destinyhelp

Just remember this - college is awesome no matter what. I ended up having to go to my financial safety, and I hated the idea of it. This past year ended up being the best year of my life. Where you go does not matter, it's what you make of it.

happymomof1

If your family will be full-pay, and is ready, willing, and able to shell out 50k each year, there are lots of colleges and universities with decent math departments all over the country that would be very happy to admit you. Your counselor has given you recommendations from a very small set of the total possible options. Since you don't like the ones your counselor considers safe for you, throw them out, run some of the college-matching search engines, and come up with a list of safeties that you do like. Surely at least one of your home state public Us could work.

mom2collegekids

A school isn't a safety if you wouldn't be happy to attend.

Find safeties that you LIKE.


Also...find out how much your parents will pay for a safety! Some parents will pay $55k+ for a top school....but they won't for a safety.

So ASK THEM

M's Mom

It sounds like you aren't looking for advice on how to find more safeties. It sounds like what you are really asking is how to reconcile yourself to the disappointment of not getting into one of your preferred schools. Is that right?

I think the answer is to find things to love about each safety. You may not love the whole school, but you don't have to. Every school - even your perfect fit - will have things you don't like about it and every safety should have at least a few things you really like. Pick a safety with a great location. Spend time exploring programs at the safeties that you would like to try. Check out the ECs that you might consider joining. Look at the calendar for events and activities on campus that you might want to participate in. Check out the study abroad options. If math is your love, look up the bios of the math faculty to see what their particular interests are and see if any of them intrigue you. When people say 'love your safety' it doesn't mean you have to love every single thing - just a few things that will help you look forward to attending.

And destinyhelp is right - you may get to your safety and discover that you love it. And if not, you can always transfer a year later.

MizzBee

You say you trust your college admissions officer, but have you told him/her why you don't like the safeties and why you like your reaches? It is possible that whatever he/she has used to factor these is not taking into consideration your preferences.

At the very least, spend some of your time visiting a couple of your safety schools. While applying EA is still a good strategy, if you have bad luck during the EA cycle, it will be hard to show your love at any safety school that you may need during teh RD cycle. As many posts will tell you, what you consider a safety is a dream school to someone else and no school wants to be taken for granted. In particular, Tulane seemed to reject a lot of quality candidates in RD and deferred quite a few top candidates in EA.

Looking at your list, it is hard for me to see a pattern. Normally I can see a list of similar schools but the academic and social environment seem quite varied.

DrGoogle

My kid thinks she likes snow so I found a few safeties that are excellent for her potential majors, more like top 20 and have acceptance rate about 50%. She doesn't mind the big school. She has stated several times she does not like the smallness of a LAC.

annasdad

Has she ever seriously looked at LACs? Or is this just based on stuff she has picked up from friends, or from driving by a few LACs and being unimpressed?

I ask because a year and a half ago, my D was in the same mindset. Her top two picks were 30,000-plus schools. But after visiting both large and small schools, she flipped, and wound up not even applying to one of her original top two. She's headed off to a school of under 6,000 - and the last two to be eliminated from consideration in April were about 2,000 and just under 3,000.

I'm not saying this will happen to every kid - nor that it should, big colleges are the best choice for some kids. But I think every kid should cast a broad net, at least in the early stages, until they find out just what they really are looking for, and why.

DrGoogle

annasdad, I don't have a clue, perhaps it's too close to where we live. Pomona sent her a mail and she said she will not apply to Pomona(stamping her feet). But I'm not too worried because I know it's hard to get into Pomona, let alone use it as a safety, her sister was rejected there(my suggestion).
I will take her for a visit once school is over hoping to change her mind on these preconceived notions.

annasdad

I wouldn't try to change a kid's mind on this - just to open it so that they can really consider all the options and weigh the advantages of small school against the advantages of a big school - and come to whatever decision makes sense for them.

ucbalumnus

However, schools which are smaller and/or less selective may have more limited math major degree programs, due to lack of interest (math is not a hugely popular major like biology or economics). Also, if you are super-advanced in math, you may want to consider the existence of a good graduate program in math to be worth considering (super-advanced math majors often take graduate courses as undergraduates). On the other hand, there are some small LACs with good math major programs -- but one has to choose carefully.

Strong math major degree programs are often found at large state flagship universities, like Stony Brook, Rutgers, Penn State, Maryland, Minnesota, Purdue, Indiana, etc.. You may want to see if you like any of them enough and if you are assured admission by stats for them to become safeties. If you are super-advanced in math, you may skip many of the giant lower division math courses anyway and go straight to smaller upper division courses.

Davidabb84

Pick different safety schools, you've misunderstood the definition.