Why avoiding highly competitive schools is a winning applications strategy

thumper1
Tue, 30 Mar 2021 21:50:12 +0000

My second kid applied to three colleges only initially. All would be considered “safeties” for admission based on her stats. One had rolling admissions and two were EA. She had all three acceptances before Christmas. The first came the week before Thanksgiving.

She decided to add a reach school, and we asked her to do one school closer to home. Frankly those all were a waste of money because she went to one of the first three acceptances.

She looked for colleges that satisfied her three criteria:

1. Strong sciences

2. Ability to play in the college orchestra without major or minor in music (this was the hardest criteria to fulfill, but all five schools she applied to were yes. But we visited about 18 colleges and 13 said NO).

3. Pleasing weather (which really meant no snow ever).

I should add…we never looked at or saw the USNews rankings and really didn’t care about them. The only ranking that mattered was the one our kid did.