Between not applying ED as Legacy, clear loathing of the school, and the infamous"Tufts Syndrome" it’s hard to believe you’d count this school as a “safety”/backup, lol!! Anyway, I think 8-10 is a good number, but not really a believer in applying to hated schools or alot of reaches. The hardest part of the college search is finding safeties,/matched that the kid likes/loves.
Not a safety backup at all. Just saying why he applied to a school he did not love. And don’t disagree with the rest of what you said.
Amherst is not remote? Well, not from Springfield I guess LOL.
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Finding " safeties" the kid likes/loves is very hard it seems. Depends on the kid of course, but many kids ( and some parents) are hung up on " prestige" and thinking a school is a " safety" often makes that school less desirable. Of course one kid’s safety is another kid’s reach. The whole system is crazy and I agree the number of applications made these days by many students is insane. My son’s 10 was on the low end of many of his peers.
I keep hearing how more applications per student makes it tougher for everyone. I’d really like to hear how people think that actually works. Colleges know their yield and accept accordingly. In the end, each applicant can only take one seat at one school.
@doschicos I don’t think it’s as big of a factor as many people say it is, but I do think its real.
I think it works something like this:
[ul]
[]Colleges can really only guess their yield, and when they get record numbers of applications year over year, they have to reject more students, which lowers the acceptance rate.
[]The colleges don’t know their actual yield for the class until May 1 (not counting for withdrawals).
[]The new yield is probably lower for most schools since each applicant can only take one seat (as you mentioned).
[]The school can either use that value or try to extrapolate a new value based on the general trend for the next year’s admissions cycle.
[li]Parents, students, and GCs see the lower admission rates at many schools and decide that they will need to apply to more schools, resulting in another record number of applications and continuing this vicious cycle.
[/li][/ul]
I think this also wreaks havoc on Freshman merit scholarship awards by raising the bar each year (look at the FSU forum as an example). It doesn’t hurt the school at all if students that are offered the scholarships choose to go elsewhere, but it does hurt students that plan on attending and who would have received merit had the bar not been raised as high.
Should colleges expect to see increasing numbers of applications? Absolutely. Can they accurately predict this year-over-year? Apparently not although some seem to be better than others (CMU has been noted to have accepted less than 7 students off the waitlist over the last few years, which tells me that they are very good at figuring this out).
The one thing I think is very unfair to the students is for schools to put 10x as many kids on the waitlist than they have ever accepted off the waitlist. If a schools has only ever accepted 20 off the waitlist, they should offer waitlist spots to no more than 75.
Well, not everyone is going to accept a place on the waitlist for starters - just a fraction. And, of the ones who do, by the time they get a phone call, they might have changed their minds. Plus, they are often looking for a certain someone - gender, full pay if no FA was freed up, certain profile in terms of skill set or major, etc. Honestly, one should move forward with the acceptances in hand if on a waitlist. One can hope for the best and pursue a waitlist but I wouldn’t expect much or anything at all.
On the issue of applying to more schools, there are things that will contribute to more competition - increase in number of applicants due to folks seeking more prestige, internet making it easier reach all quarters, increased outreach, increased international applications - but solely the fact that students are applying to more schools does reduce chances for others. There are X number of real live students applying. There are Y number of seats available. More applications per student does not change X or Y.
But many students view the place on the waitlist as “I almost got in” when that’s not true, and there are 1000 or more students offered places on the waitlist and 10 get chosen. Many are asked for more essays, or another LOR, or to update all the awards. Schools should have to take their chances of having open seats or being overbooked. The applicants have to make choices on which schools to apply to, which to keep on their short lists. Why shouldn’t schools have to too?
Georgetown University was the worst tour in my experience.
D was adamant that she would not attend a Catholic school (we are Catholic) but I talked her into looking at Georgetown because we were in that neck of the woods.
*The campus was largely empty due to Easter break at GU, so we didn’t see any classes or many students.
*The weather was miserably hot and humid. Until it started to hail half way through the tour. Then it was freezing.
*When it started hailing, our tour guide stopped under an archway in the middle of campus at which point he decided he had enough and ditched the group.
I assumed D would hate GU after that experience.
She said it just felt right, she applied, was accepted and loved every minute at Georgetown.
You just never know.
Because they are still in the driver’s seat and hold the advantages in a competitive environment. It’s up to students/families to educate themselves about the odds, just like they should educate themselves about the odds of getting accepted in the first place. Such is life - college, jobs, etc.
As the old saying goes, love the school that loves you. One doesn’t have to accept a place on the waitlist if they don’t want to play the game. They can pick the favorite of the options they do have and move on.
@mompop great story - thanks for sharing!
S18 and I both HATED UPenn!!! We REALLY wanted to love it there because S18 had a good shot at going there as a rowing recruit. But we both hated it immensely! Part of the problem was that it was 98 degrees and muggy. But the admissions people were SO rude - they made us feel like we were an intrusion on them and their conversation. And even though the campus was beautiful on the inside, right outside its walls, the area was extremely run down and there were people passed out drunk or on drugs on both sides of the street. We also hated Villanova - to be fair, we didn’t even get out of the car. The whole area where we were trying to park was under construction and we would’ve had to go somewhere else to get a parking pass, and my son said, “Just keep driving!” and we moved on. The one school that I was shocked S18 didn’t like was Dartmouth - it’s right up his alley in theory, but he was just “Meh” about it. The one school he loved that I absolutely HATED was Tufts (which he applied to and got in, but will not be attending). I lived near Medford for about 10 years and my sister went to Tufts for grad school, and it’s just such a run-down school. The area around it is ALWAYS under construction, too. Just blech! But my son really liked it, so who knows? In the end, he was accepted to and will attend the school he loved the most during visits, to perhaps there is something about fit that just “clicks” - and when it’s not right, it just isn’t. Kind of like dating chemistry 
I had to giggle a little about all the talk of rundown areas and then to pick Yale - and New Haven. 
@doschicos You beat me to that punchline! #GoPennGo
@blueskies2day – where did your child choose for BME? Did you happen to look at Brown or Tufts?
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Might I take this opportunity to remind users of the title of this thread: “What school was unexpectedly your least favorite when you visited?” Please save the waitlist anecdotes to the 27 million existing waitlist threads.
@moosiechica88 @doschicos My kids grew up going to school in New Haven. Parts of it are a mess. The Yale campus is an oasis and beautiful. New Haven with it’s issues is still nicer and safer than Philadelphia.
The rowing team is based a good 30 minutes away in an old mill town but the boat house is beautiful. My daughter’s team races out of it. I understand the rowing coaches have a hard time getting recruits because of the perception of New Haven, but it’s a good program.
My only complaint is that the men’s team was extremely rude to my D21’s novice boat last week when they were trying to turn their 8 to the dock. Everyone was once a novice, LOL.
Villanova is an architectural and landscape disaster. There is nothing remotely pleasing about this campus. Some genius chose to brick and paver the center of campus vs a nice green. Jeez!! It’s a good thing they have a basketball team and overrated business school or they’d be La Salle :))
“Should colleges expect to see increasing numbers of applications? Absolutely. Can they accurately predict this year-over-year? Apparently not although some seem to be better than others”
That’s right. The growth in applications per student is very hard on the colleges. From the outside, we see schools with students beating down the door and assume it’s easy for them to get the right number of heads in beds. It’s not, even for the power players. Harvard significantly over-admitted last year due to an uptick in yield.
Families don’t have to care about admissions officers’ headaches, of course. But if you don’t like tripled-up freshman dorms…they are a direct result of yield prediction problems.