<p>After you graduate from a good college, and I think you will, you will save for your kids’ education. And then, after all those years of saving, you will want to maximize their chances at getting in the best college you can get for your money. And you won’t like it when someone suggests that they shouldn’t apply to as many colleges as you can afford.</p>
<p>You simply can’t generalize. There are a number of legitimate reasons why a student may need to apply to a large number of schools. It is becoming increasingly common among unhooked top students who wish to get admitted to one of the most selective colleges. </p>
<p>With admission rates dropping into the single digits and admission increasingly unpredictable, you would be a fool to apply to only 4 or 5 reaches and expect to have any reasonable chances of admission to a highly selective college. At the most competitive level, college admission is starting to resemble med school admission where students are forced to apply to many medical school to get a single offer of admission. </p>
<p>If you think you can trim your list and still maintain a reasonable chance of admission to a highly selective college , good luck! Unless you are a mind reader, your guess will probably end up wrong. </p>
<p>Our D ended applying to 17 schools with 12 of them reaches or high reaches. She had no geographic preference and virtually all had similar student bodies. She came from a large selective public high school from a region vastly overrepresented at top colleges. She ended up being admitted to 4 of her reaches but not to any she had predicted. Had she tried to trim her list to the most likely to admit her based on her profile, she would have been out of luck completely. </p>
<p>The extra $500 cost of applications was nothing compared to the extra $10,000/year in financial aid we got from the school she ended up attending. The best investment we ever made.</p>
<p>But it’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
Admission rates are dropping into single digits because the schools are getting so many apps. Herein is the conundrum.
So 5 were matches or safeties? If she got into all of those she got accepted at 9 schools.</p>
<p>But among those 9 schools (which they didn’t know beforehand she would be admitted to) there were differences in the financial aid offered. That is an important piece of the puzzle.</p>
<p>Geomom, I completely understand, and we went through this with our older son. I can see how out of 9 schools, how 3-6 can fly off the table because of the merit and financial aid packages.</p>
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<p>I think it’s unfair, but I don’t think fairness is the ultimate test. If the parents were truly penalized for not saving (i.e., charged the same rate of tuition as you), it’s not the parents who are penalized - it’s the student. The student ends up shouldering the debt or not going to college at all, or to go to a college that he or she doesn’t like (although some people feel college is nothing more than glorified job training, which is fine, but in which case this last part wouldn’t matter as much). So if the parents were irresponsible, who is paying? The student is paying. Some students want to change, to be different from their parents. This is especially true for first generation students, working or recently middle class students, and students with parents who are fiscally irresponsible. Should they be denied that opportunity because their parents are idiots, or because their parents just didn’t know to or couldn’t save? Then the same would be said of low-income students whose parents can’t contribute… should they get no aid because their parents “could have worked harder” to earn more money?</p>
<p>It’s not fair. Life isn’t fair. However, the playing field is slightly more leveled. We don’t live in a meritocracy. The fact is that no matter how hard an eighteen year old works, it’s unlikely that he or she could earn the $20,000 ($80,000!) a year to go in-state - even the ten thousand ($40,000!) to live at home and go to school would be tough. If you’ve saved, that’s good - and hopefully you’ve instilled that into your children, as well. If you haven’t or if you haven’t been able to, should your child suffer the same fate because you were foolish? Sure, many people want a hand out. But for most people, an accomplishment is worth more if we’ve done it ourselves. There are plenty of people who are purposefully gaming the system. I meet people at the grocery store where I work who get $600 of food stamps a month (which is outrageous of you don’t know anything about the system) and are content to stay there for the rest of their lives. But for every one of those people, I meet at least two who cheered at their last food stamp purchase - I know we did.</p>
<p>Although neither of my kids applied to more than 7 colleges, either could have applied to more had they not each been accepted early at an acceptable institution. Most of my friends’ children have applied a lot more broadly than that.</p>
<p>But I completely disagree with rocket6louise questioning how some kids could love 4 Ivies + MIT + 3 LACs. My question is why stop there? How can some kids NOT love all those colleges, and more? They are basically all completely lovable. You have to rely on fundamentally stupid, largely irrelevant criteria like bathroom placement and food choices in the cafeteria, or how liberal the reputation is, or how much you like the city they’re in, to exclude any. I agree that people should make more choices before they apply, but the system actually incents them to put off making choices until later. And, honestly, given that the people we’re talking about are 17 or 18, it’s not so horrible to give them another few months to decide what it is they really want, with concrete options, not just possibilities, in front of them.</p>
<p>Keliexandria – have you considered SUNY Stony Brook? They are quite well-regarded, nationally. My son got a full-tuition scholarship from them (apply early)–OOS, it was very affordable (tho he didn’t go).</p>
<p>rocket6louise – I think there is a waiver of app cost that you can get directly from the college to which you apply? Maybe you could check that out.</p>
<p>I looked at the app costs as an investment. For the few hundred dollars invested, son was increasing his chances at merit $$ (we got zero need-based aid) which could save (literally!) hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, it did. Then there’s the geographic diversity factor. Schools in TX might be more likely to accept (& offer incentive merit $) to a kid from NJ or Conn. </p>
<p>If I were you, I’d borrow, email college admiss depts, whatever it took to make sure you increased the chance of getting those apps in to different schools. The system isn’t going to change during the year you apply. You have to look out for yourself and try to optimize your options. IMO! :-)</p>
<p>Jolynne, so many schools waive their app fees if you apply online, or if you get a priority application (to increase chances at getting them, get on the mailing list of schools that interest you that offer them). Apps still do cost a small amount money because you might need to pay $9 or so to send out an SAT or ACT score.</p>
<p>My son applied to 12 schools, and he would have been happy to attend any of them (except perhaps the safest safety, which would have been OK). He applied to that many schools because while he had the stats to reasonably apply to very selective schools, it was far from a sure thing that he would get into the most selective ones, and you couldn’t be sure about the next tier, either. I would add that he could easily have identified quite a few more that he would have been happy to attend. In the end, he got in EA at the school where he was a legacy, and withdrew his applications from all the others before RD decisions.
But if he hadn’t gotten in EA, he would have attended the “best” school he got in in RD–“best” meaning the best for him.</p>
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<p>Oh, wait…that was geomom. :D</p>
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<p>That is precisely what happened. The matches and safeties had terrible financial aid, and only two reaches offered reasonable packages. In the end, the 17 apps yielded two academically and financially acceptable options. </p>
<p>The biggest problem is that there is hardly any overlap between academic and financial safeties. In general, the best financial aid is offered by the most selective colleges. A typical application strategy of two safeties, three matches and three reaches may leave one with no acceptable options in the end.</p>
<p>Wow, this discussion sure took off in <24 hours. </p>
<p>Our situation resembles Jolynne Smith’s–son with very good scores, mezze-mezze GPA (but at a very tough school), and therefore a highly unpredictable admissions picture–but also Keilexandra’s, in that our son has very specific curriculum desiderata (music, international relations, and Arabic). On top of that, we will need a good deal of financial aid. We had hoped that our son would get into a full-need school, but the GPA woes have made that unlikely.</p>
<p>If you put all those factors together, it should be easy to understand why I am nervous that we are not applying to enough schools even though we have 10 on our list.</p>
<p>As another example of where 8 would not have been enough, my DS wanted to play college baseball and having a place to play was a major criteria in selecting a school. </p>
<p>Academically he was in great shape, first in his class GPA wise and with solid SATs. As a result, he was a sure thing at all but the most elite of the schools where the coaches were interested (UCLA, Berkeley and Stanford being the exceptions). </p>
<p>Athletically however, he was a late bloomer with a lot of potential but the coaches wanted to see him pitch in his senior year before finalizing a scholarship offer. In general, the odds are very much against any baseball player getting the right interest from a coach. In any given year at any given school, there are perhaps 7 or 8 openings on the baseball team - and usually only 3-4 are for pitchers. </p>
<p>Since baseball is a spring sport, this meant he had to apply to schools in the fall and then perform on the field in March and April before the baseball side of the equation would be known. </p>
<p>The coaches sent him free applications “chits” and said “please submit an application within the normal deadlines and then we can talk about scholarship money and role on the team once we see you pitch.” </p>
<p>Many of the schools were possibilities (and required essentially just a mouse click to send in the common app) - so he did… He ended up applied to something like 20 or 21 schools, getting into nearly all of them.</p>
<p>In many ways this would be similar to a music or drama major who has an audition component to their application.</p>
<p>Also, you cannot assume that a school that meets 92% of need will be an “okay” package, even if one is upper middle class. The school determines need, and 92% is an average. Also, gapping at an 8% average can be significant since one is already being stretched to through the roof to meet EFC.</p>
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<p>Our D applied to a number of Ivies and other highly selective universities and LACs. She would have been happy at any of them except possibly at her academic safety. </p>
<p>She wanted a challenging college experience surrounded by academic peers. Her choices all had strong departments in her field of interest. Retention rates and graduation rates were uniformly high. Faculty student ratios were low. The rest to her was just noise. </p>
<p>Her experience from visiting these colleges was that you could have shuffled the students between them and it would have made no difference in the overall college experience at any particular school. Most students at the most selective LACs had also applied to top universities and vice versa. But in the end, all students she met were happy with where they ended up. Any concept of fit was more a post-admission rationalization than based on any definite preferences.</p>
<p>I agree, JHS.</p>
<p>I am about to go through this process for the first time with my S and am wondering if it hurts acceptance chances if a school sees that someone is applying to or sent SAT scores to a high number of schools (they can see this to some extent, right?). From a yield-minded school’s standpoint, why risk rejection – either for admission or a merit scholarship – if a student looks to be applying to a dozen-odd other schools? Or do they think this way?</p>
<p>Forgive me if I missed this point being covered already; just skimmed the first 77 posts and didn’t spot it.</p>
<p>Colleges can’t tell how many other schools you are applying to, though some do ask you where else you are applying. There are endless threads here on CC as to whether one needs to tell the whole truth if they ask this question and if it’s any of their business.</p>
<p>What is unethical is colleges sending out “because you are a preferred student we are offering you a vip application process” emails, just to boost their application numbers. They send these to anyone with warm blood, raising hopes of kids who don’t have a chance of being accepted.</p>