College consultant steering DS away from stretch schools

[Anonymous]

My DS's college consultant talked him out of applying to stretch schools and he ended up applying to 7 schools and got into every single one. I kind of wish he had tried for a couple of stretch schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP's child is competing for admission to Notre Dame first and foremost with other kids from his class at Gonzaga.

They will take a certain number of students from that high school each year and your student needs to be at or near the top of the group of students in his class that decide to apply to ND.

The experience of a male or female student from MCPS or Fairfax or Sidwell or Holy Cross or St Johns is interesting, but not really relevant.

Believe me - a lot of the top kids st the school will not even apply to ND. There are so many other schools ... Ever heard of Georgetown? How about Yale or U of Chicago?

All of those schools are 10X harder to get in than ND.

I'm not sure how one would measure multiples of "hardness" for admissions. One way to estimate difficulty of admission is to look at profiles of the students admitted at the lower end of the class, a proxy for which is the ACT 25.
ACT25:
ND- 33
Yale- 32
Chicago- 32
Georgetown- 29

They are all great schools. Not sure why some people an here feel such a need to criticize so many schools they know so little about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS's college consultant talked him out of applying to stretch schools and he ended up applying to 7 schools and got into every single one. I kind of wish he had tried for a couple of stretch schools.

I agree. I think some of these schools are so hit or miss. So many kids getting into harder schools and not into lesser schools. I think that has to do with yield as well as how they look at the applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP's child is competing for admission to Notre Dame first and foremost with other kids from his class at Gonzaga.

They will take a certain number of students from that high school each year and your student needs to be at or near the top of the group of students in his class that decide to apply to ND.

The experience of a male or female student from MCPS or Fairfax or Sidwell or Holy Cross or St Johns is interesting, but not really relevant.

Believe me - a lot of the top kids st the school will not even apply to ND. There are so many other schools ... Ever heard of Georgetown? How about Yale or U of Chicago?

All of those schools are 10X harder to get in than ND.

I'm not sure how one would measure multiples of "hardness" for admissions. One way to estimate difficulty of admission is to look at profiles of the students admitted at the lower end of the class, a proxy for which is the ACT 25.
ACT25:
ND- 33
Yale- 32
Chicago- 32
Georgetown- 29

They are all great schools. Not sure why some people an here feel such a need to criticize so many schools they know so little about.

You have your numbers wrong. Can you show me your source? Niche has different numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP's child is competing for admission to Notre Dame first and foremost with other kids from his class at Gonzaga.

They will take a certain number of students from that high school each year and your student needs to be at or near the top of the group of students in his class that decide to apply to ND.

The experience of a male or female student from MCPS or Fairfax or Sidwell or Holy Cross or St Johns is interesting, but not really relevant.

Believe me - a lot of the top kids st the school will not even apply to ND. There are so many other schools ... Ever heard of Georgetown? How about Yale or U of Chicago?

All of those schools are 10X harder to get in than ND.

I'm not sure how one would measure multiples of "hardness" for admissions. One way to estimate difficulty of admission is to look at profiles of the students admitted at the lower end of the class, a proxy for which is the ACT 25.
ACT25:
ND- 33
Yale- 32
Chicago- 32
Georgetown- 29

They are all great schools. Not sure why some people an here feel such a need to criticize so many schools they know so little about.

You have your numbers wrong. Can you show me your source? Niche has different numbers.

Niche is self-reported, so I would take it very much with a grain of salt. I just looked up the numbers from the admissions statistics on each college's website.

[Anonymous]

"I don't understand this strategy. If a safety is truly a safety (meaning that you are nearly certain of admission and like it well enough to attend, and can afford based on NPC), then one doesn't need to apply to many. One or two should do. Most applications should be to schools where the outcome is uncertain. This can include schools where you are not certain of admission, or schools where admission may be fairly certain, but you are hoping for scholarships."

Actually, a big part of our admissions strategy was to apply to the strongest departments in weaker schools. We weren't sure if there were lots of students doing the same making those departments more selective.

Now we know that there aren't lots of strong students applying to those strong departments, or DS woouldn't have gotten in, and we have several good merit offers.

Also we needed to apply to many because it is much more difficult to judge admissions if you are not in your schools magnet program so half the points on most naviance plots have more rigor than you.

[Anonymous]

Departments play no role in college admissions. Your kid got in because it’s a “weaker” school. What makes your strategy a sound one is not an admissions advantage. It’s that you’ve identified relatively easy to get into schools where the subject(s) DC is interested in are well taught. I’m guessing/hoping you’re looking at schools where there are grad programs in DC’s field — otherwise how would you know the strength of specific departments? (USNWR rankings of undergrad programs are useless). And this strategy relies on your kid ending up in the major s/he was interested in as a junior in HS. You may well understand all this, but someone reading your post might not.

Congrats to your DC!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Departments play no role in college admissions. Your kid got in because it’s a “weaker” school. What makes your strategy a sound one is not an admissions advantage. It’s that you’ve identified relatively easy to get into schools where the subject(s) DC is interested in are well taught. I’m guessing/hoping you’re looking at schools where there are grad programs in DC’s field — otherwise how would you know the strength of specific departments? (USNWR rankings of undergrad programs are useless). And this strategy relies on your kid ending up in the major s/he was interested in as a junior in HS. You may well understand all this, but someone reading your post might not.

Congrats to your DC!

I'm still not really understanding the strategy. I agree with above post that this is a great strategy for identifying and researching schools. But there is no need to apply to them. If there are multiple schools that meet these criteria, and where you are assured of admission (safety), there is no reason to apply. Choose which you like best and apply there. The only reason to apply to more than one or two would be if something about it is not "safe", like fishing for merit aid--which is a perfectly valid strategy- apply to many schools where you are certain of admission, but not certain of merit aid in hopes of finding a significant scholarship. What I don't understand are the kids that apply to many schools where they were certain of admission, and knew up front what the merit outcome was likely to be (either because the school doesn't offer any, or it is an amount based on a fixed table, etc.). In these cases applying is either about putting off making a decision that you will need to make anyway, or for ego to rack up acceptances to schools that they know they do not want to attend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Departments play no role in college admissions. Your kid got in because it’s a “weaker” school. What makes your strategy a sound one is not an admissions advantage. It’s that you’ve identified relatively easy to get into schools where the subject(s) DC is interested in are well taught. I’m guessing/hoping you’re looking at schools where there are grad programs in DC’s field — otherwise how would you know the strength of specific departments? (USNWR rankings of undergrad programs are useless). And this strategy relies on your kid ending up in the major s/he was interested in as a junior in HS. You may well understand all this, but someone reading your post might not.

Congrats to your DC!

I'm still not really understanding the strategy. I agree with above post that this is a great strategy for identifying and researching schools. But there is no need to apply to them. If there are multiple schools that meet these criteria, and where you are assured of admission (safety), there is no reason to apply. Choose which you like best and apply there. The only reason to apply to more than one or two would be if something about it is not "safe", like fishing for merit aid--which is a perfectly valid strategy- apply to many schools where you are certain of admission, but not certain of merit aid in hopes of finding a significant scholarship. What I don't understand are the kids that apply to many schools where they were certain of admission, and knew up front what the merit outcome was likely to be (either because the school doesn't offer any, or it is an amount based on a fixed table, etc.). In these cases applying is either about putting off making a decision that you will need to make anyway, or for ego to rack up acceptances to schools that they know they do not want to attend.

Or maybe about having options in the event a 17 year old changes their mind between October and April. My DC assessment at decision time ended up being a little different than at application time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Departments play no role in college admissions. Your kid got in because it’s a “weaker” school. What makes your strategy a sound one is not an admissions advantage. It’s that you’ve identified relatively easy to get into schools where the subject(s) DC is interested in are well taught. I’m guessing/hoping you’re looking at schools where there are grad programs in DC’s field — otherwise how would you know the strength of specific departments? (USNWR rankings of undergrad programs are useless). And this strategy relies on your kid ending up in the major s/he was interested in as a junior in HS. You may well understand all this, but someone reading your post might not.

Congrats to your DC!

I'm still not really understanding the strategy. I agree with above post that this is a great strategy for identifying and researching schools. But there is no need to apply to them. If there are multiple schools that meet these criteria, and where you are assured of admission (safety), there is no reason to apply. Choose which you like best and apply there. The only reason to apply to more than one or two would be if something about it is not "safe", like fishing for merit aid--which is a perfectly valid strategy- apply to many schools where you are certain of admission, but not certain of merit aid in hopes of finding a significant scholarship. What I don't understand are the kids that apply to many schools where they were certain of admission, and knew up front what the merit outcome was likely to be (either because the school doesn't offer any, or it is an amount based on a fixed table, etc.). In these cases applying is either about putting off making a decision that you will need to make anyway, or for ego to rack up acceptances to schools that they know they do not want to attend.

Because they WEREN'T sure. She was worried that her non-honors-track son had different admission chances than his honors-track peers from the same high school.

[Anonymous]

"ND- 33
Yale- 32
Chicago- 32
Georgetown- 29"

If these are correct, they suggest that even in 2018 the distribution of where students take the SAT and the ACT still isn't random.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Departments play no role in college admissions. Your kid got in because it’s a “weaker” school. What makes your strategy a sound one is not an admissions advantage. It’s that you’ve identified relatively easy to get into schools where the subject(s) DC is interested in are well taught. I’m guessing/hoping you’re looking at schools where there are grad programs in DC’s field — otherwise how would you know the strength of specific departments? (USNWR rankings of undergrad programs are useless). And this strategy relies on your kid ending up in the major s/he was interested in as a junior in HS. You may well understand all this, but someone reading your post might not.

Congrats to your DC!

I'm still not really understanding the strategy. I agree with above post that this is a great strategy for identifying and researching schools. But there is no need to apply to them. If there are multiple schools that meet these criteria, and where you are assured of admission (safety), there is no reason to apply. Choose which you like best and apply there. The only reason to apply to more than one or two would be if something about it is not "safe", like fishing for merit aid--which is a perfectly valid strategy- apply to many schools where you are certain of admission, but not certain of merit aid in hopes of finding a significant scholarship. What I don't understand are the kids that apply to many schools where they were certain of admission, and knew up front what the merit outcome was likely to be (either because the school doesn't offer any, or it is an amount based on a fixed table, etc.). In these cases applying is either about putting off making a decision that you will need to make anyway, or for ego to rack up acceptances to schools that they know they do not want to attend.

NP here,

Some of my kid's safeties offered free applications, so he applied sight unseen. Once he knows where he's gotten in, he can fly out to the top couple schools, and make a decision. It makes more sense than visiting widely before he knows where he'll get offers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"ND- 33
Yale- 32
Chicago- 32
Georgetown- 29"

If these are correct, they suggest that even in 2018 the distribution of where students take the SAT and the ACT still isn't random.

ACT is a weird measure for Yale, because the vast bulk of students take the SATs.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, my college counselor laughed at my list of Yale (early), Harvard, Brown, MIT, Chicago and UMichigan and told me not to waste the early app on Yale and that UMichigan was 50% at best and therefore not a safety. I got into Yale early, so I have no idea how the rest of the applications would have panned out.

[Anonymous]

Re not understanding the strategy. In addition to reasons other PPs have offered, it’s also the case that safeties aren’t sure things until you have offers in hand. Lots of moving parts you have no knowledge of or control over and the situation can change dramatically from one year to the next. One year, adcomms at school X are under pressure to improve yield, so they reject or defer overqualified kids whom they suspect are using them as safeties. School Y is under pressure to limit OOS students and their priority wrt those students isn’t to maximize GPA/scores but to improve geographic diversity. School Z has two legacy candidates and an athletic recruit it wants from DC’s HS and they’ve never admitted more than 2 kids in the past.

Basically, there’s a lot of noise in the process. Odds are strong that if DC applies to a few schools where stats are clearly top 25% of class, s/he will get into at least one. But any individual school in that range is still a crapshoot. If the goal is to minimize apps to safeties, look for schools with nonbinding early notification options. Land one and DC may be done with that aspect of the process.