Anonymous wrote:Back in the stone ages I dated a guy who went to Exeter and at the time he told me Exeter only allowed students to apply to two Ivies (there may have been other limits too). Maybe GDS should increase their limit to 12 but in general I think a limit is helpful. I assume GDS is transparent about this rule and you could have picked another school or switch to public if it really bothers you.

Not true. Either you made up or the guy you dated lied to you.

Back in the stone ages I dated a guy who went to Exeter and at the time he told me Exeter only allowed students to apply to two Ivies (there may have been other limits too). Maybe GDS should increase their limit to 12 but in general I think a limit is helpful. I assume GDS is transparent about this rule and you could have picked another school or switch to public if it really bothers you.

Anonymous wrote:Application numbers are restricted so the top students don’t get all of the acceptances. They need to spots open at top colleges for the next tier of students.

This is it.
Do you guys not get it or are all your kids in the top 10%?

I have a straight A student at GDS. Do you really want him applying to all the top 20 schools? your B student is not going to get admitted if both our kids apply.

On the plus side it means any college accepting a kid from GDS has a higher chance of having that kid enroll since the kid isn’t applying to 15 competitors. So Harvard knows they’re not competing against 5 other Ivies and is more likely to get them to enroll.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s no way they can cap something that has nothing to do with them. Other than sending transcripts the high school should really be hands off. Your kids can apply wherever they want. I do think more than 10 would be pointless, but still can’t be school regulated.

They have to send recommendations, transcripts etc for each student, with 125 or whatever students, that is a lot to manage. Get one kid who wants to apply to 20 schools and it gets unmanagable.

Really, if you focus a list, there is no reason to need more than 10.

- a parent who has been through it twice in very recent years including 2022

I'm not quite sure I buy this as a reason. I mean hire more people in the office. The fact that summer camp office at GDS has more staff than than college counseling office is notable and stupid. That said, each of the 4 or 5 people in their college office seem strong in my interactions. But having too much to send is not a reason to cap.

I suppose they are delivering good results with this cap. Here's unofficial count of 21 and 22 GDS matriculations by college (using public sources, any college above a count of 3 combined '21 and '22). There's a very long tail below this list of course.

University of Michigan 8
Tufts 7
Wash U 7
Brown 6
NYU 6
Duke 5
Cornell 4
Harvard 4
Macalaster 4
Tulane 4
University of Toronto 4
University of Wisconsin 4
Boston College 3
Georgetown 3
UPenn 3
University of Chicago 3
Wesleyan 3
Yale 3

Anonymous wrote:Here's the official GDS policy - I think they actually *can* enforce this by refusing to send grades and letters to more than 10 schools.

Students may apply to up to 10 schools. We communicate this policy to each college. This policy is well received because each GDS application is known to be thoughtful and well-considered.

The College Counseling Office will submit:
The School Report.
The GDS School Profile.
The Official Transcript.
Quarter/Semester grades for senior year.
Counselor Letter of recommendation.
Teacher Letters of recommendation.

That would be a deal breaker for me

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They have to send recommendations, transcripts etc for each student, with 125 or whatever students, that is a lot to manage. Get one kid who wants to apply to 20 schools and it gets unmanagable.

Yet somehow the sole college counselor at my kid's public school will manage a class of 700 students.

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that GDS caps at 10 colleges max to be applied to (UC's count as 1 school despite being able to apply to multiple UCs and UCAS/UK count as 1 application as well)

Capping at 10 seems not in line with the times. In theory, capping is a good idea. In practice, the world has changed - admit rates are way down (Northeastern is now 67%!) - yet GDS still caps at 10 schools. I'm not aware any NYC/SF/CHI/LA private schools cap at 10

It actually seems reasonable, if you thoughtfully and judiciously choose those ten schools, i.e., don’t apply to all the Ivies plus Stanford and MIT.

What if Stanford is your safety?

Anonymous wrote:They have to send recommendations, transcripts etc for each student, with 125 or whatever students, that is a lot to manage. Get one kid who wants to apply to 20 schools and it gets unmanagable.

Yet somehow the sole college counselor at my kid's public school will manage a class of 700 students.

“Need to leave spots open”

Application numbers are restricted so the top students don’t get all of the acceptances. They need to spots open at top colleges for the next tier of students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s no way they can cap something that has nothing to do with them. Other than sending transcripts the high school should really be hands off. Your kids can apply wherever they want. I do think more than 10 would be pointless, but still can’t be school regulated.

They have to send recommendations, transcripts etc for each student, with 125 or whatever students, that is a lot to manage. Get one kid who wants to apply to 20 schools and it gets unmanagable.

Really, if you focus a list, there is no reason to need more than 10.

- a parent who has been through it twice in very recent years including 2022

A school charges close $50K tuition can't handle sending recommendations, transcripts to more than 10 schools per student? Where does the tuition go? Note some students get into ED and will not need to apply to RD. So it is not that every student will apply to more than 10 schools.

Don't you know now everything is automatic that you just need to click a button to send those documents to schools? Remember all the schools will receive the same transcript and recommendation letters for one student. If you say a school can't handle this, I am not sure what they can handle.

Anonymous wrote:GDS has excellent college admissions so it seems that they know what they are doing.

Are you one the counselors at GDS?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The general recommendation by private college counselors is to apply to 6-9 universities/colleges. 2-3 reaches, 2-3 matches, 2-3 safeties.

So a max of 10 seems eminently reasonable, OP. The essays have to be really well written. Counselors seek to avoid students overextending themselves and sabotaging themselves with poor personal statements and supplemental essays.

That's outdated for very academic/selective candidates. I'm talking the 35/36 ACT, unweighted 4.0s/weighted higher, most rigorous course load, leader of a club, athlete, etc. These kids are in the top of the top 10 admissions stats for scores/SATS, but just given the sheer low level of acceptance rates (4-8% at most of the top 10s--and, let's face it, caucasians/non-legacy/nonfirst gen--that percentage is even lower) they need to cast a wider net. And I would up the meets/exceeds stat reaches and have 2 lower (lest than top 213) and only 1-2 sure bet.

The key is to be judicious about safeties and targets. It really isn't that hard to hone a list.

For example, no one should be applying to Chicago and Brown. And no one should be applying to Harvard/Penn and Darmouth.

Size, geography, curriculum, setting all weigh in as factors. Narrow that down and the list gets small pretty quickly.

Anonymous wrote:There’s no way they can cap something that has nothing to do with them. Other than sending transcripts the high school should really be hands off. Your kids can apply wherever they want. I do think more than 10 would be pointless, but still can’t be school regulated.

They have to send recommendations, transcripts etc for each student, with 125 or whatever students, that is a lot to manage. Get one kid who wants to apply to 20 schools and it gets unmanagable.

Really, if you focus a list, there is no reason to need more than 10.

- a parent who has been through it twice in very recent years including 2022