In opposition to reach schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP you are stating the obvious. If your kids never had a snowflake's chance in hell of getting into a top 10 you wasted everyone's time applying to those places.

This mean comment adds nothing to this conversation. Move along and maybe try being a nicer person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this guy basically saying a kid with a 3.3 and 1300 shouldn't apply to HYP?

No, he’s saying a kid with a 4.5/1500 shouldn’t apply to HYP. And he’s being taken apart for daring to imagine that HYP ever admits any unhooked kid with a score as low as 1500.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My take after going through the college application process with two kids is that applying to true reach schools (ie schools where you’re child has less than 5% chance at admission) is a net negative.

Both of my kids had good grades at good schools, excellent ECs with top ten percent test scores and all advanced classes. This made them competitive for T50 schools but really long shots at T10 schools. But like everyone around here we applied to a mix of target, safety and reach schools. The results were exactly as predicted. Admitted to every school except the reaches.

The prevailing wisdom is - “at least you took your shot.” However, I think that sentiment overlooks the cost of applying to reach schools:

1. Fees. While application fees are small potatoes when thinking about college costs its not nothing- I certainly would have preferred to take my wife out to a nice dinner rather than send Princeton, Harvard and U of C almost $300.

2. Time and trouble. The reach schools’ applications are considerably more trouble than other colleges. I particularly dislike U of C’s zany question. Both of my kids spent hours brainstorming, drafting and editing their essays. All time that would have been better spent enjoying their senior year.

3. Disappointment. Life already has its bumps and troubles you don’t have to go look for them. While my kids didn’t have big expectations and therefore weren’t terribly disappointed each rejection did take the air out of the evening. It also makes for uncomfortable moments with well meaning grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.

4. Waitlisted. The worst position is being waitlisted. It creates all kinds of distractions and makes planning difficult.

Look, of your kid is a good candidate for a top school go for it. But if your kid is a standard issue overachiever save yourself the money, time and trouble.

Any T20 school is basically a lottery. You pick one, get rejected or deferred and move on. 1 in 10/20 get in. Understand that going into it and the disappointment factor will be reduced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP you are stating the obvious. If your kids never had a snowflake's chance in hell of getting into a top 10 you wasted everyone's time applying to those places.

This mean comment adds nothing to this conversation. Move along and maybe try being a nicer person.

Absolutely nothing mean at all about that comment. The OP IS stating the obvious and everyone knows it even though they live in a tiny fantasy world where their kid is the best and will always win top spot. When they won't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My take after going through the college application process with two kids is that applying to true reach schools (ie schools where you’re child has less than 5% chance at admission) is a net negative.

Both of my kids had good grades at good schools, excellent ECs with top ten percent test scores and all advanced classes. This made them competitive for T50 schools but really long shots at T10 schools. But like everyone around here we applied to a mix of target, safety and reach schools. The results were exactly as predicted. Admitted to every school except the reaches.

The prevailing wisdom is - “at least you took your shot.” However, I think that sentiment overlooks the cost of applying to reach schools:

1. Fees. While application fees are small potatoes when thinking about college costs its not nothing- I certainly would have preferred to take my wife out to a nice dinner rather than send Princeton, Harvard and U of C almost $300.

2. Time and trouble. The reach schools’ applications are considerably more trouble than other colleges. I particularly dislike U of C’s zany question. Both of my kids spent hours brainstorming, drafting and editing their essays. All time that would have been better spent enjoying their senior year.

3. Disappointment. Life already has its bumps and troubles you don’t have to go look for them. While my kids didn’t have big expectations and therefore weren’t terribly disappointed each rejection did take the air out of the evening. It also makes for uncomfortable moments with well meaning grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.

4. Waitlisted. The worst position is being waitlisted. It creates all kinds of distractions and makes planning difficult.

Look, of your kid is a good candidate for a top school go for it. But if your kid is a standard issue overachiever save yourself the money, time and trouble.

We've got two years until we go through this process. I appreciate you sharing your experience!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hear hear! If a kid really wants to go for a reach, that’s great. But for the reasons you outlined, I would not push my kid to do so.

I agree completely! But kids are influenced by their peers and will do what they want.

[Anonymous]

Yes! The prevailing wisdom is to apply to several reaches, targets, and safeties. But actually, reaches aren't necessary at all. Most important is finding a good fit: socially, academically, and financially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like this is a post I need to wait until April 1 (when all decisions are in) to comment on. My short take is, sometimes you don't know what's a reach until after the fact. Because my kid is at a title 1 high school, we don't have to pay application fees, score report fees or CSS fees. So absent the cost factor, if she wants to write essays to see if she's got a shot at some Ivys or the like, go for it. We'll find out in 2.5 months if any of it was worth doing.

i want to bump up an old post:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1176381.page

In defense of reach schools/shotgunning?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top 10% test scores are not in range for T10 schools.

Yeah that’s what makes them reaches. Try to keep up.

DP. No, that would make them even more remote reaches. They're already reaches for the top 5% of scorers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My take after going through the college application process with two kids is that applying to true reach schools (ie schools where you’re child has less than 5% chance at admission) is a net negative.

Both of my kids had good grades at good schools, excellent ECs with top ten percent test scores and all advanced classes. This made them competitive for T50 schools but really long shots at T10 schools. But like everyone around here we applied to a mix of target, safety and reach schools. The results were exactly as predicted. Admitted to every school except the reaches.

The prevailing wisdom is - “at least you took your shot.” However, I think that sentiment overlooks the cost of applying to reach schools:

1. Fees. While application fees are small potatoes when thinking about college costs its not nothing- I certainly would have preferred to take my wife out to a nice dinner rather than send Princeton, Harvard and U of C almost $300.

2. Time and trouble. The reach schools’ applications are considerably more trouble than other colleges. I particularly dislike U of C’s zany question. Both of my kids spent hours brainstorming, drafting and editing their essays. All time that would have been better spent enjoying their senior year.

3. Disappointment. Life already has its bumps and troubles you don’t have to go look for them. While my kids didn’t have big expectations and therefore weren’t terribly disappointed each rejection did take the air out of the evening. It also makes for uncomfortable moments with well meaning grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.

4. Waitlisted. The worst position is being waitlisted. It creates all kinds of distractions and makes planning difficult.

Look, of your kid is a good candidate for a top school go for it. But if your kid is a standard issue overachiever save yourself the money, time and trouble.

Top 10% of test scores = 1350 SAT! This is a ridiculous post. Of course they didn’t have a shot.

[Anonymous]

My take: go ahead and apply to reaches if you wish, but put most of your energy into identifying good safeties and targets.

[Anonymous]

I guess this we dodged this bullet because set a budget equal to instate COA and we dont live in Cali.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My personal favorite is my son got an email from U Chicago saying "even though deadline has passed you can still apply".

Ummm, yeah, not going to add to your pile of denials, pretty sure no one who applies after the deadline has a shot, they just want to pad their acceptance %

+1
UChicago is shameless when it comes to this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My take after going through the college application process with two kids is that applying to true reach schools (ie schools where you’re child has less than 5% chance at admission) is a net negative.

Both of my kids had good grades at good schools, excellent ECs with top ten percent test scores and all advanced classes. This made them competitive for T50 schools but really long shots at T10 schools. But like everyone around here we applied to a mix of target, safety and reach schools. The results were exactly as predicted. Admitted to every school except the reaches.

The prevailing wisdom is - “at least you took your shot.” However, I think that sentiment overlooks the cost of applying to reach schools:

1. Fees. While application fees are small potatoes when thinking about college costs its not nothing- I certainly would have preferred to take my wife out to a nice dinner rather than send Princeton, Harvard and U of C almost $300.

2. Time and trouble. The reach schools’ applications are considerably more trouble than other colleges. I particularly dislike U of C’s zany question. Both of my kids spent hours brainstorming, drafting and editing their essays. All time that would have been better spent enjoying their senior year.

3. Disappointment. Life already has its bumps and troubles you don’t have to go look for them. While my kids didn’t have big expectations and therefore weren’t terribly disappointed each rejection did take the air out of the evening. It also makes for uncomfortable moments with well meaning grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.

4. Waitlisted. The worst position is being waitlisted. It creates all kinds of distractions and makes planning difficult.

Look, of your kid is a good candidate for a top school go for it. But if your kid is a standard issue overachiever save yourself the money, time and trouble.

+100

Schools like Harvard and other ivy leagues could increase seats (supply) as there is more than enough demand for these old institutional brand names. And there's no shortage of highly qualified overachiever wonderful kids that they would have zero dip in quality. But like medical school, they constrain supply of their grads and maintain prestige through uber scarcity.

Personally, I have no interest in contributing to their denominator of rejected students or help them further reduce their acceptance rate from 4 to 3 per cent. It does nothing for our family but cost money and time with no payoff.

Where you go to school for 4 years is not worth this much stress.

Finally. Sense and reason arrive on this board.

I agree we don’t need to help these schools become even more rejective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My personal favorite is my son got an email from U Chicago saying "even though deadline has passed you can still apply".

Ummm, yeah, not going to add to your pile of denials, pretty sure no one who applies after the deadline has a shot, they just want to pad their acceptance %

I dislike Chicago for this reason.

👎