<p>^^^^ Ouch. Lousy ratio, bluebayou. But in CA many use the “one application fits all” UC app. Not meaning to minimize <em>at all</em> the importance of a good, educated college counselor (our HS now apparently has 4). They work wonders in helping a family pare down the list, and there are of course many CA students who apply outside of the UC system. Just saying perhaps they rationalize the low ratio of counselors to students as possibly less of a need b/c of the UC system. And being a bankrupt state.</p>
<p>Out of curiousity, did those who applied to , say over 12 schools, feel like they had adequate college counseling from a HS or private college counselor, or were you more or less on your own (and using references like cc)</p>
<p>^^ Totally on our own, jym626. Counselors meant well (& some were quite informed) but the bulk of the relevant (& innovative) info came right here on CC! I was quite fortunate to have the time to do the research.</p>
<p>IMHO that story has caused way too many nervous breakdowns on C.C and has led to a lot of irrational safety-seeking behavior. Every year there are hundreds of students and parents who post their acceptances on C.C, usually reporting multiple acceptances in a single post on the results thread. Yet, what do we all think about? We think about Andi’s son. Folks, Andi’s son’s story is interesting because it is an anomaly. The vast majority of kids with good qualifications get into good colleges. This is true on C.C, and also true of kids I hear about in real life. </p>
<p>Even Andison got great acceptances after taking a gap year, and I believe he attended MIT. In the long run, I think that kid was lucky he did not apply to and get accepted at some random safety school the first time around. JMHO.</p>
<p>That extra match that he unfortunately didn’t rush to the PO to mail at the deadline was not “some random safety school”. It is a very well respected school that would have been a fine fit for him, and he probably would have gotten in.</p>
<p>^^ Ah, jym626, you remember the details a bit better than I do…I had forgotten that part. But I think my point is still valid- his story is scary because it is so unusual. I’m trying to alleviate people’s anxieties here. </p>
<p>I also know of a kid who started at Harvard this year who would not be there had she been forced to trim her top-heavy list and add more safeties. She was not expecting to get into Harvard in her wildest dreams and that may well have been the school she would have cut out. She did not get into several of her other reaches but she did get into Harvard.</p>
<p>of the four counselors, one is excellent, one is average and one is so-so. Yes, being instate, there is a focus on the UCs and Cal States. But we do send 10-20 to the Ivies+Stanford+MIT every year, and a large group to USC and other excellent privates. Many of those do use private counselors. </p>
<p>Some use word-of-mouth, which unfortunately is usually incorrect. Those parents would be much better off on cc!</p>
<p>No offense to andi and her high achieving son but I believe even they would now admit that his college list was not BALANCED. It was all top heavy with reaches. I don’t care if you walk on water, you need a range of schools…reaches, ballpark, safeties. If Andi’s son had had some matches on there, there was a good chance he would have landed at a selective school (not Swarthmore, but just under that) and not had to go to a safety (though he did not have safeties on his list either). And for a very accomplished student, a safety school doesn’t have to be a super easy school but simply one where it would be a sure bet. My D was a high achieving kid and her safeties were not what I think of as easy schools. One even gave her a bunch of merit aid (Lehigh). And i have indeed seen kids on CC who have lists that are ALL REACHES (or sometimes ALL REACHES plus state U that they say they have NO interest in attending, rather than finding safeties and matches that are schools they would like). The eye can not be so fixated on reaches. This is a problem for some and their lists are not realistically balanced. </p>
<p>By the way, my nephew applied to competitive programs last year in a specialized field. They went about things poorly in several respects which I won’t list here but included too few schools for such a selective process and no safeties. He got into none. He is taking a gap year and I am helping him this time (though he hasn’t done much unfortunately, but that is another issue).</p>
<p>vp-
I remember that detail b/c I had backchannel conversations with andi about the school (and front channel conversations about the penguin march at the Edinburgh zoo)
And yes, of course there will be those stories about the surprise longshot acceptance, just as there are the sad stories of the longshot “coming up empty” scenarios. My bro was one of those-- his GC told him he had a snowball’s chance in h*ll of getting into Yale. On acceptance day he made a snowball out of the frost in the freezer (this was 41 yrs ago) and brought it to school. A reach is a reach is a reach. If it is a top choice reach, then I would advise against cutting it from the list, unless it is unaffordable.</p>
<p>The person I’m thinking of was not a ‘surprise longshot acceptance’. She was your typical ‘walk on water’ kid with everything going for her. She did get into a few very good schools and would have been just fine, but was rejected or waitlisted by many of the super-selective schools. She was waitlisted and then eventually accepted by Harvard. At that point, she didn’t even know whether she would like Harvard, she hadn’t even visited it. But after her acceptance she visited, and liked the school a lot, so she matriculated there. </p>
<p>The point is, which is relevant to the title of this thread, if she had been asked to limit her applications to an arbitrary number of schools and then tried to balance out the list, she would have missed out on a really good school.</p>
<p>^^^ That is, if she cut Harvard instead of a school she thought she might like less. Or she would have (if she were attending our hs) paid the fifty buks to have the extra school on the list. Understand your story, but the one school here or there isn’t really the issue most posters are talking about.</p>
<p>jolynne,
Hypothetically, if you had had a really good college counselor who helped you with the process along the way, was knowledgeable about the process and was available for suggestions, information, guidance and support, do you think you might have had a list of a different length?</p>
<p>I agree with vicariousparent’s point. If a student is well-qualified for HYPSM, by unusual personal accomplishments and exceptionally high potential, as well as GPA, SAT’s, SAT II’s, AP’s, and multiple university courses, from my observation of students from our region, there are still no guarantees of acceptance at any particular one of that set (with a possible exception, for a Davidson Fellow we had some years back). It would probably be quite different for a student at Groton or Harvard-Westlake (or maybe even New Trier), where the GC’s might be able to suggest one of those schools that would be a particularly good match for the applicant. </p>
<p>andison’s case is the very rare extreme, where the student wound up with 0 acceptances in the senior year. But if a student’s list is tailored too narrowly, the student could well wind up at a safety school, when the addition of one or two more super-reaches would have yielded an acceptance at that level. I would guess that this scenario is quite common, relative to andison’s situation–and it would become more common if applications were limited. JHS: Admittedly, this situation may never arise in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters how good the college counselor is. No one can predict who’s going to get in where, with the exception of large public schools with numbers-driven admissions criteria.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’ll be fair. Its like limiting taking the SAT/ACT to one/two times. Its just a bigger hassler and it puts a strain on the kid. What if a straight A kid who applied to many reach schools was rejected? where would he/she go? On the other side, I think it helps the admissions job at top schools become less hectic- but at what cost to the students and the student body at those schools?</p>
<p>We were lucky in that S1 felt he would have been able to make the flagship work for him. Not as confident about that with S2, though he says he’d be fine. Mathmom, I fervently wish S1 would take a look at American, but it’s just too darned close to home.</p>
<p>jym, we did College Karma’s Stats Eval and they didn’t think 12 was excessive. Suggested that S2 might be better positioned at his reachiest if he did ED, and offered a couple of other school suggestions. According to them, he has 7 low reaches and four likelies (some more likely than others). Nothing is particularly out of his league; it’s just that there are other highly qualified kids applying, too.</p>
<p>Each of my kids applied to ten schools; S should have applied to 8. D should have applied to 12, although she did get into her #1 school. It retrospect I can see we were lucky.</p>
<p>However, I don’t think my experience is representative of anyone but my family.</p>
<p>Although I do understand Soozie’s point, different strokes for different folks. </p>
<p>I don’t begrudge Curm or Jolynne’s family their 17 and 19. And I don’t second guess them. If they felt that was necessary, I don’t want to say that it wasn’t. That they really could have gotten away with 12. I always prefer to believe people’s own experience, just as I want people t believe mine.</p>
<p>As for Jym’s situation, I am glad it worked for her family to have their limited number of applications, and I can see charging for more if the finances of the school dictate it. If it is really important to the family to add 10 schools, somehow the $500.00 will have to be found and looked at as an investment toward merit money in that situation.</p>
<p>I think schools that limit the number with no redress are very peremptory and unfair. If those transcripts are needed the student has no options.</p>
<p>CountingDown, we’re lucky that American is both familiar, but not far away. Grandparents (who have both passed on) lived within blocks of American. Neither of my kids were interested in schools in our county or in NYC.</p>
<p>I only applied to 5 schools, and really you shouldn’t need much more than that. You should do your research before to get it down to a small list of schools that you’d actually go to and you have a realistic chance at. Applying to 10+ schools is ridiculous.</p>
<p>mythmom, I agree…I don’t think it should be up to the high school to decide how many a student can apply to. If they want to charge for transcripts over a certain number, that is a reasonable solution but it is really up to the applicant. </p>
<p>I also don’t begrudge Curm or Jolynne, even if I would not have made the same choices because we all do what we feel is right or best for our own situations. My comments are meant to be more general since so many people read these threads and so I am just of the opinion that it is a rare situation that truly NEEDS a lot more than 12 apps and encourage and advise applicants to narrow it to a reasonable number, like 12 and under in most situations (exceptions might arise for valid reasons) because at some point, the list needs to be more focused and narrowed. Not too narrow as to not yield results but broad enough to yield options in the spring but reasonable enough so that in April, the student is not mulling over 12 options at that point. That is my personal viewpoint and not meant to judge as much as it is to advise anyone who is embarking on this process and reading this thread. I don’t think one has to shoot 18 arrows to get into a top college if truly a competitive candidate. And from personal experience with two kids of my own applying to highly competitive colleges or specialized programs, we knew they were competitive but were realistic that they could get turned down, but confident that they would not be without a school come April. And that was with 8 apps each and being FA applicants as well. This may not be right for everyone else, of course. But I do think it is doable for just about anyone to not have to go much past 12 or so to get good results, if the college list is appropriate to the candidate and well balanced. </p>
<p>(example …D2 applied to 8 schools with admit rates from 2-9%…I don’t think she needed more than 8 hits to score…she scored most of them, but not all…it was enough)</p>