-30+ years back, or who didnât attend college and just donât know what they donât know (and may well not have the time to find out, particularly if theyâre working multiple jobs), itâs a different case. If you see that a schoolâs SAT range is 1500-1550 and your kid has a 1580 and a 4.0 UW GPA, then you think that odds are, your kid is going to get in, even if the admission rate is 5%. After all, how many kids have stats like yours? But most people donât realize that when you start thinking about all of the high schools in this country times the number of top students and great ECs and high test scores that the pool ends up being very big for a very small number of slots. And that doesnât even begin to cover the realization that there is a large number of families in the top 1% who are willing and able to fill large numbers of the slots at these schools that all âmeet needâ and donât advertise the part that theyâre need aware.
@roycroftmom recently shared an article about Brownâs applicant pool and how it compares to other Ivies. I think that if more families (adults and students) saw graphs like these, they might have a better sense of their chances.
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Not necessarily. We got one acceptance and my notes from when I did the NPC predicted 26-33k COA. Their offer gave us a $28k COA. Another one she got into the NPC was about 30k. Their offer came in at 41k. Both meets needs. Canât do 41k. But I donât call that mis-planning on my part.
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Itâs misplanning in this sense - EVERYONE should have a guaranteed financial safety that worst case would be totally acceptable to them.
You (if I remember correctly) had Alabama.
So if the NPCs were off (and they often are) - perhaps in part due to the online calculation or they canât dig deep enough like a CSS.
So if you didnât have a school you can afford, you did have Alabama. Now, your student wonât look at Bama and so maybe that was the wrong app. Maybe it should have been UAH or Western Carolina or Southern Illinois or Truman State or Arizona or wherever.
But for someone who needs aid, itâs - in my opinion - a mistake if you donât have a financially assured safety - that youâd be ok attending.
So thatâs two things - Iâll repeat in list form:
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A safety you can afford
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Iâd be glad to attend - this is the part thatâs most often overlooked.
So I would say that someone who didnât have #1 and #2 did mis plan. If I recall, you had #1 (Bama) but not #2.
Thanks
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Thank you so much for that response! Not every HS guidance counselor is doing more than just signing off on student selections and directing kids to Niche. We had no counseling or education on ED, no college coach. I stumbled upon this site after my D23 already sent apps. But we are sharing our experiences with others to help them navigate future years - best thing we can do now. Letâs all do that!
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âIf you can, please name the FASFA only school. I am looking for them.â
If the school isnât listed as a CSS Participating Institution (you can easily look those up on the College Board CSS section) they are FASFA only. The majority of colleges and universities do not require CSS.
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Not necessarily true on the self-assessment part. I know itâs hard for some CC posters to believe but not every top kid aspires to HYPSM.
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We had some that did not use the CSS but then had a separate, college-specific financial aid formâŠthat was essentially just the main questions from the CSS (house equity, investments, other sources of income). 
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Thatâs an interesting suggestion (follow schools on social media to glean information about institutional priorities). I have to try it for my younger kids. Iâm not big into social media, but maybe I will now.
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Unfortunately, there are many parents (I know some IRL as well as have seen here on CC) who think the information they read doesnât apply to their special kid. 
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I find this person every day in the mirror
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If your daughter is more interested in Hamilton than her other admits, you might be able to get Hamilton to match the other offers. They definitely consider Colgate to a be a peer institution, so showing them the other offer might move their FA office to make adjustments.
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Always great advice⊠thank you. I have appreciated your realistic, pragmatic guidance. I will share what worked for my S23, so maybe it will help others if they still have kiddos to go in the process.
We treated safeties and matches with the utmost importance.
S23 is 3.8 uw, 33 ACT, 7 APâs, white male, varsity athlete, good music ECâs, from a small private school. âAverage excellentâ in every way. So I was worriedâŠ
One we developed a balanced list, we decided demonstrated interest was going to be our strategy. It seemed to us, that other than Institutional priorities, Yield was extremely important to colleges with SO many kids applying to SO many schools.
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We looked up online what the respective admission counsellors looked like, got their names & read about them.
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We scheduled official visits at each match and safety school. We emailed the admissions officer that we were coming⊠sometimes with a question⊠and that we looked forward to meeting them.
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We sought them out at the visit. We had a prepared question. We introduced ourselves, tried to share some personal, memorable things, so maybe they would remember son when reading app. Tried to make a connection. We followed up after the visit with an email and what son liked about the school, how excited he was about school X, and how he intended to apply EA and hoped they would enjoy reading his app.
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If the admission counselor was not there at the visit and we did not get to meet, we followed up with an email of all things he liked and how excited he was to apply to school X.
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Some schools if we liked them and they stayed on the list, we visited twice. We did all day events if available during junior Spring, Summer before senior year or Fall of senior year. Some of the communication listed above was done around the second visit,⊠and we told them that we loved it so much that we had to come back.
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We also signed up to receive schools email & did tons of virtual events.
I know this seems like overkill, but it worked for my son to the EA schools where he applied. He went 4/4 on match & safeties where he did this. And 2/3 on low reaches where he did this.
The schools on his list that he did not do this demonstrated interest, he got deferred.
I think applying alone is not enough anymore.
It also got my son excited about these schools⊠showing all this interest.
Visit match and safeties first.
My heart goes out to all of you in this current cycle. Maybe this will help someone in the future.
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This idea seems to exist in some fantasy world where you can control how your kids feel. If anyone has a magic solution to guarantee how their kids feel, why have you not marketed it and become the richest person in the world by now?
Again, every kid is different â they are born different, they are exposed to different stimuli, they react differently to it. Some many love their safeties. Some, you can do all the careful planning, research, expectation setting in the world, and they may be disappointed with every single safety that exists. Thatâs not poor planning, thatâs reality. Itâs awesome great fortune for the parents who have the kids who love their safeties. But terribly unfair to condemn the parents who donât have those kids of being responsible for their disappointment.
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I agree that condemning parents is unwarranted, but I think the truth is somewhere in between the two stances. Parents can help guide expectations to some extent. Of course not just with college stuff. With success and failure in general in life. Try your best, and donât take the result to heart. The inability to handle failure also limits your capacity to take risk, and indeed limits your long term upside.
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@civitas, thanks for your response. It may be fantasy or it may not be.
Some kids have safeties that are inexpensive because mom and dad said you have to add them. There was one parent - I think @AnonMomof2 but maybe a different one - that added Bama to their schoolâs list due it itâs largesse in merit. But the kid went along because they had too.
But there are other strong merit schools too. Itâs not just Bama although they seem to come up due to their national footprint.
You are right - if a kid is hooked on a name then no matter what the school it might never get the kidâs buy in. There are some kids who think they should go to MIT or Cal Tech and they might as well wait another year and try again before they go to RPI or a local school.
My point here is not to condemn - but to warn parents - they need to 100% assure their kids have a place to go - that wonât financially strangle the family.
And if kids start with visits to these schools - some of which are frankly gorgeous - rather than visits to the reaches - they have a fighting chance.
To many apply to highly rejective schools and they are the only ones they visit. They throw all their eggs in one basket.
We cannot cure this past cycle (well we can if people are open as there are still auto merit schools taking apps til May 1st, etc.).
But we can give warning to next yearâs posters.
The last thing Iâll add is - weâve all read hundreds of messages that say something like - my kid couldnât go to their top choice (for whever the reason - money, admittance, etc.) - but now that they are where they are, they could never see themselves anywhere else.
So for this who canât get to the top choice - donât despair. A student can be happy in many places.
No condemnation - but yes, I do believe there is a strategy related to optimal planning - and I too am learning some after the fact.
Empathy is nice - but the reality is, most of what I read happened due to poor planning.
I think it may also be that we see our own little bubble not realizing what exists outside that bubble. Your kid may be one of a handful of kids at THEIR school to achieve certain academic goals or captain a team or start a club. The reality is there are thousands of kids like that and then some.
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The process usually doesnât start in 11th grade. Parents would have pointed these schools to kid when they were in middle school to motivate them to study harder. And they have served their purpose in this way. Now the kids canât become suddenly detached from these long emotional associations. This is what they call a dynamic programming problem :-).
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