Applying to 20 schools, crazy or not?
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Anonymous
No, it is not. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings Also, colleges have no idea where else you have applied, or to how many. |
Anonymous
| Crazy. 3 safeties, 3 matches and 3 reaches. |
Anonymous
| Don’t listen to those who claim they applied to less than 10. Apply as many as you physically and financially can because you’ll have great options later on. You don’t give up those options just because some suckers told you not to apply. |
Anonymous
| My kid did a couple of years ago - she wanted to apply to 20 schools as a member of the class of 2020. She got into Pitt early and then applied to many LACs looking for merit aid. She had her own budget and used money from her summer job to apply to any random ones that she wanted to, that we weren't aware of. Coincidentally, some of those Midwestern LACs had no or waived the application fee - think Oberlin (where she wound up), Grinnell, Macalester, (if you apply early), Carleton and also some in NE like Colby, Smith, and Wellesley etc (although not all of those offer merit aid). In the grand scheme of paying for college, a few hundred bucks isn't that big of a deal (at least to our family and our kid paid herself as well), and applying to undergrad and imagining yourself at a wide range of institutions is a process that most people only go through once. Good luck to you and your child! |
Anonymous
PP here. Oh, and many LACs at least have fewer essays (or none at all) than many T20 universities or honors colleges (looking at you, PSU Schreyer). My kid wrote more essays for Pitt honors college than any of the other ones she applied to (Northwestern and Cornell didn't have many either, at least back in the day). |
Anonymous
Are we able to use pejoratives for strategies we don’t agree with? Great! I am in. 3 safeties is incredibly stupid. Why would anyone need more than one safety? |
Anonymous
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I just thought about this and in a way this strategy lines up with one of my more intensely held but less popular views about the whole process: high focus on fit/“dream” schools.*
The whole point is to come out the other side with a degree and having learned something about the world and oneself while making friends with other future members of the 10%. If you’re hell bent on a top school and it is truly the prestige you’re after, you should be agnostic enough to apply to both Michigan and Georgetown (just to give examples of schools ranked the same). Once all offers are on the table, you can compare and focus on soft factors. I also think more dice rolls helps for merit aid. *I do concede this can matter in specific cases such as needing access to top notch disability services. |
Anonymous
| It’s a valid strategy for people who are playing the merit aid lottery. |
Anonymous
Stop being stupid, stupid. Safeties are erratic nowadays with yield protection shenanigans. But by all means have your little troll apply to only one. That would be simply brilliant. |
Anonymous
Perhaps they’re seeing which one of the safeties offered the best merit aid? |
Anonymous
+1 It can also make sense to apply to multiple safeties if you haven't had a chance to visit and so aren't sure which is most preferred. It nice in the end to feel you have choices. 20 still seems like an awful lot to 1) submit quality applications, if they have a lot of supplements 2) pay for if you don't get waivers. And, then in the end if that 20 includes a lot of matches/safeties you are just pushing the decision making to a more compressed time in the Spring. I know one student who applied to nearly 20 last year. She hadn't been able to visit because of covid and had no idea what she wanted so the 20 were all over the place in size and location. She got into most of them and still had a lot of trouble deciding so they were cramming in a lot of visits to try to figure it out. |
Anonymous
Then guess what? THEN THEY ARE NOT SAFETIES. You only need one safety. By definition. |
Anonymous
Not PP, but you’re an idiot. Safety never meant to be a school that guarantees your admission. It never existed that way. |
Anonymous
I am the PP, and that is EXACTLY what a safety is and is supposed to be. If yours are not, then you have no safeties. Do some reading if you don’t believe me. A safety is a school where you know you will be accepted that you can afford and would be satisfied attending. Anything that does not meet those criteria is not a safety. I mean, jeez, just thing about what the term “safe” means! And I am an idiot? Lol that’s funny! |
Anonymous
Have you actually been through the process? Even safeties are never sure bets. |