Rising junior here, starting to organize the colleges I’m interested in into safeties, targets, and reaches. And I keep running into a problem: every label I assign feels premature.
My GPA is where it is, but I haven’t taken the SAT yet. My activities are real but still developing. So when I look at a school’s published ranges, I’m comparing them against a profile that won’t exist in its final form for another year. A school that looks like a reach today might be a target after junior year, or the other way around.
At the same time, I don’t want to just wait. Junior year choices (courses, activities, testing timeline) should probably be informed by where I’m aiming, which means I need some working version of the list now.
So for people further along: how did you handle this as a junior? Did you label schools based on your profile at the time, or where you projected you’d be? Did your labels change a lot between junior and senior year?
And the deeper version of the question: I keep reading that colleges want authenticity, but also that they have specific things they value. How do you aim at schools without turning your last two years of high school into reverse-engineering what admissions offices want? I’d rather grow into a strong applicant than perform as one, but I also don’t want to be naive about how this works.
What actually mattered in the end for people who’ve been through it?
Think of the college application process as a funnel. As a rising junior, the funnel should still be very wide. There are many unknowns, both as to your achievements and your interests. Whether a school is a reach or target at this point is not really important. If you want to begin to shape your list, choose schools that interest you based on programs, size, type and locations. Those schools can then be sorted by selectivity based on admit rate, median GPA, test scores. So for example, we set up a master spreadsheet for the 15 to 20 schools my kids were considering. For each school, we listed the median GPA, test scores and key deadlines. As time progresses, the funnel gets narrower based on your stats and your interests. For the 10± schools at the end, we also listed the supplemental essays and self imposed timelines to finish the apps.
As to what schools are looking for in ECs, they are looking for depth, commitment and achievement and less so what the EC’s are. Bottom line, they want to gauge what and how you are going to contribute to the college community.
You can look at the overall acceptance rates for the colleges for your intended major. Any school with a less than 20-25% acceptance rate should be reach. Anything over 75%+ a safety and everything else is in between that you can refine once you have more grades and test scores.
Good tip! I like the idea about keeping a spreadsheet…definitely helps keep you grounded as your profile keeps changing throughout junior year.
Since a school with a 76-99% admission rate rejects some applicants, it is not a safety for all.
Additionally, if it is not assured for affordability, it cannot be a safety.
Also, some schools may be much more selective for some majors than others.
At this point you are half way through high school, and a bit more than a year away from sending in applications. This is a good time to be thinking about what you want in a college or university. You might want to visit a few schools, starting with schools that are relatively nearby, and just see how they feel to you. You do not need to categorize schools into “reach, target, safety” categories quite yet, but just think about what would be a good fit for you. Where would you be happy?
Part of this is what sort of subjects a university is known for. Part of this is how academically demanding a school is. Part of this is how large a school is. Part of this is where a school is (close to home, far away, in a big city, in a small town, …). Part of this is just how you feel at each school. There is a lot to think about in terms of finding a school where you will feel comfortable.
This might be backward. Junior year choices should be informed by what is the right choice for you. This in turn may impact what universities you want to aim for. Do you even want to take particularly tough math or history or language courses, or take any music class at all? Which of these you like best and are good at is likely to influence which university would be the best fit for you.
In terms of ECs, again do what is right for you. If you like an activity, assuming that it is a constructive way to spend your time, then that activity is likely to be right for you regardless of whether it is a sport or a game club or a nature club or a job (and a part time job can be a good extracurricular activity), or something else.
There are a lot of very good universities. Most of them would be quite happy with you doing pretty much anything constructive with your time. There might be a slightly higher percentage of chess players at a technology-oriented university, and a slightly higher percentage of people with medical-related activities at a school known for medical subjects (ditto for languages, music, and pretty much anything else you can think of), but a lot of this is just where students choose to go.
I’ve been through it. My wife’s been through it. Our kids have been through it (one graduate degree is still in progress, but the admissions part is done). We each did what was right for us, and this means that we each did very different activities in high school and had some difference in terms of what classes we took. This took us all to different universities, but that is fine.
Other than doing what is right for you, and doing it well, the other recommendation I would make is that attending a university that is a good fit for you is way, way, way more important compared to the ranking of the university that you attend.
Affordability is also key. You need to know what your budget is, and then try to find schools that fit this budget.
But visiting a few schools and thinking about what you want in a school is a good activity at this point.
This is great advice, Dad.
OP- understanding what you are looking to get out of your education is much more important right now than categorizing, stuffing things into boxes. And trying to reverse engineer your interests to fit the schools on your list is very difficult- and typically not successful.
XYZ college loves cello players. Are you going to become proficient in the cello over the next year? College ABC has a robust sculpture/ceramics program and is trying to attract more students to its fine arts department– even kids who plan to major in chemistry. Can you develop a sculpture portfolio in the next few months?
Focus on YOU right now. Do you want a big, bustling, “everyone goes to football games” experience and hope to major in finance? Do you want a quiet, bucolic setting where students have “theme” dinners at professors homes and hike and birdwatch in their spare time and want to study Classics??
Most kids get the categorizations wrong anyway so don’t sweat it!!!
I think both these are good advice. My kid did not have a typical school progression, but I can say there was a notable difference between how colleges would have been classified between targets and reaches at the end of sophomore year vs at the end of junior year. Finding the type of college that attracts you is a good start. Depending on your potential majors - especially if they aren’t a common among all schools - you might also start narrowing down on that. (For example, my student is doing architecture, and a number of schools that might otherwise have been of interest just don’t offer it.)
I am a big proponent of authenticity in the sense of do what interests you. Passion comes across and you can spin your ECs any way you want - you can tell a good story whether your ECs are concentrated in a specific area or whether you are a person with wide interests. You are only a teen once, and to spend your time outside of school doing stuff because you think it looks good on a college application rather than because you enjoy it seems very suboptimal to me.
For academics - continue to challenge yourself in core courses - for most people that gives you 5 courses already - and you should already know what interests or challenges you enough for an elective (or two, if your schedule permits).
I’ll just echo others–I recommend doing what is right for you in HS, then shaping a college list around that, as opposed to the other way around.
I also see no harm in using the summer between junior year and senior year, and indeed possibly early fall senior year, to keep fine-tuning your list. I agree with the strategy of identifying one or more early rolling colleges, but other than that you can keep researching and reflecting until at least the beginning of October, and still have time to submit early applications by November deadlines.
My D is your age, so we are on this path with you. Sent you a message with the list of info we have in her spreadsheet. For every college we come across that could meet her needs, we enter it in the spreadsheet. It’s too early to be sure what will truly end up being a reach or a likely, besides the obvious sub 20% admission type schools, but we will sort those once SAT scores and her first semester junior year grades come in. We have a general sense, but obviously not fully baked in yet. Bit it’s letting us keep track as she learns about schools and adds or removes them from the list
If you know what you want to study, or a particular EC or sport, or size or location of school start there. As you learn more about schools, and your profile becomes clear, how that list ultimately shapes will start to become clear.
This. There is no need for you to sort colleges by selectivity right now. But it IS good to look at colleges with a variety of selectivity levels. What is right for you will better be teased out after mid year junior year…or maybe even after.
That’s because you are prematurely assigning labels. You have plenty of time to figure out what colleges you are interested in. Get a Fiske guide and relax.
At this point, with my kids, I brought them to see a big state flagship, a medium suburban mid-size school, and a small LAC to see if anything jumped out at them…I made sure none were super super selective so they didn’t fall in love with something that would end up being impossible….then we visited, during junior year, a bunch of sort of mid-range acceptance rate schools that had academically aligned programs and narrowed down “vibes” and sizes. (Mine neither cared about city/country locations, but did about part of country, for example).
Once you have fall grades jr year, your GPA is actually pretty set, honestly. It is hard to move need much for EA submissions and you will have PSATs by then, too and have a MUCH better handle on categorizing schools, etc.