Application station, part 3, choosing schools.

I’ve gotten quite a few requests for more information about applications, so I am going to make a series of posts that fill in the blanks of my previous post found here. This post will be about choosing a list of colleges to which you might apply.

Make a list of 10 schools, with at least two being virtually guaranteed entry.

Sometimes people make the foolish assumption that a “state school in their state has to accept them as long as they are a nominally average student. That isn’t the case. Such schools usually have large numbers of applicants and they offer admittance to people for a variety of reasons. Not even the best students are guaranteed entry and meeting a school’s acceptance criteria is simply a way of being allowed into their personal lottery. The odds aren’t millions to one, nothing is a guarantee, and no one is owed.

So, how do you make sure that you get in somewhere? The first thing is to make sure that you actually meet the requirements of the schools you apply to. I can’t believe how often I receive complaints from students because they weren’t accepted to a school, but when I ask for details, I find out that the school required a 2.85 and they had a 2.79 but decided that was enough! I often find test scores that are below the requirements, failure to meet language requirements, and a host of very obvious ways in which the frustrated student failed to meet explicit requirements but decided they would get in anyway, based on their conviction that they deserved it, or would be good at it.

If you can afford to apply to 10 schools, it might be OK to fall short on two of your “hopefuls” but more than that and you are wasting your money and setting yourself for frustration. Find out what the schools requirements are, then find out what their average entrant numbers are. That’s right, a school might require a 2.85 but have so many applicants, that their average first year student has a 3.15 cumulative GPA for high school. You need to meet their entrance requirements and you want to be at least close to their average accepted student.

You can also give us your specs and ask us to find 10 schools (or however many you need) in your area.