<p>Carnegie Mellon University</p>
<p>Somewhere in the long process last year, I read about someone who had the student chose schools (pick a number) and then letting mom and dad each select one. I did a lot of reading about colleges because, quite frankly, DD was overwhelmed with school, applications, sports, and to top it off, she went on an exchange to Japan in October of her senior year. I asked her to apply to a college, which she did, and that is where she ended up. She loves it.</p>
<p>She was happy because she applied everywhere she wanted to and was accepted at her top choices; the application I asked her to complete was not a difficult one.</p>
<p>Nope, none were spared!
My wife asked me for more safeties after his rejection for Rice ED. We ended up with a “final” total of 18, including Rice. [Dear God, was it really that many???] It’s about an even mix of Safety/Match/Reach, but we probably could have done without a few of those last minute safeties. It really came down to the wire on January 1st when DS was finally finishing his essays for the last few apps. He made the cut-off by the skin of his teeth.</p>
<p>To be honest, I really think that D2 made mostly good choices in the schools that she applied to. I think that if she could go back in time about 3 or 4 months, she would have dropped one or two of her safety schools and applied to U. Michigan, instead.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>now this is funny. Of course my older D still asks me why I let her wear her hair a certain way one day in HS… I reminded her that that I DID say that pictures were being taken and she might regret it. But somethings you just have to learn for yourself, and unfortunately when it comes to applying to college, you really only do it once for the most part. So, the only person to actually benefit from the learning curve around here is me and to protect my own sanity in dealing with future possible teen angst is that younger D will definitely have at least one EA school on her list.</p>
<p>And seriously… 18 schools??? Now I know why there are a ton of increases in applications!! Son applied to 8 and H thought that was ridiculous!! I don’t know how you could even learn enough about 18 schools to know you would like it well enough to attend!</p>
<p>I’m completely serious! And it’s SO much fun tracking 18 apps. But heck, he’s our one and only. I applied to a total of two schools back in the day, and my wife back door’d her way into UC Berkeley by taking a few classes while in high school. She never applied anywhere. We wanted him to have lots of options, with Biomed/Bioengineering being the main criteria. It’s done. They’re out there. We’ll start hearing in Feb.</p>
<p>18 AVHS wow, just wow. I doubt any of my kids could come up with 18 schools they would want to attend. You’ll have a fun, interesting spring no doubt!</p>
<p>My girls didn’t want to leave the east coast, if they did, they might have come in that ballpark, if they went west, mid-west, etc. (glad they didn’t!) : )</p>
<p>Seeing as I eliminated a lot of schools for picky reasons–schools that I would still have been happy to attend–it’s not THAT difficult to get to 18. And I know high-stat people who genuinely would be happy in either a rural or urban environment, large or small student body–in that case, it’s not hard to pick 9 each of one’s favorite LACs and Us.</p>
<p>I agree, Debruns. Without thinking too hard about it, I can come up with a half-dozen schools my son might very likely have applied to if he’d been willing to consider going as far as the Midwest–that would have brought him up to 15 right there, without even thinking about the South or the Pacific. 18 is a lot, but it doesn’t sound off the scale to me.</p>
<p>MDMom that sounds like mythmom’s “mommy school” notion. We adopted it too and though neither of my girls attended their mommy school it was good to know that they had the option.</p>
<p>AVHSdad, I had fun too and between them my twin daughters also had 18 apps to complete and fret over. Thanks heavens the majority were on the common app or it wouldn’t have been nearly as much “fun”</p>
<p>West Point - our S, who had talked about WP being his heart’s desire for the past two years, decided he no longer wanted to apply because of the strong engineering/math/science focus in their core curriculum (he will major in History). Since he still wants to go to a senior military college (VMI is his first choice), DH and I are somewhat disappointed that he didn’t give WP a shot.</p>
<p>Each of the 5 schools S applied to had to have ROTC on campus; he agreed to apply to non-military schools after campus visits increased their appeal to him. He has applications in to Syracuse, Bucknell, Siena and SUNY Brockport (in addition to VMI) and has already received acceptance letters from VMI, Siena and Brockport. (After he got the letter from VMI, he agreed to drop The Citadel from his list if we would agree to let him drop BU! He was getting really tired of those dreaded supplemental essays!) I asked him recently if he had any regrets about letting go of West Point, he said no, so I guess DH and I will have to get over ourselves!!</p>
<p>My son was very fortunate in that, starting in the summer after his sophomore year in HS, he was able to visit 17 colleges as offshoots to family trips we took to DC, New England, the PNW, and the midwest. </p>
<p>The unexpected consequence of being able to visit several schools is that he didn’t give as much thought as he might to any college that he was NOT able to visit, which obviously includes the vast majority of what’s out there. Of these, I think if he had visited Wesleyan, Vassar, Oberlin, Kenyon, and Pomona, one or more of these colleges would have made his list. </p>
<p>No list is perfect, though, and I believe he would be truly happy at any of the colleges he applied to. Which is all you can ask for.</p>
<p>S2 originally had 24 on the consideration list, got it down to 10, and after EA – added one and dropped three, for a total of eight submitted apps (four were submitted before EA decisions were released). Has a flagship, four medium sized research Us and three LACs. At this point, we know he will need warm winter clothing next year, as the southernmost school is the flagship.</p>
<p>“Ones that got away” – Dart (he went back and forth through the fall on it) and Pomona (he loved the Claremont consortium, had concerns about CMC, I thought Pomona would be a good fit). I think he was feeling a bit insecure about his prospects. I wanted him to look at American and Grinnell, but now see that he was right.</p>
<p>He spent a lot of time thinking through his list and had good reasons for applying to each. He says he would be happy at any of them. There are a couple that I feel are better fits than others, but we’ll see how that plays out when he has acceptances in hand and can go do some serious visiting.</p>
<p>I also wished I had done SAT subject tests…that way I could have done Princeton if I had wanted to…(I think if it would have been possible, I would have applied)</p>
<p>My mom is still bitter that Caltech got cut from my college list so early (I cut it before I cut CU-boulder…) and I think considers caltech and berkeley the schools that got away.
I’m at Dartmouth and it is the perfect school for me, but she would like it if I were closer to home.</p>