This is where I am with my daughter. 5 applications done. One favorite reach school. Accepted and happy to go to the state school 2 miles up the road if the first choice doesn’t happen. She sees no need to find other options.
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Dad applied ? What. U can’t do that.
If he applied to ED and nothing else they didn’t have a well thought out plan.
Plenty of time for other schools.
Yeah, every kid is different, and not to get all weepy about it, but learning a lot more about my kid, the things he values, the way he thinks, and so on as he is going through this process is such a nice, unanticipated bonus for me.
The tricky thing, at least for me, is S24 actually does value my input, while I am trying to enable him to own this process. I don’t think that is an impossible contradiction, I just have to think carefully sometimes about when and what I say. But he, at least, wanted me involved in the process in a meaningful way.
D30, I don’t know. I could see her wanting us to be way more hands off, but we shall see.
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Of course he shouldn’t have, but he did. He did apply to other schools, but when targets turned out to be reaches and he only ended accepted into one school he wasn’t thrilled with, that’s when dad went off the rails, applying to colleges his din had no interest in. At one point they realized he would most likely be shut out. He did get a sophomore transfer option if he kept a certain GPA so I don’t know if that made things worse (he’s adhd, executive function issues, and I seriously doubt he would find it a good fit at all). I curious to see how it plays out, my sister told him he was responsible to get applications done if he wanted to try and transfer somewhere else. ETA he’s a current freshman.
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there but for the grace of God…
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Oh there were others and he got into one. Good.
Hopefully he has a great year and forgets this nonsense and stays put.
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Being a legacy is not a good enough reason to apply to a super-selective school. Legacies don’t mean what they used to, and if they confer a meaningful advantage in some schools, it’s usually just in the ED round. So if you’ve got room on the Common App, and your son loves the school, then he can dish off an app to Princeton, but I think you’re probably right that his chances are slim (of course, anyone’s chances are slim).
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I understand the concern that an ED rejection will mean that your son will have to aim much lower (however you define “lower”) in the RD round, but try not to think that way. I had the same concerns, but my D23 ended up getting into several schools in the RD round that were as selective overall or in some cases even more selective than the school that rejected her in the ED round. Holistic admissions at SLACs can be so unpredictable, and remember that so many slots in the ED round go to athletes and other students who fulfill institutional priorities. And in the RD round, schools have to allow for far lower yield rates. So he should apply to his absolute top choice ED (if he has an absolute top choice), but I don’t think that an ED rejection, if it turns out that way, spells doom for the RD cycle.
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I think that deciding on how many schools to apply to and which schools to apply to has more to do with the applicant’s psychological makeup than what the proportion of reaches, targets, and safeties “should” be.
As @Blossom indicated, you have the optimizers and those who are flexible and will be fine just about anywhere and don’t care about the quest. The optimizers would be likely to have a lot more schools on their application list than the latter group.
But beyond that, how well does the applicant take rejection? For some people, even one rejection is majorly stinging. How would your kid feel with 2 or 3 (or more) rejections? Would it impact their mental health? On the other end, if your kid really liked School A and gets accepted to school A, but then gets rejected from schools B-L, will they still be just as happy attending School A or will they start to think that there’s something wrong with School A because it accepted them when no one else did?
Personally, my general advice would be to apply to at least as many schools that you think you have a good chance of being accepted to as you apply to schools that have a good chance of giving a rejection. The more emotionally impacted a person would be by rejections, the fewer opportunities for rejection I would put on the list. But if there’s someone with the personality that every rejection just fires them up more to prove them wrong, then they could be fine with a very reach-heavy list. It really just depends on the applicant.
If your kid isn’t that engaged in the college search process right now, think about how motivated your kid will be to do all of the application essays. It may well turn out that there will be a curated list of 3-5 (or fewer) favorites that he’ll apply to and then call it a day. And frankly, with a kid as strong as your kid is (despite not seeming like a CC miracle kid), and with the finances that your family has, I would only have him ED to a school that is a clear favorite, no matter what its acceptance rate is. And I think things will turn out just fine if he doesn’t ED anywhere.
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Why?
One thing visits do is change the landscape of one’s perception.
My kid eliminated schools after visits - one we had gotten into with great money. It didn’t matter if it was ranked 1 or 100 - she didn’t like it.
If he likes Rhodes, he likes Rhodes - the rank doesn’t matter.
That you go to Carleton/Bowdoin/Vassar doesn’t mean he’ll like them more - just because they are in his mind more prestigious.
Some kids will say - I really loved Rhodes and liked Vassar but I prefer Vassar because it’s higher ranked.
But it’s really two areas - so liking Rhodes shouldn’t be impacted by other visits, unless he likes the others better for pure reasons and not rank.
This is why some kids end up at safeties - they “like” them better.
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Yeah, I have tried to explain this to my husband (the legacy thing). I think “lower” vs “higher” isn’t a super helpful way to think about these schools. He did observe – despite liking Rhodes – that it didn’t seem like a super geographically diverse school. And when his college counselor asked him how ambitious he was – as in “do you want to go to the top-ranked school that you can get into, or do you just want to go somewhere pleasant and you’re not super concerned about brand/reputation?” he answered “somewhere in the middle, maybe closer to ambitious.” His parents and aunts and uncles went to Harvard/Princeton/Stanford/Caltech/MIT and getting him to realize that those schools mean something different today than they did a generation or two ago hasn’t been super easy. There have been a lot of “you just don’t believe in me” conversations.
I don’t know how he’ll handle rejection from colleges. A lot of ADHD kids struggle with something called rejection sensitive dysphoria – typically it shows up more in interpersonal dynamics, though (e.g. thinking we don’t believe he’s smart because we don’t think he should fix his sights on the University of Chicago, bless their quirky postcard-sending hearts.)
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Honestly I just want him to find a few places that he feels really excited and hopeful about. He had an instant negative reaction to the Vanderbilt campus when we did a short stop there, and I don’t think it was just because it was cold that day. We’re casting a wide net and will see where he feels motivated to apply.
I’m also enthusiastic about the potential for a gap year for this kiddo. I think we’ll do the regular admissions cycle no matter what (since it’s quite logistically challenging to manage once one is no longer in high school) but if he wants to do a year of AmeriCorps or an exchange year in Sweden or Belgium or a stint at a Norwegian Folk School – I think that would help tremendously.
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@goldbug sounds very similar to my son, except he had a higher GPA, slightly lower test scores and far fewer APs. He had A LOT of service — loved peer tutoring… Most schools want students who will contribute to the community (and have contributed to their high school community). My son‘s first choice was Carleton*, second was Bowdoin. Waitlisted at both. In at Macalester, Rhodes, Providence and Bentley, all with merit scholarships. Also in at Wisconsin, Minnesota (Carlson - Bus), UMass Amherst (Isenberg-Bus), Skidmore, BC (attending BC). Waitlisted also at Wesleyan and Bates. Rejected WUSTL and Carnegie Mellon.
*Carleton encourages its students to study abroad — sometimes up to 3x!
In hindsight, he should have applied to legacy schools (MIT and Princeton and Richmond). Richmond actually would’ve been a great fit for him. Do not let your son short change himself. He will get in somewhere terrific! Definitely apply to the legacy schools. Don’t let the high school college counselors discourage him or you. Remember, their job is to place EVERYONE in a good school, not to place your son in the school that’s the best fit for him.
Enjoy visiting, connect with professors, students, programs. Demonstrate interest! Go to the admissions events at his school. Research the schools he likes and find programs and reasons why he loves the schools. And make sure he communicates that during interviews and in essays. And apply early!
I love the idea of taking AB Calc in summer and BC Calc senior year, just make sure he starts with 1st semester Calc as a freshman in college. A lot of students repeat to guarantee themselves an „A“ making the curve really tough for those who don’t repeat. He could set up a peer tutor program in fall of senior year to help his peers in the AB Calc!
BC has a human centered engineering program that he might find interesting. Boston College Human-Centered Engineering program
One more edit: Look at Tulane Spring Scholars program. They take a one semester gap and start In January.
re ED. ED is often for athletes, top GPAs/scores and other students that fill a particular need. Although if the OP’s son rocks his SATs like he did the PSATs, he has a chance IF there is one school that he loves above all others. Also, there are some schools where students must apply EA to even have a chance - Northeastern, Villanova, Tulane come to mind. And there is also REA for the Ivys.
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@goldbug I answered elsewhere, but three more thoughts
- Coalition app is unlimited and he can apply to many schools through their own app or Coalition app. That leaves many more slots free on common app for safeties, so not limited to 20.
- If going to Bates, definitely visit Bowdoin same day. It’s about an hour away.,
- If he doesn’t mind rural, students LOVE Hamilton. It’s open curriculum. But you need to visit to know if it is right or not. There’s not much else around.
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@goldbug
If you need info on Rhodes, my DD studies there. I think you have some wrong ideas.
DD applied to 20 colleges, got into 19. Had GPA 3.95. 30+DE credits (Rhodes prefers APs though). In our case she chose Rhodes due to good merit, link to her premed program (LECOM), and the campus vibe.
All Rhodes students are 3.8-4.0 HS GPA students. Some with 25+ AP credits. Classes are very demanding. No picnic.
Who said that geographical diversity is not there? Her roommate is from Chicago, her friends are from Atlanta, Seattle, Cincinnati, Memphis, Austin, CA, South Korea, and Kazakhstan, and we are from metro DC…
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To me boiler plate extracurriculars are much overrated. The challenge for your son, I think, will be to communicate in his application, through essays, recommendations and supplements who he is, what excites him and how he’d be able to contribute to the campus community.
Many very bright, intellectually curious kids are reluctant to blow their own horns, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they lack aspirations. Often the will to succeed is overcome by fear of failure. You seem to recognize this, though finding the right balance of encouraging risk and minimizing risk can be awfully hard.
Crosswords, magic cards, garage bands, katanas all sound like good essay themes. Depending on his skill level he might submit a music supplement even if he has no intention of majoring in music.
Hopefully he’ll identify a couple of teachers or mentors who can advocate on his behalf. For LACs additional non academic LORs are common — his music teacher, his host family in France. Or if he gets a summer job, paid or unpaid, a thoughtful employer or co-worker.
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I agree that the importance of applying ED is overrated. When our S19 started the process, I worried he might disadvantage himself if he didn’t do it, but he himself didn’t want to. We had done a big round of college visits during the spring of his junior year, and we figured out from that trip that he wanted an SLAC. But no one school emerged as the favorite, and he wanted to take his time and have the opportunity to choose from among at least a couple of possibilities. In the end, there was a lot of overlap between the schools he applied to and the schools being discussed on this thread, and it all worked out fine. I did encourage him to apply to some schools offering EA, and I continue to think that is a good idea - having an acceptance or two in hand before year-end removes a lot of the stress from the process and can free up a kid either to exit the process early or to apply to some additional reaches, so long as they are happy with the EA acceptances. In our case, one of the EA acceptances stayed in the race for quite a while, but then when he visited Denison for the first time during his spring break senior year, after having been accepted, he decided right away that was the place. It really took him quite a while to become fully engaged in the process, and we the parents did a lot of legwork in researching schools and suggesting candidates, but in the end it all came together and he owned it. Every kid is different, and there are many different ways to get through this process successfully.
P.S. I have to say that the OP’s son doesn’t sound boring at all to me, and I think a lot of the schools being discussed here will find him interesting, particularly if he writes a good essay. I’m sure the schools must be very tired of seeing all these curated ECs. My son’s school in Japan sponsored a community service trip to Cambodia to help local people build wells, and he still complains about how stupid it was given that the local people were obviously much better at well-building than a bunch of high school kids. (So I guess he learned something!)
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@goldbug, Having read your itineraries and concerns, your list looks pretty balanced. Fwiw, I went through much of the same angst with DS.
Worries that steering him away from certain hail-Mary schools came across as votes of no confidence- did that!
DH, who had a many decades out of date perspective on colleges, really came around through touring. You would never believe, listening to him talk glowingly now about places like Bard and Earlham, that we had “discussions” about extending the list beyond his universe of “good” schools.
We toured 18 schools that were candidateson paper. Three came off the list as a result. All probably for wrong reasons but so what?
We pressed DS to ED for the “advantage”, which I continue to believe exists but not to the extent I first thought. Deferred to RD at ED1 school, which was his second choice because he thought he’d waste ED1 on his first choice. Did ED2 where he had legacy (lots of it!) because he didn’t want to “waste” it. Deferred again to RD. In the end, his only rejection was from the legacy school. He got into both his first choice and ED1 school from the WL (yep, May! And this was still playing out.) He attended original first choice. But at that point, he’d seriously considered (and attended admitted student days at) several of the other schools to which he had been admitted and found exciting and compelling. Some are on your list.
Yes, having had a few EA acceptances helped enormously, so this is smart.
All to say, yes, it’s fine to have reaches - just make sure they are places your kid will thrive. Make sure you will have choice. And if possible, get some early acceptances. It can be a long winter from ED deferral or rejection until March acceptances!
You are doing this wisely!
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Actually, only 3 of the Ivys offer REA. The rest have ED.
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For what it’s worth I know personally a student who turned down Chicago, Duke, and Tulane in order to attend Rhodes. If your son liked Rhodes, it will stand up well to the more famous N.E. schools (unless he gets seduced by the silly rankings or levels of rejection in admission). Its campus is stunning. And few SLACs have as much of an orientation to community service (being in Memphis helps).
I also am very glad that you’re visiting St. Olaf. The two schools really remind me of each other - including with their extremely strong honor code, and their extremely strong sense of campus community, and with academically hitting way above their weight, in a collaborative way.
(And I’d second what a few people mentioned above: Carleton is lovely. It is way more of an intense school than many others on your list - thanks in part to the trimesters, but also just to the campus vibe. And yes, super friendly students, but, as they will tell you, super intense.)
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