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Q&A: How Many Schools Should Your Student Apply To? Sean Brian Dermody
Q:
How many schools should my junior apply to? Is there really such thing as a “safety” school? What does that mean?
A: Trying to decide how many and which colleges to apply to can be one of the most challenging aspects of the admissions process.
Fortunately,
by beginning this process in the junior year, your son or daughter has
more time to reflect upon the college experience that he or she wants,
and to do the necessary research to find schools that match it. By the
time your student is a senior and is ready to fill out applications, he
or she should have a number of possible schools from which to choose.
Of
those choices, I recommend applying to between three to five schools.
By applying to a minimum of three, your student has options in case
admission is denied or if he or she has a change of heart later with
their front-runner college. I recommend applying to no more than five
colleges so that your student has the time needed to complete each
application with the utmost care and attention to detail that it needs
and deserves.
When suggesting the minimum number of schools to
apply to, I always encourage students with whom I speak to both reach
for their dream college, but also be realistic about college costs and
admission standards. Not everyone who applies to his or her
first-choice college is admitted. And if admitted, not everyone can
afford the costs. If your child only applies to one school and is
denied admission, he or she is in the tough spot of scrambling to find
a different college at which to enroll. Rather than being stuck in this
position, it’s far better to apply to multiple colleges of varying
degrees of selectivity.
High school students generally refer
to their second or third-choice colleges as “safety schools.” They
apply to them because they feel assured of admission in case they are
not admitted to their first-choice college.
There are a lot of
misconceptions about “safety schools” that need to be addressed. To
begin with, the only true “safety school,” in which admission is
guaranteed, is a college with open admissions, like a community
college.
Unfortunately, I often hear the term “safety school”
used by high school students in reference to four-year institutions.
This is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, a student’s
perception of whether a college qualifies as a “safety school” is based
upon his or her perception of friends, family members or acquaintances
who were admitted.
Yet seldom are two applicants exactly the
same. One may have come for an interview or submitted an essay that
makes them stand out in the mind of the admissions committee, while
another does not. Don’t let your student assume that they are safe for
admission just because his or her friends were admitted!
The
other problem rests on the assumption that admissions requirements to
particular colleges are static. This is not necessarily the case. If a
college receives more applications or decides that it wishes to become
more selective over a period of years, it may change its admissions
requirements to become more stringent.
The only real way to
determine whether a student will likely be admissible is to meet with
an admissions adviser. I highly encourage a visit to your top choices
to discern your teen’s chances for admission.
Article reprinted with persmission from Next Step Magazine.
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