mom58

This can work if you have an idea what you like about a school.
DD likes Yale. Residential colleges are a significant factor in that affection, so I encourage her to look at Rice. Swarthmore and Reed are often paired because of their reputed academic intensity.

These groupings would be more useful if they included at least one match and one safety for a student with an SAT score of, say, 2000 - 2200. I think it is fairly easy to come up with a fist full of dream schools. It is harder, but likely more important, to find matches and safeties with many of the attributes that make the dream schools so desirable.

unalove

To round at your specific example, Chicago and Smith have the "Yale" academic aspect and the "Yale" house system. Chicago and Smith would both be matches to the right candidate with those scores.

Safety/Low match? I'd probably look at a school like Whitman (no residence colleges, though) or even an honors college at a state school with honors housing.

mom58

unalove-- We visited UChic, and it's a definite possibility. Do students retain their house affiliation all four years? Is there some healthy rivalry among houses?

I think the drawback of honors housing is segregation. I suppose, though, that within honors there is quite a bit of diversity of interests.

unalove

In my view, honors housing would be fun because it's easier to identify the strongest students academically, and I would think that socially, an honors college within a state U that has separate housing feels a lot like a more selective school.

Chicago students do maintain house affiliation throughout their stay in housing (students tend to move off after two years, though you can become an "associate member" and continue to participate in house activities) but houses tend to be the primary social blocks. Most of my friends are in-house, and if I become very friendly with somebody outside of the house, I end up meeting all of their housemates pretty fast.

House rivalries are playful, and probably exhibit themselves the most in intramural sports games and occasional pranks.

hawkette

An example of what I think is an inappropriate group would be a single student applying to all eight of the Ivy colleges. These are very different colleges which offer very different experiences. IMO, such an application strategy would be letting the prestige of a certain college or group of colleges overwhelm an intelligent search for a college that is both academically excellent and a good personal fit.

As for an example of a student making a list of colleges that have some similarities in academic caliber and undergraduate experience, I have often posted in favor of colleges that IMO offer the premier undergraduate experiences, ie, those with excellent academics, a socially oriented student body, and active, nationally competitive sports scene. If a student were interested in this type of undergraduate experience, then the groupings would go as follows:

BEST CHOICES
Stanford
Duke
Northwestern
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame

NEXT BEST CHOICES
Rice
Georgetown
USC
Wake Forest

“IF YOU HAVE TO HAVE IVY” CHOICES
Cornell
U Penn
Princeton

PUBLIC CHOICES
UC Berkeley
U Virginia
UCLA
U Michigan
U North Carolina