The cheap insurance argument seems to land with some kids, but the truth is I think that is only one of the benefits. I think in many other cases, the process of really thinking about Likelies and Targets leads to kids actually figuring out one of those might well be the best college for them, even if it is not as hard for them to get admitted.
Indeed, when you think about it, the idea that the best college for you is whatever college you apply to that would be least likely to admit you does not make much sense. Maybe sometimes, but often I think colleges and applicants both see the same things, meaning that both sides in their own ways see they are good fits for each other. And so often it is actually not so hard to get admitted to a great college for you.
Ok thanks, I will look into tamu. I donât want to come off as saying our college counseling is bad because it is really good. Itâs just that they (purposefully?) donât talk about t15s being in the cards for anyone, theyâre more concerned with getting you into a college than into the best one you can. And yeah our historical data we have pretty inflated acceptance rates, like 10% for stanford in the past 3 years, i think 18% for mit although i will say it is probably a heavily self selected pool since they have a separate application. also ed for some of the lower ivies is pretty good odds. but students can only see charts for gpa/test scores so I donât have a whole lot to accurately compare myself.
You can try but most strike out. The money comes from schools. Lots of those private ones require you to be low income etc.
Try small local ones - less competition but little $. And sometimes parents employers have them.
Hope isnât a way to pay for college. Make sure you have an affordable and assured admit. No matter your career goals, you need to be able to pay for school and then pay back your loans after school - they could be very expensive vs your current earnings. And what if you need grad school? Loans donât just have interest but burdensome upfront fees when you get to high amounts.
So you have ASU. Just know Honors isnât free but at a cost of thousands more. Not onerous but more.
Make sure ASU is loan free. You need a loan free option.
I suspect they do this to reduce stress, rumors and petty competition.
It IS hard (for anyone) to deduce which of the 3 amazing kids gets into Harvard, or whatever, so they try not to have people dwell on those too distinctly.
I assume they arenât saying âdonâtâ apply to the tippy top, but I see why they canât possibly risk chancing in any narrow sense given acceptance rates..and donât want kids to only dwell on those.
My kid who is at a similar sounding school has top notch counselors and they barely mention college before fall of 11th.. (though they are there for questions). They also care a lot about fit, and less about #10 vs. #15 on one of the many lists. Parents, and kids, can get VERY wrapped up in that stuff (which is not helpful). This may not be you, but they have to treat people roughly the same.
So this is now sounding more consistent with what I am used to.
If it is what I am used to, then their goal isnât just to get every kid into some college. I mean, it would be a huge scandal if like 50% of the class didnât get admitted anywhere, but there is not much danger of that.
However, then their goal becomes trying to get kids offers to consider that are really affordable great offers for those individual kids. For some kids this will mean offers from âNational Universitiesâ that the US News ranks highly, but not always.
In part that is because probably they couldnât get everyone into such colleges. Like even if half the class could get into one of those, then that would be pre-determining half the class would be considered failures in the college admissions process. Not good.
But I think it is also because those are not in fact necessarily the best colleges for everyone. For some people, maybe the best college is an LAC, or a specialty college of some sort (including military academies, arts schools, and so on). Maybe it is a non-US university. Maybe it is a great public research university with top sports in a traditional college town. Maybe it involves in-state tuition or merit offers. And on and on.
So they do tend to push back on the notion that the US News National University rankings are a good way to think about best colleges. And they tend to try to steer their applicants away from all just applying to the same lists of such colleges.
Some applications to some of those colleges, where appropriate, sure. But to meet their goal of trying to make sure every kid ends up in an affordable college that really makes sense for them, they need a lot of their applicants to be willing to think a lot more broadly than that.
And my two cents is if your counselors are trying to get you to think in those terms, perhaps you should go along with that.
In order for people to help you with your list, itâs really important to have a sense of your budget.
Outside merit scholarships like Coke Scholars are a long shot and also unlikely to make a big difference in full pay private tuition (I believe the maximum available through Coke Scholars is a $20k scholarship?)
Iâll ask again, how much are your parents willing to pay out of pocket for college, before you start adding in loans and any scholarships you might be able to get?
20k/year? 50k? 70k? 100k?
You said above, âI just donât see the benefit of paying target price for a non target schoolâ so does this mean your parents are willing to pay full price for certain schools and not others? Or are they actually willing to pay the full price, but you donât see the value?
If you havenât had this conversation with your parents, this is a good time to start! You donât want to waste time applying to schools that you canât afford.
We have discussed it before; I only said the loans thing because they told me but now that I think of it they mightâve been joking lol. We can probably afford full pay at most places but ideally it wouldnât exceed 70k yearly. And yeah they would be willing to do this for certain schools, others Iâm not sure.
I think your reaches probably all exceed 70k. For example the first one on your list, Stanford, currently shows a $96,513 COA (and typically costs rise). Are your parents ok with that?
Make sure to apply to U Chicago EA. There is no reason to wait for RD, and it will decrease your chance of admission. If you add any other schools with EA make sure to apply in that round at those schools too.
I expect they are telling students to have reaches/targets/likelies (or whatever terms they use.) I defer to your counselor for categorizing your list. If you for sure want a choice in the end, I would encourage you to add some target schools. The U Chicago ED2 strategy could work if it ends up being your first choice. You wonât have any results besides ASU (not sure about the honors college decisions) before the UChicago ED2 app is due (Jan 5, 2026)âŠbut I would still make the EA deadline and roll the app into ED2, if ED2 makes sense at that point.
@hebegebe Do you have any advice for OP who wants a career in quant or AI?
Turing is perfectly fine for quant. I would have a hard time justifying another university full pay ($400k) over Turing in state, especially considering how ultra competitive those two niches are. With quant, your school name is only helpful for getting past the resume screen. Turing will not hinder you much at that stage. And after that, itâs all down to how you interview. For AI, a graduate degree is expected, so thereâs once again not much of a downside to UT for undergrad.
You could look at good schools that also offer significant merit scholarships like Duke, Vanderbilt, WUStL, USC, Emory, UVA (Jefferson), Georgia Tech (stamps), etc. I would personally opt for these over full pay at most of your reaches. Georgia Tech in particular is nice because even without the scholarship itâs within your budget and has recently been very strong in CS (e.g. https://tradingatgt.org/ )
Princeton is very generous with aid, so give their NPC a try to get a lower bound for your CoA. If itâs still full price, then you can reasonably assume youâd be full pay everywhere and would need to knock out all the schools where âfull payâ goes over your $70k per year budget.
I am so geniuinely curious about your school. Seventy percent of grads go to T20? And itâs located in a ânot so popular areaâ? And itâs nationally ranked in multiple sports? My mind is blown by this odd combo of school traits.
I read your post to mean that you are at a boarding school and your permanent residence is in a not so popular area of Texas. Maybe you could clarify that without being so cryptic, but you should not be divulging the name of your high school nor should people on these boards be pressuring you to do so. That being said. I am an alum of one of the elite boarding schools and even back in my day, I donât they were sending 70 percent to top 20s. You are obviously at a very high performing school and my guess is that outside of HYMSP, you probably have a good shot at the other schools on your list from an admission standpoint. Chicago and NYU seem to take a lot of students from the elite boarding schools who are not at the top of their class.
@NiceUnparticularMan made most of the points I would have made, but I am going to be redundant and state that strangers on the Internet canât chance you for any of your schools (other than ASU which is an obvious safety). How did you arrive at this list? Were these schools recommended by your college counselor? Did your counselor at least categorize which schools are a likely/target/reach for you? Do you have access to Naviance or scoir data for your school? Do you have a sense of how many of the acceptances from your high school to your reach schools are hooked applicants - ie legacies,recruited athletes and possibly children of faculty at elite universities? Are you looking for suggestions for universities that may be more affordable? Georgia Tech for instance would be less than $70k without any merit scholarship.