Most students and their families understand the importance of fit. Now, you are tasked with applying these factors towards making your college list. It’s time to make some big decisions, decide on your “deal breakers” and apply to the schools that fit your unique circumstances. Your final list should be optimistic yet realistic.
College Applications: How Many Is Too Many?
When building a college list, there is no one “right” number of applications across the board for every student. Taking into account individual circumstances, we advise that, for the great majority of students, the best number is a range between 7 and 10. Less than 7 may not spread your risk sufficiently and more than 10 could dissipate your focus and effort.
There are a couple of key things to remember as you embark on making your college list:
#1 You can only attend one school.
#2 EVERY school on your list should be a winner in your mind – meaning every college on your list matches your academic, social, and financial goals.
If push came to shove, would you be happy at any one of the schools on your list?
Be Realistic With Your College List and Let Go of Deal Breakers
As you join other high school seniors across the country in defining the criteria for suitable potential colleges, consider these two crucial questions:
#1 What colleges can I afford to attend?
#2 What colleges are good academic matches?
As you examine your aspirations and goals and consider what type of environment, friends, and culture you want in your college experience, you must look through the overarching lenses of affordability and feasibility. Will you need to give up a dream school to find one that is less expensive?
Zero In On Your College List Criteria
Your first step should be to establish the criteria to use in selecting schools. Your criteria is objective and chosen by you alone. There’s no set standard. You and your family decide which factors will become priorities as you begin to build your list. Perhaps finances will drive the process or a specific academic program, or even a geographical location.
Your criteria might include such factors as the size of the student body, faculty-to-student ratio, total annual expenses, core curriculum, majors, degrees granted, geographic location, the local community, campus setting, campus amenities, social opportunities, work-study programs, mentorship programs, and any other factors useful in selecting colleges that fit you well. Your criteria can be weighted according to importance. Often affordability and academic fit are weighted most heavily.
Do your homework. Start by researching schools to determine which criteria are satisfied by the colleges you are most interested in. Check out their websites, college guidebooks and similar publications, governmental resources, contact the schools directly and visit them if you can!
Visiting campuses, starting in junior year if possible, is an excellent way to assess fit. Make sure that you take a campus tour, arrange for an admissions interview, and set up meetings with students and faculty in your planned area of study. Staying overnight in a dorm and talking with students will give your more useful information than any formal meeting or third-party data source can provide.
Regarding factors:
I have found that students and parents vary in their awareness in how to approach the nuances of various fit factors. Common ones like cost, location, size are often considered, but what about others like, prestige, academic competitiveness, or inclusivity? The more factors a student is exposed to, the better. One of our key tasks as AdmissionSmarts, is to help a student weigh and prioritize all of these factors to help find good matches.
We recommend starting with academic tiers.
The Three Tiers of A Successful College List
A common approach to developing a college list is to categorize colleges into three tiers. The tiers are: 1) Schools to which you will almost certainly be admitted, 2) Schools to which you will probably be admitted, and, 3) Desirable schools to which you have a small but real chance of admission.
There are a variety of names applied to the three tiers by college admissions professionals. At AdmissionSmarts, we refer to them as Foundation, Target, and Reach. To divide schools by tier, you’ll start with your high school academic record. This consists of your unweighted GPA, SAT or ACT scores, and other factors that vary among colleges such as class rank and SAT Subject Test scores. The data set that you’ll compare it to is the academic records of those applicants who were accepted last year at each school you’re considering. This data can usually be found on a college’s website or by googling Common Data Set and the name of the school.
An overview of the three tiers is provided below:
Foundation: A foundation school is one at which your academic record falls well above the average GPA and test scores of the last freshman class. You should feel confident that you’ll be admitted to your three foundation schools. It’s important to select foundation schools that you’d be happy to attend if none of your target or reach schools admit you.
Target: A target school is one at which your academic record falls at about the midpoint – GPA and average test scores of the last freshman class. You should have four target schools on your list. It’s reasonable to anticipate acceptance at your target schools, although there’s an unknown risk inherent in the variability of the volume and quality of applications from year to year. Your target schools are the schools where you should invest the most time and resources researching and visiting.
Reach: A reach school is one that you aspire to attend and at which you have at least the possibility of admission. Your academic record places you in the top end of the average of last year’s successful applicants.
Exceptions
Some students may have specific circumstances where they apply to more or less than the 8-10 range we suggest. Here are some examples of exceptions:
-A student applies ED to a school that might be a foundation school. In this case, a student may not apply to a large list of other colleges.
-A student applies Rolling Decision to a favorite school and is accepted very early in the process.
-A student needs to compare financial aid awards, and therefore needs to cast a wider net of schools.
-A student is a musical theater major, looking to apply to a competitive BFA program, that requires auditions. This will create a much larger list.
-A student is reaching for the UBER selective schools, schools with acceptance rates under 10%. These schools are reaches for everyone. These types of students may need to apply to additional schools to cover this risk and unknown.
-Recruited athletes – particularly Division 1 athletes – don’t usually apply to a long list of schools since they commit to a coach at a single school.
Ready to Build A Successful College List?
A college list that produces the desired outcome, acceptance at one or more of your best-fit schools, is well worth the effort. Unfortunately, many students spend too much time researching, visiting, and choosing reach schools for their list. Don’t ever let prestige trump fit. Applying to too many schools, particularly the wrong schools, will be expensive, and the outcome will be disappointing. Focus on applying to the right number of schools that are good matches for you. If you need help, the AdmissionSmarts team is here to develop a winning strategy. We’d love to hear from you and help you to achieve college success.