Your account isn’t accepting any PMs, but if you’d like any help in looking for an ultimate safety, feel free to let me know what your D is looking for (either on this thread, on a new thread, or via PM).
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My two cents is the difference between a true safety and a very likely is often just definitional.
I think in the strictest sense, a true safety is one that guarantees admission if you meet certain criteria. My own feeling is not every kid needs to apply to such a school.
A very likely in the broad sense can include a school which does not make such a guarantee, but in the history of that high school and similar high schools across a very wide sample of students has never rejected a student with a certain set of qualifications.
But some people would say that latter is a practical safety too.
But then it becomes a line-drawing problem. Like, suppose the counselors know of an exception, but are confident they know why that was an exception. Very likely? Or still a safety? How many exceptions like that are allowed before it stops being a safety?
In the end, I personally do trust our counselors to guide us to a safe application list and process. Exactly what that means I think can vary by kid.
But that said, if you wanted to add another very likely, or indeed true safety school in the strict sense, I doubt our counselors would say you couldn’t.
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Totally redundant, in fact. I should have read ahead before posting.
This week was free application week for most of our instate schools. So, it was a long week but all in state apps are submitted.
Next week is our local college fair, we will pop in and just double check there is not another school out there that looks promising.
Current total is 2 acceptances.
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I agree with all of the above, but in my experience with D22’s BS and now her younger sister’s BS, the global perspective plays out differently than you describe. Sure, the college office wants everyone to have a home that they feel excited about and part of ensuring that outcome is maintaining really strong relationships with the colleges. I don’t think either school picks up the phone to call admissions offices (or at least they say that they don’t) so I don’t mean strong relationship as in a conspiracy or collusion sort of thing. I mean that the college advisors want the colleges to trust that only well-qualified, very good-fit students will apply from the BS and that they are likely to yield those kids if admitted. The office wants to avoid students applying to an EA school and then shopping around by applying to lots of other colleges. Their reasoning is that it creates bad blood with the college admissions offices and also within the child’s peer group/classmates. They want kids to apply early, and if admitted, attend that EA college so that college will continue admitting the BS’s students in high numbers.
This means that for all intents and purposes, early action functions almost as ED from my daughters’ boarding schools at least as far as colleges that notify before RD deadlines go. My D22 school strongly discouraged any of her classmates to put in additional applications post-admission to their EA school. The official rule was that if a student was admitted to an EA school, the student should not put in more than one or two additional applications after the student got the good news. In fact, students and parents were told that the preference was no more applications at all after an EA acceptance. The only exception to that 0-2 additional applications rule was for FA students who were admitted early to a college and the aid package was unaffordable. D22 actually broke the rule by applying to three more colleges despite having an affordable REA option, and the college office didn’t like it. D22 made the case to her advisor why in her circumstances that made a lot of sense to put in those three apps. But I got the sense that the advisor acquiesced due to some extenuating circumstances on D22’s part and without those circumstances, they would have pushed back even harder. Would they have refused to send her information or transcripts? I have a hard time believing that they would have gone that far.
That’s interesting. We have gotten nothing quite like that from our college counselors.
The somewhat similar thing we do get is the counselors encourage relatively modest-sized lists, and careful thought to which colleges fit really well such that they should be included on those lists. They very strongly discourage just shotgunning things like “T10s” or “Ivys” or anything like that.
That more or less automatically avoids the problem of too many kids applying to too many of the same schools. And I do think they steer kids to colleges where they think the kid can get full support from the high school, as opposed to the honest answer being something like, “Actually, we have five other people applying this year who are clearly better fits for you.” They really want to be able to say, “We have five people applying who we think are all great fits for you.”
But once that is all done, I have never heard them suggest we should somehow only apply to some of those schools non-binding EA. Of course if you apply REA, that might be a rule you have to follow. But otherwise, if the rules of the colleges allow you to apply to all 10 of your colleges EA, then fine, feel free.
Indeed, the way you are suggesting your school treats this, that they want kids to voluntarily treat non-binding EA as if it was actually binding ED, is really not something we have encountered. We treat ED as binding, EA as non-binding, and don’t try to make EA into ED.
I note REA is a bit different from normal EA. Again we have no such rules, but definitely it is usually expected that if a kid applies somewhere REA and is admitted, they will shut down the process at that point. But again, not as a rule. But the expectation is if the kid did a good job choosing their REA school, that would be the natural consequence in most cases.
By the way, it would be kinda interesting to see what a typical distribution of college lists looked like in our respective high schools.
I think for a variety of reasons, ours really end up very diverse. We don’t really have a strong regional focus; we have kids looking at different mixes of LACs, smaller universities, and larger universities; we have STEM kids, and very much not STEM kids; and so on. Combined with our overall size and the way our counselors guide the search phase, I don’t think overlap ends up a big problem.
I gather some feeder high schools might have a different pattern. Indeed, I have started calling our high school “feederish” because although we get kids into the most selective colleges at a multiple of normal rates, there really is not some particular short list of colleges where that happens. I mean, you can see how certain colleges seem to enroll a lot of our kids, at least over a period of years to build up a good sample. But that is still a long list, it is not exclusive of others which may be less common but still pretty regular, and a lot of that is very likely just self-selection.
Point being, I suspect the conditions necessary for this “EA is actually also ED” strategy may just not exist at our HS. But maybe they do at others.
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This sounds a lot like our high school, too. You could be describing the same place! A distribution list from different schools would be interesting to see.
I have some guesses about why some high schools would be one way or another, but it would really be speculation. So yeah, some sort of systematic study about college application diversity-or-overlap, and the factors that drive it, would be really interesting.
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FWIW, at our school (tippy top BS) there is absolutely positively no rule, official or otherwise, that EA be considered or treated as ED with subsequent RD applications limited in any way.
I agree btw with your supposition that REA might be treated somewhat as ED. I think that has everything to do with which schools are actually REA 
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I have only scanned the ED discussion, which we are in the middle of pondering in our house, and want to go back and read more thoroughly, but I did not see anyone address this point - if you go to a college prep school, a boarding school, or any kind of “feeder” school to top colleges, would you want to consider ED to possibly put your (assumably) strong application to be considered before other applicants from your school, since your application will be considered along with them?
Right now, according to the college counselor at our college prep school, there are about 15 kids applying to a (non-Ivy, T20) school that D24 is considering for ED(and she goes to an all-girls high school, so all are female). None of them are athletes or are planning ED so far, to the counselor’s knowledge. Obviously, if the school does not find that your application is strong enough, you will be rejected or deferred to RD to be considered in the batch from your school or area anyway, but the fact that we have a lot of girls applying to top schools from our same high school is a factor for ED for us.
You are likely right about your school. I didn’t mean to imply that all independent schools are the same. My only caveat is that if I am reading your posts correctly, I think S24 is your first. I was completely unaware of D22’s school’s expectation around EA apps until after she was admitted to her REA school. I guess that it was not a secret if we had known to ask, but it didn’t occur to me to ask. I had thought the REA was a smart financial strategy so that she could apply to loads of other colleges if she wanted. My daughter told me when she got home for xmas break, but the first official word that I heard about the expectation was during xmas break when the college office sent letter to all senior families about the post-break college process. The letter talked about lots of topics, but the guidance to kids with early acceptances was clear --more applications are STRONGLY discouraged for X,Y, and Z reasons. I was surprised. If my D22 had not had this experience, it would never occurred to me to ask D24’s school if they had any policy about EA acceptances.
Turns out that D24’s BS feels the same way. Students should pick their EA school with as much care as students who pick an ED school. It should be a school that they would be delighted to attend, and therefore, unless finances are an issue, there should be no need to apply to more than a couple of additional schools. Kids with EA (and of course ED acceptances), typically apply to 1-3 colleges unless FA is an issue. Everyone applies early somewhere, and most students without early acceptances apply to 6-8 schools max.
Maybe using the word “rule” is inappropriate since I am not sure that there is any actual enforcement mechanism. But at least for D22, the expectation was stated strongly and she felt that it was considered very bad form and potentially harming your friends and classmates to cross that expectation unless you had an important reason beyond trying to see where else you might gain acceptances. So functionally EA behaved almost like ED at her school.
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Writing this from my phone and it’s been so long I’m hoping I’m writing a new string vs responding to something by accident. I can’t tell!
First off, if you messaged me, I’m deeply sorry I’ve not responded. In the last 18 months, went thru divorce hell. I am on the other side of it but I just needed to take a breather. Please re-ask if you still need me to respond to the messages :).
We are now working on ED for D24’s dream school—Yale. All campuses were visited during spring break so she’s sure. It’s an Ivy. Here’s the line up and I’m wondering if she should report ACT to the Ivies. Composite is 34 but dont think Yale takes composite. Both times composite was 33.
4.65 weighted, 3.95 unweighted, I think 10 AP’s + more honors. Well-rounded. Essays will be solid. Interned for city one summer and legislative intern this summer. Done a ton in biomed, research advisory board for youth for UC Davis School of Med, state/regional STEM awards, and we throw in homecoming royalty today (JK!!). Report the ACT scores or no? I think 33 is solid and she’s got a better GPA and EC list than S21 and he got into Brown (but he got a 36 ACT).
@MommaLue welcome back to the thread. Sorry about the divorce.
In regards to the ACT and being test optional in your D24’s case is hard decision. Yales 25% to 75% for ACT is 33 to 35. So she is in the range, but as you said she has a great GPA and EC’s and so it may be ok to leave it off.
I saw the 25%tile range so I’m hemming and hawing. If she doesn’t submit and there’s a ton of testing oppty now, do they assume she scored poorly? If she submits the low range, does it hurt their average and messes their US News Ranking? 
Thank you for the welcome back. I’m good now, so definitely don’t have to feel sorry 
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. Do you know if other kids in school may apply to Yale and if so do you know your school’s ACT range could be. Our school publishes the range for our school. If your D24’s score is above avg for your school I would consider submitting.
Never thought to ask! I’ll check. She’s likely average among the “top 10 kids or maybe a point below.” But strongest EC’s (ranked #3 right now).
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I haven’t heard this from the counselors, but the kids have talked about a related concept a bit.
Like, there is one student, known to be top of the class despite a lack of official ranking, about whom the consensus is he will get in anywhere he applies. This is the sort of kid we don’t necessarily have every year, so really quite impressive. And that includes being very nice and social, and good friends with a lot of the other kids who are near the top of the class academically.
And those other kids, in a very good-natured way, are all very interested in where he is applying REA/ED. Because they think it might help them if he is not applying REA/ED to the same college as them.
And normally I would be a little skeptical, but I don’t know. Like, some of these other kids are definitely competitive, but still also hoping things like being a legacy might put them over the top in REA/ED. So if, say, you are what looks like a more normal top student for us and a legacy at your REA/ED school, would it maybe help if this kid was not yet in front of them as well? There are lots of reasons why it might not matter–they can take two REA/ED; indirectly they might sorta know anyway from the fact you’ll be getting more “one of the top” versus “the top” recommendations; and so on. But still, the other kids are at least tempted to think maybe giving him his own REA/ED lane is not such a bad idea for them.
And there is more of that which is a bit less explicit but something similar might be happening. There is the student particularly good at math that might also be de facto getting his own early lane. Kids actually do know who is legacy where, and if A knows that peer B is a legacy and applying REA/ED to X, maybe A will think Y is a better idea for their own REA/ED. And so on.
I actually wonder how much this sort of thing happens every year. Like, even without the counselors doing anything specific to make this happen, the top-of-the-class-type kids are often friends. And I don’t know for sure, but maybe this sort of informal avoiding of unnecessary conflict does help them collectively.
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So again I do think the expectation, not rule, is that if kids get into their REA college they will happily shut down the rest of the process.
But that is specifically for REA. And as another poster pointed out, there is a basic logic to that expectation given the schools in question. Basically, people are picking their favorite among HYPS to apply REA (Georgetown and ND are really different because they just restrict you from any other ED, but not EA, applications). Which also by implication is their favorite among all private US colleges. So why wouldn’t they just go if admitted? I guess if there was a public or non-US college they preferred, but then I don’t know if anyone would care.
You are right that technically I do not know for sure there will not be a surprise coming as to REA admits and some sort of more pushy policy, because it hasn’t happened yet. But I think we do already know the general EA policy, because they have already talked about applying to many schools EA being perfectly fine. And I know kids are in fact in the process of doing that, meaning if they are not applying to one of HYPS early, they are likely applying to many schools early.
In fact, we use a customized version of Kickstart, and it flat out recommends that. You put in your working list of schools in your current order of preference, and it maps out a possible strategy for you. If you have an REA school at the top, it will just let you know which schools on your list are exceptions, and also where you need to apply RD but by an earlier date for scholarship purposes.
If you don’t have an REA school at the top of your list, it will then tell you if your top school has ED, and then also map out all the schools to which you can apply early.
So it can’t possibly be true they want us to treat every EA application like an REA/ED application. Because they would have to have told us something different already.
So if you were just talking about REA, maybe things would at least be somewhat similar.
But for EA generally? That really does not sound like anything at our school, and I do think I would have to know by now.
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I agree that hopefully your HS can give you some school-specific guidance on this subject.
But I would just offer that I think the growing consensus is that submitting test scores really anywhere in their recent 25+ range is probably a good idea for the large majority of applicants at colleges like Yale.
It is always worth remembering these are all kids who enrolled, so these are all success stories in terms of admission. And I think the evidence at this point is mounting that a high test score–and that is a high test score!–can help give these colleges some comfort you are in fact academically well-qualified, such that they can move on to the rest of holistic review.
In the end, you still have to decide the difficult question of whether the application is stronger or weaker with the test score. But I think the more data that comes out, the more people are coming around to high test scores usually making even applications with near-perfect grades in high-rigor classes at least a little stronger.
And even if it is unnecessary, the odds of it actually hurting are plausibly very low. Like, putting on your hypothetical Yale AO hat, suppose you have a kid you love, great grades in all the hardest courses, glowing teacher recommendations, interesting activities, an essay you actually enjoyed . . . . OK, but there is an unopened folder with their ACT score in it. So you open it up, and it says 33.
What is your reaction? Relief it confirms this applicant you love meets your normal academic standards for enrolled students? Or do you think, “Oh no, if that had been a 34 we could have admitted, but now I have to reject because it was only a 33!”
The former reaction is just so much more plausible than the latter. It would be completely irrational for Yale to treat a 33 as meaningfully different from a 34 in those circumstances, and I really doubt they do.
And I think the statistics support that.
So again, up to you, but personally unless my high school told me a good reason not to do it, at this point I’d just submit a 33 and assume it is very unlikely to hurt, and might help a bit.
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