Safeties for a strong student

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't apply in August to at least a couple of rolling admission schools where you should be admitted and would be at least somewhat happy to attend you're doing it wrong.

While neither of my kids did this and they both lucked out in getting in ED, I was really gnashing my teeth about their refusal to do it.

My DS couldn’t find a single school with rolling admissions that he’d be happy to attend. We heard him out and ended up agreeing with him. He identified 2 safeties and applied EA. He ended up getting into his ED1 school on the same day he got into 1 of his safeties. He obviously went with the ED school, but he would have been happy to go to the EA admission! Not fake happy but sincerely happy. That’s because he spent a lot of time like 8:18 said identifying where he could be happy.

That is the key. A safety is NOT a true safety if your kid would not be really happy attending. It's everyone's choice, but in the crazy world of admissions, it really makes sense to find 2+ real safeties just in case. Your April will be much more enjoyable should things not go your way with reach/targets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't apply in August to at least a couple of rolling admission schools where you should be admitted and would be at least somewhat happy to attend you're doing it wrong.

While neither of my kids did this and they both lucked out in getting in ED, I was really gnashing my teeth about their refusal to do it.

For many kids, this is just a waste of time, there are no such schools that are of interest to my student.

Then find true safeties---acceptance rates over 60%, your kid is at/+ 75% for scores and you can afford it. And finally your kid must actually like it and be happy to attend. My kid had no rolling admission schools for the same reason as you, but we worked hard to find 2 really good safeties. They included their one safety in the final decision of 3 choices in April. Did not choose the safety ultimately, for good reasons (7 week term being the main reason, my procrastinator kid decided that might not be the best thing for their learning style given their other choices).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't apply in August to at least a couple of rolling admission schools where you should be admitted and would be at least somewhat happy to attend you're doing it wrong.

While neither of my kids did this and they both lucked out in getting in ED, I was really gnashing my teeth about their refusal to do it.

My DS couldn’t find a single school with rolling admissions that he’d be happy to attend. We heard him out and ended up agreeing with him. He identified 2 safeties and applied EA. He ended up getting into his ED1 school on the same day he got into 1 of his safeties. He obviously went with the ED school, but he would have been happy to go to the EA admission! Not fake happy but sincerely happy. That’s because he spent a lot of time like 8:18 said identifying where he could be happy.

I get that, but also think "happy to attend" may shift if the EDs/EAs/RDs don't work out. For one DC, they had heard positively from 3 EA schools by the time they heard "admitted" from their ED. For the other DC, they heard from their ED ~December 10 (can't remember exact date, but not first week), had submitted 1 EA application and was partially done with a second, and had done nothing for the remaining schools on their list. This was risky as their college counselor told them to apply only to schools with admit rates under 30%. Yes, DC is a super strong student with great profile, but I think DC got incredibly lucky based on some of her peers' experiences.

Yes, that college counselor is not very helpful. It could have turned out really bad for your DC. Everyone needs 3-5 schools with admit rates over 30% (and 2-3 of those should be over 50-60%). Being a super strong student does not matter in the crap shoot that is college admissions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't apply in August to at least a couple of rolling admission schools where you should be admitted and would be at least somewhat happy to attend you're doing it wrong.

While neither of my kids did this and they both lucked out in getting in ED, I was really gnashing my teeth about their refusal to do it.

My DS couldn’t find a single school with rolling admissions that he’d be happy to attend. We heard him out and ended up agreeing with him. He identified 2 safeties and applied EA. He ended up getting into his ED1 school on the same day he got into 1 of his safeties. He obviously went with the ED school, but he would have been happy to go to the EA admission! Not fake happy but sincerely happy. That’s because he spent a lot of time like 8:18 said identifying where he could be happy.

I get that, but also think "happy to attend" may shift if the EDs/EAs/RDs don't work out. For one DC, they had heard positively from 3 EA schools by the time they heard "admitted" from their ED. For the other DC, they heard from their ED ~December 10 (can't remember exact date, but not first week), had submitted 1 EA application and was partially done with a second, and had done nothing for the remaining schools on their list. This was risky as their college counselor told them to apply only to schools with admit rates under 30%. Yes, DC is a super strong student with great profile, but I think DC got incredibly lucky based on some of her peers' experiences.

Yes, that college counselor is not very helpful. It could have turned out really bad for your DC. Everyone needs 3-5 schools with admit rates over 30% (and 2-3 of those should be over 50-60%). Being a super strong student does not matter in the crap shoot that is college admissions

+100 Also, waiting on applying to the highly-likely schools until you hear from others is a bad strategy. You lower your opportunity for merit aid and risk being waitlisted due to yield protection. You need to show match and highly-likely schools attention too, much more so than reaches.

If you can't find a higher-admit rate school you can feel good about, you are probably too focused on the misconception that admit rate=quality rather than just an indicator of marketing.