Finding the right balance of colleges to apply to

[Anonymous]

DD is a rising senior and planning which colleges to apply to. I've seen horror stories about students applying to 30+ colleges and she definitely doesn't to be one of those. Plan is to apply to 6 schools that she's really researched and has every intention of attending each school. Her academics and ECs are quite strong so we're not too worried about those boxes, but we believe her demonstrated interest in each school will come through the essays and put her over the top. VA resident fyi.

2 reaches - Yale, UChicago

2 matches - Cornell, Duke

2 safeties - UVA, Michigan

Is this a good list? Any risks to this plan? Please keep feedback constructive.

[Anonymous]

UVA and Michigan are safeties? Oooooohhhhhkkkkkkaaaaayyyyy

[Anonymous]

You are completely out of touch with the admissions process if you think Cornell and Duke are matches. They are not matches for anyone, no matter how good a student's stats are. And Michigan should never be put in anyone's "safety" category...perhaps a match for a super high stats kid.

If people truly understood single-digit admission numbers, they wouldn't apply to those schools.

I don't mean to come across as rude, but I get really concerned when I see lists such as this...I strongly recommend some "true" safeties, or you are really setting your child up for serious disappointment.

[Anonymous]

You are unrealistic. Definitely need to add more "match" and "safeties" and be realistic about the schools that go in those categories.

[Anonymous]

Have you been in some sort of a Rip Van Winkle slumber for the past 30 years, or are you just delusional?

[Anonymous]

Troll.

[Anonymous]

This has got to be a joke post.

[Anonymous]

(this is honest advice).

We thought exactly like this one year ago. Everyone does when your kid has a perfect transcript etc.
Unless your kid is an apex achiever <insert subject> Olympiad team member, nothing can be taken for granted.

Colleges on your match list are not looking for just grades. And that makes everything variable.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Like I said to my child...if the rejection rate at a school is 94%, than the likely outcome for each applicant is that they will be rejected. Point being that more than 9/10 applicants to that school will be rejected. That is a fact.

You need some schools where the MAJORITY of kids from your child's peer group are accepted. Play a LITTLE loose and fast if he/she is a SUPERSTAR nationally...but understand that lots of other factors will come into play (besides GPA and SAT) like how many kids apply from the same area, gender, EC's, race, major, recruited athletes, alum's, etc. At highly selective schools, most of the strong applicants get rejected too. It is math, and you had better brush up on it.

[Anonymous]

I would add some safeties to the list. I don’t think UVA is a safety for a NoVA resident no matter how great the stats are.

[Anonymous]

It really doesn’t matter how you categorize them, OP, but I think the other posters have a point. I suggest adding two more with even higher accept rates. Call them super-safeties if you like. Perhaps DD won’t need them, but the process will be much less stressful if you include them. Even better if they are EA or rolling admit school, so your kid knows early that they are in somewhere. UVM was the early safety for our kid, and she would have been perfectly fine there, though in the end she got into 7 of her 8 choices.

[Anonymous]

I think, OP, that you may think your DD is a match if your DD's stats fall within certain peramaters of the schools. But you need to think of it this way: (and I'll make up numbers to make it easy)

These schools only have room for 200 incoming students. Let's say 8,000 apply. Of those 8,000, 700 have exactly the stats of your DD. So 500 totally qualified kids, for sure are going to be rejected.

But it will actually be more, because the school may take kids that are not as high on the stats as your DD because there may be some kids that are legacy, or recruited for a sport....schools like to do things like have at least one kid from each state, so they can say, 'we have kids from all 50 states..."

It's like this, OP: Your kid may be great and play the trumpet, but while last year the school had a graduating trumpet player and so needed a trumpet player, this year their trumpet player is just going into her sophomore year. But the cello player is graduating, so this year it's the cello player they need. Make sense?

[Anonymous]

FWIW, my child was admitted to UChicago and waitlisted at UMichigan. Ditto his classmate who was admitted to ?Harvard. All 6 schools you listed are reaches for almost everyone, including your daughter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, my child was admitted to UChicago and waitlisted at UMichigan. Ditto his classmate who was admitted to ?Harvard. All 6 schools you listed are reaches for almost everyone, including your daughter.

Michigan yield protects

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Troll.

And a bad one.