<p>If its the safety school in the sense that the only way he would go there is if it were the only option I fail to see why its important to visit. </p>
<p>But…I think students should be able to choose from any of the accepting schools. Just because they get an offer from stretch A doesnt mean that Safety B is off the table. B might have a better financial package or there may be friends going to B etc. In that situation not having a visit to B makes it difficult to make the call.</p>
<p>We are in a similar situation.</p>
<p>Visiting Safety for our family was #1 priority! But, we just did the “big one” of our 2 safeties - I believe they’re the same as OPs</p>
<p>Each school on his list is constantly compared to Safety we visited.
As deadlines are approaching, I am seeing him opt to not apply to schools that were a top choice a few months ago. </p>
<p>DS is like your son, he figured if he had no other choices, there was no point in visiting. He was glad he did. For me, knowing he would be very content at his safety lessened my anxiety.</p>
<p>
The ‘safety’ shouldn’t necessarily be singular and the apps shouldn’t be serial and sometimes the safety isn’t as safe as you thought it was. he should consider applying up front to at least a couple of reasonable safeties. </p>
<p>Having at least a couple of safeties that were at least researched well on the internet, including maybe using tools like Google street view (and campus view if they cover the particular one), Bing Birds-eye view, virtual tours on the college website, etc. can help quite a bit. Visiting is nice but again, not absolutely necessary IMO.</p>
<p>If he applies to at least a couple of true safeties, and assuming he’s admitted to them, then he’ll at least have a choice if he doesn’t get into his preferred colleges.</p>
<p>I think that visiting your safeties is more important than visiting your reaches. I agree with mini’s post in #6. One caveat, many reaches may not be academic reaches but rather selective reaches. Your child may be well qualified but so are the thousands of other applicants that apply. Sometimes at those schools shown interest can make a difference in the acceptance of an applicant. Some of these schools are need blind and guarantee to meet most of your need with out loans or with minimal loans. So if your EFC is low they could possibly be cheaper than other options.</p>
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<p>I think this is what I’m hoping for. If highly competitive School X (with the great need-based aid) is no more desirable than a safety with guaranteed merit aid, then why bother applying to School X?</p>
<p>But it’s something you can’t know unless you’ve visited the safety.</p>
<p>It’s hard to know whether a school is one your child will be happy to attend without a visit. If at all possible I’d try to schedule one. My D ended up at one of her safety schools (which I think is one of the ones you’re considering) even after getting into all the schools she applied to, because it turned out to be her favorite. Finances were not an issue - she chose the school without regard to the generous scholarships she received. I can assure you she would not have chosen the school without having visited.</p>
<p>I personally think that the safety school is the most important choice, and sometimes the hardest to make. The reality is that it’s very easy to pick dream schools or schools that are very appealing. It is less easy to pick a school that is not your top pick.</p>
<p>Our daughter actually applied to three safety schools (her top choices and she attended one) and one reach.</p>
<p>Our son was a music performance major so really NO school was a safety. </p>
<p>Our kids visited every school they applied to and a number of others as well. We combined many family vacations with college visit opportunities. For both kids, this started on 10th grade.</p>
<p>my son actually had 4 instate safeties available to him, ua, uab, uah and auburn. all with automatic great merit, all with very different vibes (probably auburn and ua have the most similar to each other) he found ua and auburn not to his taste, too sports, too greek, not as serious as he would like . found uah “just ok” and found he liked the urban feel of uab. without visitng he wouldnt have known what the differences were. he did an internship one summer and stayed on campus at uah so had a better feel for that one that just visits. He had always said he wanted to go out of state but final decision was to go to uab and he couldnt be happier…even more than he expected it to be.</p>
<p>What schools reject applicants that are way above a school’s profile?</p>
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<p>At the time she applied, did she consider the reach at least potentially more desirable than the safeties?</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Schools that are worried about yield.</p>
<p>*Quote:
Originally Posted by mom2collegekids
I think I know which safety schools you’re talking about . . .
If he can only visit one, have him visit the flagship.</p>
<p>“No bias there! Yep, gotta love UA - the school that actually schedules the start of the Spring term around the football schedule! (Add this to the list of things one learns when calling to schedule campus visits!)”*</p>
<p>lol…yes for the 2009 BCS Championship, Bama got bit in the tush because Spring semester was supposed to commence a day before the BCS in Calif (start date was Wednesday, game was on Thursday night, people returning on Friday). So, it had to delay the start of the semester til Monday because too many of the school’s members (faculty, students, athletes, band, cheer, pep, dancers, baton twillers, etc) were going to be in Calif for the first 3 days of the semester. </p>
<p>Bama got a lot of criticism from outsiders for making that change. After that, Bama started scheduling the spring start date a day or two after the BCS…so no more criticism (besides, many schools start after that date, too. :)</p>
<p>^^^ ANY school can reject any applicant! And no school wants to accept a candidate who’s just going to turn around and say, “no thanks!” So, if it seems apparent that the applicant isn’t really interested, and has applied to several more competitive schools (and appears likely to get admitted to those schools), why bother accepting him or her?</p>
<p>Re: #32</p>
<p>In practice, many schools do not care about keeping their yield high, although they will try to predict yield so that they can estimate how many will matriculate based on the number admitted. Many less selective state universities admit purely by GPA/rank/scores formula and do not try to guess who (individually) will matriculate, although they will be aware that yield goes down for higher stats admits.</p>
<p>Of course, the bulk of college students attend open admission community colleges.</p>
<p>Checking for whether “level of applicant’s interest” is a criterion for admission (common data set, section C7, or admissions tab on collegedata.com) can be a way of determining which colleges may reject an applicant using them as a safety who does not “show interest”.</p>
<p>Ucba…the reach was a great school, but it was a mega reach. It was also a last minute application. Yes it was appealing, but a huge longshot (she was not accepted). If she had been, it would have been a tough decision. The school she attended was her top choice from the get go.</p>