What if kids were limited to 6 applications?

Parents Forum
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<p>Pizzagir, of your Son is truely interested in internanal relations, and history, wouldn’t he really want to be in a school where internships, etc are available? In this job market, if you have experience outside the classroom you will get hired over someone who doesn’t </p>

<p>My D is a history major, with minors in political science and women’s studies. She picked a school specifically where she can get to internships and where internships were plentiful. It may not be the top in its field for her majors, but its great.</p>

<p>If you are looking at a major that isn’t one that leads straight to a job, then in this day and age, you better intern. You better volunteer someplace. International studies? Volunteer at Amestiy International or an immigration group. History major, volunteer at a museum.</p>

<p>Most employeers want someone who has worked in the arena, not necessarliy the exact job, but something that will add to whatever they learn in the classroom. </p>

<p>My D, she does research for a news program. Every person around her, working for that show, every one of them, interned in college. Some are history majors, some are marketing, some are journalism, but to a person, they all interned before they got hired. Some interend at non profits, some interned at NGOs, some ivolunteered at homeless shleters doing outreach. But if you don’t consider location and possibilities for lonig term job prospects and doing something beyond the classroom when you are in college, the jobs won’t be there. Too many applicants,not enough jobs, so those that have done something beyond the classroom, especially the humanities majors, well, they very well might not get the job over someone from a “lesser” school who has some experience.</p>

<p>To that end, to dismiss location and claim that isn’t that important for kids who want to be around the best, is not being truely aware of the circumstance of the job market and the need to be able to get a leg up. And a diploma from a school with oodles of smart kids won’t cut it like it used to. </p>

<p>That is why location is not irrelevant. </p>

<p>I have a friend who’s daughter goes to a great UC. Davis. Wonderful education, wonderful smart kids, nice campus. But her D cannot get an internship. There is just nothing there. </p>

<p>So yeah, a kid can be elated in a school with lots of smart kids around, but if they just stick to the classroom, sad to say in this day and age, the work won’t be there, no matter how smart they are, unless they get out there and DO while in school.</p>

<p>Ask anyone looking for work right now, its tough, but if you can get a leg up by going to a good school, not necessaruly the reachiest you can, and can be inthe world while there, you will have just as an exciting, intellectual an experiince as if you were surrounded by all the 4.0 in the world.</p>

<p>I know, said I was done. Now I truly am. That is why location, etc is very imporant. THat is why a FULL educaiton, of the whole person, in all aspects, beyond the classrom is essential these days. </p>

<p>My Ds also picked schools with a strong core currucium, so they would get a well rounded education. Part of that is the students, the profs, and the world.</p>

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<p>Um…I really don’t see as much disagreement here. Cellardwellar has posted about a child who was picky (?) re: academics. Ilovetoquitl22’s D had an equally strongly held set of desires that encompassed multiple other factors. Cellardweller explained how 17 apps got her/his daughter where she wanted to be. My son had a different set of criteria than either (not pure academics, not a super strict/long list of other factors). He used 19 apps to get to where he wanted to be, as well.</p>

<p>I think the issue of ‘does America value education’ is certainly interesting but somewhat of a side point to the current topic, of whether a student might use more than the traditional 6 apps to get wherever he/she wants to be.</p>

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<p>ilovetoquilt:</p>

<p>On another thread, you indicated that your D checked out colleges in both DC and Boston, but chose to not apply (for whatever reason). Did you visit them and then your D decided they were not a good fit (again, for whatever reason)? If you wouldn’t have had the resources to visit might she have applied and visited after accpetance? </p>

<p>For families that don’t have the resources to visit colleges across the country, would your position on ~12 apps change?</p>

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<p>Maybe, maybe not. It’ll have to be his choice. He has an affinity for rural areas of great natural beauty AND the opportunity to intern. So - we’ll go visit both types. Maybe he’ll strongly prefer one or the other. Maybe he’ll like both types, for different reasons. Who knows? The point is, it doesn’t have to be narrowed down at this point, and it doesn’t even have to be narrowed down at the application point. It’s ok, you know, if he winds up with acceptances from 2 schools that are very, very different (both high caliber, but offer very different pros and cons) and has to make a choice. All the applications / acceptances don’t need to be cut from the exact same mold.</p>

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I do.My older son does NOTHING off campus. Location is immaterial to him. He gets his fun by playing board games and computer games. He’d be equally fine on a rural or city campus or all points in between. While I’m a city girl at heart, I love to hike, I could easily have spent four years on a rural campus. When I was in college I did 90% of my socializing on campus though I did enjoy the idea of Boston being right there, I didn’t make use of it nearly as much as I expected to.</p>

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<p>Maybe we should think in terms of “deal breakers” or what the student doesn’t want, rather than what they do or are neutral about, to help whittle a list. It doesn’t have to be a anything that means anything to us, but rather to them. For eg, my older s also wanted an intellectually stimulating environment, was initially open to both LACs and U’s, (although when he decided he wanted to have a school with engineering, that changed), didn’t care about geography, weather, open to yes/no on greek life, etc. But, his dealbreaker (which I understand b/c I felt the same way)-- he didnt want to HAVE to take any more language. Was that stupid? Maybe. Did that knock a lot of potentially great schools off his list? (he wasnt taking an AP language so would not have gotten credit nor could he have likely passed a proficiency test in the foreign language he took in HS). Probably (though as he considered engineering, the option to not have to take more language opened up even at places like Columbia, Tufts, etc). This “cut from the bottom” approach worked, and can work even when need is a high priority in the mix. Funny thing, he almost ended up taking a language in college, though ultimately didn’t. But he wanted it to be his choice, which it was.</p>

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<p>Not necessarily. Those interested in an academic future should consider pedigree first and foremost (since pedigree matters in academia). Thus, rural Cornell can easily trumps many city colleges for such a kid.</p>

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<p>Oy vey. I was writing a hypothetical. As I said, I was NOT describing my kids. Or any immediate member of my family. I do know kids who fit the hypothetical, and I know far more who don’t. The latter won’t be applying to the type of schools mentioned, nor using the type of application strategy that calls for applying to large numbers of schools. That’s fine. Similarly, my hypothetical science/engineering kid would be applying to pretty much one school in NYC, along with a lot of schools that wouldn’t fit your daughter’s criteria. This in no way impugns your children or their academic abilities. It simply means that there are different strokes for different folks. It’s a puzzlement to me that this is such a puzzlement to you.</p>

<p>And the mean spirited comment about kids (again, NOT MINE, at least not at this time) who are pursuing careers that require great dedication, sometimes against great odds of success, is uncalled for.</p>

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<p>JHS:</p>

<p>The last school was Tufts, a top 30 school, a low match for her. </p>

<p>Of the 10 top 15 universities, she got in to one high reach (out of 5), one reach (out of 3) and one low reach (out of 2), waitlisted at one, rejected at 6. Of the LACs admitted to 2, waitlisted to 3. </p>

<p>Eliminating any of the reaches would have been like Russian roulette. Even among the low reaches she only had a 50/50 chance as a RD applicant. FA further complicated the issue. Even in retrospect, I don’t see that we have done anything substantially different or that further research would have helped trim the list.</p>

<p>Could she have skipped on the LACs applications entirely? Possibly. But that could have been very risky as they were generally matches or low reaches. They weren’t really part of the original plan as we had assumed research was not really an option at LACs. The meeting with the private counselor and subsequent visits to the the LACs on our list convinced us that it was still possible to find the program she wanted. We also knew the LACs would quite generous financially. A top LAC wound up as the third best choice in the end, just after her high reach and reach admissions. She would certainly had been happy to attend it had the first two options not materialized.</p>

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<p>I’m always surprised at how many people say you can’t like Brown and U. of Chicago because one has a core and the other doesn’t. My son thinks the core would be good for him, but he isn’t particularly looking for it. </p>

<p>I agree that deal breakers are sometimes the easier way to go. For older son an inadequate comp sci department and Red states (more for weather than politics) were the only dealbreaker. </p>

<p>For younger son he wants a campus and he doesn’t want to be in the woods. But that leaves a lot of other schools.</p>

<p>I agree with cellardweller - while of course college can be a lot more than academics - for kids who will bloom where they are planted there is nothing wrong with just choosing from the top schools in the USNWR list. You could do worse.</p>

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<p>What I am getting from this thread is that there are many reasons why someone might need to apply to more than 6-8 schools. I am just so glad that the discussion is hypothetical and that most of us do have the ability to allow our kids to apply to as many schools as they want (or need) to apply to.</p>

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<p>In our land of the free today, it is a proud moment for a boy to announce to his friends at a party that he just made the varsity football team, and the kid next to him would never think about joining the parade with “Oh yeah, I made the math team!” </p>

<p>I agree with cd & geomom. We seem to be fixated on athletics and art. It is not politically correct to be smart and let your intelligence shine, but it is okay to let people know you are the fastest runner or the strongest lifter. There is something wrong with this. Is it because deep down we are okay to concede that other people are physically more gifted or better conditioned than us, but it pains us to admit that we are just not as smart or as knowledgeable? Is it because our security and confidence are more shaken when we find ourselves on the losing end of a contest of the minds? </p>

<p>Professionals who are at the top of their fields are meticulous at making sure they have every advantage they can find. They leave no stone unturned. No edge is too small for them. Heck, many us even condone the use of performance drugs – just listen to the cheers these violators continue to receive. We seem to acknowledge and understand this for our athletes, artists & musicians, but we shake our heads when a student is agonizing over whether to take another SAT II so he can drop the 720 from his list. Is it that hard for us to admit our kids are not as smart or as gifted as the other kids? Maybe, just maybe, we just don’t want to admit to ourselves that the other kids are more deserving than ours.</p>

<p>We sneer at the math and science kids and call them nerds and tell them to “get a life”, while we fully support other “lifestyles”. It is no wonder we are rapidly losing our huge advantage in the world. If anything, let’s give our academically focused kids a double round of applause for being true to themselves despite the immense social pressure they experience day in and day out. Keep your head high, we are proud of you.</p>

<p>I hope no one takes my “We” pronoun personally. It is just a substitute for our prevalent culture.</p>

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<p>ilovetoquilt22: I was one of the people who dissed your list of fit factors. My kids had exactly the same criteria yours did, more or less. (One of them applied to one rural LAC that was a pretty safe match in case she changed her mind between December and May.) Did I stop them from using those criteria? Of course not! I was perfectly happy with the schools to which they applied.</p>

<p>But we have obviously never spoken, because I know with all my heart that either of them would have been perfectly happy at a rural or suburban school. Do you really think that students at Dartmouth, Cornell, Williams, Amherst (not to mention Princeton or Stanford) suffer permanent damage from spending 36 months (assuming no study abroad) in a place with fraternity houses but no opera houses or subways? That they don’t get interesting internship opportunities? </p>

<p>Wow. Just think of what Stephen Sondheim might have accomplished with his life if only he hadn’t been stuck in Williamstown, with only one theater, for eight semesters! Moses Pendleton might have been a REAL dancer if there had been a better teacher available in the New Hampshire woods than Alison Chase. Tim Geithner: too bad he didn’t have an international bank he could get to on the bus, he might have developed a global outlook. And poor Meryl Streep, buried in podunk Northampton for the critical years of her development.</p>

<p>Of course I’m not saying that kids don’t have real preferences. They do, and that’s fine. It helps narrow things down. I did make my kids look at how the other half lived, and they looked, and they turned up their noses at it. But even they knew, too, that if somehow fate had forced them to go to college in a SMSA with fewer than 8 million people, they would still have been interested and engaged.</p>

<p>By the way, the absolute coolest internship I heard of in the past year belonged to an Amherst student, obtained solely with the help of her Amherst teachers: working with the GM of a major league baseball team to develop analytical models to evaluate trades and drafting decisions. In a city, with public transportation, cultural options, and everything (not that she got to go anywhere much besides the ballpark). She got paid to do it, too.</p>

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<p>Pedigree with not always trump experience. My D got her internship at MSNBC over students from Columbia and NYU. Why, cause she has been doing internships all along. In fact, three major networks wanted her. She goes to a good school, top 70, but no where near a pedigreed school. When she gets out of school she will have a degree, but she will ALSO have work experience, connections, a resume, and recommendations, something she probably would not have goteen at a school without the location.</p>

<p>Why did she not choose to apply to Boston or DC schools. She wanted a location where she would have options for internships and volunteering that would enhance her classroom education, in a more varied sense. DC was wonderful, but for my D, who had interned and volunteered all through HS, she knew that for her major, she really needed to get real world experiences. </p>

<p>My other D, who is interested in marketing and communication and film making and fashion, NYC was a slam dunk.</p>

<p>That’s our story. They were truly able to see the big picture, see down the road, see what they wanted and had deal breakers. And beleive me, if you aren’t adaptable, you won’t cute it in NYC. </p>

<p>Both my Ds took a good look at their probable majors, or at least their realms of interest, added in the need to intern in this day and age,and were able to pair down their lists.</p>

<p>Maybe to some their reasons for not even applying to some schools with higher rankings and prestige were foolish, those school would have been reaches, but they didn’t think the prestige was all that important.</p>

<p>One of my Ds got into NYU. She nixed it. Why? NYU is a bigger named school, it has internships, it had location, but what it had was size. Too big. Some say size doesn’t matter. Well, it should.</p>

<p>So when both my Ds put together all the factors, looked and their futures, looked at the now, looked at the students, location, etc, they truely were able to have a good solid list. Why bother to include schools that weren’t going to really give them the FULL educaiton they needed and wanted.</p>

<p>I still say 19 schools is a heavy list and is unecessary. But hey, your time, your dollar, your headache.</p>

<p>Jus tdon’t think readers of this thread should go away thinking, yeah, that;s a great and the smartest plan, Just apply anywhere that you want. Being a little particular is the wrong approach!! Location doesn’t matter? Prestige is important!!! Sending that message only is not fair to those who are applying now.</p>

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<p>^^^^ Meryl Streep was in Poughkeepsie, not Northampton (in a very strong drama program)</p>

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<p>cellardweller, your story pretty much justifies your strategy. I don’t see that very often, but I will admit that, even with hindsight, your daughter could not have halved her application portfolio without taking on a lot of additional risk.</p>

<p>EDIT: Ooops. Sorry, Vassarites, on the Meryl Streep gaffe. I knew it was someplace less than urbane.</p>

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<p>I don’t think anyone on this thread is saying this. Why can’t you understand that developing an appropriate list is different for every student? Characteristics that were important to your daughters may be unimportant to others. The key is figuring out what matters to you, and building the list from there. One size does not fit all.</p>

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<p>Shades of Moneyball! A friend trained in statistical methods, who’s a huge A’s fan, wrote to the A’s organization volunteering his services gratis to do exactly this. Not even the favor of a reply. He’s going to choke when I send him this quote. :)</p>

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<p>It did for your children. That’s not necessarily the case for everyone else. </p>

<p>Back to the househunting analogy. One of our family’s important criteria was living in a house where it would be easy for our children to get around without having to rely on the parental limousine service all the time. Other families we know wanted to live where they’d have a view and be isolated from traffic noise. Other families didn’t care one way or another as long as the house was in turnkey condition.</p>

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<p>That’s simply wrong for a school to say you can only apply to x number of schools. Your principal or counselor shouldn’t decide what you can and can’t do in that situation.</p>

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<p>JHS…post 333…agreed…students can get internships (ie., summer) or cool opportunities no matter the location of the college. By the way, though, I think Meryl Streep went to Vassar, not Smith. ;)</p>

<p>Bluebayou…when I said I have not run into a kid who truly seems to NEED more than approx. 12 schools, I did not mean just in my line of work. I meant any kid I have known anywhere in regular life or read about on CC. </p>

<p>Ilovetoquilt…you put down kids pursuing certain fields. Yes, it is very hard to make it in musical theater, as one that you mentioned. So far so good for my recent graduate but we know it is a difficult field. And while I understand criteria that your kids weighed in choosing colleges, I don’t think you really know what a person pursuing a specialized degree program needs to do in creating selection criteria as it is a VERY different process than selecting a regular college (even in my own family, one kid went to a regular college and one a specialized professional degree program and their selection and application process were very different). For a specialized degree candidate, they must first and foremost, choose the program and then secondarily, the college within which it is located and then all the other typical criteria like location, size, etc. </p>

<p>Cellardweller…I feel you have misinterpreted me or I did not express myself well. I am totally into going to the best colleges you can and in fact, one of my own children attended an Ivy League school (though Ivy was not her goal…but very challenging selective school was a main goal, along with other selection criteria she had). You mention the population of your local school. While ours is not that type, my family has a cultural value of obtaining a very good education and doing everything that is possible to obtain that and pay for it. You mention Jewish kids. We are Jewish, if that matters. We highly value a fine education. I went to an excellent college and grad school myself. And so have my kids. I never said to not shoot high! </p>

<p>You are critical of my point about a balanced list. I never said that the number of reaches should equal the number of matches and should equal the number of safeties. But I do believe a list usually should have schools in a range on it. And frankly, even YOUR D’s list of 17 schools indeed had that as you said that Tufts was a Match for your D and that UCLA was a safety. So, while your D’s list was mostly REACHES, it was not ALL REACHES for her. </p>

<p>I have a D who was a top student in all respects in and out of the classroom. Yes, she reached high for schools that were a good fit and part of that good fit was “challenging academics and learning environment.” Still, she was realistic in the sense that she knew that these very selective colleges still turn away qualified students like herself. She knew she was a contender at every school on her list but that it could result in some rejections. We felt she’d get in somewhere of course. However, it made sense to include matches (she had two…Tufts and Smith, and would have been happy to have attended either which she loved and in fact, preferred over Penn which she was also admitted to), and she included two safeties but these were not rock bottom schools and in fact, were still selective but simply sure bets for HER, as you say UCLA was for your D. A list with ALL reaches and nothing else simply is quite chancy even for the best applicants. That is all that I meant. I did not mean to not reach high. </p>

<p>I have also posted that if one is a TRUE contender for their “reach” schools (which are not really reaches in terms of their profile but simply fall into the “reach” category due to the low admit rates), then I believe such a candidate WILL get into at least one, but can’t predict which of these will come through. If a student can’t get into any of their low admit rate schools, they likely were not a true contender. That is generally speaking. Exceptions may exist. In other words, I don’t think a true top student who is a contender for the most elite colleges in the land, needs 17 reach schools in order to make a “hit.” In my experience, the most competitive candidates CAN get at least one or more acceptances at a very selective college while applying to much less than 17. It should not take more than 12 if they are truly solidly in the ballpark of the top schools. Again, both my D’s had 8 colleges on their respective lists…we knew they were contenders. We realistically knew not every school would come through given the odds. We never thought they would be shut out. They ended up getting into most, but not all of their schools. If you really are in the ballpark at these so called “reach schools”, it should not take 17 tries to make a hit.</p>