I’ve helped to guide my three children through this process. All three were accepted at every school to which they applied.
Was this luck? A wildly improbable hat trick? Are they all Olympic athletes with perfect SATs? No.
All three of my smart, accomplished, “average excellent” children spent much more time at the beginning of their college admission process figuring out exactly what they needed and what they wanted before putting a college list together.
I’d estimate that 75% of their total effort was spent taking a very wide view of what schools would work for their determined needs/wants, 20% on the applications (they were all targeting merit money so spent serious time working on creating the strongest application they could), and 5% on stressing while waiting for if all the yeses would also be affordable (they were pretty sure they’d get all yeses, affordability wasn’t always clear pre-decision).
I never want to dissuade any student from applying to reaches. But to say that there are no safeties anymore is beyond hyperbole.
Students and families are fully in control of where they decide to apply. Safeties are the easiest schools to find for the highest qualified students - and there are plenty of schools within the Top 200 universities that will not only be admission safeties, but will also give good merit money. Same within the Top 100 LACs.
But you don’t know if you will get in, you hope you will, but it might be harder if you need financial assistance. So rather than applying to one or two you apply to 10 because it’s not an option to just pick a safety and go, it has to be a safety you can afford as well. And obviously all kids should be able to also apply to target schools and reaches- which means, adding more schools at the target/ reach level if you need financials- you can see if you can afford it, but they might not admit you.
(I should add that yes, I am sure they could estimate schools they probably will get into that they can afford, but then what if . . . and anxiety- and its not wrong, sometimes there are wacky admission results- so add in reasonable anxiety)
If you apply to a school with a merit table and you meet the criteria, you’re likely getting in. Many of these schools have 70% and 80% and higher acceptance rates.
If they are auto merit, it’s not harder.
If it says if you have a 3.5, 30 ACT and you get $20,000 - then you are getting at least $20,000.
If it says some get - that’s different. A U of SC had a guide but it wasn’t a guarantee.
But I’m talking about schools that give a criteria - you hit, you win. Lots of these exist.
Then you can determine - can I afford it ?
Or there are schools like W Carolina that are $20K all in - so someone can say - I know I can afford $25K - and I may or may not get there at x school - depending on need.
But guess what - at W Carolina you don’t have the worry - so why aren’t you applying?
There’s truly many many schools like this table below (Mizzou)- but not a ton want to go to E Kentucky, Murray State, or Mississippi State, etc.
With D24 who is only interested in the S part of STEM programs, we avoided the popular markets/brand name schools and got into every school(public flagships and privates) she applied to with excellent merit.
I disagree. There are still plenty of safety schools, but they are often schools that are of limited interest to certain students. Places like Bama, Ole Miss, U of A, Iowa and many, many more. For kids with an excellent academic record the issue isn’t finding a safety-it’s finding a safety your child wants to attend (and that will work financially).
Some (those with declining enrollment or in financial troubles) have lowered their rack rate.
But 2nd and 3rd tier schools are the ones that will suffer because college enrollments are declining - and they have to fight hard - to get revenue in the door.
It’s no different than my industry - if we’re not selling enough, we put incentives or price adjustments.
If you have a car that everyone wants - people pay sticker or over.
College is a commodity. It’s a consumer product - and it’s discretionary.
Don’t want Skippy Peanut Butter? Buy Jif or Trader Joes or Costco brand, etc. Different price points. Different positions.
That isn’t to say kids aren’t stressed - my own son is. Much of it is self-created stress, though. He wanted to shoot high, but if that is your strategy it will require a lot of applications and a fair amount of stress. And he is is in the fortunate situation of not needing to worry about the finances - we can afford any school so he doesn’t have what I consider to be the ultimate stress. Wondering how to swing the cost of a college degree.
At some privates per their CDS, it appears virtually everyone attending either has institutional need or merit or both.
I’m not sure that is entirely just a psychological trick, as it appears to me that the amount of aid is often still a variable, and so the full COA is necessary for calculation purposes.
But it makes sense to me for marketing purposes they would prefer to give everyone a minimum of $5000 off (or whatever) rather than just reduce the full COA by $5000 and then offer some substantial percentage of people nothing.
Not sure if you picked Caltech as a random example or were being specific. But if the latter, it may be worth noting that Caltech is famously test blind. They explicitly tell you not to bother submitting scores because they will not even be glanced at let alone considered as part of the review of your application.
But not (only) because of holistic admissions. (And even re: ‘holistic,’ that’s not exactly what they’re saying either. They say “We’re increasing our focus on evaluating your academic preparedness prior to applying to Caltech.”)
Anyway, they don’t want SAT and ACT scores because the tests are too blunt as instruments to be of any use to Caltech. Blunt as in too easy. 36 and 800M are things many Caltech kids were scoring in 7th grade.
Yeah, our HS has a two likelies suggested strategy, my S24 was guided to two colleges the counseling staff agreed were likelies, and he was admitted to both.
I don’t get the sense they often miss if kids actually follow their guidance. But it isn’t as simple as picking “safeties” all your kid peers say will be safeties for you. Our likelies are just as carefully chosen and individualized as any other colleges.
Which is easy at a highly resourced HS, but places like this forum will provide you all the help you really need too.
But the kid and the family have to be willing to follow such guidance.
And then my S24 is not by any means stress free anyway. But not as stressed as the kids I see posting about how they just got deferred/waitlisted/rejected by a college their peers called a safety.
My sister-in-law went to Grinnell and LOVED it. Their alumni network is so tight it borders on being a secret society. She would visit cities and I’d ask where she stayed. “Oh at the home of some Grinnell alum”. She didn’t know them, but she got connected with them through the network.
She described her curriculum and it’s basically the equivalent to a bachelor’s + master’s degree in four years.
That said, I’ve been to Grinnell many times and I’m still shocked how many people from all over the world go to school in this little town in the middle of rural Iowa.
I like the two+ safeties strategy not just as a “belt and suspenders” approach but also because it means students will (most likely) have a choice come May 1. This can help what seemed like an unpalitable option (as safeties sometimes are) become an active affirmative choice. The process of going through the pros/cons of the “unwanted” options and discovering a prefered choice can shift a student’s thinking into a more positive attitude.
From my personal eperience the past few weeks, I also support the idea of finding a safeties that are rolling or EA. It has been very helpful in keeping anxiety at bay as we wait.
Requiring 2 likelies bare minimum is what ours has done for a number of years, then in 2022 moved to requiring 3 likelies. Plus a mix of matches and reaches, which vary by the student and sometimes on what seems to be a steep gradient (one kid in the top few told a very top school X is a match, another told its a reach….and on and on. They fine tune it but the barrier is sometimes students and parents do not listen. They were spot on with D21 and 23 and the recs coordinated with what it appeared from naviance data, but there are kids in the same HS with the same advice who do not get in to all likelies so 3 is a nice buffer. There was a lot of digging deep into data and school fit to create a list, but much of that was because neither applied to any publics OOS.
Your son goes to private school, right? To me, this is such a benefit of having individualized counseling - our large public high school doesn’t do anything like that, which is why so many parents hire a private counselor, thus creating so many inequities… it’s exhausting.
Aside from the aspect of public/private, I totally agree that this is a great strategy - my D24 was accepted to two schools EA, both of which were likelies, and got excellent merit aid at both, thus reducing her stress by a LOT.
Chiming in from 2023 to agree with @beebee3 that there are thousands of safeties out there and we on CC tend to be a very nonrepresentative sample of the college-going public.
But, I guess the reason we’re all on CC is that we want something “better” for our snowflakes. And we have the time to do lots of research to ensure they get it. I bet most of us are just as motivated to research all of our major purchases in life, cars, house upgrades, travel, etc.
Look, if you can afford full pay, you have the luxury of matching your kid’s stats and wants and desires exactly to the student body and academic offerings at a raft of colleges. He’s got a 3.4 and wants underwater basketweaving in a small farm town? There is a school for that. A 6.0, 1600, and nuclear physics with a stellar track team? Yeah, that too.
If you can’t afford full pay, you still have the luxury of matching - but there might be compromises in wants, in order to come in at or under budget.
The compromise part is the hard part, in the age of Tiktok and the feeds of their Instagram peers.
But it’s a good life lesson in how life isn’t always perfect, or fair. And really, it’s all going to be just fine, for 99% of our kids, no matter where they go. There is a dizzying array of options out there and most would love to enroll your kid!
Except not quite, because this kid will be told that lots of kids like him get rejected, and there is no reason for him to want to go to MIT, and that he better apply to the state flagship bc MIT is a reach for anyone, and that it doesn’t really matter.
I refuse to believe that there is only one perfect-match school - MIT - for a kid with those stats. Marketing and rankings have led us to believe this. But it’s just not true.
When students like this come on to CC and ask for advice, I never see anyone tell that student to not apply to MIT.
I do see people suggesting that student expand their view of what schools may end up working very well for them, especially if there is a budget to take into account. Suggesting other technical schools, privates, and yes…some public universities which may have a great combo of a strong physics department as well as a kick butt track team.
I also see people remind that kid of student that even the kid who built a nuclear reaction in their garage didn’t get accepted to MIT - no one should consider it a lock.
What part of any of that advice is inaccurate or wrong?
And we have the time to do lots of research to ensure they get it. I bet most of us are just as motivated to research all of our major purchases in life, cars, house upgrades, travel, etc.