Fit is the most over-rated buzzword. If my child is a fit to only 10% of the colleges in the Forbes top 200 then that’s 20 colleges she could apply too and encompass safeties, matches and reaches. For 80% of the kids applying the only fit that matters is interest of study and academic peers.
Fit is very important. It’s not just a buzzword. I am well attuned to my D’s needs, both academic and social. While she would be fine at any college that has her area of interest because that’s just her – she won’t let anything affect her academics – she wouldn’t be happy at a lot of schools. With all the college options in this country, why settle for 3/4/5 years at a school that you don’t really fit in. College is much more than book learning. Those years represent critical personal growth years. If a student is at a school that they fit in well, they will experience more personal growth. That’s just my personal opinion.
@Jara123 No. Right now all the LORs are sent to one place per student, to the Common Ap portal. Without it, even if the LORs had no addressee, the guidance department would have 15 times as many emails to send per student, no matter how mant recs each school requires. That simply won’t fly at either public or even private schools. Just imagine if each had to be addressed to a particular school. That means 45 LORs, assuming three recs per school, per student will need editing. That wont happen either even with copy and paste. Just imagine the risk of error as well, schools getting an LOR addressed to another school.
Fit is over-rated in that there are so many colleges that are a fit for most students. Finding fit is not going to stop someone from applying to a lot of colleges if they want to because they fit at so many colleges.
Wait a minute. Schools used to send lots of paper LORs. You brought in stamped envelopes, and gave them to the teacher and the guidance counselor. It wasn’t a big deal, except for a few teachers who insisted on crafting a specific LOR for each college. Teachers who didn’t do that simply made copies and stuffed the envelopes.
“The Common App needs to go. It is too easy to apply to too many schools.” No, the top schools usually have supplemental essays. There’s a thread now by a kid who applied to 16 schools and says it was a completely miserable experience. My kid applied to 11 and that was a huge distraction from what she wanted to be doing senior year and did negatively affect her academics. Basically wrecked the fall of her senior year. If anything, it should be easier to apply to schools. Why can’t they all use the same few essays and just have a short supplemental statement “Why us?”. Why torture students by making them write so many essays?
When I was in college I was able to fill out my paper applications, write the essays and carefully hand write (or maybe I typed, can’t recall) them onto the forms, and get it all done in about a week over xmas vacation. It was not a big deal. I don’t think there was even much discussion about it among my fellow students and none of the angst I see nowadays. I applied to 4 schools but if I’d had to do a few more that would not have been a big deal. The teachers had a photocopy machine for the letters, and of course I provided them with prepared envelopes so once written it would only take a few minutes to copy and send the letters.
Also this idea that it would be so much more work without common app is silly.
Agree with @Hunt. Back in the stone ages, I applied to 14 schools. LORs were not a problem at all. I gave each teacher and the guidance counselor stamped envelopes for each school. Essays also weren’t a problem. I wrote a multi-purpose essay that worked for all 14 schools’ prompts.
Most kids back then applied to 5 schools. Since school resources are more thin now, they would never accommodate the additional workload. Once you are used to something easy, its hard to go back to the same process with as many applications. Moreover, those teachers and guidance counselors are retired. The new ones would pass out on the floor or call their union rep if each student had 15 applications to process manually.
At my kids’ school, they were still doing the multiple envelope thing in 2009. That’s not exactly ancient history.
@OnTheBubble I think you give teachers and admins too little credit.
perhaps many families are realizing that the schools that meet full need – which include many if not most of the high-prestige schools – might be the most affordable option for their child.
if you are low-to-middle income, acceptance to a top-ranked school may come with a financial aid package that will make it far more affordable than $20K per year for your state U.
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With great respect I say to all parents, “Relax.”<<
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I’ll relax when colleges decide to make themselves affordable for families again. until then i’m looking for merit and need-based $$$.
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When students apply to all the most selective schools, many of which are very different, is it about fit? Or is it only about prestige?<<
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no, it may be because these schools might be the most affordable options, if they can only get accepted.
Madness is created solely by family. It is completely avoidable. The student’s attitude “I will do fine anywhere” removes all this craziness and makes the process enjoyable and memorable for the rest of life as one of the most positive and fun process. And that is exactly what it was in our family. The goals were achieved well beyond expected without additional grey hair. If you want to be frenzied, go ahead, if not, the result will be much better, I guarantee, but it is entirely your choice!!
@Wien2NC The thing is that if students have the stats necessary to be seriously considered for the most selective full need schools then they have the stats to get good scholarships even at their in state schools. The likelihood of receiving those scholarships are much better than the likelihood of acceptance to the esteemed schools. In my opinion if a student truly wants to attend Harvard etc. then expending the time, money and emotional resources are worth it but if they are simply attempting to find a lower cost option there are better ways which will be less stressful.
^that’s not the case, because not all states have good scholarships for their instate students. Think of kids who got into UIUC or Penn State, for instance.
Top schools that meet need may be the best option for kids from low to middle income families (Harvard for instance promises that if your family makes less than 180K it’ll cost less than your state flagship).
Whether you’re a high-need applicant or a “donut hole” applicant, you’ll apply to a crazy number of schools simply because, if you don’t, you’re not going to college.
yes MYOS you are right. if NC State would cost a little as Rutgers did for me in the 80s, we would apply there and be done with this. but at $20K-$22K / year for in-state? no way.
now they do have 35 Park scholarships and 50 Goodnight scholarships that cover just about the whole cost. but that is 85 out of a freshman class of more than 10,000. my son will certainly be in the running, but to just assume he will win one of these scholarships is as presumptuous as those who apply only to Ivies and no safeties.
and I can’t simply assume they will just stack other scholarships or will “just find money” for him to make NC State affordable. so we can hope he is one of the 50 Goodnight scholars out of 10,000 freshmen. AND we can apply to some schools like Cornell – reasonable reaches that produce a very favorable number on the Net Price Calculator. after all it is certainly possible to be accepted into Cornell while NOT winning the Goodnight. AND we can lock in safeties like Alabama and Mississippi whose generous OOS auto-merit scholarships make them affordable options in case the others don’t pan out.
but what if Cornell – or Rice – or whatever – turns out to be the only highly-ranked school that would accept him and offer him an affordable FA package – and we never apply to that school? then we are the losers in the high stakes game of College Roulette. and that’s why people would apply to a larger number of those schools. so you don’t chance missing out on the ONE elite or near-elite school that will accept you and offer you a great FA package.
Telling parents to “relax” isn’t very helpful and doesn’t show a very good understanding of what parents are dealing with these days.
We are faced with upwards of $250K for a four year degree for each child. In many parts of the country, that’s a house. It’s a breath-taking amount of money.
So, we try to get our kids into the “best” college we can. Sure we look at the USN rankings, but what it’s really about is ROI. As college costs rise faster than incomes, this becomes more important. So, what’s best – a premier private college, a flagship state school, or that local safety college? Well, it all depends on how much aid they offer and what we perceive to be the value of the name on the sheepskin in today’s job market. As parents know, often the best way to answer this question is to apply to many schools and see what offers you get.
Those are the rules of the game and they are driven by the cost, which in turn drives the hunt for aid, and limited job prospects, which in turn drives the hunt for prestige. Parents and students are faced with an anxiety-ridden process that may result in a losing gambit that could saddle their kids with a lifetime of debt. Telling us to “relax” is not the solution.
We assumed from the start that there were literally dozens of colleges that were “fit” for our kids. Or rather, they could get a fine education given the programs and curricula offered there. But that didn’t mean we could put the college names on pieces of paper, drop them in a paper bag, and pick the winner. After all, the colleges have preferences, too.
There were key issues to address in the college search. Foremost was the “taste” of our kids for the type of college, programs offered, location, and so forth. We told them not to worry about the cost. That would be our problem. It also meant, however, that there was little reason to create a large list of qualified colleges prospecting for financial aid.
Almost inevitably, however, this meant there would be a search of some kind. Daughter wanted a “real city,” “preferably in the east.” (We live in the Midwest.) Added criterion: “stand-alone art school.” This ruled out in-state colleges, including flagships. It led to a small list of colleges (6), and to a pretty calm search. All applications were successful. Chose one (RISD). Spent summer abroad in Italy. Graduated in 4 years.
Son largely trusted us to come up with a list. Main criterion: “A college where it’s considered okay to be a thinker.” Many liberal arts college would clearly fill that bill, including my alma mater (Reed). Second criterion: “Major league city.” That ruled out many fine LAC’s, but he applied to a few anyway. State flagship? “Maybe.” (Rolling admission, and hence “backup.”) He did not want to make any tours of colleges prior to applying (but had spent summers in debate institutes at the flagship). Admitted to all but one target (3 universities, 3 LAC’s). After that, he visited the one that I had thought from the start was the best fit. After the overnight – his first time at the campus – he said simply “This will do.” Medium sized university in major league city (UChicago). Done. Spent junior year abroad in London; graduated in 4 years.
My guess is that despite what we read about the intense competition to get into the most prestigious colleges, this is a competition that at best 10-15% of high school graduates participate in. In the high school attended by our kids, an excellent school in a “university town,” most kids applied to only a few colleges: 2 to 5. We need to keep this in perspective. I think those numbers are common. The students and parents who post on this discussion board are a highly self-selected sample. By and large all the kids are well above average as well as highly motivated to find the best possible affordable college for them. But they’re not necessarily typical of college-bound high-school seniors as a whole.
My oldest was applying in 2008, when only a couple of the schools on his list were using the common app, and all of them had regular applications as an option. Teachers and guidance counselors were handed the physical LOR form unique to each college’s application, along with SAS envelopes. They were snail mailed. It was a much more burdensome process for everyone. At a certain point if you hadn’t gotten confirmation from each college that the application package was complete a parent or the senior would call admissions to find out what was missing. Sometimes the missing part of the application was laying around somewhere in admissions and hadn’t yet been matched up with the rest of the application, and that match would happen while you were on hold on the phone.
By 2014 when my youngest applied, via the common app to every school except our state flagship which still uses ONLY its own on online application, the process was completely different: much easier, quicker, and streamlined. Our high school had, by this time, adopted Naviance as a portal for students, guidance and teachers to communicate what needed to be sent through common app or the flagship portal. My youngest, (and guidance, and teachers writing LORs) spent much, much less time on the tedious details of the process. She didn’t have to check back with each teacher and with guidance to confirm that the needed info had been sent, she could check Naviance. Teachers submitted LORs through naviance. They could keep track of the requests and whether the info had been successfully submitted.
Some of the posters on this thread have not been around long enough to know what it was like prior to the common app. (and Naviance). Teachers in our high school used to limit how many LOR’s they would do because it took so much more time for them to submit. The tediousness of filling out the basic information, in different formats, 10 or 15 times was enough for my oldest to self limit the number of applications he did. EVERY SCHOOL had different essay prompts. Our guidance office employed two people whose entire jobs (for the first half of each school year) involved managing the college application process in terms of physically connecting the teacher LORs and Guidance info for each senior with the package of SAS envelopes the senior had supplied.
The essays are a wash. I don’t think the common app increases or decreases the number of essays the applicant needs to write.
But the application process is incredibly easier now compared to ten years ago. And the ease of applications makes it much more likely for people to over apply.
Well isn’t that nice for you that you have Naviance. Some of us are still in the stone ages I guess.
Here’s the thread I mentioned earlier. Good thing it’s so easy for the kids now with common app. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1883485-i-applied-to-16-colleges-and-it-was-terrible-p1.html
“Relax” is this Dean’s advice, as if we’re all prestige chasing, neighborhood bragging, helicopter parents. The tone of the article is dismissive and more than a tad condescending. No doubt there are some who apply to a raft of elite schools just because they can. But that hasn’t been our experience with our oldest or her friends.
Colleges, including private schools like the one that employs Dean Deb Shaver, are just as responsible for this frenzy as are the students and parents. Colleges are businesses first, learning institutions second. The obscene rise in tuitions are the leading factor in increased applications. As with many families, we’re chasing the money. But our oldest only applied to 6 and I expect our youngest to follow suit.
@MYOS1634 : What’s a donut applicant?