<p>I don’t think there is one magic number. My son applied to 8 and if we’d done a visit sooner it would have been seven as he got accepted to one of his safeties early enough that he didn’t need to apply to the second one. He applied to a lot colleges with very low acceptance rates that are reaches for everyone. He basically had 6 reach/match schools and 2 safeties. He got merit awards at the two safeties and nothing from the two other schools that accepted him.</p>
<p>mammall, I think, from reading a few of your other posts, that you may be thinking about including some potential merit scholarship schools in the mix. Given that, I think a few more than eight might be called for. Big scholarships at schools that appeal to very strong students are few and far between, and a heck of a lot of luck is involved. </p>
<p>One factor may be how adjustable, or flexible, the student is. If she/he is not terribly picky about certain aspects of college life, or weather, or distance from home, then one can safely send out applications to schools that may not seem like perfect fits. If an extremely attractive financial offer comes along, the student can then check out the school carefully.</p>
<p>Like mathmom, my son applied to eight, and there were too many safeties in that mix. He got lucky. I don’t recommend his approach to others. Either limit the number of safeties if the student’s record is extremely strong, or increase the number of matches/reaches/potential merit schools.</p>
<p>^^^for some irritating reason, I cannot edit my last post. The last sentence should read " …or increase the total number of applications to include more matches/reaches/potential merit schools."</p>
<p>EA trimmed our list considerably. I have both my kids home for the weekend. I think they needed to see each other. I am glad that neither went 500 miles away. This is the first time they’ve been home, and they won’t come home until Thanksgiving I’m sure, but we love being together and love doing things together, and I really don’t see a problem with that.</p>
<p>We did have enough safeties (S had geographical diversity, D did not) to make sure each would have somewhere to go.</p>
<p>Midmo - as usual you’re hitting the real issue for us. Daughter is applying to reaches but also slightly less crap shoot type schools that offer merit. Neither of those objectives is at all a sure thing (super reaches or big merit scholarships) and then, of course, you have to have your true safeties. So the list grows. It’s okay, though. Applications fees are being waived at a number of the schools and thank goodness for the common app.</p>
<p>mythmom - unlike your situation, S1’s early app is what increased his list. The rejection was tough and made me panic. He wound up applying to 11 schools with 2 denials (I hate the word rejections). But the inability to make sense of one of those denials (among SWAP, he applied to two; one denied him admission while another sent him an early write acceptance letter) has me encouraging S2 to apply to just as many schools. Admittedly, both go to an excellent public HS where their safeties are our excellent state schools and more than a dozen apply to each of the ivy, top tech and LAC schools every year so that they must be, to some extent, competing with their classmates. On average, of the dozen applicants to each of these selective schools, 4 or 5 are admitted. Each spring, the kids just shake their heads at the ultimate admits and denials. At the 10% admittance level schools, the kids need to apply to perhaps a disproportionately large number, because most of them have the required stats to thearetically get in anywhere. But as we all know, theory and reality differ.</p>
<p>That being said, the best words I heard from S1 after the last application was sent was that although he had his dream school, he could see himself happy and content at any of the schools to which he had applied. That, to me, made all of his schools, the “reaches”, the “matches”, and the “safeties” matches!</p>
<p>mathmom wrote, about the number of colleges to apply to, </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think there is either. As of today, my son seems to have about ten colleges on a list of almost-sure-to-apply colleges, and two colleges that are his favorite colleges (as they have been for a while). One college that I will persistently urge him to apply to is our state university, which is just restructuring its honors program. My son has a friend there who has just started as a freshman with LAVISH scholarship support. It would be nice to get that deal there. I don’t know when that college announces scholarship awards (the friend’s news came just before Christmas last year, and another friend’s later) but State U here has “on the spot” admission appointments beginning in the first week of October, so in two years we’ll know our first admission news. </p>
<p>Depending on what happens with the state university and a few colleges that have, as of this year, early action programs, my son may apply to as few as eight colleges or as many as thirteen. It really depends what the admission chances look like at the time.</p>
<p>sewbusy: Maybe it’s because th EA school was a “safety”. That said, I agree with your approach of seeing everything as a match. It’s especially true because both my kids had better luck at “reaches” than “matches”. If “safeties” are chosen with care (kids really like the school), all schools, barring financial issues, can go into the same pot.</p>
<p>DS had nine on his list, and that has changed since EA. Got into two stellar schools EA; one was his super-reach and the other is one he LOVES. Deferred at his third big reach EA. He has since dropped three other schools where he had planned to apply and added one more. We’ll see if he wants to keep pursuing the deferral. He said he didn’t want to go on a trophy hunt.</p>
<p>The ones still pending (that we haven’t heard from) offer excellent merit and/or FA, so we’re keeping them on the table. We feel SO lucky that he likes every school on his list and that the entire app process has been so pleasant.</p>
<p>[The difference between 770 and 800 on SAT math can be one careless mistake that has nothing to do with the student’s mathematical ability (as probably will be evident from the rest of the application). Once the scores are “in the range” (which, generally speaking, means above 700 in all sections and SAT IIs), I doubt that the scores play any significant roll in the admissions decisions.]</p>
<p>-This is very true.</p>
<p>And why do we bring this up now??</p>
<p>To expand on my post #820, suggesting that there was some negative stereotyping of 2400-scorers: while sorting through old files, I found one with an MIT admissions blog that contains a relevant entry–a comment which seems to have come from Ben Jones. The full entry with comments is now at this link:
[MIT</a> Admissions | Blog Entry: ““I’ve Got 99 Problems… Admissions Is Not One””](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_freshman_application/ive_got_99_problems_admissions.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_freshman_application/ive_got_99_problems_admissions.shtml)</p>
<p>It starts with Bryan Nance’s list of “52 things not to do if you want to be admitted to MIT.” Item 23 is “Don’t rely solely on your 2400 SAT/36ACT scores to get you into MIT.”</p>
<p>I’m in agreement with this advice, and I doubt that any student who has been reading CC for long would rely on SAT scores for admission. Also, personally, I don’t know anyone who advocates that students should be selected solely or even preponderantly on the basis of SAT/ACT scores. So, I have no problem at all with the item above; but I do have a problem with the discussion that follows it.</p>
<p>Momchil (November 4, 2005, 3:03 AM–so you can find it) posted,
“Mr. Nance, speaking of the SAT, you say a student should not rely solely on a 2400 SAT score. But can I at least rely solely on a 2400 SAT, 800 Math (level 2), 800 Chemistry, 800 Physics? Not that I have those scores . . .”</p>
<p>In return, Ben (in the next post), wrote,
“As for perfect SAT’s - LOL LOL LOL. One will never get into MIT just by ‘dialing toll free’ (having all 800’s). Because more often than not, achieving perfect SAT’s means sacrificing many things that are more important.”</p>
<p>Is this from Ben Jones? I can’t say for sure, but clicking on “Ben” in blue will connect you to Ben Jones’s admissions blog.</p>
<p>I think that this last statement comes (at the least) very close to negative stereotyping; and if it does come from Ben Jones, it might provide another part of the answer to tokenadult’s question.</p>
<p>The “sacrifice hypothesis” should be empirically testable. I hope that someone at MIT or an alum might take the time to do that, if a method could be worked out (with attention to the applicants’ privacy).</p>
<p>I do note that Ben’s post was followed by another from Momchil, who mentioned spending a month in the summer studying for the Chemistry SAT II and a month studying for the Physics SAT II–but I sincerely doubt that this is common for people with 800’s across the board.</p>
<p>I would feel sorry for Momchil, except that I’m having a hard time getting a clear picture of Momchil. On Nov. 2, Momchil posted a comment with references (that struck me as reasonably well-informed) to Joseph Heller and Holden Caulfield, an obscene word, and a comment about jogging, but “not because my doctor tells me it is good for my health.” Later, Momchil raised a question about sending photocopies of certificates for “local, national and international championships and contests,” asking “if I must, but the certificates are in Bulgarian, what should I do?” Yet later, Momchil makes another reference to learning subject matter in Bulgarian, but becoming an avid reader of fiction in English.</p>
<p>I don’t know what happened to Momchil, but if I were looking at an application from a Bulgarian jogger with 800 Math level 2 and 800 Chemistry (per subsequent post), and some knowledge of Joseph Heller, I’d feel that the person also passed the rarity test–even if he/she almost totally wasted two summer months.</p>
<p>“I think that this last statement comes (at the least) very close to negative stereotyping; and if it does come from Ben Jones, it might provide another part of the answer to tokenadult’s question.”</p>
<p>You already know my views, but I get the feeling like Ben doesn’t have a good handle on what the profile or mentality of a very successful future scientist/engineer would look like in high school. From his own blog, he discloses that he took all of one AP class in high school. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I kind of feel like he is on another planet from the high achievers whose merit and “passion” he regularly judges.</p>
<p>As for studying for math/science SATIIs, the best way to study for them is to ace your AP classes. Don’t just go for the “A”. Shoot for a 100% average. I also find it odd that someone would spend their summer studying for them. Most of the high scorers I know spent a weekend at the most studying for them.</p>
<p>Who is Ben Jones? What is the point here? Just not following what the question is.</p>
<p>^^mammall,</p>
<p>Sorry, for those who don’t live and breathe MIT, Ben Jones is an admissions committee member there.</p>
<p>. . . and he seems to think that perfect SAT scorers have, more often than not, sacrificed “many more important things” to achieve their scores.</p>
<p>I doubt it. A student has to take the SAT I and SAT II for ACT for most highly competitive colleges anyway, so even the time and money involved in taking the test can’t really be viewed as a sacrifice to achieve their scores. </p>
<p>But if an admissions representative opens a file, with the “sacrifice hypothesis” in mind, and the student has “top scores,” in my opinion the pre-existing hypothesis is likely to color the reading of the file by that admissions committee member.</p>
<p>. . . and my own hypothesis is that the majority of students with perfect scores sacrificed nothing in the pursuit of those scores–in the sense that I’d guess the majority of them read the SAT booklet, might have tried a practice test or two, and then took the SAT’s (I and II), with even less than the weekend’s work of prep that collegealum314 guesses is an upper bound on the time spent by most.</p>
<p>This is also empirically testable.</p>
<p>QuantMech: I haven’t known enough perfect-scorers to have a valid sample for your hypothesis, but for some of the ones I’ve known, the perfect scores were effortless evidence of sparkling brilliance, and for others the perfect scores were evidence of test-taking ability, sometimes studied, unaccompanied by many other admirable traits. Perfect SATs are not inconsistent with being a pedestrian student, and a not-very-interesting person.</p>
<p>Is that usually the case? I don’t think so. On the other hand, the perfect scorers I have seen have generally been accepted to lots – sometimes not all, but usually lots – of very desirable, selective colleges. Including MIT. I’m not worried about bias against them. If there is bias against them, you would have a darn hard time proving it.</p>
<p>Mathson didn’t have 2400s, but he did get 800s on the CR twice and finished off the SAT2’s in one session with three 800s. He didn’t study at all except to review a bit of the physics that wasn’t covered in AP Physics C. In fact he spent a lot less time on school work and exam prep than most of his friends. I suppose there are some who really study for those 800s, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are more who don’t.</p>
<p>
My observation as well. Those who dosn’t study, more often than not will repeat the 800, like your son. Those who has studied, it is hard to repeat a perfect score. … I also have feeling that adcom see how many sits a student achieves the high scores. No matter what they said in info session that they look at the highest score from each section.</p>
<p>It was said Yale is the one among the top schools put most emphasize on perfect 2400 scores.</p>