Here’s the hazard I see in starting your search with reaches. They’re brutal on a kid’s ego when he or she gets rejected.
Most of the kids on this thread-- in fact, most on this site-- appear to be extraordinarily bright, gifted kids. (My kids are pretty much the lone exceptions.I love my kids to death, but “Ivy” and “Tier One” simply weren’t part of our discussion.) These kids have grown up knowing they were bright; they’ve been hearing it since the cradle.
Yet, those “reaches” are named that way for a reason. They’re the schools that stand a better chance of rejecting the particular applicant than accepting him or her.
And those rejections hurt. A lot. They have a way of making a kid question all that he’s been told about how bright, how special, he is.Even the most emotionally healthy kid’s ego is going to take a beating when the first three schools he applies to reject him–even if he knew the odds were that he wouldn’t get in.
Please, parents. Be kind to your kids during this process. Get some safeties in there, and get them in early. And make sure they’re the kind of school your child would really be happy to attend, be happy to live and learn and be proud of for the next four year.
That way, when those inevitable rejections come in, you child will have some acceptances he’s happy with to cushion the blow.
100% agree with this. D16 was applying to some schools with low single digit admit rates. She applied to my alma mater EA knowing she would get in because she knew she would be happy there if that’s where she ended up. She did get her share of rejections, including an ED wait list - but she never had the “I’m not getting into college” panic because she had that acceptance in her back pocket. It’s a VERY long time between ED decisions and Regular decisions, and I was glad she wasn’t overly stressed.
D16 applied very early to two rolling admissions schools and had two acceptances in hand by mid October. That took a huge amount of stress off. There was no question about not getting in anywhere. It was then just a matter of waiting to hear back from other schools to see what all her options were and making a decision. I hope to do the same with S
One good reason is that their applications often open earlier, and the applications are often simpler, and so you might as well get them out of the way when you can.
F’rex, one of my D19’s already-identified safeties is Iowa State. Their application opens for her sometime in early June (and the beginning of July for all students), and it’s entirely stats-based admission. Therefore, once it opens, she’s plugging her stuff in, asking me to pay their $40 application fee, and will know by the end of June that if all else fails she has a place to go to college, and doesn’t have to worry about that particular school as she’s working on the more involved applications.
For D17, we went 1 rolling, 2 EA’s and the rest RD’s. Having that rolling/safety in early was good for her self esteem as her words were “I am going to college!”. She got into the two EA’s which gave her choices. We went back and forth about going ED2 with her top choice, but because we needed merit to make it work, but theoretically according to FAFSA and such we could “afford” it, we went RD. She got into that choice with merit and just finished her freshman year extremely happy. She applied to 7 schools total. 5 wins, 1 WL and 1 loss.
Fast forward to S19. He right now has 4 schools he is applying to. One is a safety all around, and does rolling admissions. We can very easily get that application in early and get acceptance right away. Yes, we can wait until we would hear back from ED, if we go that route, but for us it makes sense for stress levels to just “have it”. He would be fine going to that school, and if he did the financial situation would allow us to even get him a car, and provide extra money. At the same time, for EA for our state flagships, which are not Safeties at all, the applications are due by Nov 1st. I would call that school a reach. Then we have the two “matches”. We are really considering ED for one. They have a friendly ED that even allows you to back out if you are not happy with the money and go into the RD pool (but I suspect being RD then would be detrimental). The other one we would go RD for sure. i did ask at the session for the ED school if as long we dont put down any deposits we could go rolling at other schools and EA, and they said yes. Right now we are leaning towards the ED. Come end of July, S19 and our college consultant would work on his essays and apps. S19 has EF issues (different story for different day and taken into account in school choice). Having someone that can help him and make him accountable. is well worth the $. WE used her for D17. She charges per hour and is very reasonable. This keeps peace in my family and keeps the nagging factor out of it. She is a former English teacher and made sure that D’s essays were clean grammatically.
D1 had two schools on her list with EA. One was a clear safety and one was a bit “reachy” She really liked both schools and would have been happy at either. As long as we were getting 2 done by the EA deadline, it made sense to get the others in as well so she was basically done with college apps in the fall. She got into both EA schools and the relief she experienced was palpable and visible. It was as if 100 tons was lifted off of her shoulders. Her Senior year was fun and relaxed while her friends were still panicking. D2 will be doing the same, securing one or more acceptances to schools she really likes. After that the rest is just icing.
We have one rolling admissions safety on the list that we’ve already applied to and expect to have the acceptance in hand in late August/early September.
Kiddo wants to use the early app silver bullet on a SCEA super reach, and I’m actually somewhat OK with that. Our financial situation is not super-complicated, but there are a few oddities that could potentially end up with us having a far higher 4 year EFC than we could possibly ever pay.
Last night was the finals performance for the theatre magnet class that my son is in. Brief Shakespeare monologues and scenes, then musical theatre solos and an ensemble piece.
There are 12 kids in the class (down from the 16 who started freshman year). I know 8 of his classmates very well - we see them at rehearsal all the time, they come over or we take the kid to their house. 3 of the kids I only see on finals performance night. They have other commitments, or they just don’t go out for plays I guess. But each year I’m struck by some aspect of their talent and I get sad that I’m missing their performances. One girl has a voice that could move mountains but she works two jobs after school. Another is leading lady gorgeous with impeccable comic timing, but she is in ROTC and doesn’t often have time for rehearsal.
I want to steal an extra 20 hours in the week and give it to these girls to use for our plays. I want to drop a winning lottery ticket on the one girl, negotiate a free pass to the academy for the other. I feel deprived of their talents.
This part is so difficult, especially because we cannot afford to fly around the country visiting schools. We’ve done some very heavy research, and D is done with school in the next week so she will do some more heavy research and whittle down her list. So far it’s
1 rolling
1 high likely we can afford
1 high likely but needs merit aid
The next part is tricky because she has a list of 8 or so reach schools that she has the stats for but the acceptance rates are low. I’d like her to narrow it down more but without an actual visit it is so hard… some of them might move up/down/off but we have no way of knowing until after she might be accepted. Then we would visit.
Because of our tight budget, I really hesitate with ED- but D is only allowed to apply to schools we could afford in the first place. So passing up the chance to apply ED seems foolish for her if she had a definite first choice, but she doesn’t. I’ve instilled the ‘Love the school that loves you back’ theory- so that’s not helping because she would LOVE to attend several different schools if they would want her. So we have no idea what she’ll do at this point.
I think each family needs to decide on their own process. It is helpful to see all of the reasons for different approaches but they don’t all work for every student. I would LOVE to have S19 apply to EA schools he likes and a few rolling as well but we have scoured the lists of schools that offer EA/rolling and he’s just not that excited about any of them. I can’t make him be excited. I could tell him that it’s in his best interests to apply somewhere EA so that he has an acceptance early and we know he’s “going to college” but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if the schools aren’t what he wants.
He will apply to one EA school that we have not visited but checks all of his boxes. He’s shown interest online as well as by meeting with the local rep who came to our school. Is he excited about it? No. But I honestly do think that he would be happy there. No one from his high school has ever heard of it. He’s the only one who showed up for the presentation when the rep came to our school. It’s not a perfect match as it’s hard to get there from where we live. I’m still kicking around the idea of visiting this summer but not sure it’s worth $1000 to do that. They are known for wanting demonstrated interest and, since it’s his only EA safety, I sort of feel like we should go. That being said, what if we get there and he doesn’t like it? Maybe better to not visit. If he’s accepted in the end and wants to explore it as an option, then he would visit with a much better attitude about it.
He has another EA school on his list (UNC) that is not remotely a safety for OOS and it’s also a way bigger school than he really wants…but it’s warm and it’s obviously got an amazing reputation so he’ll apply. If they didn’t have EA, i don’t even know that he would apply. I just want more EA schools and he picked it. I’m still trying to convince him to apply to Wisconsin.
All of the rest are RD. And, right now, there are nine schools on there for sure. One that is safe. He has another four schools that are big reaches and he has to decide if he will apply to them. The list is already long. Honestly, I think it will boil down to how much stamina he has for doing the essays.
@SDCounty3Mom, do Stanford early admissions still show a bit of a bump for legacies? I ask only because Princeton’s now clearly do not (i.e., all things being equal, legacy might help you the teeniest bit, but that doesn’t vary from early to regular applications). With Princeton’s heavy focus now on FLI (first gen/low income) students, legacy no longer gives much – if any at all – boost. Princeton has acknowledged that much of the increase in FLI applicants is basically coming at the expense of the legacy pool. I think it’s a phenomenal thing for Princeton to do, even if it means that none of my kids are going to end up going there (despite more legacy connections than you can shake a stick at).
If he gets there and doesn’t like it, then your objective has been met. You know how he feels about the school. That’s the point, right? To determine whether or not it’s as much a fit in real life as it appears to be online.
My kids were both funny when it came to not liking a school we had visited. Each of them knew within 3 minutes of arriving on campus that the school was not what they were looking for. Each was hesitant when I suggested NOT even taking the tour. I asked each for their reasons; they both had reasons beyond the “I’m not in the mood for this right now variety.” (Him: This (nice, woodsy) campus “feels like a bunch of old cabins in the woods.” Her: I forget exactly what she didn’t like… a combination of parking and being surrounded by a neighborhood; she felt as though acting like normal college kids would be an issue with the neighbors.)
So we made our excuses, cancelled the tour, and went out to lunch. Objective met; no need to apply to those schools.
@bjkmom ha! Yes, but then he is practically all RD and that scares me even more. If we can tie a visit to this EA school into with another school, we may go. There’s another school on his RD list that is two hours away from EA school but that trip would be long. We’d fly to the closest metro area, drive two hours to the RD school and then another 2 hours to the EA school, and then four hours back to the airport. That would have to be a three day trip with the flying and the driving. Flights, two days of hotel, renting a car makes it now more like $1600. That would be hilarious, though, if he got to each campus and said thanks but no thanks and we just went to lunch!.
@SDCounty3Mom One of D’s high school friends was a double legacy at Stanford. This girl was class president, class valedictorian, had perfect SAT’s, etc. She was deferred EA and was rejected ED. The parents were very active alumni and they were quite upset. They stopped all alumni activity after that. The student did end up at another highly selective school so it worked out well for her, but I don’t think you can count on legacy at Stanford helping very much.
Well, yeah, sure. If you can apply early and the school has rolling admissions, I can see the benefit of having that security in hand. But I’m not going to be seeking out a bunch of safety schools for him to apply to early just for an ego boost.
I will be discouraging S from applying to lottery schools. HYS aren’t even on the radar. There was talk about MIT last summer, but I think he knows now that’s a pipe dream, and his interests seem to have changed since then too. We haven’t toured Princeton yet, and I’m hoping he’s not attracted to it, but if he is, we’d have a real decision to make as to which reach school he would apply to. The only reason I would consider allowing him to apply there is because they do take students from our high school and we have family with connections there that we might be able to leverage a bit.
My oldest kid applied to his two top schools EA. He was accepted to his second choice early December and deferred by his top choice. Once he was accepted to his second choice EA, he did not bother sending out any additional applications. He ended up being one of the lucky ones that was accepted in the RD round of his top choice.
My middle kid was a recruited athlete, and applied to only 1 school. He was accepted ED in December.
This time around with third kiddo is going to be completely different. She hasn’t even had much time yet to visit many of the colleges on her list. We are planning on visiting many of the schools this summer, which isn’t the ideal time to visit. If her top choice school ends up having an ED program, she will be applying ED as I do think that gives a boost.
S19 has three rolling admissions schools (one in-state uni and two LACs) on this list. Penn State is semi-rolling. The remaining LACs have EA and RD. All are on the Common App for next year. The plan is to apply early to the rollings and EA for the others.
He doesn’t have a favorite or “dream” school. Which is fine by me. Because ED is not a good option for us. Our EFC will be what we consider to be too high. So it will best serve S19 to have more options and potential merit from which to choose. Assuming he gets in everywhere of course.
