standrews

vballmom,

To a large extent the question is, how good is admissions information that is even a year old? Some schools experience 20% leaps in applications in one year. Safeties turn into matches and matches into reaches with little warning. After reading CC for a year and a half I have yet to read, 'X used to be a tough school to get in to, but it's not now.' Paranoia at the end of the jr year is better than panic at the end of the sr year.

tokenadult

Yes. Scary emotions that help you get ready are better than scary emotions that just magnify disappointment at opportunities already lost.

copter

Sometime last year when I first discovered this website, our often lackadaiscal son was taking little interest in creating a list of prospective colleges.

And some wise cc parent told me to relax, come up with 2 or 3 schools that would accept him, that he would consider attending, that would offer him a decent education and meet our financial constraints.

So I did. And I prodded him throughout the summer and early fall to read college profiles in various guide books, and even to visit three campuses over the summer. He eventually developed a list of 8 schools (including the three safeties that I insisted upon) He ended up applying to 6 schools; the two that dropped off the list required four essays. I figured that was just as well, if he can't be bothered with the work it takes to apply, I doubt that he'd do the work required to graduate.

And here we are now, and he'll attend a "safety school", that I suggested and he chose, and I am very excited for him.

elevenson

i definitely second the "don't trust your GC" comment. mine said that Emory was a safety for me. number 1: i got waitlisted. number 2: emory isn't a safety for ANYONE.

i had about 5 safeties on my list that i loved, so everything worked out just fine.

historymom

vballmom: I think UC Merced is a dark horse. I have a feeling that students who attend UCM and plan to attend grad school after will come out of there with excellent preparation for whatever field they enter. You can't beat the combo of UC resources w/ the LAC size. I am trying to convince one of my DDs to give it a look as a safety. If she refuses I may employ the "Mommy School" method. It's a great idea.

vballmom

This bears repeating, and possibly framing


historymom, I agree in general about UC Merced, but unfortunately it doesn't yet offer my son's major (EE). What's the "Mommy School" method?

historymom

vballmom: mythmom is the one who I first saw use the term "mommy school" it refers to picking a college which you, the mommy, think your child should apply to because of financial or other reasons. She said that though neither of her kids ended up attending their mommy school they both grew to love the schools she chose and would have been happy there had the need arisen.

la2pgh

I think that Tufts syndrome does not help the process. As a result of it, many students are trapped in no man's land.

Motherof2girls

What about a child that wants to apply to Tufts but may not be 100 percent certatin it's their # 1 choice. We have been trying to find small to medium safeties in the northeast for some time now. My child has certain particulars including : no religious affiliation, fairly equal male,female ratio stong arts and not an eternal winter. Any help would be very much appreciated. By the way she is a strong student from a public specialized HS with great EC's and great teacher recs.

mythmom

Mommy school is of my own coinage. Although my kids did develop their own lists and chose their own college and I am usually a very laissez faire parent, I do think in something as important as college admissions it was fair to bring my 30+ years of more experience to bear and insist they apply to one school each I thought they were foolishly overlooking.

I was lucky both kids agreed. If they hadn't, I might have gone the, "then I'm not paying the application fees," route, but that certainly wasn't necessary.

S fell in loves with his, UofC, after he heard they had the phoenix as a mascot, and D was okay with hers, Smith and Mt. Holyoke (she only wanted Barnard.)

All was well.

I called it a mommy school to them to make fun of myself, which kids always love. They didn't call me mommy any more at that point.

dncrgrl102

in my case there were no mommy schools...just daddy school (state flagship
), which was continually shoved into my head.
Some more words of advice when selecting "safties", or even match schools, be sure to check with the school if you have some sort of special condition, if that will affect their admissions decisions, especially if these are private schools, they can discriminate in whatever way possible.

I ran into this problems when I was getting my college letters. I am graduating at 15, and some colleges relaly didnt like this. I had applied to GW and brandeis as safties, hoping for some merit$, and ended up getting rejected by both because of my age. However, other schools I had asked if this would be a problem, and some said yes and some said no. The ones that said no all accepted me, and the ones that said this is a problem all rejected me... However, I will happily be attending my dream high-match next fall! (one that was quite ok with my special situation)

churning

Here's a funny thing: my child got rejected at two affordable state "safeties" and accepted at two reaches. Unfortunately to find out the two reaches were unaffordable for us. Luckily a few "matches" that were in there were accepted at and affordable!

tokenadult

I hear that state university admission is less predictable than formerly. Let's discuss that some more here.

historymom

UC admissions were crazy this year. When I went to UCD's admissions criteria/points system page and figured both of my DDs' admission number, My D who had the lower GPA actually had the higher number because she is an AVID student and that gave her a bump her sister didn't get. It used to seem that the GPA and test scores were the only part of the equation but as campuses have become more competitive they are factoring in more academic variables.

tokenadult

That's interesting about the new UC formulas. I visited an AVID

AVIDonline

class in Minneapolis in November as part of a tour connected with the National Association for Gifted Children conference. I appreciate the tip to look carefully at how colleges define their admission variables.