HS Class of 2013 Lessons Learned

DennyAlaska
Sat, 30 Mar 2013 21:12:04 +0000

My perspective is different, as I’m not a member of the “HS Class of 2013,” but I am the father of a daughter of the “HS Class of 2013,” a young lady who applied to nine colleges and was accepted to nine colleges and received substantial merit aid offers from all nine colleges.

My advice as a parent to other parents who are helping/steering their child through the process is this: toss out the concept of “reach, match and safety” schools when applying. Ban the use of the terms, ignore the concepts they represent, and instead be realistic and forward-thinking.

I mean really, why bother with such silliness as a “reach” school? “Reach” schools are just that, out of reach for most high school students; applications submitted to those schools result in time, money and effort wasted. And why create (or let your child create in his/her mind) the thought that they will be one of the very few to get into Harvard or Stanford? Be honest, once you mail off that application to Elite U., the anticipation will continue to build in the kid’s mind until the “no” is received. Then what? Be realistic. Kids with perfect GPAs, perfect test scores, almost unbelievable ECs and altruistic work are routinely rejected by the Ivies and others frequently. Is your child an exception?

“Safety” is another term that should be shown the door. As you know, “safety” is generally defined to mean a school your child would be happy to go to, has the major he/she wants to study and is affordable. Believe me, “safety” to your kid means “well, I couldn’t get in anywhere else, so here I am.” That’s not exactly the way you want your off-spring to begin their college career, even though they are likely to get just as good an education at Safety U. as they could anyplace else. But when you set up a college as a “fallback” or “default” position, by referring to it as a “safety,” well, how do you think your child is going to view it?

“Match.” Ah. Every college your child applies to should be a match for his/her grades, test scores, talents and desires. Every single one. Why waste time with reaches? Why was time applying to schools with rolling admissions and no entry requirements?

For what it’s worth, our procedure to get where my daughter is today was this. We began identifying colleges my daughter would like to attend in her freshman year of high school. She made the initial choices based upon geography (she wanted someplace warm; we live in Alaska, go figure), major(s) offered (she’s settled on marine biology), school size (not too big, not too small; you know the drill), no religious affiliation, urban vs. suburban vs. rural setting, school colors (yes). From that list–well over 100 schools–we began narrowing things down. Summer vacations over the recent two summers were spent touring college campuses; not all 100, certainly, but we visited well over 40 (with a drawer-full of tee shirts to prove it). The list was becoming manageable.

By the time she began her senior year of high school in August, 2012, we knew approximately what her GPA would be, test scores (she took both the ACT and SAT in the spring of 2012; scored well enough to not test again), awards/honors and other accomplishments. Then we turned to our good friend, the NCES’ “College Navigator.”

I cannot recommend this site highly enough. In one place you can find all the information you need to make informed decisions about a college/university, from acceptance rates to graduation rates to safety issues to default rates on student loans. I feel the biggest information tool it contains is the 25th/75th percentile ranking of the most recent incoming freshman class’ SAT and ACT scores. We used these test figures the most, selecting schools where our daughter was at or well above the 75th percentile for the ACT and all three test categories of the SAT; we did this both for assessing her academic “fit” at the school, and her chances of winning merit scholarships.

From this list we narrowed the choices to nine. Where these “matches?” In a way, yes, but to our way of thinking they were schools where our daughter would be accepted, would like to attend and, oh yeah, that we could afford. Late November/early December was spent sending off applications and documentation. Acceptances came in beginning in late December, with the last one (Univ. of Washington) arriving in mid-March.

Where’s the list currently? Following campus visits/re-visits in mid-February, two schools were dropped from further consideration (“too urban, the buildings are too tall!” remember, we live in Alaska). Two other schools have since been eliminated, well, because; daughter’s decision. Five remain. May 1st seems a long way off, and yet in other ways it seems like tomorrow.

I apologize for the length of this post. The tl;dr bottom line: my advice is to stay away from categorizing college choices as “reach, match, safety,” as it colors the school. “Reach” out for the schools where your kid “matches” or exceeds the qualifications.