Unless you live near an international border (with a desired university on the other side), it would seem that these two go against each other.
all excellent points!
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We never used the word safety in preparing the lists for our kids. I think for many kids they immediately discount it and itâs hard to get excited about it. We did talk a lot about the type of school they were interested in - size and location and things like flexibility of curriculum. Both also had specific extra-curriculars that made things more complicated. We also talked a LOT about how single digit acceptance rates make admission difficult for all students.
And also spent a TON of time looking for the right schools with high acceptance rates that would have something uniquely interesting for them. While the state flagship works for many students, we live too close ours and knew no matter how we spun it, they would not be excited about attending the school.
So I found the schools with great ballet programs and lots of research where my D20 could genuinely feel excited about going or schools where my S21 could swim and avoid taking a foreign language ever again - both things that wouldnât be possible at our state flagship.
Iâm not going to pretend that it magically made everything stress free, but we saw enough extremely painful processes by kids who truly believed that their all top 30 application strategy would work out for them. who are attending the state school as they only applied there at the guidance counselor instance.
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My second kid applied to three colleges only initially. All would be considered âsafetiesâ for admission based on her stats. One had rolling admissions and two were EA. She had all three acceptances before Christmas. The first came the week before Thanksgiving.
She decided to add a reach school, and we asked her to do one school closer to home. Frankly those all were a waste of money because she went to one of the first three acceptances.
She looked for colleges that satisfied her three criteria:
- Strong sciences
- Ability to play in the college orchestra without major or minor in music (this was the hardest criteria to fulfill, but all five schools she applied to were yes. But we visited about 18 colleges and 13 said NO).
- Pleasing weather (which really meant no snow ever).
I should addâŠwe never looked at or saw the USNews rankings and really didnât care about them. The only ranking that mattered was the one our kid did.
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Unless the COL is lower to offset travel expenses. I know several people that have taken advantage of WFH options and moved out of the US, at least temporarily. COL is much, much cheaper than their US locations (Chicago is one).
My son is an international student attending a university in NY. It was an eye-opener for me when helping my son to search US schools. It is a such complicated procedure. It took me more than half a year to do the research and got familiar with schoolsâ names for which I never heard of before. After reading forums on College confidential or articles on other websites I do think there is yield protection exist. Also, there are no true safety schools for internationals, especially if need financial aid. A lot of times I thought why we needed to go through this stress? Why didnât we just stay in our own country? It is just like a simple click on the computer to complete the college applications? Oh, well. Fortunately, my son got accepted by a school ranked between 60 - 70 by USnews with a very good award combined with a merit scholarship and financial aid. We didnât really show too much interest for most schools we applied for as visiting campus wasnât easy for internationals. I always think we are lucky doesnât matter what application strategy we used.
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Depends on the college. Tuition at my daughterâs very generous, coastal T10 college is significantly less than our western state flagship. That savings translates directly into travel/treat yourself money for her. Cheap flights are easy to find if one plans ahead.
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You canât get in unless you tryâŠ
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Based on my experience with S25 and D25, I believe that a search strategy should include a true analysis to be reviewed with your student of the collegesâ demographic composition which reveals how many seats are truly available. My best example is Wellesley. Wellesley admits 10% of applicants from the Midwest, 65% non-white applicants, 15% international. As a midwestern applicant, she was competing for 1 of 60 seats (120 Acceptances) without considering major, race, or geographic dispersion within the Midwest, etc. Wellesley recruits heavily in our large city with many private prep schools. How many women from one city will the college accept? How legacies were in the pool? Any ED candidates that fit that profile? (Weâve since learned that another student from her school with lower stats was admitted ED.) All factors showed that her true chance of RD acceptance was well below the college rate of 20% regardless of possessing objective stats that placed her safely in the top quartile of students. This spells Waitlist City.
Thankfully, in addition to her flagship safety, she was admitted to a highly selective LAC. Interestingly, when pairing her with a current college student from her âgeographic areaâ, the match was from another major midwestern city over 300 miles away. I have no doubt that a significant factor was that the college wanted a student from our area amongst her other qualities. My lesson learned is that for national colleges you simply cannot look at high level admission stats and build your chances around those factors. The black box of admission decisions is structured internally in a way that applicants will never see. It makes the process mostly random for us.
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I wholeheartedly agree. I wish I could say we didnât know the rankings but they were not considered for either of our children and were ignored. Both kids had very different criteria for their choice of where to apply and created their own rankings as to where they wanted to attend. Both have been successful and neither had any unexpected rejections.
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I would add, donât apply to a school because itâs selective. Understand what you want in a university and apply accordingly. If it does happen to be a selective school understand you have a very limited chance of being accepted and while you can be disappointed, donât be surprised or resentful. Finally, applying to even more selective schools only means you have a very limited chance to be accepted at more schools, not that you have a better chance to be accepted to a selective university. What is assured though is that youâve increased your chances of being disappointed.
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@tboooe CA as well but I am new. Do you know which ones to focus on. I only know UC, which mean Iâll guide my kid toward Riverside and Santa Cruz. Not sure what else out there.
Thanks!
To be honest, if the family has limited resources to fund 4 years of college education and the student doesnât have outstanding credentials, the first criterion for selection remains the Cost of Attending College. The other factors that influence the selection strategy are the availability of the preferred course/major, the scope for changing the major/ doing a double major, class sizes, location, and campus setting. Prestige comes much later. However, the strategy could entirely be different for an outstanding student with excellent ECs, or for students whose parents can fund the education without any constraints.
You are making some assumptions that are misplaced and are missing key information in your analysis.
If your student was targeting T10 schools, they chose to play the lottery rather than apply widely with the intention of attending college. Applying to a T10 school is like playing the lottery for nearly every applicant. Itâs not always about rich or poor, black or white, privileged or underprivileged. Itâs about the school receiving many applications that look nearly exactly like your studentâs. If your student was qualified for these schools, they were considered, but if 25 other applicants had similar credentials, then your studentâs overall chance of admission was low.
Rankings are not the most important thing when it comes to quality education, and attending an in state school is a great thing. Most of them provide high quality education. Itâs up to your student to take advantage of whatâs offered.
Your student probably doesnât know if they had a âgoodâ interview. In many cases, the alumni interviewer themselves doesnât know this information if they are doing their job well. It wasnât always this way, but it is now for good reason.
I hope your student ultimately ended up at a school that they can be proud to attend. We are very fortunate here to have a lot of high quality schools to chose from, both public and private. Thatâs a real privilege on this planet. Donât make the mistake of screening out colleges that arenât in a certain ranking decile before youâve even applied.
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