<p>Curious about how many schools are on your kids’ final (or getting more final) “apply to” lists as we head into Senior year.</p>
<p>Does 7-9 sound right or too few?</p>
<p>A nephew who went through the process last year applied to 16 or 17, which seemed crazy to me at the time. But he’s starting his first week at Brown, so they must have done something right!</p>
<p>(BTW, I know the best answer is “Ask your kid’s GC/CC.”, and I will…but just wanted to get a read from our friendly neighborhood CC/BS cohort. And besides, the board has been slow/boring for a while now and I figured I’d try to stir things up!)</p>
<p>May you all have a relaxing Labor Day weekend.</p>
<p>GC said up to 12. Current list is between 7 and 11. I think a lot depends on the balance of safety/match/reach schools. The debate which seems to crop up on CC is how many reach schools to apply to (if you are of the “crap shoot” mentality then the more you apply to the better your chances of getting in to one of them are, but of course the process is not really random, just opaque.) My feeling is that if you apply to too many you can’t possibly do a good job on individualizing and optimizing each application. But D2 is also not status-obsessed which makes things easier.</p>
<p>Choate says, “three reaches, three matches, three safeties, and the state flagship.” ChoatieKid has ten on his list: four reaches (no high reaches), two safeties, four high-probables. He’s done with his app to our state flagship’s honors college.</p>
<p>Yep, 9 or 10. Our GC is going by admit rate, so 3 in the highly competitive tier (anything less than 25% admit rate), 3 in the mid competitive tier (up to about 40%) 3 in the less competitive (40% plus, at least for applicants with similar GPA and SATs). But either highly- or mid-will likely get one additional school tacked on.</p>
<p>7-Dad, I would think 7 would be the magic number </p>
<p>Our GC/CC just increased the recommended max from 6 to 10 this year.
2 in each of the match/reach/far reach categories, as before, but a few more can be thrown in for good measure. </p>
<p>However, there’s still the school requirement that once an early acceptance is received from a highly selective school (10% or less national acceptance), no further apps can be submitted. So in effect EA becomes ED for students who are admitted to elite colleges. They say it improves everyone’s chances, who knows?</p>
<p>Okay, so an open letter to all the colleges that are sending 7D1 mail right now: YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE.</p>
<p>University of Chicago started marketing to her back when she was a sophomore — perhaps based on some early standardized test results? Not just that, but they had pretty interesting materials, not the form letters and generic brochures that seem to be arriving daily these past few weeks.</p>
<p>I assume these other schools had access to the same mailing lists years ago (at the very least, the option to buy the PSAT/SAT lists)…but they wait until August before Senior Year to start bombarding her with mail?</p>
<p>Could they have not started their marketing campaigns back in the Spring, you know, when we were planning college tours/putting together her “to consider” list? </p>
<p>I’m in the marketing industry and I’m feeling like all the stuff sent now is just wasted paper.</p>
<p>The stuff coming to our house these days is second or third pass for some schools (probably 20th for Chicago–somewhere the Lorax is crying). Crap started coming end of sophomore year (like Bard). It all goes straight into the trash.</p>
<p>Rural son says he thinks of them like Monopoly properties. Princeton and Harvard are like Park Place & Boardwalk. Not sure who he is playing against. I suspect members of his old PS.</p>
<p>Reaching out to the “senior” parents here. My junior went to see a few schools this summer to get her feet wet, and at one LAC that seemed like a perfect fit on paper, the 4 student guides left on campus in August were not my D1’s “people” per se. We wanted to love it, but the very similar vibe among the 5 students left on campus was off-putting. Has anyone had a meh summer visit, and then gone back again later on and fallen in love? </p>
<p>My daughter wants a school that is active in human rights, politics, and social sciences and close to a good sized urban area. Not spending 4 more years on top of a mountain was at the top of her must-haves. After touring 4 schools this summer, guess what school is currently at the top of her list… the school located hours away from any sizable town. Fantastic tour there with just about the nicest boy ever and every other kid we met was equally personable. So I know now that I don’t know anything until she sets foot on the different campuses! </p>
Unless the school is offering outrageous amt of scholarship money, why wd u go back to revisit a school that u thought was meh when there are are so many other possibilities? </p>
<p>I think daughter’s list is hovering around 9 schools right now. Between spring break and the summer, we have visited every single one of those 9…but may go back to a few in the fall if needed.</p>
<p>@chemmchimney: I have been admonished here before for judging a school (BS) based solely on the interaction with one or a few students on tours. HOWEVER, I would go with your gut on this. Even if the school was “a perfect fit on paper”, based on your telling, it sounds like an imperfect fit in person.</p>
<p>I do think you need to judge whether the imperfect fit with tour guides is due to variations in interests (maybe they were all STEM kids who stayed on campus to do research while you have a humanities kid) versus that the students have priorities and basic orientations that don’t match your student. If it’s the first , revisit. If it’s the second, you’re done. We had several visits where she loved the school on paper and felt it was absolutely the wrong fit in real life. </p>
<p>Thanks for the insights guys - I think this may be a case where the 5 students on campus may not have been representative of the feel of the school as a whole when it is in session (as Sudsie mentions) so she will probably look again, schedule permitting. To clarify school was not “meh” at all, but the vibe of the student guides was just not my dd’s cup of tea. </p>
<p>Both of my kids did some summer tours between jr and sr yr. I think the tour guide has a lot to do with first impressions on a student whether they want to admit it or not. We toured empty campuses with a great tour and the schools stayed on the list. We toured some busy campuses with lousy tours and the schools fell off the radar. Bottom line, visiting the school matters. In one case S thought for sure he would love certain school but left feeling meh after so-so tour. We went back and did a second tour the following yr on busy campus and still meh. Perhaps the first impression was already set.</p>
<p>I have said this before, but with the budgets these colleges have it astounds me that they do not take the tours more seriously. Tour Guide should be a “paid” position with training provided given how much weight students and parents seem to put on the visit. Personally, we have not encountered any really bad guides, but many of them were simply not prepared for some of the questions that came their way. I don’t get too bent out of shape about things like that but many in our group were shaking their heads.</p>
<p>There was only one school where I think the student panel they presented at the info session had a negative impact on us. One of the 3 students was extremely impressive but the other 2 were quite the opposite. The student representing the engineering school went on and on about how he hated math. We were ALL scratching our heads on that one.</p>
<p>@muf123 - I agree about the tour guides. We tried to separate the school from the tour guide, and told our D to make sure not to judge an entire college on one tour, but in reality the tour really affects the way a visitor sees the school and assesses fit, vibe, etc. The colleges that didn’t provide great tours have pretty much fallen off her radar at this point.</p>
<p>It’s hard to figure out if it’s the college itself or the tour, since it’s difficult to mentally separate the two.</p>
<p>My D likes Columbia more since the tour guide told the group that if you didn’t really enjoy reading literature and writing about it at length, you should rethink applying. The honesty was refreshing.</p>
<p>Chemmchimney, in my experience, I’d tend to follow the campus visit, rather than the school’s presentation “on paper.” If I were you, I’d wait to revisit the “meh” college until you’d visited a number of other, similar schools. </p>
<p>There’s no need to try to fall in love with a college which is “perfect on paper.” The only exceptions would be colleges which offer significant financial incentives, such as in-state tuition or merit scholarships.</p>
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