Why not apply to only safeties?

College Search & Selection
1

Daughter is a junior and I’ve learned so much from this forum. A common question is: help us decide between full pay at selective college vs a less selective school that’s offering merit, or a state school. Most people seem to encourage the student to go to the less expensive school if cost is a factor.

So, since cost is a factor for us, is there any reason to encourage my daughter to apply to reach (more prestigious) schools that offer little to no merit and would be out of range financially? We’re pretty confident that her safeties would give her some merit aid which would bring the cost down to something we could manage.

2

Please define what schools you consider safeties? Someone here on CC who was aiming for HYP stated that Cornell was their safety!

3

If you are cost-constrained, realize that an actual safety must be known to be affordable, as well as known to admit the student. I.e. the reach/match/safety assessment needs to be made based on the likelihood of getting the necessary scholarships and financial aid for affordability, not merely admission.

4

If you have a budget, have run the NPC’s, know merit is unlikely at some schools and know these schools would be out of reach financially, what would be the point of encouraging her to apply? I guess I’m missing something.

5

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So, since cost is a factor for us, is there any reason to encourage my daughter to apply to reach (more prestigious) schools that offer little to no merit and would be out of range financially? We’re pretty confident that her safeties would give her some merit aid which would bring the cost down to something we could manage.


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It’s ok to throw out an app or two to a school that “might” end up being affordable if they do give out some competitive merit. Those would be financial reaches.

however, if you have an unaffordable EFC, then be sure to apply to a couple of schools that FOR SURE will give you the merit amounts that will bring costs down. Being “pretty confident” isn’t enough. Your DD needs to apply to a couple of schools that FOR SURE will give her enough merit.

The “pretty confident” schools can be her “financial reach/match” schools…but not safeties.

Safeties need to be affordable so you need to know FOR SURE that the merit awards will be there.

6

Well for starters I’d say it depends on the state school. In-state schools are much stronger in states like CA, NC, WA, NY, etc. It’s a bit different than a state school in say West Virginia, or Wyoming, or Mississippi. The other thing is, if your student has very impressive stats, a lot of top tier schools will meet full need. I think it’s always worth applying to a school like that if it’s within the realm of possibility. Going to a more prestigious school can give you a more fulfilling experience because they might have more impressive faculty, facilities, on campus recruiting, alumni networks, etc.

7

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your student has very impressive stats, a lot of top tier schools will meet full need.
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@newyorkmom2girl needs to clarify. From her post it appeared that they can’t afford their EFC. If that’s the case then a school that “meets full need” wouldn’t work. If the family has an EFC of $40k, but can only pay $20k, then how would a “meets full need” school help them??

How much can you pay each year? What do you think your EFC will be:

What are your DD’s stats? You mention that she might be premed and doesn’t want party schools. Lol…every college is a party school…even the elites. when you get 18-22 year olds together, there is drinking, partying, sex, and rock and roll. IT’s a given.

8

I believe in applying for a variety of schools because you really never know what the admissions team will do. So much is subjective. If you can afford the application fees or can get waivers, I say go for it for any schools she would be interest in attending where she meet the basic qualifications. My son’s applications became more limited than I wanted due to the separate essays some wanted. It does depend on your child. If your child has difficulty with rejection, I’d say apply for more safety schools.

9

If you absolutely know you can’t afford the reaches then there is no reason to allow your child to apply to them. It makes it difficult if they get in and then you put the brakes on.

10

Have you made the financial limits clear to your child? Is your child truly ready, willing, and able to turn down any unaffordable offer? Are you truly committed to your limits, or would you be tempted by Dream School’s offer even if it threatened to crush your budget? Tossing Dream School’s acceptance letter into the recycling bin (even if it truly should go straight there) could be harder than you think.

Provided your child has a couple of true safeties on the list that will flat-out guarantee admissions for stats, are guaranteed to be affordable either because they are cheap enough to begin with or because they guarantee merit for stats, that offer your child’s major, and that your child will be happy to attend if all else goes wrong in the admissions process, your child will be fine. Find those places, get the applications in early enough to lock in admissions and aid, and then your child can apply where ever else looks like it might be affordable.

11

That is the approach we finally realized that our kids need to pursue. Our kids have a very limited college budget that is absolutely not even close to what our expected contribution is.

It can be an excellent college application strategy, but you need to craft their application list carefully and make sure that you are covering their academic needs, bc being awarded a scholarship does not ensure that the college will be a good academic fit. Our current college student is attending on full scholarship. He had 2 full scholarship options, one was not a great choice and one was. (These were not his only options, but just focusing on them bc they were his only full scholarship options.)

The one that was not a good option was his absolute safety. It was our local university where he had been dual enrolling. He was taking 300 level physics courses there his sr yr of high school. The dept offered him the scholarship and offered to create an honors program just for him. THe profs there loved him; he was blessed by their mentoring while he was in high school. Unfortunately, they do not have a grad program, and he would have run out of physics classes by his sophomore yr. They were going to offer him independent study courses and research with them. If we hadn’t had any other financial choices, it would have been a mixed blessing (affordable but academically a poor fit) that he would have had to put in a lot of effort to make work for his goals. I have nothing but good things to say about the dept, though, b/c the professors were so supportive of our ds.

His other full scholarship option was Alabama. He was awarded several competitive scholarships that stack on top of their guaranteed admissions scholarship. It has been a great fit. His scholarship covers grad level classes. He is in their honors research-focused program (CBH). He has been involved in UG research since his freshman yr. His professors are wonderful mentors.

(I should interject here and say we visited one full-tuition scholarship university where the only way to describe our dept visit is to say that it was a nightmare visit of epoch proportions. They were insulting about their own students’ abilities (that students’ perceptions about their actual knowledge and understanding was inflated) and were rude toward our ds, insisting that it was impossible for him to have mastered any material at whatever his current level was back then. Interjecting that here to stress that dept visits are vital. Your child has to fit into that dept!)

He was accepted into top programs, but they were all unaffordable. They were wasted applications and time. (Do NOT underestimate how much of a time suck college applications are!!) They were, however, excellent guidance counselor training for me. We took heart from his experience, and this time around, dd did not apply to any schools that did not offer competitive scholarships. We winnowed the competitive scholarship school list down-- first on the actual probability that she would be considered for them and second on her interactions with the depts. (Initial contact with depts were via email and then based on responses, we visited.)

Our strategy has proved successful. She has been awarded scholarships from every school she applied to and has been invited to competitive scholarship weekends at several schools to interview/compete for their top scholarships. We don’t know yet what the final scholarship awards will be at the competitive interview weekends, but we do know that she has affordable options.

Anyway, this is way too long. Her list included schools where we knew that she would get automatic scholarships (she is a NMSF) and schools with competitive scholarships we thought she was a strong contender to be awarded.

12

For us, the decision to apply or not apply was based on how far our true budget was from our EFC.

If your EFC is $25,000 per year but you only feel you can pay $20,000 then I would also throw my hat into the ring of some of the schools that DO meet feel need if your student is a competitive applicant. I have seen plenty of people post that the need based aid they received at X school was a few thousand more than what they expected and they were pleasantly surprised.

If our EFC is $40,000 but you absolutely cannot do more than $25,000 then I wouldn’t bother applying to schools that meet full need and that give no merit. They are not likely to come in range of your budget and it is wasted time, stress and application fees.

If it is a school that is generous to need AND gives merit (ie, Tulane, etc.) then go for it. But of course, have the safeties lined up and ready to go.

13

It’s not the case that all schools are party schools.

Most are, but there are a few that are not party schools.

To find out you can google and and and then look through what google tosses out for the niche page on . Scroll down and you can see whether there are parties throughout the week or not that many parties, etc. Also google and and look at the overview page for terms that describe the school. We personally avoid all schools that say “work hard play hard.”

Some schools, like UC Santa Cruz, with reps for being party schools, also have dorms and in Santa Cruz’s case entire colleges, dedicated to students who don’t want to party and who do want to study. Bard for example has clean dorms. Connecticut College seems to still be mixed all together. Someone can update that info however. It might be old.

14

Here is one example of a school with no parties – at one extreme–
https://colleges.niche.com/suny-maritime-college/campus-life/

Here is one example of the opposite end of the spectrum, where only 4% of people said that there were no good parties and 96% indicate that basically there were parties all other days of the week–
https://colleges.niche.com/vanderbilt-university/campus-life/

And here is an example of a studious school with house parties mainly on the weekends.
https://colleges.niche.com/guilford-college/campus-life/

15

There is no point in applying to schools you know you can’t afford. Run net price calculators and investigate merit options before scheduling visits. No point in wasting a day and letting your kid grow fond of a school they can’t attend.

Educate yourself on the different types of loans, too. Federal loans the student can take out have decent protections and make sense for a lot of students. They can’t borrow that much – $5,500 freshman year, a little more in following years. But beyond that, better to stay away from loans. Students can work in the summer and part time during the school year, too.

16

I am always so impressed by how much knowledge is so generously shared on these forums. OP, the collected wisdom here (and the baseline takeaways on making sure that the school is actually a financial safety) is excellent.

I only add one more piece, in answer to your question about applying only to safeties. A lot of posters on CC are trying to figure out how ‘high’ the college prestige ladder they can climb. I know a fair few students (including one of my collegekids) who deliberately didn’t choose to go that route. Some had specific things that they wanted from their college experience, some simply did not want the competitiveness, several who planned to graduate schools wanted places where they would get the GPAs and be the department star, and a bunch (like the above posters) were determined to end up with little/no college debt. So far, none of them has regretted their choice. The prestige element is at it’s most intense from April to May of Senior year- such a brief moment compared to the next 4 (and if debt is involved, more) years.

17

Another parent agreeing with the approach of only applying to schools which are affordable, after doing sufficient research on EFC, merit etc. We were in a similar boat as the OP in that we are full pay according to schools, but with about a $20k a year gap between what we could pay vs. the bill. So, any school where he was not a good candidate for merit aid of at least $20k, came off the list. Goodbye NESCACs, Haverford, Vassar etc. My kid had a good list from safety to matches, and received generous merit awards making all the schools affordable. I can’t imagine what the conversations in April would have been if he had applied and been admitted to Grinnell or Vassar but we had to say, sorry, we can’t afford it, you’ll have to chose from schools on this other list of schools we can actually afford to send you to.

18

The only reason would be to satisfy one’s ego and curiosity. There is nothing wrong with that but just be realistic with yourself and your daughter.

19

My S only applied to matches and safeties for this exact reason. There were no reaches that would be affordable. Even with that, merit monies may be less or more than anticipated and a match or safety school may not come in quite as affordable as hoped as a result unless it is a published stats based scholarship. We have one such school that has dropped off the list as a result. And another that moved up. So for us having a mix of matches that in theory would offer a variety of merit opportunities seemed to be our best strategy.

I think an unaffordable reach acceptance just tortures everyone involved.

20

To answer some earlier questions, we won’t qualify for financial aid and yet full price isn’t realistic either.

We’re considering safeties the schools where she’s above the 75th percentile and where we’d be comfortable paying for her to go. One example is Indiana/Bloomington. She’s also interested in Vanderbilt, which would be a reach for her and there’s very little chance of merit - yet there is still a small chance.

We’ve already talked to her about trying to find schools where she’d likely qualify for merit aid (or OOS schools that are affordable) and she agrees with that. We are trying very, very hard to keep her focused on finding safety schools and to not get caught up in prestige or where everyone else is applying. (This is much easier said than done!)

@sevmom, that was my point exactly! It seems like many posters on here mention safety/match/reach schools even though many of them say finances are an issue. I was wondering what I was missing! The sense I get from parents in my area is “hey, I can’t really afford Duke but I’ll use retirement savings to pay for it because Duke is worth it.” That is absolutely not our philosophy.

Thank you for the reminder that there is no reason to apply to reaches that we can’t pay for! It’s so obvious and yet something that I needed to hear again.