I think both parents and kids discount what it actually feels like to get a rejection until it happens. The hardest rejection so far was one that we felt was really more of a match/target than a reach. I would recc adding some more safeties to have som joy between the pain next time. 
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Which is obviously the real source of uncertainty, not the sheer number.
But since I canât help myselfâI couldnât even tell you my S24âs top 3 at this point. I am not sure he could either. And I am supposedly going to be arranging first-visits/revisits to his short list in April. Which could be any of . . . checks math, minus the 2 not on this list for specific reasons . . . 286 possible combinations of 3!
Please share that information as soon as you learn it!
S24 has pointed out repeatedly recently that thanks to a deferral, he so far still has not been rejected anywhere.
But given the insane list of reaches he ended up with for RD, this streak is going to come to a crashing halt soon enough.
My S24 has a reach, but not one of his hardest reaches, he really, really wants (his almost-ED2 school). It is easy for me to be philosophical about all this, but that one definitely has a lot of potential to sting.
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I remember calling our CC at this point two years ago and saying âplease tell me it will be ok.â We were completely empty handed as all her schools were RD. I donât remember a W&M postcard even though she was accepted as a Monroe Scholar in early March.
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This thread offers a super interesting comparison of parents perspective, compared with each applicantâs perspective. My sister applied to 15 schools across US and Canada, and is very chilled because she visited and quite liked both the location and the campuses of her safety schools, where admission is rolling but 99% dependent on grades alone, rather than 99% holistic and unpredictable. She got rejected ED1, and admitted EA, so she is now 3 for 4 and awaiting March decisions, and will think about college choices if she gets one or more RD admission out of the RD round. I hope to copy her strategy next year, though she has better grades.
Best of luck to everyone.
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We had a lot of safeties since sheâs test optional. She was 11/11 until UMD came in with a no. She wasnât sure how to react. Good reality check before the RDs come in.
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No. Of the three schools for which they have all of the information theyâre going to get (no longer waiting for honors/BFA decisions), two are still very much in the running. There is one school that C doesnât want to attend, but that I donât want them to say no to without further consideration. So weâre waiting for now, both for additional decisions and for C to attend admitted students days at the schools they already have decisions from.
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My D24 is the same. She canât give me any kind of ranking at this point. We are going to the SCHC session on April 5th and Admitted Student Day on April 6th (plus stopping for a Tiger Tour at Clemson on our way there), so Iâm hoping that will bring some clarity. We have been watching a ton of virtual stuff on SC, and with the honors college, I think it is a great option. She should also have all of her RD decisions officially out by then. However, I am also stressing about housing, orientations, and the travel (we are OOS NY) that goes along with it! You are not alone 
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Thatâs a great observation. I think for some of us parents, this is kinda like watching our kids in tense competitionsâwe can sometimes feel more anxiety for our kids than they feel for themselves, because of course as parents we spend so much time thinking about protecting our kids from harm.
But of course your sisterâs feelings are the ones that actually count, and she has the exact right attitude. And there is no reason you canât do something similar, even if the exact list of colleges is not the same.
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I made my college choice the night before it was due; I remember a lot of tears and anxiety, all self-induced. My parents were amazing: they had limited me to public schools only, so when it came down to deciding between my final two (an honors college at an OOS school with half-tuition scholarship and a more prestigious OOS school full-pay), they told me they were supportive of either option and truly let me make the decision. They listened as I made pro and con lists and cried and worried, but they never put their thumb on the scale.
Almost 35 years later, I am so grateful to them for that, for insisting that the decision be mine. I now know how hard it is as a parent to resist the urge to steer your child. In retrospect, I know that they had a strong preference and that it aligned with the school I chose. But I truly did not know at the time that they had any preference at allâonly that they had set boundaries for me in the application process and thought it was important that I be able to make the final decision. I imagine those hours of observing me gnash my teeth and rend my garments were incredibly hard on them, although it didnât occur to me at the time in my self-centered teenage fog.
So to the parents of the class of 2024 I say: your kids probably donât realize they are making you crazy. But one day I hope they will look back on this process and be grateful that their parents supported them and let them make this first big adult decision.
(In case anyone is wondering: I chose the full-pay school and loved it. My own senior was admitted to his school ED2, so we are not facing this situation right now, but I also have a C26, so I still have opportunity to live this on the parent side!)
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Yes! Fortunately SCHC does have an honors dorm and housing priority, and early registration (even before orientation!). There are some summer optional opportunities that may fill up and he may miss out, but it wouldnât be that big of a deal.
Hugs to you on waiting to hear from so many. At least St. Andrews and W&M likely letter give you some peace of mind. I attended W&M a million years ago and loved it, and it has only gotten better since then!
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Yes we turned down two offers with scholarships, one without, and withdrew some applications for schools he is no longer interested in attending.
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We tried to parse this the other night with the droids, both of whom are waiting on a LOT of schools (though with happy offers in-hand).
They couldnât really do it.
We mostly did âA vs Bâ and âB vs Câ type comparisons. Problem is that they might prefer A to B, and B to C, but not A to C. Apparently the transitive property of college preference does not exist.
For some schools, location played an outsized role in preference, swamping other types of considerations. For other schools, a particular sort of academic situation. Or an athletic one. And thus not so easy to strictly rank.
I may next try a soccer tournament style approach, with a group round followed by single elimination.
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Whatâs a check?
I highly recommend this website for that (tournament-style ranking). You can create a ranking engine that pairs every school up against all the others and creates a final ranking. It is fun and we have done it a few times as the list evolves. (mine is a 25, not 24 so we have a lot of time)
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S24 is our youngest. Definitely put all the lessons learned from the two older onesâ college search/selection into his.
If anyone had told me 5 years ago that I would be most grateful for having imposed a firm, nowhere-near-unlimited budget on the college costs, I wouldnât have believe them. And yet, that budget in many ways made our/our childrenâs choices so much clearer and easier.
I have a lot of sympathy for the paradox of choice that many families with high stat children and generous college funds often end up having in this process. With almost no reason to limit where a student might apply, and having no upper limitations on where the student is highly qualified - it can be exceptionally difficult to narrow the field down, or to find âlikelyâ schools the student is excited by as very few students (no matter how smart) have the bandwidth to do a deep dive on many, many schools. It can be hard for a 17/18 year old to flexibly consider trade offs âworth itâ when they are competitive for âthe bestâ. To happily widen the pool really requires a very open mind and imagination.
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Thank you for filling my next 28 days!
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Another fun site:
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Waiting on 5 here. Ugh. Reading this board and seeing others struggle with patience too helps though!
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Pitt too! Honestly I almost feel icky complaining at all, because now I know he is going to have a great college experience, and get a fantastic education. I just donât know where yet.
In fact, I just realized those were his three lowest sticker-price options (and there are not a lot of realistic merit options left). Maybe I should just be rooting for total wipeout from here . . . .
And between us, if we are doing some crazy mad visit scramble in April? Iâll love every minute of that too.
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This is truly random, but I was studying stuff like this in grad school (and then left for law school, so donât take this as very authoritative). There are lots of practical reasons why something like this might happen, and one of the most common is when the choices are either hypothetical, or distant in time (which is virtually the same thing in practice).
So I am sure all our currently indecisive kids are going to gain some clarity once it is all really real, and they actually have to pick. But how soon before? TBD.
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