@allyphoe The poster who applied to Harvard as an afterthought also applied to the state flagship that her son would have been happy to attend. I don’t believe you need a ton of matches and safeties. You only need one that gives you what you need.
“Found out that some universities that were “reach” for his old public school became “match” for his performing arts school…”
Please be careful. You said he transferred as a senior. Naviance may focus on stats but its results reflect the 3.5 years that high school’s students have been there, their work, relationships, experiences, and maybe the savvy acquired. In msny cases, the transcript will reflect the two different hs. And the Common App definitely asks about other hs attended.
For parents who haven’t been through this process yet, the number of essays required are staggering. My daughter visited 15 schools and narrowed her list down to 8. She wrote 19 essays and one of those schools didn’t require anything beyond the common app. Some were short but most were very lengthy. A student applying to 8+ reaches is going to struggle creating compelling applications to all (and that isn’t including all the match and safeties that also require care. I also struggle with how a student feels like they would “fit” at every Ivy. There is a huge discrepancy in size, feel, location amongst the Ivies and I’m hard pressed to believe that a student who loves the small, rural feel of Dartmouth is going to want to be in the middle of the city at U Penn or Columbia. So many times it seems like students are attracted just because it’s an “Ivy”. I have to believe that comes across to the admission folks in the applications.
@gallentjill I was just rolling my eyes at the idea that that list was “focused on high-likelihood admittances.” This thread started because of kids who figure that their state flagship is enough of a safety, and then are disappointed they have to go there.
For his case in particular (may not be for other transfer situation), seems like colleges are willing to take kids from his performing arts school with lower stats than kids from other schools like his old school. He transferred as a senior, but the performing arts school’s acceptance is about 10% regardless when you apply. You do need to have a high proficiency at your arts/crafts to get in. He is a math/science kid who loves to dance and applied for both routes. For dance it doesn’t matter which schools you go because admission is audition based. For academic route we suspect it made a difference (even though it wasn’t his intention to transfer in order to get in a more competitive school). For example Stanford admit 1 student from his old school every few years and about half a dozen from his performing arts school every year. He is one of them this year. We are very surprised and suspect it has something to do with the dance conservatory he attends currently is well recognized.
@allyphoe - Mackinaw is an old-timer like me (we both joined CC in 2004). There was a time that we both remember when U. of Chicago accepted 40% of applicants and Reed accepted 75% of applicant. So these schools really were matches back in the day. I agree that the post could have been more clear-- and I did have a little bit of a problem with the idea of a parent-crafted list with Harvard thrown in… (I let my kids figure out their own lists with research assistance from me
except for my insistence on app to the in-state publics as backup) – but back in the day, Mackinaw’s list would have been very well balanced for a high stat applicant.
@19parent - the problem with your assumption is that admission to the mega-selective colleges is not random. It’s not like tossing a pair of dice 10 times with the idea that the more times you toss, the greater the odds of it coming up 7. Although all the high reach college have similar baseline criteria, each has different institutional preferences and different needs, which also may vary from year to to year.
So its not a luck of the draw kind of thing.
Each applicant will have better chances at some colleges, worse than others, based on individual characteristics. I think the best way to improve outcomes is to do the research needed to target the schools where the chances are best. A large number of apps to reach colleges is just an indication of poor research, and those are exactly the kids who end up with a slew of rejections in the spring and feelings of despair when they see kids with seemingly similar or weaker stats get into the same schools they have been rejected from.
@calmom Oh, I figured from the post history. But that’s not the reality now, and failure to realize that certainly contributes to the overreach and disappointment!
I don’t roll my eyes at the parent-crafted list, because I was just excitedly explaining to my kid the minutae of how I arrived at the latest permutation of my parent-crafted list for her.
cal mom what your saying is a given. This is NOT suggesting that people apply to the top 20 of the US News list hoping that someone will recognize your greatness. This is assuming the candidate has done appropriate research and visits, is very well qualified, and determined that there are a dozen great schools that would be equally appropriate . So we agree to disagree that there is only a couple perfect reaches for every student and that if they find that perfect fit, the admissions officers will also see they are perfect fits. I believe we are now at the point at many selective campuses where there are 20+ well qualified, perfectly suited candidates for every one slot. If the student carefully chooses only one or two, they might not know what specific needs that campus has and be out of luck, yes luck. That is why I believe many talented students are increasing the number of applications to reach schools, and why it does help in increasing their odds of getting accepted. All you need to do is check the many statistics. Very few students are accepted to all the schools they apply to.
Sorry, but what I’ve seen suggests most do not do the appropriate research, the “very well qualified” is in stats and rigor, maybe hs standing, (if the hs ranks,) not the whole of the app and supp. There are 20 candidates for each slot, but far fewer are true contenders, finalists.
It’s why I harp on that research. Personally, it’s one of my frustrations with CC that the elements of match are missed. People state things like, “Write a killer essay,” without an idea of what a relevant essay is or what to show. And so on. And kids, in their rush, make some avoidable mistakes.
Not exactly – that’s a generalization but the point is that college admissions is a conglomeration of many different slots that need to be filled.
It’s not about “omigod this college is such a great fit for what I want and dream and hope for!”
Rather it’s more about “I am really good at X and I hear that you need more students who can do X very well”. (X could very well involve throwing a ball).
My daughter had really great qualifications to fulfill a “prospective Russian major” slot. I tried to encourage her to consider applying to Yale, because at the time Yale practically was putting out “wanted” ads for Russian majors. No go. My daughter’s test scores may very well have been too low for Yale… but I would have loved to test the waters.
On the other hand, my daughter did want to apply to Brown. Brown, unlike Yale, was easily filling its Russian classes …so -0- advantage in applying. So I was absolutely certain that Brown would reject DD; so certain that I refused to pay the application fee (because I’m not made of money). D. got a fee waiver, applied, rejected.
My daughter probably very correctly perceived Brown to be the better “fit” for what she wanted in a college – but at the time Yale was the only Ivy that was shopping for what she was selling. And even Yale would only have a tiny number of “slots” at best allocated for that role - but there would also be a very small number of students competing for that more specialized role. Given that my daughter didn’t apply to Yale, I’ll never know what the outcome would have been … but I am pretty sure that of all the Ivies, Yale would have been the best shot.
So again: it’s not about “fit” as the applicant perceives it. It is about “need” as the college ad com perceives it.
By the time the college gets done filling all of its needs, not a whole lot of spots left.
But if you really do want to improve odds–then go ED or SCEA. Because admission rates are higher in that round, and that is probably where the well-rounded high stat applicants probably get the biggest boost.
You still have to match. Early apps don’t get a bye on that.
To the extent that a college is trying to match applicants to its wants, an early round application could theoretically be advantageous in this respect, because a later round application could find the matching bucket to be full of those already admitted in the early round.
However, be cautious with admission rates, since early rounds may have different applicant characteristics that may inflate the early round admission rates (e.g. recruited athletes).
cal mom I still think the ball is in the college’s court. You can do extensive diligent research and you still might be out of luck because YOU might think you are a perfect fit by you are not what THEY want. I think at this point we agree to disagree. I still believe it is better to increase your odds and and submit as many great applications to schools that you are a good fit to. I do think that it is very important for those applications are the best they can be. That is much more important to increasing applications.
“My daughter had really great qualifications to fulfill a “prospective Russian major” slot.”
But many, many students aren’t as hard to fit as a potential Russian major. Say you are a student interested in something more common like poli sci or econ and you want a smaller LAC type environment and wanted to be on the east coast. In addition to applying to 2-3 likelies and 2-3 matches further down the selectivity range, many applicants could be equally happy at Williams, Amherst, Swat, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Vassar, Hamilton, Haverford, and Wesleyan, for example, which could conceivably all be reaches for an applicant. I could totally see it making sense for an applicant to have a list that contains all of them.
I do think there is a point of excess but I think for some the days of applying to just 4, 5, or even 7,8 schools no longer makes the most sense. I’m not advocating for 20+ either but 12-15, I can definitely see.
@doschicos that will be S19 for sure. Undecided. Leaning towards maybe poli sci or econ or history and wants a LAC. He’s got a few pretty specific ways he could contribute on a campus, but we have no idea which schools will need what he would bring.
Guess whose summer is going to be filled with writing supplements?
@doschicos – but the point is,it is NOT about “fit” or what makes an applicant “happy.” My daughter wanted to study poli sci or international relations, maybe psych - and some of her safeties did not even offer Russian.
But she and I knew that to get into a selective college she needed to focus on what she had to offer (not what she wanted or had to gain)… so she opted to play the strongest cards she had. For Barnard & Chicago, that was her Russian card. For her less selective schools her GPA & test scores were in play. (Test scores too low for the big leagues, but well above average and quite respectable in other contexts.) She did instead to pursue Russian if offered at a college… but it was pretty far down her personal priority list.
I’d note that the same rules apply post-college when looking for employment. Except then it is the employer’s needs that take precedence. Not what the applicant thinks would be a dream job. But what the employer needs and what the applicant can do. Except in the job-hunting world the numbers are often running 300 applicants to 1 hire.
@calmom so did that work? Putting her Russian in the forefront at schools where you thought it may help?
That’s specific to your daughter though - the Russian. Lots of applicants aren’t going to have that kind of niche. My point being there are applicants that could easily be good fits to any of the schools I listed. The schools aren’t that different from each other really. Sure, you want to “sell” yourself to the college and they are in the driver’s seat but applying to more than a few reaches is perfectly acceptable in my book. I’m not saying to apply to every Ivy for example but one can develop a deep list of reach schools that make sense. Not that hard given how many schools are now in the reach stratosphere.
Honestly, I think you can take the dialing in thing too far. I do think it gives the impression that there is a “secret sauce” and I don’t think there is. Of course, do your homework, try to write compelling essays (easier said than done for many kids), draw connections between you and the school. Those are all good strategies.
Calmom also said she wasn’t going to pay the application fee for Brown, so her perspective may be to limit the number of applications (and fees) to only a few select schools. IMO, I would err of the side of more applications not less applications as $70 is a drop in the bucket when you are talking about spending 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands to attend a university. I want to make sure my kids have several options.