Why avoiding highly competitive schools is a winning applications strategy

Darcy123
Tue, 30 Mar 2021 21:44:04 +0000

We never used the word safety in preparing the lists for our kids. I think for many kids they immediately discount it and it’s hard to get excited about it. We did talk a lot about the type of school they were interested in - size and location and things like flexibility of curriculum. Both also had specific extra-curriculars that made things more complicated. We also talked a LOT about how single digit acceptance rates make admission difficult for all students.

And also spent a TON of time looking for the right schools with high acceptance rates that would have something uniquely interesting for them. While the state flagship works for many students, we live too close ours and knew no matter how we spun it, they would not be excited about attending the school.

So I found the schools with great ballet programs and lots of research where my D20 could genuinely feel excited about going or schools where my S21 could swim and avoid taking a foreign language ever again - both things that wouldn’t be possible at our state flagship.

I’m not going to pretend that it magically made everything stress free, but we saw enough extremely painful processes by kids who truly believed that their all top 30 application strategy would work out for them. who are attending the state school as they only applied there at the guidance counselor instance.