<p>Hunt, at my kids’ school many of their top-student classmates essentially had a HYP(and/or M, B, C)-Penn-or-bust attitude, applying to those schools and a public safety, with nothing in-between. And of course for some of them it was “bust”. But it wasn’t really “bust” at all. It was honors programs at Penn State, Pitt, Michigan, or McGill, a lot of attention from their teachers, plenty of academic stimulation. (In one case, Smith.)</p>
<p>Maybe it would have been more of a problem if they weren’t self-starters and driven, disciplined students. But they ARE self-starters and driven, disciplined students, which is why it wasn’t delusional for them to apply to Harvard et al. in the first place.</p>
<p>Looking back, do they wish they had been accepted at Harvard? Of course. Are there things they could have done at Harvard that they might not be able to do at Pitt? Sure. But are they starved for academic stimulation and social contact with their intellectual peers? No way. Not even a little. And while none of them will ever be in Porcellian or Skull & Bones, I don’t think any other doors have been closed to them.</p>
<p>1) You can’t say that every kid will respond the same way to an academic environment: it depends on the kid’s temperament and personal needs. My D1 was a high-stat kid, and she could have been top of the heap at hundreds of schools. It mattered very much to her to be in a school where she would not be the best. She knows she’s not the smartest person in the world, and she was sick and tired of having hardly anyone around her that could inspire her or fill her with awe. She applied only to “reach” schools (for her because they all had small acceptance percentages) because she desperately wanted the challenge of keeping up with that kind of pack. Yes, she could have gotten a great challenge at a great number of schools, but this is where she went. And in the long run she has thrived, and surpassed what she thought she was capable of.</p>
<p>2) It’s not fair to define a kid by the test scores or grades they get in 10th, 11th, or even 12th grade, and think that they will continue to perform at about that level in college. My D2 has made so many strides in intellectual maturity over the past two years that I pretty much think now that she might be ready for anything by the time she’s in college. Not only is she growing internally, but the circumstances she’s in may actually cause even more growth; my H went to a school that was perhaps “over his head” initially, because he’d never meet or seen anything like it, but once he was there, he blossomed. In another life he would have just gone and had his 4.0 at a state school and never known the difference - but he wouldn’t be the person he is today.</p>
<p>I’m not arguing here for or against going to a reach, nor to a “tippy top” school. I’m just taking issue with the idea of creating a ceiling when a kid is 16 or 17, just to be “safe” (however that’s defined). I think there’s a lot that can happen for different people under different circumstances, and that is why we have so many choices. </p>
<p>I went to a university that was known at the time for taking kids with all kinds of stats in HS and finding their untapped intellectual strengths. I’m for letting kids take a chance who want a chance. This is a human process, not a numbers game.</p>
<p>That was bizarre glido. You quote yourself, then you quote me responding to something totally different a few posts later. Interesting. The post that mathmom made a comment on was me merely trying to point out that I thought your post was short on a number of important caveats and fine points. I thought it was getting far away from that, so I was just saying that was my original intent. Sorry you are offended.</p>
<p>JHS, I’m sure those students are doing fine at the honors college of their local state university, but sometimes I wonder why the heck these kids don’t look at a wider range of schools than HYPSMC and State University.</p>
<p>I agree with mathmom, its one thing if you decided that your state flagship honors college Or an Ivy are the best choices. But to pass on all those non-Ivy top 50 schools cause you were already applying to so many ivies and couldnt do more apps, that seems like a poor strategy, to me. </p>
<p>Of course in some cases it make sense financially - shoot for the ivies with the most generous aid policies, and go to an instate public if you miss those. Unless and until the Harvard/Columbia approach to Fin Aid trickles down to other elite privates, the whole college app process is going to have that weird dynamic for the students with the best stats, but limited money.</p>
<p>A lot has to do with what your state university is. <em>I</em> don’t get the kids around here who look at HYP and then U of Illinois and nothing in between, but I also can’t say that too many doors around here are firmly closed to U of Illinois grads or that U of Illinois grads don’t go on to achieve high levels of success if they so choose. Plenty of “only” U of Illinois grads are sitting pretty in multi million dollar homes on the North Shore with plenty of funds to send their kids wherever they want to go, fully paid. That is not my personal preference for my own kids – I think both of mine would be ill-served by a school of that size – but it makes sense for a lot of kids.</p>
<p>Mathmom, some of it is cultural and some economic. They feel they need a really good reason to go farther than they can travel easily on their own. In many cases they want to live in a city, and don’t feel any attraction for rural or suburban schools. (Lots don’t even apply to Princeton.) </p>
<p>They are very price-sensitive. They are willing to pay Harvard prices for Harvard, but not for WashU, Amherst, or Carnegie-Mellon. </p>
<p>And they know they will be fine where they are going. So why stress more than they have to? If they get into Harvard or Penn, great. If not, they will just go on being the successful students they have always been and expect good things to keep happening, as they always have.</p>
<p>While I personally think that’s a stupid attitude (I’d pay those prices for WashU, Amherst and / or Carnegie Mellon), to the extent that it keeps those kids focused on the same old same old schools and leaves the other schools with fewer applicants, I’m all about that. Let them all zig so my kids can zag.</p>
<p>I think every kid is different. Some want no reaches while others want all reaches with the hope of getting into a top notch school, then figuring out their major based on abilities.</p>
<p>No one should be forced to apply to reach schools they have no intention of going to. On the flip side of the coin, I think high schools have a harder time convincing some parents why their son or daughter shouldn’t apply to all ivy league since it likely won’t result in a matriculation given their child’s stats.</p>
I think some of them just don’t get the advice to look more broadly–the school guidance department thinks (and of course rightly, in many cases) that the state flagship is a great school, and that it can serve as both a match and a safety. I also think some of these kids have an unrealistic expectation of whether they are likely to get into the super-selective choices.</p>
<p>I just had an encounter with a very bright young man who is dreaming of MIT – and he certainly has the stats, accomplishments and smarts to be a viable candidate – but his other choices are all at extremely high levels. A few other Ivies, Stanford, Duke, maybe Carnegie Mellon. I can’t help but feel he still needs a couple of notches lower to be on the safe side, as he is not interested in his state flagship (Michigan).</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I hope this young man applies EA to MIT and other schools. Either he will be ecstatic by Dec 15, or he will have a reality check and apply to more options.</p>
<p>This really bothers me. There is a presumption some have that higher stats automatically means higher performance, or that if your kid is in the bottom 25% of standardized test scores he/she will struggle against the “geniuses.” This is so much crap. I say go for it. The only penalty will probably be to get shut of any merit aid possibilties, but even that is not certain. Academic performance shouldn’t be an issue. </p>
<p>My D applied to several reaches. She was wait-listed at one and admitted to the other two. One offered zero merit aid. The other offered a mid-range, five figure merit scholarship, guaranteed for four years. She took it and ignored the matches and safety. Yes, she had second thoughts as the fall approached. We were all shocked by the merit scholarship and surprised by her acceptance. She started to wonder if she would “belong.” A week before leaving for school she worried that she would be the “dumbest kid on campus.” I told her “nonsense.” I used myself as an example: I scored 300-400 points below the average of my classmates, and only got into the college because I was a transfer. I graduated Dean’s List against those so-called “superior students.” It was all hogwash. My D took my advice, and three weeks after she got to campus, she called me and said, “Daddy these kids aren’t smarter than me with their 750’s on all the SATs.” She excelled her freshman year, and thanked me for reminding her that standardized test scores don’t mean a thing because they cannot measure motivation. </p>
<p>If merit aid is not an issue, go for the reach! You never know.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>From my standpoint, “he is not interested in his state flagship (Michigan)” = “not worth caring about”. A Michigander’s state flagship happens to be one of the great universities in the world, and one of a handful of public universities that really, truly is a peer of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. If a student isn’t interested in that at in-state prices, I don’t know what the heck he could possibly be interested in that I would respect. I’m not saying he couldn’t have other things he cared about, too. But to exclude Michigan categorically is nuts.</p></li>
<li><p>As I said above, there’s a lot of culture in play. In my kids’ world, at least, people from well-to-do families with highly educated parents tended to have high regard for LACs and less-popular elite institutions like Chicago, Tufts, or Hopkins. Or Dartmouth for that matter. They would apply to a broad range of institutions. Less sophisticated kids often didn’t. But that wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule. One close friend of my son’s, the first person in her immigrant family to go to college, and the top URM student in her grade, is at an elite LAC (almost certainly in part because she hung out with people like my son who told her it was great). Another, who culturally should have been part of the hedge-your-bets group, applied to 6 Ivies and Pitt. I don’t know why; I was shocked when I found out she had done that, because it seemed out of character (in fairness her teachers and counselors thought she would be accepted at one or more of the Ivies).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Mathmom, at both S1’s and S2’s HS programs, it was HPYSM or the flagship. (Part of that reflects the kids who were admitted to these programs, too.) UMD offered great merit aid to a lot of those kids, and parents in this high-COL area typically make enough that they don’t get much FA, but not enough to afford full-pay. </p>
<p>Both of my kids’s college decisions (Chicago and Tufts) were considered “unusual” given the prevailing mindset here.</p>
<p>We know a lot of folks who took the full-ride at the flagship and have no regrets, and that includes 2400s, Harvard/MIT/etc. admits.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl – Agree with JHS on UMich. Even S1, who most definitely did NOT want a college-town, big sports atmosphere, liked UMich. He sat in on CS and Math courses and liked them. Felt he would definitely be able to make it work for him. I was stunned. S1 had a lot of the same schools on his list that your young friend does. He would not even consider Berkeley for UG, which was the other big OOS state school on the preliminary list. Would your young friend look at UIUC?</p>
<p>“If a student isn’t interested in that at in-state prices, I don’t know what the heck he could possibly be interested in that I would respect.”</p>
<p>There are a whole lot of kids who have personality and other issues that make a school that size an issue. </p>
<p>My DD passed on applying to VTech, applied to a bunch of privates and will be attending RPI. VTech is just as strong in the fields she was interested in as RPI. I respect her choice - it showed a lot of self knowledge.</p>
<p>Yes, he is applying EA to MIT. I think he’s well aware of how much of a lottery it is. It’s not my kid and I have enough work getting two kids into college this year, thankyouverymuch :-).</p>
<p>This kid is very sciency / techy and wants a research university setting. The schools this kid / family talked about were MIT, I think Yale, maybe a few other Ivies but not remembering which ones, Caltech, Carnegie-Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Duke if I am remembering the conversation correctly. He looked at Case Western Reserve and didn’t care for it (neither did my kids, fwiw). In hindsight, I might have also suggested a Harvey Mudd as an “out of the box” type of choice. </p>
<p>Re not wanting to go to Michigan – He lives close to Ann Arbor (within a half hour). It is not a rejection of Michigan’s academics; it is the desire to go someplace other than in his own backyard. Which I totally understand. Even though I now have a kid who wants to go to a school in my own backyard, despite my best efforts to shoo him away.<br>
Would he be interested in UIUC? I don’t know, I didn’t bring it up. If he’s not interested in Michigan, I don’t see the point of suggesting UIUC. </p>
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<p>I don’t disagree with you at all, JHS. In fact, I highly agree, which is why my kids’ lists look like they do. The parents are trying to get him to think more broadly.</p>
<p>Thank u fallen chemist. SAT:M-450,CR-650,W-590 She’s taking again in Oct and has worked w/tutor so we hope math may go up. ACT is 24 Weighted GPA is 2.8 Our school is a highly competitive one in NJ She has taken many honors courses and gotten mostly A or B+ No AP tho. Been consistent rise thru Junior year.However there have been some barely passing grades in math. She has stuck with it and is taking a 4th year now FA is def a factor but we figure we’ll work it out somehow we’ve looked at several schools trying to get a feel of things. The school she loved is Ithaca Stats and Naviance show it of course as a reach. Not sure about Naviance sometimes it seems quite at odds with other stats. We’ve looked at smaller schools - she had excellent interviews at Allegheny and Juniata we also saw Susquehanna,and on diff trip Kutztown Ursinus. Feeling now is that she would prefer a larger school but prob no more than 10,000. Also wd like school that offers some animal studies but really is undecided. A relative of mine insists that her GC says ED is real mistake but I,as u say, thought the true desire factor wd help Oh- re Ex Cs they’re OK nothing super No school sports Biggest passion has been horseback riding and she has worked to pay for as much as she can.We cannot afford a horse but support as much as we can re lessons Anyway that’s the quik pic and any advice wd be greatly appreciated</p>
<p>Another factor to consider when applying-the student may feel a certain way in 10th and 11th grade when applying (i.e. the kid wants a school with a great football team or the kid loves an urban campus) and then by senior year, the priorities shift. Maybe the things the student thought were crucial to the decision are no longer that important. Therefore, the “fit” may change.</p>