<p>^ agreed, DS is applying to a few places where the total number accepted is 30 or so kids, this is out of schools with 30K+ students. Different situation there.</p>
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<p>Or maybe they just want a good number of choices come next April.</p>
<p>Here’s how things are playing out at our house (although it’s subject to change):</p>
<p>1) Son gets into one of his reaches and really, really wants to go there. We will pay full tuition (unfortunately, no financial aid for us).</p>
<p>2) Son doesn’t get into one of his reaches (or chooses not to go to it) but gets into several of his matches - which are all small LACs with $40-50 per year price tags. Unless he in head in over heads in love with one - we would encourage him to go to the one with the best merit aid or encourage him to go to a state U (see below).</p>
<p>3) Son gets a full-ride to one of our flagship universities (and hopefully gets into the honors program). BTW - he’s not ‘feeling the love’ for these safeties at the moment. Even if he doesn’t get a full-ride, we will end up paying less (maybe even a lot less) than we are currently paying for his private HS tuition. If he does this, we will guarantee we will pay for graduate school. </p>
<p>So there’s a lot of variables going on here. Limiting him to only 6 applicants might work but if he wants to increase his chances of more LAC merit aid, then it would make sense for him to apply to more schools.</p>
<p>As for the reaches - well, in my mind, why not ‘shoot for the moon?’ if that is what he wants - right now he has 3 on his list. They range from mid-high reaches but certainty not totally out of the question reaches. I see no reason to take them off.</p>
<p>So he has 3 reaches, 2 safeties, and 5 match LACs on the list right now. This list is down from 14 as of a few weeks ago. </p>
<p>I was going to try to get him to narrow the list down to 8 but the more I read CC, the more convinced I am becoming that keeping the number of match LACs up in hopes of getting a big merit offer is the way to go.</p>
<p>“Just curious–other than a BFA/Conservatory program–what are the other programs that have an admissions policy that’s different from that of the university in general?”</p>
<p>Combined bs/md programs. Good number of them are more selective than Ivy’s (example, 15 spots for 800 applicants on average). How you can limit in this case. Kids get accepted to extremely selective college with huge Merit scholarship and still do not get accepted to the program. They usually choose college that accepts them to the program</p>
<p>“Does anyone know if kids who apply to large numbers of schools are primarily hunting for good FA, or primarily hoping for acceptances at selective schools?”</p>
<p>Agree w/MomLive – sometimes its a combination of things. We were looking for good FA for our son, he was looking for a solid academic program at a school he liked a lot and wasn’t sure how his academic package would be received at various schools. He got into some fairly competitive schools for his major, but wasn’t necessarily shooting for super-selective schools.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, the combined BS/MD programs are a good example of a highly specialized degree program where you apply directly into the program and the admit rate is very low. The only difference, however, that I see, compared to let’s say the highly selective BFA in Musical Theater programs, is that for a BS/MD candidate, if accepted to the university but not the program, they can still study pre-med. For a BFA in MT candidate who is not accpeted into the program but is accepted into the university (and actually some BFA programs are all or nothing and you can’t get into the university without the BFA acceptance…example: NYU/Tisch), the student cannot study MT at all and must choose a different major if he/she were to attend. For example, my kid got into Emerson College but not the BFA in MT and would have NO interest in attending Emerson without the BFA in MT as she intended to go into MT and only picked Emerson to apply to for the program itself and would never study some other major. For candidates to specialized degree programs, they are applying to and selecting the programs more than selecting colleges themselves (or the college itself is a secondary consideration).</p>
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<p>This would be true if the total number of applications stays constant. When the same number of kids are filing more applications, the total number of applications goes up. This implies that the admit rates and/or the yields must be going down to get back to the same number of matriculating students. For the elite schools, the app explosion drives down the admit rates significantly, while maintaining the same or slightly lower yields.</p>
<p>momlive,
Your post # 62 sounds very much like what many cc’ers have described in their quest. Willing to pay full freight if necessary, but it really better be seriously worth it, or time to weigh acceptances against the best financial safety. Makes sense. But it still can be accomplished with less than 15 applications, IMO (with the exception of the specialty programs described above). For those specialty exceptions, it seems the applicant may go wherever they are accepted, and may not have the luxury of choosing between locations, cost, etc. Thats the way it was for grad school-- applied to a gazillion since it was so uber competitive. Applied to any/all that had what I wanted in a program-- didnt get to care about location until the acceptances came in.</p>
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<p>Agreed but the variable to me is: how exactly do you know which schools are more likely to give the biggest merit packages to good students? There must be a list somewhere. Maybe I need to spend more time in the CC Financial Aid forum.</p>
<p>It seems to me, without knowing that factor, by limiting the # of applications, you run the risk of limiting your chances of getting a great merit aid offer. I know some schools (like U of Alabama) have calculators but those aren’t schools my son is interested in attending.</p>
<p>I’m going to head over to the other forum and see what I can find out.</p>
<p>If the number of kids stays constant, but each of them doubles the number of applications he files, and the college set to which they are applying stays constant, and each college accepts the same number of applications that it did last year, all but a handful of them are likely to have some big, big gaps in their classes.</p>
<p>On a macro basis, that’s exactly what is happening. While the number of kids going to college has been increasing slightly, it hasn’t been increasing anywhere near as much as the number of applications filed. But where the applications are being filed is shifting, and lots of colleges can’t fill their classes. If you just look at the Ivy League, fundamentally what is driving down admission rates is not that kids are filing so many more applications per kid, it’s that many, many more people are applying to one or more of them than was the case 10 or 20 years ago. </p>
<p>The multiple applications – which I don’t like so much – are really a red herring. At least that’s what I think.</p>
<p>In my view, though I already stated it, even in very competitive college admissions situations (such as elite college admissions like Ivies or BFA in MT programs or BS/MD programs and the like), or in situations that are seeking merit aid, or FA packages, I feel there are very few people who ever truly NEED more than 12 schools if they have an appropriate and balanced list. I think how many schools to apply to does vary on individual situations but I just think it is a rare situation to need much more than 12 schools, and certainly I can’t imagine anyone needing more than 15! </p>
<p>I have one child who applied to some of the most selective colleges in the country and was/is a top student. She had 8 schools on her very balanced list of schools. Got into 6, waitlisted at one, deferred/rejected at one. I have another child who applied to a total of 8 highly selective BFA in Musical Theater programs…got into 5, waitlisted at 1, accepted into college but not BFA at 1, and rejected at 1. Also, my oldest applied to highly competitive graduate school programs in her field (many, not all, accepted in the 10% range or so). Even still, she applied to 10 which was enough. Got into 6 of the top ones in the country and with some scholarships. By the way, my kids were also FA applicants. Even in my line of work as a college counselor, I have rarely met anyone who truly NEEDS more than 12 schools. And many don’t need that many but some justifiably do.</p>
<p>Another then vs. now question. Back in the day, I don’t remember people sending out large numbers of applications to compare merit and FA awards. I recall awareness of cost, and knowing that you might not be able to attend a college if you were offered admission but not enough aid. This was in California, back in a time when the state and federal aid programs covered a significant amount of the COA. I also recall going into the FA office with my father and having him negotiate a better FA offer even after I’d signed the SIR and paid my deposit. Like that would happen nowadays, LOL. As a teen, I thought I was pretty clever looking through the list of schools that offered NM scholarships, applying to one that I wouldn’t mind going to, and designating that as my first choice. That sounds laughably naive now, but at the time that was cutting-edge gamesmanship. </p>
<p>So what has changed? Are people just smarter about the entire process of shopping for the best FA? Has the increase in merit aid as a recruiting tool given people more likely to cast a wide net? Has this always been the way the game’s been played outside of CA?</p>
<p>I like the idea of applying to 6-10 schools. That way the kids are the ones who decide their future. “Okay Junior here are the 5 colleges that have accepted you, now YOU get to be the one who decides” Versus - “Okay Junior here is where you have to go”</p>
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<p>That also leads to increased use of waitlist and summer melt. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t even remember hearing of such a concept as a waitlist 20 years ago. You either got in or you didn’t. Period. You didn’t have this maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t domino effect.</p>
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<p>Speaking for myself, my parents and I were absolutely ignorant/uninformed. I really truly don’t think we knew the difference between “need based” and “merit” aid. They were all referred to as “scholarships.” My parents were convinced that they made too much money to get “help” as they called it and looking back on how little Dad made, I don’t think that was a correct assumption. I really had no idea that some schools would offer so much merit aid that it would bring the cost down to the same as or less than public schools. </p>
<p>Because of all of this, I was told I had to apply to publics, there was one public with my major, I applied to it and was admitted. Bringing up another point, the school had 20,000+ students, but my major accepted 20 students a year.</p>
<p>I think that more middle class families consider private schools today as an acceptable or optional choice. Something that was not common two or three decades ago. In my family case, our parents (H and I) had to work incredibly hard to afford college during and immediately after the war. My father had the GI bill or whatever it was called after WWII. Their parents were immigrants, educated in Europe and didn’t have much money after they entered the country. So, our parents valued college and saved for us (H & I). My H had social security money because his father died and he worked. It took him longer than 4 years to finish because he had to work. My parents paid full boat for a midwest private LAC for me. There are parents today who have not saved for their children’s college so yes, they are looking for the college to discount/fix the finaid equation. The costs have risen. A Midwest private when I went was about 9% of my parents annual income per year for example. That same school would be about 16% of their annual income per year were they empoyed today in identical jobs. Both my parents worked which was unusual for their generation. To me, lack of savings by parents and the rise in costs plus the desire to send kids to private schools are the factors that have changed the picture. Finally the concept that a private education is somehow better than a public education has changed. Very few discussions several decades ago about whether one school was better than another unless one was discussing football. People went to a particular college either because their parents had gone there, kids individually wanted to go there or because the expectation was they would go to a particular school. Choices were limited by parents more than today. Mine, for instance, would not let me go to Middlebury because it was “too far away” and “not worth the extra money” compared to where I ultimately went. Kids in my town that went “far away” generally had left anyway to go to boarding school and then entered colleges in that region and they were rare and came from families considered “wealthy.” Also 3 decades ago people were more “loan adverse” a major goal was to pay off your home loan so people saved for what they wanted. Culturally this generation of parents has lived the reverse culture, take out loans for everything from cars, to home, to appliances so the thinking of our generation is “why not” for expensive colleges to a certain extent. The tightening of the credit market has I’m sure bit some people in the butt. Finally there is a transitioning in thinking more along the lines of the European model, that if you have a superstar academic kid they should go to the most perceived superstar college regardless of where it is. This was not so prevalent three decades ago. Many academic superstars went to the most rigorous school in their region without even stopping to think about it.</p>
<p>pgirl, I was waitlisted 30 years ago. Single initial school.</p>
<p>Slithey: College tuition has increased far, far more than the general rate of inflation since we were kids. My family’s income is probably about equivalent to what my parents’ was, in relative terms, but the percentage of it represented by private college COA has more than tripled. My $1,000 National Merit Scholarship represented a very meaningful break on college costs; my kid’s scholarship (same amount) was helpful pocket change. Furthermore, significant inflation, combined with federally subsidized student loan rates, made paying back student loans a snap. Merit aid existed – and some people did chase it, but not many that I recall – but it wasn’t necessary to the same extent.</p>
<p>Also, a much smaller percentage of people whose families really had low or moderate income even went to college.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl – Sure, waitlists existed back in the day. But waitlists don’t explain how admission rates at the most selective colleges have almost halved in the past 6 years.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this has been raised, but consider the student who is trying to decide between two majors. I know someone who was toying with either Business or Dance. Seriously. The potential dance major would probably have an entirely different list of schools than the potential business major. Under a 6 schools rule, would the student apply to 3 schools known for each potenial major?</p>
<p>At my D’s high school they were limited to 8 applications. With this in mind D had to carefully examine why she wanted to apply to a school. I asked her, if this is the only school that you got accepted to, would you be happy to attend. She did want some very specific things and when she got finished, she did not even applied to 8 schools. She applied to 7, was accepted to all of them, and was very sad to turn down schools as she really liked all of them.</p>
<p>missypie, in your Dance vs. Business hypothetical the kid would, like most kids the world over, have to decide which she wanted before applying to college, as opposed to four months later, or with luck 10 months later. I’m all for deferring that decision point, but it wouldn’t be a tragedy of global proportions if a few more American kids had to fish or cut bait on this or that life-interest four months earlier.</p>