<p>aniger, my D is also applying to a large number of schools. Her school encourages kids to limit it to 12 with some exceptions. My D is one of the exceptions. In her case its not because she is applying to a bunch of Ivies or other academic reach school but because she is applying to a bunch of schools that will require an audition. Her odds are about the same as if she was applying to those reach schools. So she needs to maximize her numbers to maximize her chances at success. And because its possible she could be shut out of all of those auditioned schools (Yikes!) she needs some non-audition options so she has rounded out her list with academic matches and safeties. Hopefully our kids will have some good choices in the spring.</p>
<p>Honestly…I like the prospect of applying to as many colleges as you have interest in. DD was a tad downtrodden in her approach, so I helped her narrow her options as a result. Like most, rejection is not her favorite mail.</p>
<p>I also believe DD’s LOR was the exception. I think it must be difficult to write LOR’s on students you do not have a lot of experience with (flying under the radar). That being said, I would imagine most GC’s would lean on the positive side.</p>
<p>alwaysbelieve - Wow! Even when GC doesn’t have a lot of experience with a student, she can state so in her LOR. This can indicate that maybe she has too many students to pay attention to every one of them. Or that she is not a very good GC. What a witch! That is all I can say.</p>
<p>DS took the advice of his GC on how many schools to apply to (6-9.) </p>
<p>Alwaysbelieve, I read on the other thread about your son. My condolences to you and your family.</p>
<p>Congrats futureundergrad! what a nice surprise.</p>
<p>Congrats to alwaysbelieves D! How nice to have process over with.</p>
<p>
Thanks MOSB for these insightful words. Please remind us of them in April when our wallets are trying to overrule our hearts.</p>
<p>Congrats to Madbean and Alwaysbelieve on your children’s acceptances.</p>
<p>alwaysBelieve - great that your D is done. It’s hard to imagine folks in charge like the GC acting like they did - shouldn’t they have the best interests of these kids in mind??</p>
<p>Someone earlier made a comment about how a child that likes an urban environment could also apply to Dartmouth. With D, it could work. She’s not particular about location - she loved rural schools like Dartmouth and Bucknell. She also loved urban schools like Case. When we first visited UPenn, she hated it - so I was ready to dismiss all urban, city schools - but she loved several others that we visited. I came to believe it’s more of a campus vibe with her - she had to feel that she could be comfortable there. And rural/urban didn’t matter. Going over her list of choices, the common factor that does stand out is universities with a strong emphasis on research with potential opportunities for music and community service close by. She didn’t start out with this as her search criteria - but obviously, these are important to her and have helped form her list.</p>
<p>I get Aniger’s comment about maximizing chances by applying to more, especially with the tippy top schools. And if the kids are willing to do the work to apply, why not? For us, D is happy with her list - a couple of reaches that she could see herself at included. H is insisting on her applying to one more reach school - she’s not that thrilled, but will probably do it to appease him! His point is that this is the time to apply and that she shouldn’t restrict herself because she thinks she won’t get in. Shouldn’t have regrets later on…no what if’s …</p>
<p>keylime - no doubt she is indeed a witch! One could argue SHE was the reason DD struggled so much in her academic recovery. We knew from day one she didn’t like DD. </p>
<p>Thank you for the congrats! She struggled with ‘am I making the right decision’ for all of 24 hours. Since learning of the LOR, I think she is simply discouraged she never stood a chance. (at least in her mind)</p>
<p>Like these kids don’t have enough to stress over! I’m a big believer in karma so hopefully a tersely worded letter to the principal would change her comfort level going forward. It isn’t in any school’s best interest to make a student look bad - if you can’t write a glowing letter, than just stick to the facts. Very unprofessional and in my town, of a million lawyers, I don’t think this person would be working next yr (could explain why we have such turnover in the GC dept!)</p>
<p>For my ds, we came to a list of 2 schools and a bunch of runners-up. I asked him to apply to 7 which may give him some merit possibilities, the local flagship, some others that maybe too far for his comfort…a hodge podge of sorts because he is not at all complete in his mindset, one day he wants to be a politician, the next an aeronautical engineer and then next a composer…I have no idea where he’ll be in May! It’s all a crap shoot from here. The sad sick thing is I keep thinking we should add to the list - or replace Cornell with something else and my ds says something similar to what was posted here a couple days ago, something like “we used a sound methodology to come up with this list and we are done.” Think I am just stuck in that mode of researching and need to move on. Hey I’ve got a soph dd who I could do a spreadsheet for…</p>
<p>Politician, aerospace engineer, or composer! Wow… that may get a prize for the most varied list of career possibilities yet! 
I love it.</p>
<p>Blue - when we started (begin of jr yr), he was dead set on biblical archaeologist, also wanted to be able to study chinese and maybe minor in philosophy. That cut the list down significantly!</p>
<p>For my S urban vs. rural didn’t matter as much as the school’s size and the campus feel. The only criterion for the location is that it can’t be in NYC. He thinks that NYC will be too much of destruction. Like the feeling of living in NYC will overpower the feeling of being in college. (kwim?)</p>
<p>I get angier’s comment about maximizing one’s chance. And we used the same strategy when we started working on the list, but once DS found 2 safeties that he liked, he realized that he would rather go to one of these 2 schools than to some of the tippy top schools and the list got trimmed significantly after that. Right now he has 9 schools on the list, 5 are tippy top, 2 are matches and 2 are safeties. I wouldn’t mind adding couple more matches. I think it was also angier, who commented how hard it is to find matches for the high stats kids. You have couple and then start thinking about the Tufts syndrome and you add more. So, I do think that DS’s list could use more match schools, but we will defer that decision for after he is done with these 9 applications.</p>
<p>MY DS2 applied to one reach and one match school EA, and two safety schools with merit monies on a rolling basis. He also completed an additional RD match application, and an additional RD reach application. Remaining are the super-reachy schools - the lottery events that he may or may not pursue depending on the EA results. If the EA is successful, I suspect he will file one more super-reach application. IF the EA is not successful, then I suspect there will be 4-5 more reach schools added to the list… which sounds counter-intuitive…One EA application is really his first choice. Of all the other schools, he only visited one and said, well, if I got in, I would have to consider this with EA school…</p>
<p>keylime - you get the typo award of the day “NYC too much of a destruction” !!! (Hey, my D thought so, too!)</p>
<p>Anyway, anyone who is apologizing for maybe hurting people’s feelings shouldn’t worry - this is an extremely respectful and caring thread, and nobody has been saying anything bad (have you seen what really counts as nasty on CC? Golly!). It’s OK to express an opinion - we all like to have a reality check once in a while if it’s done kindly.</p>
<p>My D is the same as LoP’s - basically 2 lists of 6-7 schools, like they’re 2 kids. Reach-match (there are no safeties) in the audition group, and reach-match-safety in the non-audition group. Luckily that suits her personality: she also is the type who wants LOTS of choices in the spring. She says she doesn’t know how she’ll feel then, so she definitely doesn’t think she could make the decision now and be done with it (although we all know there are kids who can).</p>
<p>alwaysbelieve (great name, by the way) - I think what happened to you is despicable, and you should write a letter to the principal. We made the mistake of smiling and nodding about a teacher who was awful to D1, thinking it would smooth the waters for D2, and then he hurt D2 more than we could ever have imagined. We complained all the way to the superintendent; there was not much they could do about our particular situation, but we wanted it on his record. We kept hearing about kid after kid that he had hurt (and I’m betting it’s happened with this GC, too), and we felt that maybe if people actually said something there would be a cumulative effect. He’s still there - but I know he’s being watched a lot more carefully, and we are seeing little changes. Plus while we’ve tried to be discreet, word got around, and parents are being a lot more firm about his behavior. It’s a sad kind of gratification, but at least we feel like we did all we could do. And we do think now that we should have been more outspoken about kid #1 - he upped the ante so shockingly with #2 that we think it might be because he didn’t think we’d respond.</p>
<p>EmmyBet - I would call the principal up (as well as the superintendent) in a heartbeat…but…DD signed the waiver and is afraid reporting anything about it, even though her decision is made and she is beginning the process, something worse will occur. There are major issues with several teachers there involved in this fiasco, GC even witnessed a verbal personal assault on DD by one of her teachers, repercussions have already/frequently occurred. She and I have been fighting with the school since her freshman year. I feel like they see me as a parent who wants something my DD doesn’t deserve. So when she DOES get a bone thrown her way, they find another way to kick it out from under her.</p>
<p>@aniger, I agree with you. When D and I first started this process (seems so long ago…), I actually believed that 6 or 7 applications would be the limit. It shouldn’t be so hard, right? All we needed to do was check the schools that match Ds stats, which would narrow the list down, then check for the availability of certain majors, then financial aid, then location, etc… But, it turned out not to be so easy: With acceptance rates that range from 22% down to 7% and a true need for a fair financial aid package, it would be much too risky for D to apply to so few.</p>
<p>So, it looks like she’ll be applying to 13.</p>
<p>Always - I trust you completely to know how much to take a stand with this - good luck to you. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through, although I have a friend whose D struggles with a chronic illness that they are constantly battling one teacher or another over, and we’ve had some experience with hurtful situations ourselves.</p>
<p>The confidentiality thing is very, very difficult. Right now we’re dealing with our D being very active in a department where the man who severely hurt her still teaches. For the first time in my life I have someone I will not speak to, whom I tell my D not to speak to - except to be appropriately polite. I don’t believe in this, truly believe that just about everyone can be worked with somehow and that it’s terrible to snub someone. But I am right there with you in watching our backs - I won’t even ask this man to hold a door open for me, because I am afraid that somehow the interaction will go south, and there are ways in the department that he can still hurt her (and I believe he would), such as sabotaging end of year awards, or souring new people against her behind our backs. Fortunately in our case he can’t really affect her future plans - although I can believe that someone with such evil intentions would find a way, so I’ll be watching out until the very end.</p>
<p>And we didn’t make an enormous stink - there’s only so much we can do, anyway. As much as I dream of protecting the kids coming up, all I really ask is for my D to get away from him unscathed at this point. The fact that your D, and mine, have risen above these situations is a beautiful (I won’t say miraculous, but almost so) reflection on their strength and resilience. </p>
<p>Soon they can start a new life and know that they made the best of a bad situation. Hugs to your D, and all the best wishes at her new school.</p>
<p>alwaysbelieve, I am so sorry to hear how much difficulty your daughter has had during high school. Your story makes me want to send my son’s GC a huge bouquet of flowers. My son, a junior, has missed a lot of school due to surgeries frosh and soph years as well as a newly found condition just diagnosed. His GC has been wonderful in advocating for him. All but one teacher was wonderful to work with so that he could catch up. The one who was a witch was so out of the ordinary that it shocked not only the GC but also the principal, so much so that the principal allowed him to drop the class the day before the quarter ended with no penalty and no mark on his transcript.</p>
<p>I am wishing your daughter only smooth sailing going forward and hope she loves her college experience. She certainly deserves it!</p>
<p>My son definitely was of the mindset of “we used a sound methodology to come up with this list and we are done” once we came up with a solid balance of 7 schools all of which he would be happy to attend. All but financial safety were visited. He sees no point of adding more unless he gets a big surprise and gets rejected from the two schools he feels confident about and that we will hear from in the next four weeks.</p>
<p>ALWAYSBELIEVE - I am not in your shoes so I feel a bit awkward commenting. I think bullies get their power because they feel no one will confront them. Assuming you have facts/evidence to support your position, you might want to consider confronting her once the school year ends. You might want to have a witness to your conversation or tape it. I agree with EmmyBet that given what you have shared with us, D2 may worse off if you don’t speak up now.</p>
<p>As far as interests changing, I started college wanting to be a theoretical mathematician and ended up an accountant but along the way considered becoming a Rabbi, computer scientist or criminal justice major.</p>