<p>DS is a junior at Rochester. The music opportunity for non-music majors is fantastic. Lessons, performance groups, classes, etc. S is majoring in a science field and is doing his humanities cluster in music. BTW - S was accepted to Brown but turned it down for Rochester.</p>
<p>Thanks for your thoughts on applicant pools, soze and Consolation. This is not encouraging. I am aware of the “Tufts syndrome” and my son will be very interested in every school on his list, and he will demonstrate interest in every possible way. If I tell him to email them every week, he will do it. So I will be looking for ways to demonstrate interest for those schools where it matters. This is why I was hoping to limit the list to a reasonable number, but given the realities of the process, I’m thinking now that he will have to apply to more places. Unless he can get a very early/rolling admission to a school he loves. Will have to look into that.</p>
<p>He will also have his applications done before school starts senior year, so he may not benefit as much from an early admission as kids who put things off.</p>
<p>Chowdycat, you are my new best friend! That sound wonderful! My son does not know yet what he will major in or what career he wants, but my suspicion is that he will end up in science - not sure which field. I know that Rochester is supposed to be strong in the sciences. He is also intensely interested in history. How is that area at Rochester? </p>
<p>I keep seeing new posts popping up in the middle of this thread. cptofthehouse, thank you for that information on the male advantage! That’s something I will have to be aware of as I do research. I wonder whether Naviance has that information? And thanks for the information on what to ask the GC. I had no idea.</p>
<p>NYmomof2-
I’d step back from trying to choose specific schools at this point and focus instead on figuring out the type of school best suited to your son. Take some time this spring to visit different types of schools so he can get a sense of what it would be like to attend a large city school or a small rural one. If he’s interested in a specific field have him visit a couple of schools that specialize so he can see the contrast between a place where everyone is more focussed in his field vs. one where he would have more room to explore and change his mind. Have him think about what he liked or didn’t like on these trips. It will help him figure out where he’d best flourish. Eventually you can make a vertical list* with reaches matches and likelies. </p>
<p>I remember when my D came home with the same questions your S has. The other thing that happened slightly later is that she started to report that certain schools were “good schools” or “bad schools” based on what her peers were saying about them. We were careful to point out that schools had different strengths, so that a much lower ranked school might be stronger in her field than a school many slots up on the USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>*A vertical list might look something like this-
Artsy, liberal kid:
Yale
Brown
Wesleyan
Vassar
Oberlin
Sarah Lawrence
Bard
Hampshire</p>
<p>Future engineer:
MIT
Stanford
CIT
Cornell
Berkeley
Harvey Mudd
Bucknell
Lafayette
Lehigh
UIUC
Purdue</p>
<p>cptofthehouse, do you really think he will be all right on curriculum difficulty? I am aware of the kids from his HS who get into the top colleges, including Ivys, and I know a few. They are just a different breed than my son. For this reason, I wouldn’t want him in a school full of these kids even if he could get in. He needs the right school, like the one my neighbor went to or the one cptofthehouse’s son went to, where he will find his niche and thrive. I have told him that some kids are very advanced, and are able to function at an adult level in some areas while still in HS, but that it’s fine to be developing normally. He will come into his own in college, find something he loves, and do very well. I told him that if he goes to grad or professional school, he will be applying to the same programs as those really high-achieving kids, and he will be competitive with them. </p>
<p>Sue22, thank you - that’s very helpful. I do feel some urgency about identifying at least one possibility, though, because he comes home with the same comments you’ve heard. Is College X a “good” school? Some of the time I have no idea about college X. I have been telling him for months that there are many great schools and it is not meaningful to say that one school is better than another, because different kids have different needs. From what I can tell, there is a lot of misinformation floating around. The most ridiculous thing I heard: there is a spectacular senior, you know the type of kid, excelling all around with extreme achievements in a couple of different fields, valedictorian. My son came home yesterday and told me that this person was going to Columbia - why didn’t he/she go to HYP, the really good schools? Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous? I immediately disabused him of the notion that Columbia was second to anywhere. </p>
<p>Chowdycat, now I’m thinking that if Brown-level kids go to Rochester, maybe my son won’t get in? </p>
<p>I really want to avoid getting him enthused about a school where he doesn’t have much of a chance.</p>
<p>Sue22, how do you go about constructing those vertical lists? Is there a systematic way to find “artsy/liberal” schools, or “engineering” schools (my son is not in either of those categories)? Or is it just the result of lots of research?</p>
<p>Hi NYMomof2,
9-12 schools should probably be plenty if you have a good strategy, which it sounds like you will have by including safeties and matches and not overdoing the reaches. My D is a Sr. and only applied to 5 schools. She has very strong gpa and test scores and initially we probably focused too much on reach schools. After visiting several elite schools over the last few years we started to realize last spring that though she fit the stats for accepted students that most of these schools were reaches because of the low admit percentages. The one thing it really helped with though was to identify the type of school she was looking for, small LAC in not too small a town where she could play in a good Orchestra as a non music major, participate in her sport at the D3 level and with strong academics and small classes where she could be more engaged with the professors from day 1 than at a larger school. We found a school that fit that criteria, visited last summer and she really liked it. The first school she applied to was an OOS flagship that had rolling admissions and was a safety for her and though much larger than her ideal school she said she could see herself being happy there if she was accepted to the honors college, played in the non music majors orchestra and participated in club sports. She was accepted there a week after she applied so at that point she crossed a few schools off her list of applications. She then applied EA to our excellent state flagship and to the small midwest LAC. She was accepted to both of these by Christmas. She also applied to one elite LAC and one ivy. She visited the midwest LAC over winter break and did an overnight visit with a student and auditioned for a scholarship to fund lessons on her instrument and for a spot in the orchestra. By the end of the visit she had fallen in love with this school and decided to accept admission. She ultimately was not accepted to either of the 2 very elite schools she applied to, but we have been very happy that she chose her school before she knew that and it wasn’t viewed as a consolation prize. I hope this helps, it sounds like you are approaching this process in a very smart way and your S will have good choices and a happy outcome.</p>
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<p>For a teenage boy? Please bottle some of this and sell it to the rest of us.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance,
SOG</p>
<p>@NYMomof2 Your son actually sounds a lot like my daughter! I’d encourage him to think about what he wants in a school rather than listening too much to what the other kids have to say. </p>
<p>By letting D take the lead in compiling her list, I’ve learned a lot about her and she’s learned a lot about herself. Her college app list includes one high reach, about 10 reaches, a couple of matches, and one or two “safeties.” It seems like a good list now, but it’s one that has evolved over the past two years. The whole process has identified things that are important to her (medium sized university, the option to double-major or create a course of study that combines social science and biology, good research opportunities, good record in terms of med school placement, a comfortably “nerdy” vibe, etc.). The trick for us was to make sure that she will be happy at any of the schools on her list.</p>
<p>That’s a great story, cellomom2, and I will use it as a model. I did know enough to start at the bottom of the list, and I told my son about this strategy last night, emphasizing that he would apply to schools in several admission probability categories, but every one of them would be a great school for him that he would be happy to go to. He was very happy with this plan and liked the idea of starting at the bottom (most likely) category. I’m glad to hear that it’s possible to audition for a spot in a musical group before making the decision to go there - is that common?</p>
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<p>Tell him that doing well in school (and on SAT/ACT) will increase his choices.</p>
<p>A school may be a reach for someone with 2.5GPA/22ACT, match for someone with 3.0GPA/27ACT, and safety with big scholarship for someone with 3.5GPA/32ACT, for example.</p>
<p>@NYMomof2 </p>
<p>I’d consult the Fiske Guide to Colleges, which is, imo, the best of the thorough guides to the schools you’re looking at. (My D narrowed in on Tufts after consulting it). The Insiders’ Guide is a good resource, too, for info on the various school cultures. </p>
<p>It is possible to overthink chances and such. A “good” school for your son is a school that is “good” for him, not one that is prominent in the eyes of others, necessarily (and certainly not in the myopic eyes of some of his peers who don’t consider Columbia a “good” school!). </p>
<p>And whether or not “Brown-level” kids get into Rochester or Tufts or Haverford or wherever does NOT reflect your son’s chances or lack or them. </p>
<p>I went into this process alongside my D with a big, permanent shrug of the shoulders, a “you might get in, you might not, but you can sleep at night knowing you’ve made reasonable choices and have presented yourself in the best, strongest way possible, so let’s see where the chips fall” attitude. To worry over every new bit of micro-information about who’s getting in or not… trends and ranges are what you need to look at, not what’s happening to friends or neighbors or relatives or kids here on CC. Every story is different. Some fall within expectations, others defy reason. </p>
<p>The better you convey this elusive climate to your son, the better armed he’ll be during the whole process. And the better you help him disassociate self-image with the prestige or name-brand value of a chosen college, the more resilient he’ll be come decision time.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
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<p>Excellent plan! One of the great mottos of College Confidential is “Love Thy Safety”. Finding lovable safeties is the hardest part of the college search, and building a list of schools from the bottom up is a great way to proceed. </p>
<p>I’ve not checked in awhile on what schools are offering significant National Merit scholarships, but Rochester used to be on that list. If your S is in striking distance of making the cutoff for finalist for your state, it would be worth everyone’s while for him to do some SAT prep before the PSAT. There’s a forum about NSF scholarships on the Financial Aid forum. Rochester is a school that loves being loved–a visit would certainly be worthwhile. </p>
<p>Showing interest isn’t going to be that onerous IMO. Visits if possible, yes, especially if the school is within a few hours’ drive. Going to see the school reps if they do a presentation nearby or at your S’s school, yes. Asking a few questions by email, possibly, but certainly not every week. Interviewing, if possible. Writing a “Why School X” essay which clearly shows that the student values the school or sees specific unique features about it, not writing e.g. that you want to go to George Washington or American because you’d love to be in DC. </p>
<p>And yes, some schools–Harvard, big public universities–really don’t care about demonstrated interest. If you have limited time and resources, focus your visits on the campuses which care. For our Ds, we emphasized visiting schools that were possible safeties. That both showed interest, and let the D’s see if they liked the school enough to apply. </p>
<p>And some schools should be considered a “reach” for anyone, regardless of grades and scores. D has accepted that it’s okay to include those on the list, but she knows she can’t count on them…even if her scores are in the upper quartile. </p>
<p>SOG, If I could bottle it, I’d be drinking it myself. He comes home from school and immediately does his homework, without making a sound. He gets long-term projects done well in advance. He says that he can’t stand having things hanging over his head, so he just gets them done. I’ve never had to tell him to practice his instruments, but he does that out of desire. The homework is a chore, he has no real desire to do it, but he does it. </p>
<p>He has also been a vegetarian for years because he feels strongly about animal rights, and he has never wavered even though he has to watch other kids eat foods he loves but denies himself. He decided recently that he needed to exercise more and now he does his own routine every day without fail. </p>
<p>He did not get this from me.</p>
<p>^^
I hope they do wind up at the same school…he’s sounding more and more like a male version of my D!</p>
<p>It is very easy to cherry pick schools. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, who doesn’t know of them? The local schools you hear all of the time. The big sports schools. Easy pickin’s. And not to say they should not be in consideration. But the hardest part of college search is to find those schools that are not so well known that have the quality you want, the offerings you want, the atmosphere you want and that will accept you, and are affordable. Those are the rare gems for which you mine. Most families do not scratch surface below their own comfort zones and familiarity. </p>
<p>A friend of mine has two kids who competed Pritzer in CA some years ago on generous merit awards, got a world class education, took full advantage of the Claremont offerings with stats that would not have gotten them into a lot of schools that had so much to offer. I still remember him saying, “what the he_l is Pritzer, and WHERE? CA, are you kidding?” and then several years later he was one of their best parent boosters as his second child went there. The like colleges in stats here in NE offered nothing in money–P offered a very nice hunk of change and they got a great chance of pace being on the west side of the country and a world class education to boot. But that is not a school one sees on many lists with Say, Gettysburg and Dickenson which are peppered on them around here One went to Columbia for grad/prof school thereafter, and the other a fully paid PHD program at a major midwest state university, top in that field. Could not have done better in terms of academic and all other opportunities. </p>