Chance Me - and I WILL PROVIDE DETAIL OF PROCESS AND RESULTS IN APRIL [93 GPA, 1530 SAT, business]

Applying to College
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Obviously lots can be said on these subjects but I will suggest one point that pertains to them all.

One of the biggest conceptual problems with the rankings mindset is it implies a zero sum game. If one school is going up, other schools must be going down. But I think the basic truth is that at least among “national” schools, they are mostly getting better. Better facilities, better amenities, more academic programs of current interest, and so on.

OK, so the Ivies, Ivy Plus, or otherwise traditionally famous and/or highly-ranked by US News and therefore “prestigious” colleges are not in fact getting worse, and I don’t actually think their graduates are actually less valued than they used to be.

But what I do think is true is their collective capacity has not kept up with the total pool of highly qualified applicants, and so more highly qualified applicants are ending up at alternatives, alternatives which themselves have been improving in terms of what they offer. Of course it was never true that ALL the top applicants went to an Ivy Plus or whatever, but in terms of percentages, more applicants of that quality in the applicant pool combined with no more spots at Ivy Plus or whatever means a higher percentage ending up somewhere else.

Alternatives which are sometimes wooing them with merit. And those merit deals are in fact getting more naturally attractive to certain families through a combination of the large full pay cost increases through around 2017 or so (and those increases may or may not be picking up again, we’ll see), and again the fact these alternatives have actually been improving a lot in substantive quality, and actually a self-reinforcing effect where more other highly qualified kids are ending up there.

And then this is becoming a “yes and” sort of situation for selective employers and other next-step gatekeepers. Again it is not that they value the applicants from the traditional “top” colleges less than before, so still “yes” to them when they meet their criteria and interview well and so on. But they also know they can find more applicants to consider from other colleges, so “and yes” to them too.

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That is an interesting question… If you think UNC was a borderline target/reach (was a reach according to his school counselor and the scattergram) and Dartmouth was a reach 0/39 at his school over the last 5 years, they would have each been borderline before the process started. Dartmouth did not have UG business so that would have more likely been been lopped off but not by much.

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Oh, I thought you were going to provide your thoughts :slight_smile: 7 questions - but everyone will see things differently !!

  1. How much should past applicant scattergrams influence your applying? What meaning do your high school and their past applicants actually have? Are colleges truly making independent decisions?

We didn’t have these. I suppose if we did, they would have guided decisions but in most cases, I think it’s pretty easy to make a determination. The only thing that would preclude me from having my kids apply somewhere is budget - if you had one and are full pay. No point applying to where is not possible.

  1. Are reach, target, safety and similar categorizations important and helpful? Should applicants be maxing out the 20 schools on the commonapp as they wish while just making sure they have a couple affordable safeties? Is applying to 6-8 schools the old fashion-way obsolete, or still the smartest strategy you can employ?

@ucb calls all reaches you get into that are affordable safeties. It’s true. The categorization is made up. In the end, you need a place to go - one - so if you know you’re getting in and its affordable, you are good. It’s nice to have a few for choice. The rest of the list is very personal. If you’re a 3.0 and apply to only the top 10 or top 10 LACs and get shut out, it’s ok - you have the one you need and are good to go. Is balance good - perhaps and good for the psyche. But these are made up terems and defined differently by all. There’s a student now - she has Wayne State and is looking at schools that in theory are all reaches - because they are need aware and her need is above average. She may be disappointed in the end - but she will have Wayne State, which she can commute to and should be affordable.

  1. How powerful are the choices of ED, EA, and RD? Are you sacrificing an admit, based upon your choice? Are schools filling their classes with lesser students who apply ED, or in the end are the differences negligible. Is ED even fair? Is RD becoming silly because of spot scarcity?

They are important to some schools. Many are struggling financially and know that the wealthy apply ED - and they are a near assured presence. ED may not impact all schools but most - and most want demonstrated interest. No visit, no essay - nothing says DI like ED. That said, schools should give a financial aid pre read and that should be accepted b4 applying ED. And it should be against the law to break it. Yes, RD is silly at most schools - schools with higher demand than supply - especially when they note up front that when space is gone, it’s gone. At schools that are buyers (can’t get enough), it doesn’t hurt. I don’t think it helps but it doesn’t hurt. Today, many, privates especially, are buyers. If you have decent stats and can pay $40K+, you’re getting in.

  1. How about majoring in business vs. LA or undecided? Can anyone measure the differences in the odds when applying into more limited and competitive majors?

I don’t understand kids who choose a school that doesn’t offer the definite major they want. Life isn’t that long to spend four years something I know I don’t want to study. If you don’t know, it’s different, etc. but many surely know, but they value a school name. It’s their choice, of course, but you are there four years, day after day. That’s a long time to study something that isn’t of interest.

  1. Is ivy prestige less powerful than ever? Can state schools keep climbing? Will the trends continue or have they gone as far as they can go?

There will always be Ivy prestige. Those who went adore it. Those who didn’t, especially from a lower end of the economic spectrum, think it’s a golden ticket. And in ways it may be. But is it the only, and is it in some cases worth $200K, $300K, $400K? That’s only for a family to decide. There’s a student yesterday who wants to go to Rice but got into Cornell. They don’t think they like Cornell - but the Ivy allure is too strong. So they should spend four years miserable? It’s not the same as RIce and Cornell are similar but the same thought. Why spend four years, day after day, where not happy. Someone always says - Ivy is an athletic league - and it’s correct. And many Ivy work for non-Ivy, not competitive school attending people. But it does obviously play better in certain roles, which seem to be overly quantified in the grand scheme of what they actually are - but for those select folks will have meaning.

  1. Should rankings be ignored? What is the right ranking criteria and is any source even close?

Yes and no. They are a good directional piece - but of course there’s many rankings. Is Williams the #1 LAC or is it Bucknell - which one rank rates the highest. I’m a believer in career outcomes. I think that’s why people send kids to college. Many here disagree - but of course, their kids have jobs and I’d say are in the minority. I think most people send their kids to college to begin with to find jobs. So to make, salary / rankings (linkedin, WSJ) would prove more impactful than US News - but most of society is drawn to US News without even studying the criteria. So they should matter to a certain extent for those who look at them - but not everyone does. Many go to their state regional or flagship - and done. And it’s not the be all - my kids, for one, never looked at them. Just dad. They didn’t care. They found what they want. So there could also be an intra house difference on the interpretation of this question.

  1. Should stronger applicants be focusing on a merit application processes instead of applying to more schools?

This one is it depends. If you want merit or you have a budget, you need to assuredly hit it. Some schools are cheaper full pay than others with merit. So merit in and of itself doesn’t matter - total cost does and kids should set a budget instead of saying, I need merit. If you apply to at least one school that is assuredly affordable (which means either full cost hits or will hit with auto merit), you don’t need many. If you are applying to schools hoping for merit based off anecdotal info, you should apply for more. If you are hell bent on free, well perhaps all your schools should offer a freebie and cross your fingers - and it’s not just the high end schools -Vandy, Emory, W&L that have them. We recently saw an E Carolina student choose it over UMD - he got a full ride. Don’t know but guessing less competitive than the Vandy, WUSTL, Emory.

Just one person’s thoughts….but I think these are topics where everyone will have a varying opinion.

In the end, I don’t get people who say you applied to too many. Well no matter what, you can only go to one - so if you get into two affordable that you like and have a hard time choosing, it’s too many. And more get into more than that….but that’s the other issue - when you have choice….that’s an issue!! The hardest challenge isn’t figuring out where to apply to or how many. The hardest is - choosing where to go. Everyone wants choice up front - but then choice becomes a major headache :slight_smile:

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This is the only question that (I think) has a definitive answer, which is no. This FOMO or lottery/auction style approach is a major cause of the current unpredictability of admissions. It’s a vicious cycle and the application bloat is making it worse for everyone. It’s not the number of applicants that increased significantly since we parents went to college, it’s the number of applications.

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MIT, Penn (Wharton), UVA, UNC, NYU (Stern), U Mich (Ross), Babson, McGill, Richmond, Indiana (Kelley)

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I see likelies and 6 reaches. But that’s the thing with creating brackets.

Different people see them differently. Target/Match, reach, safety/likely - all made up categorizations with no official qualification behind them.

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Babson feels safer to me than it really is because I am an alum and involved and IU without Kelley seems like a sure thing if they didn’t want him for business. Truth is that is why he applied to Pitt which was a school we respected, and felt extremely safe.

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maybe i will save that for the very end, for those who are not sleeping by then

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There may be confirmation in there of the basic point of this exercise, although it sounds like a close call in this case.

So as not to hide the ball, the basic point of this exercise is to underscore that at the end of the day, you can only take one offer. And so part of the logic of a more modest-sized BUT also carefully-chosen list is not just that those lists are adequate in size and composition to get great offers to consider, but then also that their favorite of those offers will very likely be preferred even to other offers a longer list might generate, precisely because you carefully chose the colleges on the shorter list.

Again I don’t want to impose my own assumptions on this situation, but it did feel to me like Dartmouth was not necessarily a great fit for this kid from the beginning. My sense is it was tempting in the end mostly because no other similarly-highly-selective private college produced an offer. And even that ultimately wasn’t enough.

Of course for sure in this case, getting the MC at UNC muddles that story. But still, it did happen! And there are many other ways in which that potentially could have happened (getting an offer he ended preferring) that were at least close to happening.

Anyway, that’s the aspect of all this I do think tends to become clearer in retrospect. Thoughtfully trimming a list is about what I would call two-way fit–you are thinking carefully about which colleges are most likely to be looking for an applicant like you, BUT also which colleges would be the best fits for you. And indeed in some sense this is two sides to the same coin because you both want the same basic thing–you want to end up at a college where you will really thrive, and they want students who are a great bet to thrive at their college.

If you have done that two-way reflection very well, then very likely additional colleges will not generate an offer you actually take. Because even if they generate more offers to consider, very likely for one reason or another, you will choose an offer you get from the shorter list.

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Well, we know that at many of selective colleges, the majority of students either don’t know for sure what they want as a major, or they do have a major in mind but then they end up changing their mind, possibly more than once actually.

So when you suggest “many surely know,” I think more accurately, a majority heading to selective colleges actually do not know, including some who think they know but don’t. But sure, it turns out a minority may in fact know.

OK, so if you are a kid who understands all this, then it isn’t really a situation amenable to simplistic, generic rules. Instead, it is obviously more conditional.

Like if you do have some specific major already strongly in mind, OK, then obviously for you, you need to pick a college with that specific major. But even you should consider what happens if you hypothetically choose a different major in the end, because you are wise enough to understand that can happen unexpectedly.

If, however, you just have some possible interests, but no firm specific majors in mind, then you can look to see what they offer that address those interests, but you don’t necessarily need to insist on specific majors. Indeed, often there are ways of doing classes relevant to your interests even if there is not a major in that subject. Sometimes these are formalized as something like minors, concentrations, tracks, or so on. Sometimes they just exist in the form of elective classes.

And, of course, your higher education is not necessarily done with college anyway. In many professional fields, in fact, you are going to be doing further education anyway. So, even if your college specifically ends up not having many advanced classes in some specific area, as long as it provides the foundational classes, you can then go on to do the advanced stuff at the graduate or professional level.

But of course sometimes you might be looking at some possible options where the usual terminal degree is an undergrad degree, and so in those cases you might need to make sure those are an option.

So again I would really caution against kids approaching this in an overly simplistic, one-size-fits all way. I think you need to do the work to really understand what different paths look like, and reflect carefully on what options for undergrad programs you actually need.

But for a good number of kids, there will not in fact be some specific major they need, and that then frees them up to consider a variety of options.

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IMO how many schools a kid applies to depends on many factors. IF they have an auto admit they are happy with and can afford, they can go for several matches and reaches. If they live in CA and one app goes to multiple schools, that is a different story too. IF they have high need, then targeting schools with merit and need based scholarships is wise. And in several cases some essays can be recycled/retooled. But if they stress easily, applying to 15-20+ schools seems unnecessary. JMO

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That seems like a solid, understandable list given what you have told us, and obviously that would have generated the UNC offer he took. Also UVA with Echols (not a bad result at all!, even though it didn’t make his short list), the Richmond offer where he was a Finalist, and two of his waitlistings (Stern and Ross). Along of course with Babson, McGill, and Kelley (all very solid options as well).

So, I guess I will assert that list would have “worked” in the way one is hoping it would. Not with every application being a success, but it would have demonstrably done a good job in terms of solid chances and some great offers, including ultimately the offer he took.

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Babson was safe - not because of you :slight_smile: But that’s why the categorization thing is so crazy. 211 of 625 got aid - they are allegedly need blind but….that tells me right there you were getting in. Only the wealthy (I think) know of Babson. They are a hidden gem.

But you say reach, I say likely - there’s not legalized standard or certification, etc.

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When I say surely know - I’m saying they say - I want finance or I want engineering or I want journalism.

Yes, many change because they don’t “surely” know but if you say - I want A and a school doesn’t offer A or anything close to it, is all I’m pointing out.

For those who don’t surely know, I’d agree.

And yes, surely doesn’t mean surely - but in their mind at app time it should in regard to school selection….because if say you know you want marketing, well majoring in psych at a place that doesn’t offer marketing is not the same thing. So why set yourself up for that in the case you follow through on your initial goals?

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What’s interesting is had you limited your apps, you either wouldn’t have had a tough choice at the end (UNC all the way) or - you’d have had to sub in Babson or Richmond or IU or wherever vs. UNC as Dartmouth wouldn’t have made the smaller list.

So in your case, applying to more made sense or worked out - although the end result would have been UNC either way. But I have to think that while having to make a choice stinks because it’s so hard, you’re still appreciative that he had to go through that analysis to find the right one.

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OK, but there are plenty of kids here who, for example, are basically saying they are potentially interested in a CAREER in finance, but they are open to different majors.

And that’s a healthy attitude, because you do not in fact need to be a Finance major as an undergrad in order to have a career in finance.

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You have some great questions here, but I think that so much is family and kid dependent. I will also say that a number of the questions presuppose that the applicant is a “stereotypical” CC student…i.e. very strong academically and with an ambitious college list. Although that might be common on CC, I don’t think that’s representative of the vast majority of high school students planning on going to college.

I don’t have any firsthand info to inform my opinion on this one.

I agree with @momofboiler1 about the categorizations being helpful to temper expectations and to form a list that is well-suited to a student’s psychological response to rejection (i.e. the more rejection they handle well, the reachier the list can be or vice versa).

In terms of the size of the college list, I have a variety of thoughts on it.

  1. For many families, the cost of applications can really add up. Although low-income families may qualify for a voucher, there are many families for whom $1500 in application fees is not an insignificant chunk of change (i.e. $75/application for 20 applications). And that doesn’t take into account any potential travel to either visit the schools before submitting applications or after any potential acceptances are received.

  2. In determining the school list, I also think it’s really important to think about the criteria that are important for the student/family. Sometimes, there are criteria (like geographic parameters) that can really narrow a list down. For instance, if my kid wanted a liberal arts college within 3-4 hours of where we live, there would only be about 3 schools to even look at. If attending a liberal arts college and having geographic proximity were both super important to my kid, my kid’s list would never make it to the 6-8 schools possibility, much less 20 schools.

  3. On a related note, some kids don’t have a good idea of what kind of college they want to attend or what criteria are really important to them. For those kids, I think a relatively longer list makes sense to make sure there’s optionality in their choices. Mind you, that optionality still might fit in a 6-8 school list, but if this was my kid above, then we might add in a large and medium college to give some more options in case my kid’s thoughts change over senior year.

  4. Then, as others have mentioned, there are the merit aid chasers. If the amount of merit aid needed is posted in a chart or in a pre-read or NPC or similar, and that amount of merit aid is sufficient to make the school affordable, then I don’t think merit aid chasers need a longer list than non-chasers.

For the schools where Big Highly Selective Merit™ is needed for a chance at affordability, I would limit the number of those schools applied to (if the BHSM™ requires additional application materials). Additionally, I would have at least one or two options at significantly less selective schools (for instance, maybe one might apply to Holy Cross or Villanova hoping for one of their full tuition or full rides, but then one might apply to Centre or Southern Illinois for their equivalent scholarships…as the odds are much better at the latter than the former, though by no means guaranteed or even likely).

  1. Students should be mindful of all their senior year responsibilities. So many stories about all the ECs, and hard courseloads, and everything else going on during the school year…are students going to have the time, endurance, and desire to make good applications to a super long list? For most students, I find the answer is no.

  2. If a student is maxing out their 20 slots on the Common App, then I would want to make sure that every single school on the list is one that the student would be happy to attend. Sometimes I read about kids who aren’t particularly excited about some of their admits which begs the question, why did they apply there in the first place? And if it was their “safety” school, then that tells me they should have spent more time looking for “sure things” that they liked than adding on more applications to (generally) highly-rejective schools.

My hunch is that the vast majority of schools don’t offer ED. So ED is generally on an issue when you’re talking about highly-rejective colleges. I believe that ED improves the odds of admission at some of the colleges that offer it, but it’s not necessarily to “lesser” students. I don’t like ED but I don’t think it’s unfair. It places students and families at a disadvantage, but they don’t have to ED if they don’t want to.

RD is not silly. Although there are notable exceptions that make the importance of EA abundantly clear (like Purdue and UMD), the vast majority of colleges in the U.S. are still accepting most of their students via RD.

My hunch is that a declared business major at the schools with highly rejective business programs is a harder major for entry, but again, it’s neglecting the fact that the vast majority of business programs are not very rejective. For liberal arts, I think it depends on the major. Bio? Lots more competition than a Classics major. But I think the colleges that care about major variety AND are highly rejective have a sense about which students are honest about their major intentions (vs. trying to backdoor their way into a more popular major). And again, at the majority of colleges in the U.S., it won’t make a difference if you’re undecided, business, or a liberal arts major. And in terms of those undecided majors, those students might be viewed more positively overall, as students who are open to all the possibilities that colleges have to offer rather than being a 17-year old who thinks they’ve mapped out their whole life (but then again, that might be my own personal prejudice speaking).

Okay, I’m stopping here and will answer the questions in a separate post as this is getting ridiculously long.

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Exactly. Many posters have shared specific examples of this on CC! This concept isn’t limited to finance majors either.

Further, many students change majors from what they were thinking when they were HS seniors, even if their career goals stay the same. This is why it’s ok for students who want business to apply to/attend a college without business majors.

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Yep.

Now, if you say you are strongly considering being something like an engineer, architect, or nurse, you should probably go to an undergrad with that program. Even that isn’t strictly required, but that’s generally a more straightforward situation. In fact, in many colleges you might actually want to make a point of starting in that program, namely those colleges where it is a lot easier to internally transfer out of such a program than into it.

But, doctors, lawyers, most business careers, many government or non-profit careers, and so on . . . they don’t actually require specific undergrad majors.

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I agree with the @NiceUnparticularMan’s comment about Ivy presige being a Yes, and. Still has prestige, but more schools are being added that have nods of respect. I suspect that schools that go back to being test required or that have some application method that indicates that its students have a high-degree of talent will be the ones that continue climbing. With the increasing importance of AI, college graduates will need to show their critical thinking skills to show their worth. If a college’s graduates primarily dump a prompt into AI and then submit that answer, then it will do nothing (or rather, decrease the value) for their college’s reputation. But if the graduates are thinking critically and determine what assumptions were made by AI, what holes it has for real-life application, how things need to be changed and why, then those graduates will improve the reputation of their college’s name.

Some students have come on CC bemoaning how their classmates with acceptances to highly-rejective schools are primarily AI-spitter outers. If that becomes the trend at any university, then I think that its star will diminish. But the universities whose faculty continue to demand and develop the critical thinking of their students will have their stars rise.

I think that rankings are good to find hidden gems. Five or so years ago, I had never heard of Elon. But I was looking at some USNWR lists and it kept making it to lists of schools for best undergraduate teaching, first-year experiences, co/ops and internships, and many other fields. Or the WSJ had its rankings, and Hampden-Sydney kept getting lots of mentions for things like its learning environment, community & social life, and the percentage of students and recent alums who would recommend it to others. Without these various “rankings” I probably would not have those schools on my radar. at least so positively.

Washington Monthly has had a ranking that it would provide the data set for, and it was really useful for looking at certain metrics for students with or without Pell Grants and how the school was serving those students. So it could be helpful in separating out how students at the school with more economic means were performing, but it was also helpful because it would share Pell grant graduation rates with expected graduation rates. The schools that overperform on the metric are also ones that rise in my esteem because chances are, they’re doing something right in terms of the supports that they provide students, and it’s helping the Pell recipients, then it’s likely helping all of its students.

Or rankings/lists of schools can be helpful in list development with things like, I want schools with lots of race/class interactions or I want to avoid schools that are not very LGBTQ friendly. But rankings to say I only want to apply to a T10 or T20 or whatever? Pretty useless.

And as my answer might hint to, there is no single source close to providing the best version of a ranking “truth.”

I think I partly addressed this in my earlier post in terms of people seeking Big Highly Selective Merit Aid™. But I also think it depends on what comes with the BHSMA™. If it’s just money, then it depends on how much the money means to the student and the family. But if the BHSMA™ comes with a lot of extra opportunities beyond the money, then it depends on how valuable the student finds those opportunities.

So essentially, it depends, but no universal guidance on the topic.

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