I have been reading “average excellent” in the mindset of @Lindagaf 's DD and her journey as well as so many this year and last. I think of the top student who took rigorous classes and scored in the 98-99% in tests (1450+/33+). These kids are the go-getters of their school and community, many school based/community ECs and some local leadership. They may have a state or regional awards in music, sports, or ECs (robotics, science fairs, business clubs, art, etc). These are the kids that teachers, neighbors, classmates “assume” will get their pick of top 20 schools and will set the world on fire. In their community they are the cream of the crop, all around top student so of course they will get in where ever they apply. These kids NEED great safeties. Their school or community is often a puddle or small pond and they are competing in the ocean of college admissions. Before coming to CC or another reality check, those parents and students with this experience think that they are an outlier but as @Lindagaf so beautiful explained in that ocean they are “average” in the larger “excellent” world.
We crafted our safety list to be affordable for our “average excellent” DD17 and now our DS20 but that affordable point is different for every family. We are big merit hunters inspired by some parents who were also on the hunt in the class of 2017 parents page. List these safeties is so challenging because even though we were hunting merit, we had the $ for room and board and also had $ set aside to pay for 4 years at our flagship. I don’t know if it is possible to list true safeties for all since many are not as fortunate and have no way to pay the over run even after receiving huge merit awards.
I do think the exercise and this post is valuable since it will open up many ideas for parents of these superstars that there are “worthy” schools where there are thousands of other average excellent students doing great things. All families just beginning their search should absolutely start with finding a safety or two that their child loves. No one should visit a reach or dream school until they have the safeties locked in and probably not until after they have earned admission. When buying a house we looked at houses that met our needs, in the area that we needed, in our budget range. WHEN we won the lottery we would then search for the dream house. It made no sense to tour dream houses hoping that we would win the lottery because that would make settling for our perfectly wonderful average house (that exceeds all our needs) seem small, lacking, and disappointing.