I don’t know how close you are to that family but the NACAC list is out for this year. Lots of great schools on that list - still giving aid. Might be worth checking out.
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He’s just completely done with the process. He’s going to the midwest flagship. Which is a perfectly “fine” school. He just doesn’t see it that way. He was a kid that only cared about name and nothing more. Not dorms, activities, area, offerings, etc. Only the name on his diploma. Just sad because he didn’t take anyone’s advice.
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I realized as I was posting my first comment that I just desperately wanted to fix the situation (total mom response). Sometimes it is what it is.
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As well as setting a budget for colleges, you can set a budget for applications. If it is $500, your child could apply to 5 school that cost $100 each, or 10 for $50. Most likely he’d apply to a few with free applications, but still have to decide how he’s spending that $XXX budget. Or you could say that he needs to apply to 3 school for every reach (Stanford, an Ivy, MIT).
Really push a rolling application school or two. It is nice to have an acceptance when the first rejection comes in. It sounds like your child may have a chance at a reach because of his unique EC, but it is often hard to know WHICH school will really like his application. Is he a Williams kid or an MIT one. Just don’t know, but he can’t apply for them all. Limiting his number of application is going to make him do the work up front to see what the schools are looking for.
Good Luck and I hope he finds a match or two, and that you can afford it.
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It’s pretty simple. Let him apply. When he gets his stack of rejections, he can start at community college. It’s called learning the “hard way.” 
Thank you. This is great advice.
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On the one hand, there is still some time for your S25 to see reason on his own. D24’s list at this time last year vs. where she actually applied…surprisingly little overlap. Once she had access to Naviance and started looking more in depth at schools, she got a better sense of where she would be more/less competitive compared to others at her school.
Visiting likely/target schools that have a similar vibe to some of your S25’s favorite reaches might help broaden his perspective. College Confidential is a great resource for helping determine those sorts of schools given a student’s profile and preferences.
For D24, we looked at the profile of the school and if she wasn’t even at 25% percentile…I just straight up said, you aren’t a hooked applicant in any way, it doesn’t make sense to waste time and money to apply to more than one of these. Another whole swath of delightful reachy schools…eliminated due to no merit potential + donut hole NPC woes.
I told her two things…#1 don’t apply to a school you cannot see yourself at, and #2 I would really like you to have more than one school to choose from at the end. #2 gives you a good number of likely/match schools, and combined with #1 the hope is that the student will not be sad at the end.
She had one friend who applied to so many high reach schools RD, and unfortunately it was a bloodbath at the end. Rejection after rejection for weeks, months after their last EA acceptance, and that was how their application season ended. They will be attending a public school with honors and are happy with that, and that’s how you have to be if you have mostly swing for the rafters schools. If it’s all swing for the rafters, it very well may end in a way no one is happy with.
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I always find reading the NACAC list to be a joy. So many great schools and interesting opportunities. Something for everyone (except for people who want a prestige brand, I suppose.)
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What was helpful at our house was creating a shared spreadsheet of schools. We’d look at amenities, size, finances, dig into common data sets, etc. And then put schools to apply to in a particular order and the first 4-5 were very likely to be affordable and admittable, followed by match schools. You may want to have one safe option relatively close to home too just in case. Having a rolling admission is a great idea and having an admission early (October for us) relieved a lot of stress here. If you had the opportunity to visit some safer options, that isn’t a bad idea. I think that was helpful for us. Most campuses talked about here are great and are closer together than further apart. If LACs are of interest, colleges that change lives list is a GREAT list. So if the reachier options end up out at the end, some kids will burn out before they get through all the supplementals. And then it will be fine if they do. You don’t want them to burn out prior to getting their safer options laid out.
I also wouldn’t worry about GPA too much. A lot of schools will recalcuate GPA and if your school doesn’t grade inflate, that will be considered and factored in. Just definitely run those net price calculators and don’t waste time if they aren’t in range. Your other thread has a lot of schools that might run expensive suggested.
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What is the NACAC list?
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Presumably referring to a list of colleges still accepting applications in April or later.
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You’ve received a lot of great advice and suggestions so far, so I don’t really have anything new to add. But if this was my kid, I’d be doing the following:
- have kid come up with their list of colleges they’re thinking of maybe applying to
- have kid jot down at least ONE reason why each of those schools is on their list (it could be any reason, even a reason like “Because my friend so-and-so said it was a good school”)
- have kid find one major at each of those colleges that they’d like to study. And have them explain to you WHY they picked that major, and what is it about that major at THAT school which made it go on the list. Again, could be a dumb reason like “Because my friend said so.”
- YOU figure out how much your family can afford to pay max per year.
- Show the kid the # that you can afford to pay.
- Explain to kid that this is the max you’re paying per year, so if they want to go somewhere more expensive than that, they have to figure out how to afford it. That would mean a student loan (remember: if your household doesn’t qualify for federal financial aid, the max fed loan your kid will be able to get freshman year is $5500), merit scholarships at the college (if the college has those…tippy top name-brand colleges often don’t)
- If you’re not comfortable with getting Parent Plus loans to bridge the gap between what you’re willing to pay and the total COA (cost of attendance), then tell the kid this.
THEN DO THIS:
- Walk kid through using the NPC (net price calculator) for his/her top 5 schools on the list. These will probably be the hardest schools to get admitted to.
- Let the reality sink in for the kid.
- Whatever the $$ amounts that the NPC shows for each school, write that number down somewhere for each school. On a spreadsheet, a piece of paper, whatever.
- Walk the kid through how to look up the CDS (Common Data Set) for each school on the list. Have kid write down in a spreadsheet (or somewhere) some key pieces of info: (a) are test scores required; (b) what’s the mid-50% GPA range of admitted students; (c) what’s the top 25% GPA range of admitted students; (d) what’s the mid-50% and top 25% of test scores for admitted students
- Know and figure out how to explain to your kid that at, for example, ivy league colleges, even though you & your kid might think that their extracurriculars are amazing, at an Ivy League level, the extracurriculars aren’t probably as amazing as you think…for example, in order to get noticed, it kind of needs to be a national-level sort of award in order for it to make a difference.
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do you have a big enough school that naviance/scoir is available and helpful? (Bearing in mind some low outliers are possibly hooked kids - legacies or recruited athletes). That can really help put in perspective for kid (maybe).
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Other general advice/thoughts:
- Start listening to the “Your College Bound Kid” podcast. It’s full of great advice. Like this mantra: College is a match to be made, not a prize to be won. Or this one: It’s not about WHERE you go; it’s about what you do when you get there and what you do when you get out of there that matters. Repeat these to your kid when they get discouraged and see friends applying to a boatload of ‘sexy’ schools (aka name brand, US News & World Report top 20, etc.).
- Look at some of the Colleges That Change Lives schools in the northeast. Map plus list of schools is available at CTCL Map – Colleges That Change Lives. Lots of CTCL schools have really great merit scholarships (which are handed out REGARDLESS of financial need) which with a 3.7 GPA, your kid would likely qualify for.
- help your kid figure out if they want a rural, suburban, or urban school. Sometimes there’s a strong trend in 1 direction or another for a student. How do you do this? Take them on a college tour of a school somewhere in your area that is rural, suburban, or urban. Preferably, this would NOT be one of the name brand schools. Kid may balk & complain about this, but just put your parenting foot down and say, “No, we’re doing this JUST to get a feel for rural/suburban/urban” or “No, we’re doing this JUST to get a feel for large/medium/small school.”
When I was taking D24 on college tours, what worked best for us was this:
- don’t dominate the Q&A part of info sessions (my DH was bad at this)
- after the info session & tour are over, don’t say anything 1 way or another about your opinion of the school until AFTER your kid gives their opinion.
- ask kid to name 3 things they liked about the school and 3 things that they either didn’t like or thought were just “meh.” If appropriate, ask them to explain or expand upon what they mean by their top 3 things. Reason for this is it’ll shed some light into some of the qualities of a college that they’re interested in. Write this all down somewhere (on a piece of paper, a note in your phone, whatever).
REMEMBER:
this is something our school counselor told me at the start of senior year this school year. What seniors think they want in a college the summer before senior year often changes a bit by the end of March. That’s normal because there’s a lot of personal growth that happens between August and March.
Guide your kid to start thinking about what’s on their list. For example, a list of “must have” qualities and a list of “nice to have” qualities or criteria. You should come up with your own list of must have’s and nice-to-have’s. Then the 2 of you compare it and have a discussion about it.
By the way…all of this won’t happen in 1 sitting. It’s sort of an ongoing discussion that you’d have periodically. somebody elsewhere on CC last calendar year suggested to have a 15-20 min time frame each week set aside with your kid and that’s the ONLY time you talk about college stuff each week. We did this w/D24 and it helped a lot and we didn’t drive our kid crazy or vice versa in the process.
For example, something on YOUR list of must have’s would be ‘affordable.’ This means you need to define what ‘affordable’ is. For example, “tuition, room & board costs no more than $X/year.”
Your kid will probably have some other items on their must have list, like:
- good Campus Pride index score/rating
- not in ___ part of the country
- within ___ hours’ drive or travel from home
- not a women-only college
Other things that might come up:
- does the college have an LGBT LLC (living learning community). Note that some smaller colleges don’t offer this, but are still very LGBTQ+ friendly.
- how easy (or hard) is it to land research opportunities with professors? how easy (or hard) is it to get internships?
- are class sizes important?
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This is fantastic! Thanks so much!
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I fear that any “squelching” conversation won’t go over well. Net Price Calculator conversations are also moot–top schools will meet his need.
Your child needs to see the data and internalize it.
College Simply allows you to input your GPA and standardized test scores for a given school. You will then get a personalized percentage chance of admission.
My daughter is a pretty great student and did pretty well on a practice standardized test. But we were stunned by all of the “admission probability 0%” responses we got back.
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I looked at CollegeSimply just now, and it looks like their admissions calculator sends people to CollegeVine. Is this what you meant?
Not sure how you are getting 0% admission chance through the CollegeVine calculator. I set GPA to 3.0 and SAT to 1100, and I’m still seeing 1% admission chance for Harvard 
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My apologies. I should have been clearer. On a desktop…on the left hand side of the webpage there is a Filter List. In this Filter List, you can include “Your GPA” and “Your SAT/ACT Score.” If you also click on “Reach Colleges” below that…it will pull up elite schools and show your admissions chance.
On the same webpages there are links that say “Calculate My Chances,” which are ads and not what I was talking about.
FYI, this webpage is probably not scientific at all. It probably has a simple algorithim that is based on some subset of school data. But I think that people are shocked at just how many great students are turned away from great schools.
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They will meet need as each school defines and calculates it. There are plenty of families who can’t afford their FAFSA SAI and/or their expected contribution as calculated by meet full need schools that use CSS Profile.
NPCs also may not be accurate in certain instances (divorced parents, parents who own a business and/or real estate beyond a primary home, international students)
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