@homerdog – yeah, D19 seems mostly disinterested. I mean, she dutifully has been trying to fill out a big spreadsheet with assorted college info, and is willing to go on tours we set up, but I also feel like her college list is mostly (entirely?) composed of suggestions we’ve made given her basic set of interests and our perspective on what might be good given those interests (and our financial capability based on NPCs). We obviously gave her a much longer list of colleges (I think I tabbed about 50 possibilities in Fiske), but I haven’t received any feelings of “I really like college X,” or, possibly even more importantly at this stage, “I can’t believe you even thought I’d be interested in college Y.” I feel a little bit like her list is a little set in amber, and as someone who feels like the list primarily reads like a list of “low reaches,” I wish I could add some more match-y schools that she’d be interested in learning more about…
@BorgityBorg matches and safeties are just hard for some kids. I’m trying very hard to make sure he has some that S19 likes but, if I’m being honest, there’s no way he will initially be super excited about those schools. If those are what he’s left with after acceptances, he will have to figure out how to love them. I would expect he may feel disappointed at first but will come around if he has no choice.
We actually started our looking at colleges about a year ago. Way too early according to everyone around me. Hah. Anyhow, I would show the kiddo a college pamphlet or website and the kiddo would say, “That sounds nice, I could go there”. I was a bit despairing. There are 7000 colleges in the US. We could potentially afford with various scholarships 5000 of them. I needed criteria to narrow down the list, not expand it!
Anyhow, our third formal college visit was St. John’s Annapolis. We went on a lovely day. The tour guide was warm and fuzzy, the campus was nice and in a great part of Annapolis. We drove away and kiddo said, “This college is great but it isn’t for me”. I cheered.
Now I’m at the point where I want to expand the list just very slightly in a specific direction - matches, I don’t think we have enough matches. But kiddo has 5 colleges that he thinks he could be happy at so he is done with thinking about everything until summer when he starts on essays.
I know, intellectually, that I am overprepared for the point in the process where I’m standing. There is just such a mountain of work and decisions ahead! I have the time now so I feel like I ought to be doing something more. So my thinking self and feeling self are at war. I do my best not to dump that on kiddo too often.
So… relative to the idea of finding a set of safeties, matches, and reaches, have any of you given (or plan to give) your kids (either D/S19 or older kids who’ve already applied) limits or requirements in those fields? For example, you must have 2 safeties and 2 matches (however you choose to define them)? Or you can apply to no more than 1 or 2 super-reaches (e.g., HYPMS or schools where the child’s SAT/ACT scores are barely at the 25th percentile)?
It’s possible that my D19 has a set of 8-10 schools that would include 2 safeties and 2 matches (one of those safeties would be our flagship), but am wondering whether we should impose those guidelines. Doing so would make sure that she’s got at least 3-4 schools (and hopefully 6-8) to choose from she’s comfortable with.
I should also note that we will limit applications just from a financial perspective – we will not qualify for fee waivers, but don’t have enough money to be willing to allow filling out 15 applications – and a sanity-for-our-D perspective. Since we’re paying for the applications (and test submissions, etc.), I think it’s fair to say you can’t buy more than 2 lottery tickets (i.e., applications to HYPMS, Caltech, etc.).
Why is Harvard sending emails? Most people assume Harvard is too expensive for them. However, Harvard is very generous with need aid, making it affordable to many people. In fact, allegedly, for people below a certain amount of income (about $65k), Harvard is about $5k per year. So they want to make sure that, if you’re ruling out Harvard, you’re doing so for the right reason. Not because you can’t afford it.
I try to look at it like this - if it came down to the safeties, would S19 have enough choices? He has two picked out right now. If he only had those to choose from, would that be ok? If the answer is “no”, then maybe we need another safety. Both of S19’s are fairly far away and he’s only visited one. I feel like we need one closer to home…so we need to think about that more.
As for matches, it’s complicated. His matches (where he’s in the top 25th percentile for SAT and GPA according to each school’s common data set) all have less than a 30% acceptance rate and some are as low as 20%. I’ve been told that those are technically reaches since they are LACs and you never know how the holistic process will shake out. What that means for him is that he has to show a lot of interest, do interviews if they are considered, and apply widely.
For true reaches, he hasn’t picked. I honestly think it’s because he doesn’t want to hear the “no”. Also, he’s under the impression that these types of schools are all uber-intense and he doesn’t want that. I know that’s not necessarily true. I think he’ll end up with one or two super reaches but they will be in the RD round like the rest of his apps. He’s mentioned Dartmouth in passing but I haven’t the foggiest where that came from. I’ve always thought Brown made more sense for his super reach.
@gusmahler I guess. But they obviously don’t have our financial information because we would be full pay. If they even know S19’s high school or zip code, it’s super clear that none of these kids would get to go to Harvard for $5000. You are correct, though, because the email was about the affordability.
I have told my kid that he can I would pay for him to apply to one lottery ticket school (currently Yale) but if he wants to do more he gets to pull the app fee money from his own pocket. So far he hasn’t been passionate enough about any of the other sub -10% schools to consider that option. He’s intrigued by Stanford, or he was until he heard of Stanford Duck Syndrome. Swarthmore is definitely on the list and it’s almost a lottery ticket, but we have religion and legacy at Swat so I’m not including it in the restricted list.
I tried to lay down the law that he must pick and apply to a safety, but none of the colleges on his list can be considered safeties. There are a couple that are low matches, but even those I see the potential for a ‘no’ if he whiffs on the application. This causes me some stress. But I’m not going to say anything about it to him before the summer, because it’s much too early to seriously be worrying about this sort of thing. Most of his friends aren’t sure what colleges exist beyond Towson and UMBC.
I think a related question is “how honest – or accurate – are you with your kids about the likelihood of admission?” If I tell D19 that she needs (for the purpose of argument) 2 safeties, 2 matches, and can have no more than 2 lottery tickets, then I need to be prepared to tell her, “no, I don’t think X school is a match – it’s a reach.” I’ve tried to suggest that at least a couple of her schools are out of reach given her current (very good but not super-awesome) test scores. I’m totally fine if she doesn’t want to take the SAT again – I think she has a reasonable shot at a half-dozen schools she currently has on a broad list – but if she does want to apply to those reach, HYPMS-like schools, then she needs to retake (and study for) the SAT. Her choice.
But having that conversation with a kid… that can be difficult. And I’m also slightly terrified that my estimation of match and low-reach is way off – meaning I’m too optimistic – so I really want to make sure there are some honest-to-goodness low match and high safeties on there besides the flagship.
@BorgityBorg yes, that sanity check! I ended up making an appointment with my kid’s guidance counselor as my college list sanity check. I didn’t even tell him I was going. We went over the schools on the list, we looked at Naviance together, she told me about the school’s processes for sending transcripts and requesting letters of recommendation. It was great. I didn’t change any of the schools on the list, but I ended up feeling a lot better about the list as it exists and the kid’s chances to end up in a good place.
It helped that her alma mater is on the list and she had not seen any kids apply to that school (Gettysburg) for a couple of years now, so she has a personal connection.
If your kid’s HS counselor isn’t too busy, he/she can be a great resource, and maybe you can cooperate in a game of good cop/bad cop. But a private college counselor can do that too, if you have a bit of money to throw around.
@BorgityBorg I just told S19 to take absolutely nothing for granted. He’s done with SAT but has two SAT 2s to take and four APs in May. He’s knows they are important. He knows his essays will be important. I know he will put the work in. He’s been working all year to develop strong relationships with teachers so he can make sure to get good recs. I don’t know what else he can do.
I have a list of questions for our GC including questions on how many of the kids we send to LACs are athletes. We need to know how many of the acceptances we can see on Naviance are going to the non-recruited student. That will help us a bit with being realistic too.
@BorgityBorg Two safeties and matches sounds good. I am also struggling with the “How many safeties should he have?” question. But without the reaches. We have five small LACs that are matches. These are CTCL type schools for which S19’s stats are on target and merit is a possibility. He doesn’t care about prestige or reaches. It is all about fit and finances.
As we won’t know if the LACs are affordable until any offers come in, financial and academic safeties are a must. He wants a live-at-home option to reduce anxiety. Our local private college and one PASSHE school meet this need. And as a commuter, both are financial safeties. He would prefer the private school over the in-state option. I totally agree. But is the private school really a “safety” like a state school? I think so because a lot of kids from his high school commute to this private college.
So then he also needs a live-on-campus safety (or two?). This is why West Chester is on the table. But should he also consider other PASSHE schools as well?
Or, would five crap shoot LACs with the local private college and West Chester as safeties be enough? I suppose he can always apply to other PASSHE schools later if all else fails.
Reaches/matches/safeties: No limits on numbers in each category for D19. For D17, since she was targeting LACs, we had to make sure she had some safeties, but given the utter lack of prestige-chasing in the air up here, that wasn’t ever an issue. (We did limit her to only one school where merit aid isn’t offered, though amusingly that one—Colgate—ended up being only the third-most expensive option, what with an unexpectedly generous financial aid package.)
D19, on the other hand, is interested in a field that’s offered by a lot of regional publics and a few state flagships, and she’s interested in the educational approach of polytechnics anyway. The issue with them then becomes entirely and utterly finances (i.e., do they give decent merit aid to out-of-state students), since most schools still on her list admit purely by stats and she’s good there.
It’s a comfortable place to be, compared to where we were two years ago with her older sister.
My d19 has one academic/financial safety, one academic match/financial reach, one academic reach/financial match. We’ve talked about other options, but she hasn’t found anything she would prefer over her academic/financial safety so it seems a waste of time and money to apply to them. When I told her she didn’t need to apply to colleges she wouldn’t want to go to anyway, she seemed to relax a bit. So basically, it looks like she’s most likely only sending in 3 apps.
I should note that I envision D19 only applying to financially viable schools based on the NPC. We are more interested in need rather than merit (the NPCs are affordable for us) which makes me a little more nervous because there’s no such thing as a meets-full-need (let alone need-blind) safety school. 
Everybody’s in a different situation in that regard.
The weird thing, @dfbdfb , is that my D19 isn’t really interested in prestige-chasing, either. She’s interested in attending well-regarded schools in what she thinks is her scientific field, and those tend to be found in some “prestige” names. My task is to make sure that she understands that attending a school that is (to make up a number) #25 on some made-up ranking will be, in many ways, no worse of an education than attending #2. Different, perhaps, but not necessarily worse.
S19 has no list of yet, and I don’t have any limits or requirements on what goes on the list, as long as the schools are affordable and some of them will take him.
My son won’t want to apply to super reaches (and possibly not to regular reaches) because of the effort involved in applying to more selective schools. Plus, his profile will be kind of imbalanced (pretty high ACT score, but otherwise, just “good” grades, so-so rigor, one type of EC, lacks leadership/service). Frankly the kid just isn’t very oriented towards academics and his recommendations will probably reflect that.
Plenty of schools will take our money anyway. But it will make sense for him to apply to all matches and safeties if we can figure out what those are (I guess if he decides to audition for a music program, there won’t be any safeties - that scares me a little!)
I’ve mentioned it before, but we are having a hard time finding reaches for D because we are full pay. I can find plenty of academic reaches but then we would not get any merit money so they would most likely be out of reach financially. DH thinks we should let D pick 1 or 2 true reaches if she really loves them then if she got in we would deal with the high prices but I’m not sure I agree with that. Right now it doesn’t matter because D has no schools she loves.
I’d also like to think of a better word than “safeties” - I feel like that makes the school sound so much less desirable. Any ideas for other ways to label your safeties?
Also in the midst of all this, we’ve tried to raise our children to be hyperaware that for the fields they’re interested in, it doesn’t really matter if the school they go to is highly regarded (by any definition)—what matters is how highly regarded the school where they get their masters is regarded and, for the one interested in engineering, whether the undergrad program is ABET accredited.
Many good safety schools have that wonderful rolling admission, so you can call them early win schools, maybe?
@momtogkc we don’t use 'safeties" in our house, we use “likely”. Kid is likely to get in and I likely the price 
I agree if you use safety it sounds like the school is “beneath” the kid. I won’t have son19 apply to any school he would not want to attend.