OP - I didn’t understand this thing you said about his GPA:
“He has a 3.93 if 92% is a 4.0. 4.0 if 90% is 4”
What does that mean exactly? Does he have a 91 average? Very confused!
@GossamerWings He has a few 91s. If you call those As, then he has a 4,0. If you call those Bs, then he has a 3.93. Different schools do it differently.
In our school, a 91 would be an A minus which is a 3.7. What’s his overall GPA? It can be a number like 91…doesn’t have to be on a 4.0 scale…
I’m not getting the infatuation with Duke. There are about 20 schools the veterans on CC could name which would point a kid towards the kind of career he says he wants (and taken with a grain of salt since this is a HS kid after all).
Your son is allowed to fall in love- and right now, it’s Duke. Terrific. Now the real work begins.
He needs to take his current list and build out the bottom (you seem to have the reach schools identified) to cover both the unlikely but possible event that he only gets into one of his sure bet/safety schools, OR the unlikely but possible event that one or both parents is somehow unable to do what they intend to do … Dad’s insurance issues, other business problems explode; mom loses her job; someone gets sued. Unless your situation is such that the money is already in the kid’s college account, sitting tight, already moved out of equities and into a low risk bond/cash/money market fund, your son needs another financial safety.
I say this not to be mean- but having observed so many kids in 2009 ending up in a different place that they thought they’d be in during the summer of 2008. Kids whose parents worked at Lehman Brothers- and whose families lost not just the job and the income but also their assets (tied up in Lehman stock). Kids whose parents worked at Bear Stearns. Kids whose parents worked at neither of those places but whose jobs vanished during the winter of 2008 going into 2009.
Your son might decide he wants more political theory and less econ. He may decide he wants more econometrics and less economic theory. He may decide he wants to study finance and not econ, or may decide his true love is comparative literature.
So loving Duke because he gets to study abroad and do cool internships connected with what he thinks he wants to do with his life- this wouldn’t be terribly meaningful for me- and I agree with your ex-husband that an ED commitment might not be the way to go.
But getting a thoughtful discussion on the table about a few scenarios- economic and otherwise- and making sure that he’s got a safety where he’d be excited to attend, and which you guys can afford if the floor drops out from underneath you… to me, that’s more productive than listing all the benefits of Duke. He loves Duke- yup, now let’s get cracking on some alternatives.
With no disrespect to Blossom, who makes some valid points- I take a slightly different view. The kids I know who are happiest in college love their school. Not their dept, or their dorm, or their other friends who go there- but the school overall.
My D knew exactly what school she wanted before the process started - NYU. She did a summer program between junior/ senior year, and that was it for her. She wanted to apply ED. For a wide variety of completely logical reasons her dad and I said no. So she/we did applications and essays and auditions (she is an arts major) for 11 schools with a well balanced blend of reaches, fits and safeties. (11 schools is a SMALL list for arts believe it or not!) By March, (and it was LONG season, only 1 of her schools was rolling- her parent’s alma mater safety which was NOT what she wanted) she had 7 schools to choose from. We visited, discusses, debated. And she picked NYU. She knew what she wanted- and we could have saved a lot of time, effort and energy if we had listened. Now- honestly, I don’t regret applying for and finding out about the other schools- and neither does she. But it was me and my husband who had to work through the process, she always knew. Maybe your son does too
Was Duke the first college this student visited?
She must be lucky that you could afford to send her to NYU, given its reputation for poor financial aid.
Loving a given college does not necessarily mean that one cannot love other colleges. A student who has a safety that s/he loves will be spared the crushing let-down when his/her reach colleges deliver rejections or insufficient financial aid.
One of my kids loved MIT from forever. Read about it, knew about it, had gone to the Boston Science Museum on a school trip where a middle school teacher showed the kids how many of the exhibits had been developed with help and guidance from MIT professors, etc. Knew he wanted to go to MIT.
Ok, so that meant that the focus of our college visits was to find a place with a vibe like MIT; to find a place with solid programs cheaper than MIT (we were full pay), and to find some rock solid admissions schools in case he got rejected.
Too Wonderful- like your kid- the story had a happy ending. But I know lots of miserable kids every August trundling off to a college which doesn’t have any of the things they love or are looking for, because their safety school is a local open enrollment type college. They are majoring in early childhood education not Classics because their college only has three Classics courses (to fill Gen Ed requirements). They are taking “statistics for business” instead of differential equations because their college has a good finance program but a terrible math department.
It’s nice when the first choice works out. But probability suggests that having a Plan B which the kid is equally excited about is a lot more prudent than banging the drum on Duke (or whatever college is the object of the love fest). And for this particular kid- where the econ/Spanish/travel abroad component (easy to replicate elsewhere IMHO) is what’s driving the love- I wouldn’t be sitting back and saying “well he’s got three safeties that he’ll be disappointed to attend so we’re good”.
^My kid had also wanted to go to MIT forever. He’d been aware of some of kid oriented stuff they were doing at Media Lab in elementary school and worked his way through a bunch of their Open Courseware. He applied EA, was deferred and ultimately rejected. But the story had a happy ending, in fact I think he may well have found an even better fit at Carnegie Mellon with its stand alone computer department. I’m not opposed to a reach heavy list as long as there are viable safeties which I think there are for the OP. I strongly encourage finding a safety with EA or rolling admissions, because it lessens the pressure so much when you have an acceptance in hand while waiting for the big decisions.
@ucbalumnus- we do feel very lucky that we have been able to make NYU work for our D. We do not qualify for need based aide- but D’s hard work in HS brought her some merit aide. It’s not a fun bill to pay, but for OUR family (which is not meant to say our way is the right/best/only) it is something we are willing to do. Actually NYU itself advised NOT applying ED if financials were a determining factor. But like the OP- we were willing to go full pay if we had to.
@blossom - the road to the happy ending was long and arduous. The vast majority of the programs within the. schools where D applied (other than her true academic safeties) had admit rates under 10%. I think Northwestern (which was one of her reaches) had the highest admit rate at 12%. I didn’t sleep for about 6 months b/c my biggest fear was that D would be in a situation like you described (unhappy in August). My point is, if we had “listened” to D- we could have been done in December rather than March, (we would have still done other apps in case it hadn’t worked- just would have schedule all other auditions/interviews for after ED notification date) and I could have gotten to sleep 3 months sooner.
“Second, I am also a NY state resident and I wonder if you should consider Binghamton a safety. They aren’t very kind to in-state kids recently and their process shows that they give preference to out of state kids, and they will actually say that straight out.”
I would agree that the preference for Internationals students may be a threat to availability of seats for NYers but not OOS students. Even if they are accepted with lower credentials, I believe few apply. Not true for international students. I hope they are now making sure that the International students can at least write a sentence in English! I don’t think OOS students are a threat to state students because I don’t think the school attracts many.
But the question is whether Binghamton is a safety that your student will welcome attending. It is a far cry from the other two you list, which are Elon and Miami of Ohio. It is a good school but has a different vibe then the other two.
@thumper1 Duke was the third visit. Here is how it went:
Dad take to Cornell: love it, considering ED.
Mom takes to UNC: this is it, I love it here.
Mine takes to Duke: this is where I want to go.
At this point, I’m thinking he is just a serial lover…
Mom takes to Elon: I could see myself here if I don’t get in anywhere else I want.
Michigan: I love it, but I like Duke better.
MiAmi U: same as Elon, thou I think he liked it a touch better.
I was afraid for a while he would just keep loving each more than the last! Which would be cool bc then we could see Bing last!! Lol.
So he has seen most of his reaches, and most safeties, but no matches yet. Maybe that is where I should be looking next. Lehigh, Bucknell, BU, NE. Maybe a summer trip to Tulane. I don’t want to go when no school, but may have no choice.
FWIW: I did a year of grad at NYU. I can see why some kids love it. My S doesn’t bc it doesn’t meet a core requirement for him:
Must have a campus
Must have his program
Must do international (not just lip service)
Must be a school respected for that major and have good outplacement.
Otherwise, he says little. Though I did notice the rural campus did not excite him much.
@GossamerWings on your scale, he has a 3.93.
His overall ave is a 93+, but if you go course by course, he had a few under 93.
Regarding Binghamton not loving NY kids. I checked Naviance. His HS has never had a kid with an ACT over 29 get rejected. They tend to accept about 35 kids from his school. About 7 enroll. I think this year 15 enrolled.
I think anytime ED is being considered, the student and both parents should visit prior to the ED agreement being signed. All involved need to be on board.
WRT safeties. Yes, he likes Elon and Miami better. They all would cost about the same, as he would get merit at the nonSUNYs.
I just can’t imagine anyone not being diappointed a little if they end up only getting into a safety. I’m sure the diappontment would fade quickly though…He is prepared. He knows the admit stats for each college like the back of his hand!
Then the school is really not a safety. An important component of true safety is that student will be happy to attend. This is why it is not easy choosing at least 2 safety schools (everyone wants to have a choice)
One of the cardinal rules of the CC parent forum is Love Thy Safety!!
Along with “love thy safety”…goes “build your list from the safety up”. In other words, choose those two safety school’s FIRST. Find at least two schools with pretty sure admission chances, affordability that your kid likes. Then build up.
To be honest, it’s way easier to find reach and match schools.
But the safeties can be important.
In our DD’s college search we did this…and she applied to her top three choices which were actually all safeties given her stats…but were also good schools. She did end up applying to one reach…but really those first three schools were her top choices. Two were EA and one rolling…so she had her acceptances before Christmas.
I strongly recommend that too…apply EA and/or rolling to a school with a likely acceptance rate. Nice to have that early acceptance in the bag.
I think most high stats students would be disappointed if they only got in to their safeties. I don’t believe to ensure there would be a school your kid would be happy to go to is to find true safeties. If you apply to right number of matches and reaches, it is very likely you would be able to get into at least a few. My kid cried when she thought she had to go to her safety, but in hind sight she didn’t apply to enough matches and reaches. She only applied to one of each and rest of them were high reaches.
I think they would be disappointed if they got into their matches even.