I do not agree with this. Given the number of applications going out (thanks to the Common App), everything is a numbers game, no matter how well curated your list is. You want to take advantage of the law of large numbers as much as you can when dealing with a (seemingly) random process like this. And if you start working on your essays early, applying to a lot of schools does not decrease the amount of time/effort spent on each application. Plus, you can apply to many UCs in just one shot.
For example, our daughter was rejected from one of her safety schools. She got in to many much more selective schools. Why did that happen? I have no idea, but if that was the only safety she applied to, then she would have had no safeties left. As long as you have the time and money to do it, more applications are better.
Shotgun-ing out a lot of applications was a trend started on the coasts a few years ago and has become much more common this round. I believe next year many many kids will shotgun since they see how competitive the process is. I believe the Common App will face pressure to increase their max application allowance (or more people will create two profiles).
This parent needs to look forward, not backward. This kid got an acceptance to a college he likes. Time to start planning the future, and let go of whatever happened in the past.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on using a shotgun approach and applying to a very long list of colleges. It is rare for me to find a case where a student needs more than around 15 schools if they create a list of schools made up of 40% reach odds, 40% target odds, 20% (or 2 colleges) likely/safety odds, with some variation here and there.
Let’s say you have a highly qualified applicant in the range of being considered at highly selective colleges. Applying to more than, let’s say, 8 such schools (acceptance rates less than 20%) does not increase one’s chances. Their chances at each college remains the same. Shooting darts because one feels they MUST get into a college with an extremely low acceptance rate and nothing else will do and they don’t really wanna attend their targets and safeties, is not an approach I encourage. Even if my students have 8 reach odds schools, often they get into one or more of these, with some exceptions, and get into some of their targets and get into all their safeties. That is a common pattern IF the list is well crafted. Remember too, that at many colleges, applying ED or EA can increase the odds and so there’s that too. I had a client this year with your thinking who wanted to add more and more very reachy schools with very low acceptance rates (well, her parent wanted this). She had high stats, very rigorous courses at a very rigorous HS, solid activities and a job, an optional very strong art portfolio, but wasn’t necessarily exceptional on an pile of the many applicants with similar credentials…no amazing achievements, for example. Those numerous super reachy schools did not come through, though she is WL at Barnard and Carnegie Mellon, but she did get into one pretty reachy school, UMichigan, and some other good schools. Adding more and more of the highly rejective schools did not help her case. These were long shots. More and more of them did not increase her odds at each one. I have students headed to the Ivies, and typically, their college lists of Reaches/Matches/Safeties did not exceed 15. Their lists were well crafted and not a shotgun approach of trying to hit a target by trying for all top 20 schools or some such.
@neela1. I don’t agree that a well balanced college list has lost meaning. I’ve been a college counselor for 20 years and this is the ONE thing that has NOT changed. The list needs to be balanced and not where the majority of schools are Reach odds ( either reachy for that particular student OR for highly qualified students any school that accepts less than 20% automatically goes into the reach odds category). There needs to be a handful of target/match/possible schools, not just one or two, and then 2 likely/safety options.
College lists, yes, have gotten longer than 10 years ago, but a well crafted, appropriate and well balanced list has not changed.
I see the lists people create on their own without a college counselor and many times, these lists would not yield enough options. I have seen shotgun approach lists. of all tippy top highly rejective schools and like their state flagship tacked on, something like that. Or I have seen people who unrealistically believe they have a shot at certain schools where they have NO shot. The college list is one of the most crucial aspects of applying to college and a lot of the results correlate with a well or not well crafted list, time and time again.
I see people assign “reach, match, safety” to schools and their assessment of their odds are NOT accurate or how I’d assess their odds. I notice at this time of year every year, that the results my students have obtained, very much correlate with how I assessed their odds. But how some assess their own odds or their parents assess their odds, are often not so great.
I should have been a bit more clear about what I mean by “shotgun-ing.” I do agree that the list needs to be carefully curated. But as it’s very hard to visit all schools on the list, you are going in partially blind re fit for some applications. So why not add 5 extra schools (going from your ~15 to 20) to add some safety margin for randomness in the process and fit issues. I absolutely don’t recommend just making a list based on USNWR or something. Rather than cutting to 15, just cut to 20.
It depends on what kind of a student you are. If you are top student (carefully defined as to what that means), given all that is happening in the college admissions landscape, you absolutely have to shotgun your full acceptable list of schools – whatever those may be. I am not saying one should throw darts.
Agree. As we can see from this post, a lot of students (and their parents) consider themselves “top” students, but in the context of the entire applicant pool, they really aren’t. And if you intend to apply to schools with sub 10% acceptance rates, you need to be taking advantage of the law of large numbers as much as possible. You never know when something in your essay or an EC will click with an AO and leading them to advocate for you.
Or maybe they ARE top students. Remember, a college that accepts 20% of applicants also rejects 80%. In that 80% are some very well qualified students. There aren’t enough seats at most of these top colleges to accept the number if very well qualified applicants who apply.
I have read a bit of Adam Grant and I do appreciate his arguments . . .I know he verges more to pop psychology than strictly research, but a lot of what he says rings true to me.
I definitely think it applies in this case. I’d much rather people compliment my child for being caring and empathetic than for getting admission to XYZ college or earning $xyz dollars.
You should be very proud of this, as I’m sure you are. If you ask me, this, along with his demonstrated work ethic, will take him far in life. Encourage him to keep that goodness about him and don’t let this disappointment jade him or make him bitter. That would be the real tragedy in all this.
That’s fair for some students. I remember a quote from an AO saying that they could replace their entire accepted class with waitlist kids and probably have the same quality. They have to make decisions based on the thinnest of margins.
But the notion that good GPA and test scores should guarantee you a spot at an Ivy or T20/30 is simply not true. And parents need to take off their rose colored glasses and understand what the admissions landscape looks like.
and just so I understand this process, there are some vagaries introduced by how much the counselor and/or recommending teachers go to bat for the individual student, is this not true? something once can try to control somewhat but which has an element beyond one’s control? and there can be some dynamic interaction btwn the admissions committee and the school counselor based on prior relationships and the size of the school unknown to the student and parents ? and this is one of the reasons some parents who can afford it opt to educate their children in a private school (tho said not to disparage the work public school guidance counselors put in, i am sure this is yet one more variable affecting the chances of success?)
@foodle I understand if someone is unable to visit all the schools on their list before applying. However, a student should research a school in depth before putting it on their list. Therefore, they ought not to be applying "blindly. There should be NO randomness at all when it comes to fit and selecting a college to put on the list. A student needs to list their own selection criteria, find colleges that check many of the boxes (but maybe not all) on their selection criteria, and then also assess odds at each school based on many factors in their profile, as well as acceptance rate, to build the list. They can create detailed spreadsheets with information on various aspects of the school they care about. They can list pros and cons for each school. They can do a virtual campus tour and attend any online sessions about that school that the school may offer. Meet with reps who may visit their high school. Talk to current students and recent alums. Visits are important, but I realize some may not be able to do enough of these, though I would make it a priority. Even if one can only visits a handful of colleges, they will learn about the types of colleges that feel like the right sort of fit. I would not randomly add any school to a list without in-depth research on it and to ascertain how it matches up with the student’s preference for a college.
Too often, I hear students say, “I got into X or Y school, but I don’t want to go there!” Um, X or Y school should never have been on the list in the first place if they don’t wish to attend.
As an aside, my own kids visited every college on their list. They only put colleges on their list that they would be happy to attend. They did not formulate a “dream school.” They could have told you plenty of details about each school they put on their list and why it was on their list. They had well balanced lists. Both landed at highly selective colleges or programs. Same with grad schools.