Parents naturally think their kids are special. Why shouldn’t they? The opaque process of college admissions is as much responsible for their (and their kids’) disappointment as their own high expectations. In the absence of greater degree of transparency, the common advice disseminated on CC that “they should be happy with their safeties” is going to ring hollow to many of them.
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Let me flip that on you, though: Why in the world {sh,w}ould anyone be unhappy with their safeties?
Serious question.
Many are, of course—we see that every day here on CC. But why exactly is that?
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Agreed. I googled:
How many high schools in the US
How many valedictorians in US
How many kids had equivalent or better ACT scores than my son
How many spots available for the schools on his list
How many kids from our state/region did each school accept (roughly)
How many kids have 4.0
*** I made my son look at all these stats & more. Kids in general, do not have a good perspective on this.
It made my son grateful for every acceptance he received.
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Happiness is a continuum. They shouldn’t be unhappy with the safeties they’ve chosen, but that doesn’t mean they would be happy with the outcomes.
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Sure, but sometimes decent kids utterly ignore their parents guidance – sometimes they are destined to learn the hard way, just as most of us did on something that in hindsight we ignored guidance on. Sometimes they kids aren’t even able to control their feelings if they wanted to (adults too for that matter). Sometimes kids are in self-denial. Etc.
It’s obviously prudent to try and guide your children and helpful to set expectations. But sometimes it is out of your control.
This is our third college admission rodeo. I’ve been on this forum for at least 8+ years. I’m more informed than the average parent about this process (though not more than many here). By the time we got the #3, I was all about expectation setting and could see to my frustration that it was mostly useless. #3 has always marched to his own drum, always been the least likely to heed advice and only take his own counsel, from the time he was 2. And he’s unfortunately surrounded by peers at his public HS getting into reach schools that he insists is a more relevant data point than his parents.
We very briefly hired a college counselor (which we had never done with the others) with the specific goal of hoping he would accept their expertise more than ours and gave the person the goal of steering him more toward safeties and targets – that’s all we wanted from them. It didn’t work – all he did was add a couple more reaches to an already reach-centric list (and the counselor gave him the impression clear reaches were targets for him). We didn’t tour a single reach school, we spent tons of effort suggesting different kinds of safeties – dozens and dozens, researched based on strengths in his specific areas of interest. Etc.
Despite all that he ended up with just 2 sort-of-safeties on his list, including our state flagship which has a 50-something acceptance rate so not a true safety (but based on thousands of data points for his school in Naviance would have been unprecedented if he didn’t get accepted). The other (also 50-something rate) was one we insisted on adding because they sometimes gave full tuition merit awards for NM, though he was never interested in it.
And zero true targets, unless you count things like CWRU, UCI, etc. anyone’s target, which I don’t.
And a bunch of reaches and super-reaches.
I’ve set expectations for months he would likely end up at the state flagship – which is a perfectly good school, even if a little too focused on athletics. He said he would be okay with that, but I know him enough to know it wasn’t true – he was saying it just to tell us what we wanted to hear. Which was demonstrated as soon as he did get into one of his top choice reaches and admitted he would have been disappointed with the flagship.
So our story has a happy ending – he’s been getting into multiple reaches. But another family with a kid with similar stats and accomplishments might have had a different result. Too many definitely have, and its heartbreaking. Even in hindsight don’t think I could have done anything more to guide and set expectations. My wife told me she was shocked when he started getting into reaches because I had convinced her would only get into the safeties based on how often I had said to expect it and how many examples I had given her of high stat kids who were shut out of their targets and reaches.
I’m sure there are some parents who contribute to setting their kids expectations too high. But I’m equally sure there are some who are doing everything they can to steer them conservatively and still can’t avoid the heartbreak.
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My kid got me giddy - she told me she was going to Harvard on a full ride - like in 7th grade.
I missed the part where I had to be dirt poor to go there on a full ride - lest many of the other requirements.
I get your point.
But for planning purposes - maybe if someone is on a road trip in 9th grade, they can find the nicest, easiest to get into campus nearby and go visit.
My point really is - when it comes time to make a list - better planning has to happen. That’s really it.
Maybe it’s fantasy - but I don’t think so. I think it’s preparation, going over data, budgets, and realism. Someone pointed out on here that 15% of Tulsa’s class is NMF- - and we see which schools have the most NMFs. If I had a smart kid, i’d be using that data - to show smart kids go EVERYWHERE (at least flagship wise).
There are ways.
I loved the post from @mtnsun13 a few above. I need them to teach me how to use linkedin because I can already tell that either he/she or their kid is going to be a great networker in life. They played the sales game (remember, everyone is in sales - the product is you) - and they played it very well it seems.
And that skillset will take them far in life.
Just like it took them far in the college process…I mean, we cant’ know for sure but it certainly seems so.
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I would have looked up - how many don’t have a 4.0.
It seems with grade inflation, that would seem easier to find 
Damn - I was born 30 years too early.
Right, but why?
If you’ve got a place you can both afford and thrive (considering a financially difficult outcome not a true safety), why be unhappy with the outcome?
After all these years, I still completely don’t get it.
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Agreed -
but for some it’s some of the same reasons someone lights up when they buy their first Benz or BMW, etc. whereas they took the Toyota or Nissan or Chevy for granted - with a yawn.
Why does Louis Vuitton collect a premium over a bag you can buy at Target. Don’t they do the same thing?
But for some, it’s all about the appearance.
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But do you think they are that much more special than other kids applying to the same schools? I guess this is where I differ. My kids were strong students with strong applications but I assumed that the vast majority of people in the pool with them are also strong students with strong applications. We operated on the assumption that they were as likely to get in as to get rejected - even at the schools with higher acceptance rates.
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My kid set my expectations.
I utterly ignored them.
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Absolutely! We googled all kinds of stats. I MADE him sit down with me, and we googled it together. He was not going to take my word for it. It made him realize that it is a big world out there.
He is an athlete. So we approached it as a game.
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We did zero planning. Not sure it is absolutely necessary. Kid does whatever he can over the years. And in junior spring you sit down and figure out what is possible give what was done. In some ways this puts the college discussion away until Junior spring which is a healthy way of dealing with the situation.
Then you do one safety, 2-3 targets, and the rest reaches. Mabe 4-5 targets in some cases. This is a judgment call. Also EA/ED is a judgment call.
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By definition, a safety is their last choice. As I said, they shouldn’t be unhappy, but few are truly happy with their last choice because they clearly favor their other choices.
The problem is they don’t know, and indeed no one knows, in an opaque process.
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Your judgement was right.
Many are not.
You knew more than you think.
And your kid goes to Princeton - he’s not the norm.
Your second one worked out too. But you had a list that would work if the top choices didn’t work out. And as I recall they didn’t.
So you planned more than you think. You have innate knowledge others do need to acquire.
All cases are different of course. Hopefully most searches work out fine.
It’s the ones that don’t - and looking from the outside, one can understand why.
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In some cases you have an relatively more objective measure of the kids’ strength. So yes. If your school has a track record of placing x kids into school a, and y kids into school b etc, on a relatively regular basis, year-in and year-out, and you compare your kid with other kids inside the school, then you have a decent idea. You don’t need to compare your kid with the amorphous national pool.
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Why do you say that? My kid loved the safety that he picked and became quite attached to it during the process. He recently trimmed down his list of final contenders to just a few, and we all felt sad to see the safety crossed off the list. Emotionally, letting go of the safety was a more difficult moment for our family than when his former #1 reach school deferred and then denied him.
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We have one day to visit both. Have not been to either. Unfortunately their admitted student tours are at the same time so will do Hamilton as a self tour. She has no preference now without having visited. If she prefers Hamilton we will see if we can negotiate. I just don’t know how that works for all 4 years when CSS has to be done every year. Afraid they wouldn’t continue beyond year one. She’s really not that picky despite not wanting to go to Bama. That was me making her apply to what I knew would be a financial safety when I couldn’t get her to do any research. She is planning to apply for an RA position wherever she goes so will hopefully be able to make up a bit of the cost difference.
She’s a flexible kid, and not emotionally attached to any school, which I think is a good thing. Heck she moved to a Boarding School 9 hours away Jr. year site unseen and loves it. She didn’t even do all of the virtual events prior to deciding to go there.
I missed that.
Yeah many choose safeties. Both mine did. First choice.
A safety is not a last choice in all cases.
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