Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man some of your people care a lot about what other families choose to do.

Only because it affects other people, and perpetuates a cycle where kids have no choice to apply to more schools each year to get the same number of offers.

I disagree. There are roughly the same number of seats for roughly the same number of applicants as there have been for some time. The only people it affects are the colleges who have to read the apps, and they all want as many apps as possible to pick from. It doesn't affect you at all. I know you think it does, but it doesn't.

Regardless, criticizing a kid who does the work necessary to apply to that many schools is distasteful at best, and likely a sign of bitterness.

Sounds like you let your kid apply to 30 schools.

Our private said 10 is the common number nowadays at our school. A few do more, some do less.

I applied to 4 (only state schools), but times are much, much different than 30 years ago.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I check out college confidential from time to time, and am shocked to see kids reporting they applied to 20 plus schools (one kid reported 30 plus). These are high stat kids “shotgunning” every school in the T20 or T30 and doing pretty well with acceptances. Of course, they can only attend one. It just seems completely ridiculous that their high schools allow this.

If this becomes the culture at a high school the colleges will start blacklisitng kids from that high school in future years. colleges track their matriculation rates.

Blacklisting a high school where large numbers of strong students want to apply to their college - and pay application fee - so then the college gets to pick which "one" they want to accept among them? I don't see this happening. Colleges can't see where else kids have applied.

Colleges won’t keep accepting kids from a high school if applicants from that high school routinely decline the offers, thus negatively impacting the college’s yield number.

An exception is binding ED.

Correct. If High School A has it's 20 top kids applying to all the Ivies and Rice and in two years, all 10 kids who were admitted to Rice have declined, Rice is going to stop admitting from that high school.
They track matriculations and they'll assume that the college counselors at High school A are not favorably representing or supporting Rice.

This is why test optional needs to be abolished. Test scores can be an easy way to get kids to take a realistic look at their chances of getting into a school. It also gives schools an easy metric to filter out candidates who are too far below a range they would consider. Schools can obviously filter out applicants based on first gen, geography, or race, but it would probably cut out a chunk of students who are just throwing darts.

MIT is bringing back test scores because they saw that kids who came in under TO were struggling and they need a more concrete measure of their academic skills. I’d be curious to know how that impacted how many applications they received after this change.

Anonymous wrote:The financial aid calculators don’t work for us due to owning a business.

Why? You can't put the value of your business into the calculator?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here, I guess my frustration is that kids are applying to a ridiculous amount of schools and then saying they aren’t remotely interested in some of the highly selective schools they are accepted to.

Yes, but according to Common App, kids that are submitting 15+ applications to schools with an acceptance rate <40% are getting into 3-5 schools on average.

So when they apply to 30, they are getting slots at 6 to 10 schools. No kid needs that many acceptances.

They do if they're comparing financial aid offers.

Eyes on your own paper.

The kids who do this on college confidential claim to be full pay. Anyway, financial aid can be determined before applying using the school calculator.

Absolutely no kids need 10 offers, it’s just a vanity project.

The financial aid calculators don’t work for us due to owning a business.

Eyes on your own paper, as a pp said.

I do agree with you that some students apply to so many as a vanity project. On CC, a girl applied to 32 schools. This seemed to be done to be able to say they had $1 million in merit aid, which is a meaningless number.

At our school, some kids are bragging about their combined merit aid. Mine felt bad they had “only” so much in merit until I reminded them they didn’t want to apply to those less selective schools—and also they already have enough merit aid for one person! We pointed out the number means nothing yet articles are written about receiving $1 million in merit aid every year. Dumb.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I check out college confidential from time to time, and am shocked to see kids reporting they applied to 20 plus schools (one kid reported 30 plus). These are high stat kids “shotgunning” every school in the T20 or T30 and doing pretty well with acceptances. Of course, they can only attend one. It just seems completely ridiculous that their high schools allow this.

If this becomes the culture at a high school the colleges will start blacklisitng kids from that high school in future years. colleges track their matriculation rates.

Blacklisting a high school where large numbers of strong students want to apply to their college - and pay application fee - so then the college gets to pick which "one" they want to accept among them? I don't see this happening. Colleges can't see where else kids have applied.

Colleges won’t keep accepting kids from a high school if applicants from that high school routinely decline the offers, thus negatively impacting the college’s yield number.

An exception is binding ED.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I check out college confidential from time to time, and am shocked to see kids reporting they applied to 20 plus schools (one kid reported 30 plus). These are high stat kids “shotgunning” every school in the T20 or T30 and doing pretty well with acceptances. Of course, they can only attend one. It just seems completely ridiculous that their high schools allow this.

If this becomes the culture at a high school the colleges will start blacklisitng kids from that high school in future years. colleges track their matriculation rates.

Ah, this must be why the private schools do it. Also, I think the paperwork guidance has to do and track would require more staff.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here, I guess my frustration is that kids are applying to a ridiculous amount of schools and then saying they aren’t remotely interested in some of the highly selective schools they are accepted to.

Yes, but according to Common App, kids that are submitting 15+ applications to schools with an acceptance rate <40% are getting into 3-5 schools on average.

So when they apply to 30, they are getting slots at 6 to 10 schools. No kid needs that many acceptances.

They do if they're comparing financial aid offers.

Eyes on your own paper.

The kids who do this on college confidential claim to be full pay. Anyway, financial aid can be determined before applying using the school calculator.

Absolutely no kids need 10 offers, it’s just a vanity project.

This is not true. Our son applied to 20 and received a combination of merit and grants from 3 that brought total cost below that of state flagship. The school calculators did not show us that result.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man some of your people care a lot about what other families choose to do.

Only because it affects other people, and perpetuates a cycle where kids have no choice to apply to more schools each year to get the same number of offers.

I disagree. There are roughly the same number of seats for roughly the same number of applicants as there have been for some time. The only people it affects are the colleges who have to read the apps, and they all want as many apps as possible to pick from. It doesn't affect you at all. I know you think it does, but it doesn't.

Regardless, criticizing a kid who does the work necessary to apply to that many schools is distasteful at best, and likely a sign of bitterness.

My son's SAT is 1520 and he applied to 9 colleges. Right on the median, interesting

Anonymous wrote:Man some of your people care a lot about what other families choose to do.

Only because it affects other people, and perpetuates a cycle where kids have no choice to apply to more schools each year to get the same number of offers.

Man some of your people care a lot about what other families choose to do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here, I guess my frustration is that kids are applying to a ridiculous amount of schools and then saying they aren’t remotely interested in some of the highly selective schools they are accepted to.

Yes, but according to Common App, kids that are submitting 15+ applications to schools with an acceptance rate <40% are getting into 3-5 schools on average.

So when they apply to 30, they are getting slots at 6 to 10 schools. No kid needs that many acceptances.

They do if they're comparing financial aid offers.

Eyes on your own paper.

The kids who do this on college confidential claim to be full pay. Anyway, financial aid can be determined before applying using the school calculator.

Absolutely no kids need 10 offers, it’s just a vanity project.

Merit aid is a lot harder to predict than financial aid

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here, I guess my frustration is that kids are applying to a ridiculous amount of schools and then saying they aren’t remotely interested in some of the highly selective schools they are accepted to.

Yes, but according to Common App, kids that are submitting 15+ applications to schools with an acceptance rate <40% are getting into 3-5 schools on average.

So when they apply to 30, they are getting slots at 6 to 10 schools. No kid needs that many acceptances.

They do if they're comparing financial aid offers.

Eyes on your own paper.

The kids who do this on college confidential claim to be full pay. Anyway, financial aid can be determined before applying using the school calculator.

Absolutely no kids need 10 offers, it’s just a vanity project.