A critical part of the college search process is creating a solid list of colleges.
Families too often fall short on this extremely important task. If a teenager creates a problematic list, parents can easily pay too much money for college.
Today, you’ll discover how your clients can avoid common problems around college list building.
One of the key issues when creating a college list is to understand the definition of the following commonly used descriptors:
High school counselors commonly recommend that students apply to all three types of schools. This, however, can be a more costly move in many cases.
First, let’s break down what each is.
Reach schools
Definition: Reach schools represent institutions where students have a low chance of gaining admission.
The most well-known of the reach schools are the elite institutions. These include the most highly ranked research institutions such as the Ivy League members and others in this category that are gathered at the top of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings in the national university category. They include such schools as MIT, University of Chicago, Stanford, Caltech, Duke, Georgetown and Emory.
Other schools in this category include the most highly ranked liberal arts colleges. They include institutions such as Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Pomona and Swarthmore colleges.
These are institutions where it’s nearly impossible to gain admittance without a hook and even then, rejection is the most common outcome. These schools should be considered a reach school by just about everyone. And that includes students who earn perfect SAT or ACT scores and graduate as high school valedictorians.
Other reach schools
Under the right circumstances, most schools can fit into the reach category. Students, whose academic statistics put them into the lower 25% of accepted applicants in the most recent completed admission season, would be applying to a reach school.
Example
Let’s say a student has an 1100 SAT and a 3.1 GPA. This student would be applying to a reach school if the middle 50% of accepted students at this institution had an SAT range of 1110–1260 or higher. In this example, the top 25% of accepted students would have had an SAT score above 1260.
It’s easy to find standardized score figures. Just head to the College Board’s website and type in the name of a school; Once the institution’s profile is pulled up, click on the Applying link.
Below is an example of what you will find. In the black boxes, you’ll see the middle range of SAT test scores in math, reading and the total score of accepted students. You would find the same graph for ACT scores.
Figure 1: SAT Score Range in a Given College
Source: College Board
The College Board presents the standardized testing information, broken down by math and reading, in this way as well:
Figure 2: Test Score Range in a Given College
Source: College Board
In the above example, you can assume that students are applying to a reach school if their test scores are below 500 in reading and the math chart would show this reality too.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that many schools jumped on the test-optional band wagon after the pandemic struck. Unless a school is test-blind, which means they will not accept anyone’s scores, not submitting scores can, in some cases, hurt chances for admission and for merit awards. In the chart above you can see that only 35% of students submitted SAT scores.
On the College Board site, you will also see the breakdown of GPAs below for an individual college:
Figure 3: GPA Range in a Given College
Source: College Board
In this example, the chances of gaining admission without at least a 3.0 GPA is also low. (One irritating aspect of this College Board feature is that it doesn’t show what percentage of students have a 3.75 GPA or higher. You have to do the math to figure this out.
Implications
Here is why applying to a reach school can be a poor move. Students in the reach pool will likely be gapped. When gapping occurs, the school accepts the student, but the financial aid award is so low that the applicant will usually attend a different school.
In some cases, the gap between what a family can afford and what the school offers can be tens of thousands of dollars. Or the student may receive no financial assistance. Students who get accepted to a reach school and don’t qualify for need-based aid are far more likely to receive no merit scholarships. These students are far more likely to have to pay the sticker price.
Appreciating this reality, my son didn’t apply to any reach schools. He applied to liberal arts colleges where he was in the upper range of applicants. Not surprisingly then, Ben received good merit scholarships from the eight schools where he applied. Consequently, Ben enjoyed the luxury of picking the college that he really wanted to attend, which was Beloit College in Wisconsin.
There is also a hazard to applying to elite schools, which as I’ve suggested represents a reach for 99.99% of teenagers. High-income students who beat the odds and do get into one of these schools will almost never get a merit scholarship.
So high-income students who aim for the most elite schools (a growing trend is to call them highly rejective colleges) will pay full price. For some parents, paying $325,000 for a bachelor’s degree won’t matter. To them, the bragging rights and the perceived career advantage are worth every penny.
Plenty of high-income families, however, would balk at paying this exorbitant amount, while others simply don’t have the cash. This would be especially true if there are two or more children in the household or children have aspirations of going to graduate/medical/law school—and having mom and dad pay.
Target schools
Definition: These schools represent institutions where the applicant’s test scores and GPA are within that middle 50% range that I discussed above. In other words, many students on the campus had academic profiles as high schoolers that were similar to today’s applicant.
Implications
It is possible for a school, if it is test optional, to be a target for a student even if the applicant’s SAT or ACT score is lower than the published 50% range. This is true for reach schools too. Test-optional schools don’t require students to submit standardized test scores, but families need to make sure that withholding test scores won’t jeopardize a chance for an institutional merit scholarship.
If applying to a target school without submitting scores, the student’s grade point average should be in the 50% range or preferably higher. If the GPA isn’t high enough then the school would drop to a reach.
Keep in mind that target schools typically aren’t going to be as generous to accepted students who sit in the 50% range. When money is an issue, this should be an important factor.
Colleges routinely give their best packages to student who are in the top 25% of applicants or higher.
Safety schools
Definition: With safety schools, the applicant is in the top 25% of applicants. Remember that at highly selective schools there is no guarantee that an applicant will get accepted. Students shouldn’t assume a school is a safety if the institution has a high rejection rate. Luckily, most schools accept the vast majority of their applicants.
Safety schools also include open enrollment state colleges which accept just about everyone.
Implications
Safety schools are going to be the most likely to provide the best merit scholarships because institutions crave students who have the highest academic credentials in their pool of applicants.
What it takes to qualify as a safety will depend upon the school. At a competitive college, a student with a 3.6 and a 1250 could be a stellar applicant. At another school, to be a top candidate would require a 1400 SAT and a 3.8 unweighted GPA.
A safety school should not only be an institution where the student has an excellent chance to be admitted, but it should also be a financial safety where the price is reasonable or the child has an excellent chance of getting a price discount from the college.
Bottom Line
1. You can’t assume that just because a student has great academic credentials, that they will receive a top award. As a general rule, that is true, but you also have to look at the school.
Brand-name schools on the East and West coasts, for instance, don’t have to give as many scholarships nor as many generous ones, because they get plenty of high-income applicants who will pay full price.
To illustrate, let’s look at Villanova University, a popular East Coast school. At Villanova, only 63 (3.7%) of freshmen received a merit scholarship and the average amount was $18,712. That won’t dent the price much when you consider that Villanova’s cost of attendance is over $73,000.
2. Because financial aid and merit awards are tied to what kind of schools a student is applying to (reach, target, safety), it is critical that parents use each college’s net price calculator to get a heads-up on what the net price of the institution would be.
By doing so, parents could limit a child’s expectation before he or she applies to individual schools.
3. Finally, when money is an issue, it’s critical to look at the financial implications of applying to reach, target and safety schools.