Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My personal favorite is my son got an email from U Chicago saying "even though deadline has passed you can still apply".

Ummm, yeah, not going to add to your pile of denials, pretty sure no one who applies after the deadline has a shot, they just want to pad their acceptance %

Wth is wrong with Chicago? I know they're under a lot of financial stress, but they embarrass themselves with these tactics. It's bad enough that everyone seems to know that they'll about any and every full pay private school kid who applies ED.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My take after going through the college application process with two kids is that applying to true reach schools (ie schools where you’re child has less than 5% chance at admission) is a net negative.

Both of my kids had good grades at good schools, excellent ECs with top ten percent test scores and all advanced classes. This made them competitive for T50 schools but really long shots at T10 schools. But like everyone around here we applied to a mix of target, safety and reach schools. The results were exactly as predicted. Admitted to every school except the reaches.

The prevailing wisdom is - “at least you took your shot.” However, I think that sentiment overlooks the cost of applying to reach schools:

1. Fees. While application fees are small potatoes when thinking about college costs its not nothing- I certainly would have preferred to take my wife out to a nice dinner rather than send Princeton, Harvard and U of C almost $300.

2. Time and trouble. The reach schools’ applications are considerably more trouble than other colleges. I particularly dislike U of C’s zany question. Both of my kids spent hours brainstorming, drafting and editing their essays. All time that would have been better spent enjoying their senior year.

3. Disappointment. Life already has its bumps and troubles you don’t have to go look for them. While my kids didn’t have big expectations and therefore weren’t terribly disappointed each rejection did take the air out of the evening. It also makes for uncomfortable moments with well meaning grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.

4. Waitlisted. The worst position is being waitlisted. It creates all kinds of distractions and makes planning difficult.

Look, of your kid is a good candidate for a top school go for it. But if your kid is a standard issue overachiever save yourself the money, time and trouble.

Most parents cannot tell the difference and do not know how to read the Scoir scattergrams from their high school or correctly interpret the school profile to assess where their kid really stands.
"4.4 Weighted, 1520, 9 APs", but their APs are Geo, Stats, AB calc, Econ, Gov, Bio, APES, APUSH, ForLang and that GPA means they are borderline for the top 20%...when the top 5% rigor at their school takes something like AP lit, BC calc and vector calc/linear, AP chem, Physics C, Bio, APUSH, Foreign Lang...and the top 5% wgpa is 4.7+
Parents are clueless and push their kids toward out of reach schools.

Anonymous wrote:My take after going through the college application process with two kids is that applying to true reach schools (ie schools where you’re child has less than 5% chance at admission) is a net negative.

Both of my kids had good grades at good schools, excellent ECs with top ten percent test scores and all advanced classes. This made them competitive for T50 schools but really long shots at T10 schools. But like everyone around here we applied to a mix of target, safety and reach schools. The results were exactly as predicted. Admitted to every school except the reaches.

The prevailing wisdom is - “at least you took your shot.” However, I think that sentiment overlooks the cost of applying to reach schools:

1. Fees. While application fees are small potatoes when thinking about college costs its not nothing- I certainly would have preferred to take my wife out to a nice dinner rather than send Princeton, Harvard and U of C almost $300.

2. Time and trouble. The reach schools’ applications are considerably more trouble than other colleges. I particularly dislike U of C’s zany question. Both of my kids spent hours brainstorming, drafting and editing their essays. All time that would have been better spent enjoying their senior year.

3. Disappointment. Life already has its bumps and troubles you don’t have to go look for them. While my kids didn’t have big expectations and therefore weren’t terribly disappointed each rejection did take the air out of the evening. It also makes for uncomfortable moments with well meaning grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.

4. Waitlisted. The worst position is being waitlisted. It creates all kinds of distractions and makes planning difficult.

Look, of your kid is a good candidate for a top school go for it. But if your kid is a standard issue overachiever save yourself the money, time and trouble.

Anonymous wrote:+1 to the poster who made the comment about parents not understanding where their kid is compared to peers. This is where good CCs really come in, but so many parents ignore recommendations. And on top of that, it is very difficult to gauge who will be accepted where now—TO and grade inflation have made it difficult for even very knowledgeable parents to understand reach/likely/target options.

Anonymous wrote:Hindsight makes a lot of difference in how students and their families feel about applying to reaches.

My 2024 DC who was unhooked, had a high (but not perfect) GPA, 1510 SAT, interesting and authentic ECs (but not national awards or anything like that), was admitted RD to 4 ivies. DC is at Yale and is incredibly happy there. Of course our family feels like it was worth the application fees and extra essays to apply to these schools. I suspect that if DC hadn't won the lottery (and I do understand that it's a lottery), we would feel differently. But you can't ever know that unless you've taken a shot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes! The prevailing wisdom is to apply to several reaches, targets, and safeties. But actually, reaches aren't necessary at all. Most important is finding a good fit: socially, academically, and financially.

Our HS counselor is conservative. We wasted so much $ on target/safeties. Got into all. Then got in RD to 2 Ivies, Hopkins, Williams, etc. With our next kid we are cutting out so many of those that older sibling applied to. Younger one has even more rigor/stats. I made the mistake of listening to this board and everyone’s horror stories

Anonymous wrote:Yes! The prevailing wisdom is to apply to several reaches, targets, and safeties. But actually, reaches aren't necessary at all. Most important is finding a good fit: socially, academically, and financially.

Anonymous wrote:My personal favorite is my son got an email from U Chicago saying "even though deadline has passed you can still apply".

Ummm, yeah, not going to add to your pile of denials, pretty sure no one who applies after the deadline has a shot, they just want to pad their acceptance %

Anonymous wrote:Reach for my kid was only in the sense of 3-5% acceptance rates. He had the straight As, rigor, 35 ACT, 5s all AP exams and well-rounded ecs.

He did well RD. In at 2 Ivies, Hopkins and several T15/20s.

We still call them “reach”, merely based on selectivity—not reaching for schools above gpa/scores.

Anonymous wrote:My take after going through the college application process with two kids is that applying to true reach schools (ie schools where you’re child has less than 5% chance at admission) is a net negative.

Both of my kids had good grades at good schools, excellent ECs with top ten percent test scores and all advanced classes. This made them competitive for T50 schools but really long shots at T10 schools. But like everyone around here we applied to a mix of target, safety and reach schools. The results were exactly as predicted. Admitted to every school except the reaches.

The prevailing wisdom is - “at least you took your shot.” However, I think that sentiment overlooks the cost of applying to reach schools:

1. Fees. While application fees are small potatoes when thinking about college costs its not nothing- I certainly would have preferred to take my wife out to a nice dinner rather than send Princeton, Harvard and U of C almost $300.

2. Time and trouble. The reach schools’ applications are considerably more trouble than other colleges. I particularly dislike U of C’s zany question. Both of my kids spent hours brainstorming, drafting and editing their essays. All time that would have been better spent enjoying their senior year.

3. Disappointment. Life already has its bumps and troubles you don’t have to go look for them. While my kids didn’t have big expectations and therefore weren’t terribly disappointed each rejection did take the air out of the evening. It also makes for uncomfortable moments with well meaning grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.

4. Waitlisted. The worst position is being waitlisted. It creates all kinds of distractions and makes planning difficult.

Look, of your kid is a good candidate for a top school go for it. But if your kid is a standard issue overachiever save yourself the money, time and trouble.