Nobody has said that a student needs to visit ALL schools on his list, even if that list is 10 schools or fewer. But schools that otherwise may be difficult to write about convincingly and/or are very competitive for admission may be persuaded by the direct knowledge about the school and the engagement of the student with the campus. No need to exaggerate to a hypothetical and unrealistic 20+school visit plan. We’re talking, or at least I’m talking, about the vast majority of students I meet who are completely uninterested in visiting even one school, but will gladly lay down thousands for applications. The excuses simply don’t wash.
If that’s the way someone wants to do things, fine I’ve known people who have done the same. For most of them, it came down to wanting to get into the most “prestigious”,“most selective” school possible. So the list was all 8 ivies, the most selective LACs, and other schools like UCh, JHU, Duke, Stanford, etc. The one young woman I know did this with nearly 30 schools. Yes, she had a couple of safeties and matches as well, but where she and her parents were focused was whether she could get into a name school. And she did. Had she limited her list to 10 school, the school that acccepted her would not have been on the list and she’d have had a total reject list. Same with 15. Maybe at 20 that school would have made the list, but then she had no idea when putting together the list. So she had about 10 schools unnecessary on her list, but she did not know that up front until the chips were in.
Would her apps have been so much better had she picked fewer schools, focused on them, that she might have been accepted, say to her top 10 or 15 choices (that did reject her)? Who knows? They were selective enough that it’s anyone’s guess.
I don’t think she picked a good match school for herself. She picked a school up north in the boonies, when she really is more of a city type of a person. Hated it there, and transferred to NYU after a year or two where she finished and loved it. Don’t know if NYU was on that first list, long as it was.
Reply #81 does not illustrate how unimportant it is to visit colleges. It illustrates the opposite.
I applied to three schools, and visited two of the three. Was automatic to one and got into the other two. It was very difficult to choose between those two schools because their reputations were similar.
“Shotgunners” deserve what they get. If they really could not decide between twenty schools and have the dough for the application fees, they are just delaying their choice. If they have top scores, and are only worried about whether they get into HYPM or not, and have 16 more colleges, they very well could get into the 16 and miss out of the four top schools. And then what do you do? Spend 5K or more trying to visit them and see which one they like best? Or see which gives the biggest merit aid?
@momneeds2no We visited the 20 schools in batches, over an 18 month period. D missed one day of school. We spent, maybe, $3k max, but some of that was money we would have spent on vacation, visiting relatives, etc. (combining trips). App fees were about half the amount of your estimate. D received fee waivers from several schools for having visited.
Agreed, the admit slots taken by OP are eventually filled. It still doesn’t mean that there aren’t ripple effects down the line. If a majority of applicants took this approach, the system would collapse.
The part I really don’t get is that with OP’s stats, his best strategy would have been to run a statistical analysis of his stats against the historical ED admits at each of the 8 ivies. And then apply ED to the school where he has the most realistic chance of being admitted. Here, he is just going into a large RD pool with thousands of other applicants who look just like him. OP claims he doesn’t really know what he wants in a school yet (post #47). I say this is baloney. He’s been posting on CC for 2 years, including how to get into Harvard. OP knows exactly what he wants. Yet all OP really has at this point is a very long list.
OP, have you thought through the logistics of doing a lot of visits in April? My kid went to just her top 3 choices in April, and it was exhausting AND expensive given short notice for flight purchases. Her top choices were U Chicago, Swarthmore, and Harvey Mudd, so no travel synergy… Have your parents committed to all this visiting (cost, possibly going with you as they will be paying, etc)? I suspect we will see you in April jettisoning schools that may be a good fit for you due to lack of time.
Also, you haven’t said, are your safeties affordable? Both the ones you have been admitted to & those you haven’t heard from yet (I assume you ran the NPCs)?
“The part I really don’t get is that with OP’s stats, his best strategy would have been to run a statistical analysis of his stats against the historical ED admits at each of the 8 ivies. And then apply ED to the school where he has the most realistic chance of being admitted.”
Dad, the reason that so few do this is that most students who shotgun – for that matter, most students who apply with any (different) unrealistic strategy whatsoever, such as a mismatch between admissibility and admit rates – are demonstrating their superstitious approach to admissions: that it must be “random” and “like a lottery.” (i.e., more tickets = more “chances,” and qualifications are minor or even irrelevant). Such students – or such parents who suggest that realistic analysis is unnecessary – are either in denial about likelihoods for themselves OR they believe that “chances” override content. They somehow really do not believe that decisions in the committee room are deliberate and rational, but rather accidental.
I see nothing wrong with what the OP is doing. He is maximizing his chances to get into the type/tier of school he is interested in. Between Sept. of a students senior year and May, their mind may change on a variety of things related to school choices. When my daughter was applying to med schools, she applied to 32…I think the average is about half that. Who was she harming? The schools that she was accepted at and she turned down then had that spot open for a waitlist candidate. No harm, no foul. Same for the OP.
For some applicants, the “elite” factor is the most important, so they shotgun as many of such schools as they feel they can. The laws of probability do work in those cases, if there is a chance of the student getting into each school, but not as one might think. The problem is that when a student is looking at say Swarthmore, Haverford, Amherst and Williams, it is possible for that student to get into one of the four if applying to all 4 of them. I’ve seen this happen many times (sometimes just off the wait list as I know of such a case last year). Had the student picked just one or two or even three out of the four, and left out one, yes, that one might have been the one that could have been the accept. Throw in 5, 6 more selective LACs of that kind, and the results get interesting
Also, most of the kids I know who transfer out of their schools, when it’s an away school, have indeed visited the school How much of an impact the visit has overall, I don’t know
There are disadvantages and advantages to shotgunning. You take the risks of the disadvantages when you do this I prefer to take more calculated risks, and be able to up the chances of schools in the mix, but that’s just me. I also am loathe to spend that much on the apps and fees. Anyone want to do this, it’s fine by me.
No he’s not. Most schools have abysmal yield rates nowadays bcs so many applicants are shotgunning.
If one takes the “if everybody did” way of thinking, what the OP is doing would really make the admissions scene even more crazy than it is for the schools that are well known. IT’s bad enough as it is, with the common app and more kids applying to more schools these days.
Feel free to shoot me down, but perhaps the OP shotgunned because of his/her unweighted GPA. If I felt my unweighted GPA was particularly low (but had high standardized testing scores), although I wouldn’t shotgun, some might because it seems that shotgunning for the most part results in acceptance into at least one reach school.
OP spent sophomore year in England while freshman and junior year were spent in the same school in America.
You have to wonder if admissions folks aren’t used to the “apply to every schoo out there” applicant and how it is conveyed in the application. Recycled essays or mish mash essays are pretty easy to spot. Thoughtful, “on key” sweet spot essays are harder to write and are probably easier to spot.
My son thought about shot gunning at the start of the process. Though it would be neat to just apply to all of the lottery ticket schools RD and get his realistic choices EA, just to see what would pan out. But once he got into the process, and researching the schools, he dropped that idea.
Baloney1011: the teachers at our sons’ high school crafted thoughtful, individual letters of recommendation tailored for each school.
This is exactly the strategy we had to take. My son applied to 14 schools, and if he gets a very good merit aid offer from any of them, he can put those schools on his much shorter list of real possibilities. Otherwise, he will have to go to one of his financial safety schools, of which we have two really nice options. We will definitely visit any schools that are affordable, but there would be no point in visiting places that we really could not afford anyways. A good example is Rice…I think Rice is just about perfect for him and they really like to see demonstrated interest. But the chance of him getting a full-tuition scholarship is slim, since Rice is so competitive. I did not want to spend close to $1000 to take him out there, and have him fall in love with the school, only to be told we cannot afford it even if he manages to get admitted. So he applied, but we have not visited yet. (But he is trying to set up an interview, to show interest.)
I think a modified shotgun approach that involves tons of research diligence before hand, and a more narrowed list of possible schools makes more sense than a shot-in-the-dark approach with 20 or more schools. There are schools I think we wasted an application on, and there are schools that I wish he’d applied to. I am only aware of these issues, now, after continuing the research throughout the whole process. If we had started the research/college visits earlier, in his junior year of high school, our final list would have been more strategic and more effective, I bet. The research really pays off, with regard to picking which schools to put on your shotgun list.
@longrangeplan It’s wonderful that the teachers did that, but I’m thinking that it’s highly unusual, that instead most teachers write a single letter for the student to use at all schools.
My S2 had a friend apply to 21 schools. My first thought was for the poor teachers.
Very few teachers write for specific schools. Adds a lot of complexity.
But for the vast majority of kids, the teacher writes a single letter, it gets uploaded to the Common App, and then the student sends it out from there. Same process for the teacher whether the kid applies to one school or to thirty. The teacher is not involved in or notified of the individual applications.