Although the current strategy is poorly conceived, I’m going to cut this family a little slack. It’s April. The student is unlikely to submit any applications prior to October. If someone doesn’t come from a family that has been through the college process before, there is a learning curve. And a playing field that changes rapidly if you look at how quickly acceptance rates can change in a few years (Kenyon as an example.) During my oldest kid’s junior year, I thought I had some decent knowledge but my thoughts were very different between April and October. I also had to readjust a lot of perceptions I had of certain schools dating from my own college years. Sounds like he’s looking at lists (Forbes reference above) and doing some reading. Hopefully, that’ll lead to more reading and research. My guess is he’ll get some education between now and autumn and the final college list will vary from what he is saying it is now. Hopefully, there is a halfway decent college counselor in the mix. Sounds like someone who just verbalizes every step along the way as opposed to internalizing it.
^ ^ ^
Well, I agree there may be appreciable learning that is necessary. However, it seems the core problem is the mother really isn’t very interested in education. Rather, she has preconceived ideas – ones that are factually incorrect and quite possibly ego-based – and instead of embracing advice from others (including authoritative sources), with appreciation, she categorically rejects it. That appears to be arrogance, not ignorance alone, to me.
@TopTier - Unless you, too, personally know this family, your comments above are making a huge leap based on the only reference from the OP to the student’s mother which I’ve repeated below. As fun as it is to laugh at other’s hubris about how special their child is and the fact that there is little current knowledge about the relative competitiveness in the college landscape (and with my post #2 I can chuckle at it as well), there is a big difference between having a “stategy” and list in April vs October or November. If the OP had started this post in November, I guess I’d be more 
than I am now. It’ll be interesting to see how things develop…
OP stated in post #9:
D just came home and told me the guy got yelled at by his mom sharing his LAC safety school idea.
Guess what? His mom said he is better than that! My jaw dropped…
Theoretically males have a better shot at LACs than females because of the applicant ratios. This is only an advantage but does not make the LACs, especially anything in top 30-40 a surething.
You know, @doschicos, the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard applies ONLY in criminal justice matters – in 99+ percent of life we very appropriately should draw reasonable inferences and apply both logic and experiences (even if we cannot be absolutely certain). For this reason, I don’t believe my comments (in post #21) aren’t at all “a huge leap.” Rather, I believe they are completely consistent with the INFORMATION, as reported in this thread. Sometimes I wonder if our society’s apologists for, and tolerance of, SO many things – and the concomitant lack of accountability they enable – really serves us at all well.
Maybe the mom’s misperception is this: Suppose her son is in the top 5% of his class and he consistently scores in the top 5 to 10 percent on the SAT and ACT. She sees the Ivy schools with single digit admit rates, and then sees Middlebury (17% admitted) or Williams (16.8%) or Bowdoin (around 15% this year). She thinks, no problem, he’ll get in.
I hope someone explains to her that her son will be competing against the cream of the crop for admission to all of these schools, and that his stats may be only average within the applicant pool.
^ …and that: it’s not all about stats.
What gets me is how people can make the baby step and and do a teensy bit of research and assume about stats and being a Tog Dawg in their own hs- and somehow never read the rest of “what we look for.”
Yes MidwestDad3 you are correct. He’s top 5% in class and top 2% on ACT, in IB and so is my daughter. She will apply ED to one LAC where she will play her sport, no Ivies, a couple match school and some very safe safties in CA (in case of some oops). I think our plan is more realistic. I think the more the kid researches on college admission facts and sees other peers’ admission plans, the more he will come to senses. I just hope his mom will do the same. He’s a smart kid but just hasn’t been seasoned yet.
@kchendds - If your daughter doesn’t get into her LAC school ED (maybe unlikely as a sport recruit), will she be adding some reaches to her list at all? I know you mentioned matches and safeties in CA but she shouldn’t sell herself short either.
I also think it’s important to note, that although LACs have higher acceptances rates in some cases, they also accepted less people overall. While Yale, Princeton, and Harvard accept about 1900 students, LACs accept less than a thousand in some cases. Another huge thing is that LACs tend to fill a good percentage of their classes ED so RD can be really stiff competition!
D knows that it’s a long shot for any Ivies based on her “good enough but not the best stats” for them. She also lacks any hooks and over-the-top EC’s due to her commitment to her sports. I heard if you are not playing the sport in their school, they don’t see too much value in it) There’s not a lot of leadership in her HS career, only being a captain in her team and a founder of a club in school. The chance is low and she actually is not keen going to any Ivy leagues because she doesn’t think she is the right fit. I think we will try some really good match or low match (maybe a reach like Pomona College) LAC’s and some safeties she would be fine going, like Cal poly Pomona (animal science for pre-vet) I don’t think D will be happy in the top big universities because of the extreme competitive nature.
Does it make sense? Or someone will tell me it’s wrong to think like that? I love learning from the best.
I guess I was thinking more in line with applying to more top LACs herself, along with some safeties and matches in the mix. Ivies aren’t for everyone. My kids didn’t apply to any (not that they were of that caliber but they weren’t interested either.) In the off chance that she doesn’t get into her ED school, why not apply to another 3 or 4 top LACs, if she likes them? Admission results can be erratic. However, as a strong student it sounds like she would do well with academic rigor. If she can apply to a geographic mix as well, that could help. Example: Pomona, something in the New England, something in the mid Atlantic region, something in the midwest. Assuming of course she likes and would be happy at such schools.
And it’s not all about high school titles. You really have to look at the breadth and depth of what she does do. Is she working with animals now? Maxing out her math and science?
Also, is she being recruited for her sports?
D had a 36 ACT, 11 AP’s, top 5% of class in a competitive high school and so on. She was rejected outright by Amherst and waitlisted by Vassar and Williams. The top 10 LAC’s are not “safety” schools for anyone. D realized they were reaches and set her expectations accordingly. Students like the one in your Daughter’s school are setting themselves up for a major disappointment.
Yes she is being recruited for her sports PurpleTitan. No she’s not involved with animal yet but she will shadow at some vet clinic this summer. She’s taking IB Math and finished her pre-cal last year, she took chem and bio honor in freshmen year and will take AP bio next year. I don’t know if she has maxed out but her GC said it looks fine.
It’s important to remember that acceptance rates are very deceiving. All the rates tell you is how many applicants out of 100 were actually admitted. They tell you nothing about the quality of the applicants. A lot of applicants to top LACs self-select - meaning, usually only applicants who are qualified to be admitted apply to these schools. The ivies, however, receive applications from everyone and his brother. They are widely known and people figure they’ll take a chance and throw their application onto the pile, knowing full well they aren’t really qualified. In other words, while Harvard receives around 30,000 applications and admits only 1,700, only 18,000 applicants were qualified. Middlebury, however, receives 10,000 applications and admits 1,700, but over 9,000 of those applicants were qualified. So the acceptance rates do not tell the whole story. Based on respective rates of 6% and 17% one might think Harvard is about 3 times as selective, but obviously that’s not entirely accurate.
@urbanslaughter: I entirely agree with your point and have long believed it has application well beyond its pertinence to this thread alone.
It wouldn’t be overly difficult, I suspect, to utilize readily available Common Data Set information to develop a SIMPLE quantitative approach that COMBINES selectivity (undergraduate admission rate) with applicant pool strength/quality (possibly mean or 25 to 75 percentile ACT/SAT aggregate score). Yes, a metric of this sort would be fairly unsophisticated and would neglect critical holistic factors; however, it would permit immediate and valid institutional comparisons (e.g., X admits 15 percent with an average SAT I composite of 2150, whereas Y admits 12 percent with an average SAT I composite of 2200). in fact, a single ROUGHLY comparative numerical metric could easily be developed (for example, the inverse of admissions rate times the average SAT I score (or ACT composite result converted to SAT numbers), perhaps with weighting factors applied).
Obviously – understanding that FAR more than two variables are germane – such an approach would nevertheless provide an approximate indication of COMBINED applicant pool quality and admissions selectivity.
Nothing is guaranteed w college admissions. S1 was surprised to be WL by a couple of less selective schools on his list.
The guy insisted to only apply to the top 5 school plus Pomona College as his safety. I hope his plan will change in a few months…