WHy do kids apply to schools they don't want to go to?

Applying to College
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<p>“Sorry, if you want to be treated with respect and with maturity, then don’t do things just to look good. Do it because it is worthwhile.”</p>

<p>I find that comment to be particularly hurtful and degrading. You do not know me. You do not know how I handled my admissions process. You do not know that I only applied to one school that I really fell in love with. You do not know that I had to deal with ridicle from high achieving friends who thought that I was less than them because I am going to a less known school. Although I may only be eighteen I can still give valuable advice. And my advice to you is DO NOT MAKE hurtful comments about someone before you know their whole story. And for that matter DO NOT attack someone’s character or integrity. I am glad that my parents managed to teach me proper etiquette and manners. And for that I am probably further ahead in the world than half of the adults.</p>

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<p>Very well put, pilebay! I wonder why some people just have the tendency to be antagonistic on Internet discussion boards like this. Is it because of the medium that is very impersonal and the fact that people don’t really know you in person?</p>

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<p>I do agree… and i think that that was an unbnecessary attack on pilebay.</p>

<p>“then don’t do things just to look good. Do it because it is worthwhile.”
Do you paint your house? Its not worthwhile when simply a primer will do… It LOOKS good… thats what this workld is… fact, emotion and mental satisfaction… and if anyone wants to show I got this or that, they can… and should be allowed to. It is stupid yes, but if it leaves one with peace of mind, we should respect that and NOT analyse it toi death…</p>

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<p>Look people aren’t perfect. Admissions process is a stressful process where a lot of people become tense and lose confidence for some time. It is the same as any job interview. It’s temporary. It doesn’t mean we have psychological problems. I admit it, I applied to schools to see how money I would get and stayed on the waitlist to see if I’ll get in and if I didn’t get in because of Tufts Syndrome. Don’t say I took someone’s spot because I know I didn’t. I’m not going which means that waitlist spot will go to someone who wants to go. You sound like someone whose children didn’t get in or something (of course you might not be).
But really you say we need confidence from the inside and all that ideal stuff, but think about it. We’re all human and sometimes we have the need to confirm ourselves and this is just a mere opportunity. Good for you if you came out intact from the admissions process but guess what most people DON’T come out intact. Sometime they’ll get over it, but for the time being, we do that. Btw don’t act like you’re not selfish. We’re all selfish and you know it. Maturity? Even if you are adults you don’t have it sometimes. You expect people to be rational all the time. How can that be possible? We’re people not some God-made moral machine.</p>

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<p>guys, don’t listen to this “citygirlsmom.” </p>

<p>She’s obviously way too old to understand it from our perspectives. She can and only will listen to her own perspectives. </p>

<p>Maybe she forgot that she was once 18 yrs. old. Maybe.</p>

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<p>In several posts applicants have said they apply to schools because they want to prove something, to show they can do it, etc…</p>

<p>It is very interesting how defensive people get when they are questioned IN GENERAL about why some kids apply to schools they have no intention of going to</p>

<p>If you would go to a school you appplied to, great, if you are doing it to prove a point, show off, or any other reason besides being willing to attend that school, please, don’t make excuses</p>

<p>Go ahead, slam away at me, it shows more about you then it does about we</p>

<p>You can disagree all you want, i don’t really mind at all, but the defensiveness and the attacking of me is telling.</p>

<p>When a poster ADMITS they apply to show people they got in and have no real intention of attending the school, what does that show? </p>

<p>My, but look to yourselves, and actually read the posts I have written</p>

<p>and bearsfolife, you are too funny, trying to insult my intelligence and my memories because i am older than you, bet you would make yo momma proud</p>

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<p>I don’t want to speak for citygirlsmom, but let me re-state her position in other terms. The USA has literally thousands of colleges…big/small, urban/rural, private/public, hard/easy, etc. I think what she’s saying (and I agree with her) is that with all of those options, how can you possibly end up having a safety which you don’t want to go to? Her main concern is that people end up attending a college that is at least ok for them (even if it’s not their dream college), and to that end, wasting an application on a college you know ISN’T at least ok with you seems silly and actually detrimental to your future (because you could have used the same time and money applying to a college that actually WOULD be ok for you). </p>

<p>I think that is her MAIN concern. The second concern, which I think is shared by all of us over the age of 35 and apparently none of you under the age of 20, is using the whole college admissions process as a sort of parlor game…applying to colleges just for the hell of it even if you have not intention of going there. That’s a strange trend, sort of harmless in a way, except when it gums up the whole process for the admissions people, or when it results in people getting rejected from that portion of the colleges which they applied to which ARE ok, and they end up having to go to one of the parlor-game throwaway colleges that they applied to on a whim.</p>

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<p>im not sure why both sides need to be attacking one another here. </p>

<p>a vast majority of the responses have only addressed the issue of applying to tons of reaches. while i dont think this is a good thing (what happens when you get into one you dont really want to attend?), its really the secondary issue. what is the far more important and helpful question to address is why so many students arent happy with the matches and safeties to which they are admitted.</p>

<p>there are probably lots of reasons for this, but it seems most of them boil down to students simply falling into a bit too much love with some of their reaches. getting into tufts, one of the nations best schools, isnt as exciting when you have your heart set on harvard. further, reading the tufts literature, asking tufts questions, surfing the tufts website, and visiting tufts just isnt as fun. so come application time most top students have a wonderful list of well-researched reaches. fewer have great lists of of well-researched matches and safeties. come april theyre rejected from most, if not all, of their reaches (theyre ‘reaches’ for a reason), leaving a pile of acceptances from relatively unknown (to the applicant) schools around the country. its pretty difficult to fall in love with a stranger within a month of being heartbroken by harvard. </p>

<p>anyway, i dont think anyone is asking any 18 year old to act completely rationally. nonetheless, i think spreading awareness of many of the traps into which many young adults have fallen a highly valuable use of this forum.</p>

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<p>

It shows that high schoolers these days are competitive and want to get in to the most prestigious universities in the country. I mean, I have no interest in going to Yale or Dartmouth, but I’m probably going to apply there anywhere for the heck of it since they’re Ivy League universities and since the CommonApp makes it much easier to send in superfluous applications.</p>

<p>Q:Is my rationale misguided citygirlsmom?
A: Probably.</p>

<p>Q: Is that going to stop me from applying to colleges that I would hate to attend?
A: Hell no.</p>

<p>Q: Does part of me want to apply to extra colleges so I can screw other students in my school and in the country over by taking their spot, just like they might take mine in my ACTUAL top choices?
A: HELL YEAH!!!;)</p>

<p>I’m being completely honest.</p>

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<p>I think you just proved CGM’s point. These kids who get the spots at YOUR top choice school probably actually want to attend that school! They aren’t applying just to screw you out of a spot.
Boy- I’m glad my kids have good college counselors and parents to help with this process so they didn’t feel the need to do things like that.</p>

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<p>I applied to Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Duke, Columbia, Northwestern because in the Fall they were what I THOUGHT I wanted. I ruled out schools because I didn’t want to be “isolated.” But throughout senior year I learned more and realized how vibrant those types of schools could be. I only got into Columbia and Northwestern. After visiting both for accepted students days all I could think was “why didn’t I apply to Dartmouth, Amherst, Williams, and Penn.” I regretted not applying to more schools. After a year of Columbia I transferred to Dartmouth as a transfer and had the best college experience ever.</p>

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<p>ericat, you make some very good points. As I am the poster mentioned in citygirlsmom’s OP, whose son isn’t happy about going to Berkeley after turning down good offers at other schools, I can say that in his case it was not a matter of applying to schools he “had no intention of going to.” He applied to schools based on research in a guidebook and information in the schools’ catalogs and websites, and the advice of his parents and GC. He thought they would be schools he would like but as they were on the other side of the country, he couldn’t visit them. The only two he had visited and knew he liked were Yale and Brown, and he didn’t get in to either. He was quite familiar with west coast schools, and Berkeley was his favorite of the options out here. He applied to a couple of others on the west coast knowing a lot about them, but only as safeties so that he wouldn’t end up with nowhere to go - not that he WOULDN’T go, but they were clearly last resorts. In total, he applied to 7 schools (not a “ton” by today’s standards), any of which he believed at the time he’d be willing to attend. In April he made the trip to visit the two schools he’d been accepted to back east - not a small matter for us, due to the expense and the time off work involved - and unfortunately discovered that he did not feel that he would fit in at either school. There was no way he could have discerned that through either more research or more soul-searching; he had to go there and meet the students, visit classes, and stay in the housing to find out. It wasn’t because they were big or small, rural or urban, or the other usual factors that people cite as important in a school. Personally, I felt sure he’d love UChicago. I was wrong. There are indeed hundreds if not thousands of schools in the country to choose from but I guess some people are pretty picky. How can you possibly research that many schools? And how can you see them all first-hand (especially if you live in the boondocks)?</p>

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<p>“yo momma” lmao. </p>

<p>Ok, who’s got the lack of intelligence now?</p>

<p>You keep repeating everything you’ve said before. Can you give it a rest already? Or will you continue to repeat yourself?</p>

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<p>citygirlsmom</p>

<p>I never attacked you. In fact all I did was make GENERAL comments that you attacked. You than went on to attack my character and my person. All I did was reprimand you for a lack of appropriate etiquette. I still believe that you owe me an apology. Just because you can write hurtful comments on an impersonal forum does not mean that are not hurting someone’s feelings. For me this thread is no longer about applying to too many schools. It is now about the rampant rudeness that is evident online. Just because I am a kid does not mean that I will bow down to disrespectful adults. In fact after going back and rereading most of these posts the majority of people have not attacked citygirlsmom character. It has been the other way around. People are not getting defensive about your general questions. They are getting defensive about the personal attacks. THEY MUST STOP. It is o.k. to post your views and disagree with people. That is your constitutional right. You however, have absolutely no right to libel me or anyone else on this forum. I do not seriously expect an apology (although it would be the appropriate thing to do). I do expect for you to stop being so defensive and antogonistic when people have opposing viewpoints.</p>

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<p>The moral of 3inCollege’s son’s predicament is to do EVERYTHING possible to at least visit the colleges you apply to (even if you can’t make it to a big recruiting weekend event). Colleges tend to have a certain vibe that is a combination of the architecture, landscaping, students, pace, and dozens of other mysterious factors, and you can’t sense the vibe without actually being there. Considering how much blood, sweat, tears, and $ goes into applying to college and getting through 4 years of it, I can’t imagine a better investment than SOMEHOW giving the student the opportunity to stroll the campuses he/she is applying to. </p>

<p>It’s amazing to me that one of the thousands of wheeler-dealers on collegeconfidential who says he’s going to major in business and take Wall Street by storm doesn’t get his hands on a van, some tents, and a couple chaperones and start a business in which he takes kids from cash-strapped families on bare-bones tours of areas where there are a lot of colleges.</p>

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<p>Here’s the main reason (from what I can tell):</p>

<p>People on this board (as well as my friends) generally are very good students, and aim for top colleges.</p>

<p>Sometime during their high school career, they may become interested in a few colleges. They’ll visit, hear from friends, etc. Maybe they start to like Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and Berkeley, but they didn’t like Brown, U Penn, Princeton, or Dartmouth.</p>

<p>While all this is going on, they’re busy having their high school lives, their time sucked up by AP classes and friends and TV.</p>

<p>Time to apply. This kid decides to do Harvard EA, and Yale, Columbia, Stanford, and Berkeley RD. Well, anyone’s chances at these schools are pretty slim. So he thinks, I’ll apply to a few schools I’ll have a better chance at. So since he’s already filling out the UC app, might as well apply to UCLA, UCSD too. One of his good friends is at Johns Hopkins, another one at U of C, and he’s heard good things about them, so he applies there.</p>

<p>Decision time: this kid gets into UCLA, UCSD, and University of Chicago. Given the competitiveness of the top colleges, this is not uncommon. What now? Well, University of Chicago is a much better school, so he goes there. He doesn’t really like the nerdiness of it, but what choice does he have? He didn’t really like UCSD, and was indifferent towards UCLA.</p>

<p>What could this kid have done? If he hadn’t applied to the schools he didn’t really like, he might not have gotten into a school at all. Now, you say that he should have picked out some safeties that he liked. Well, people tend to like the top colleges because they’re so beautiful and resourceful. Safeties? Less appealing. So it must really fit the student well. Finding a school that fits really well could take a long time. You may have to visit 10, 20, or more schools. High school students, who are still stressing over school and SAT, scrutinizing over their essays while sport practices go 3 hours every day, usually don’t have the time and energy to do some serious research or travel around the country. Can you blame them? They just think, I’ll apply to a few schools I like, and some state schools as fallback, only to realize later that they didn’t really like them. That’s just the way it is.</p>

<p>But in any case, most students end up liking their schools. I think many at first are heartbroken over a rejection of a “dream school” but the school they attend grows on them.</p>

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<p>Slipper, I don’t think anybody on this side of the moat is talking about a case like yours, where ONE or TWO criteria unexpectedly change. That happens. Or you change your intended major at the last minute. Things like that are going to happen…either before you enroll or after. If you’re lucky, your match and safety colleges will have you covered for the change in criteria. If not, you transfer or wait a year and apply. I think what the OP was questioning was scenarios like below where the safeties are just not even close to what the applicant wants, and which 3 or 4 or all criteria would have to change in order for them to be even OK (safeties are exaggerated to make a point–it’s called “hyperbole”):</p>

<p>Guy has 4.0 GPA and wants to study chemical engineering and minor in history at elite college near a big city.</p>

<p>WANTS TO GO TO BUT WAS REJECTED BY: MIT, Berkeley, Northwestern.</p>

<p>IS DEPRESSED BECAUSE SAFETIES HE APPLIED TO ARE: UNLV (father’s bookie went there), Cape Cod Community College (legacy), and Mississippi State (decent in MECHANICAL engineering).</p>

<p>WE’RE SAYING HE SHOULD HAVE APPLIED TO: Purdue (not elite or near big city, but large with good sports and great engineering and has history); Boston U (quasi-elite, IN big city); RPI (elite-ish, in smallish city).</p>

<p>Female, 3.6 GPA, wants to study English or Pre-med on beautiful, nurturing campus in warm-weather location.</p>

<p>WANTED TO GO TO BUT WAS REJECTED BY: Emory, Pomona, Duke.</p>

<p>DEPRESSED BECAUSE AS SAFETIES SHE PICKED: U of Copenhagen (doesn’t speak a word of Danish–just wanted to see if she could get in); NYU (everybody she knows applied there); U of South Florida (huge and not particularly beautiful…but it’s warm!).</p>

<p>WHERE WE’RE SAYING SHE SHOULD HAVE APPLIED FOR SAFETIES: U of Miami (medium-sized, but warm and beautiful); Gettysburgh (not warm, but at least it’s nurturing and beautiful); U of GA (honors) (warm and beautiful–honors gives it a nurturing feel).</p>

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<p>Tourguide, you get it!!! Great post, thank you</p>