Make a Smart List, not a list organized by chronological deadlines, alphabetically, or by school ranking. A Smart List is comprised of three short lists, ordered according to priority for you—not US News and World Report. Apply to safety schools first, then work down your list!
I would seem to be micro-managing my students by giving directives about how to organize their college lists. However, this small bit of organization is crucial. It is not an overstatement to say that how you organize your list may determine where you spend the next four years of your life—and beyond.
Why Organization Matters
Let me explain why. Many students whom I work with choose to ignore my advice about limiting the college list to 9-12 schools. After we collaborate on a twelve-school list, they add another half dozen or more schools. The final list may have fifteen or twenty schools. The consequence is that they erode their chances of getting into the “perfect match”schools by dissipating their time and energy on random schools.
By the time the later deadlines come—from mid January to March—the student will likely have run out of steam. At that point, he just starts taking schools off the list that have too many essays, difficult or new essay questions, or just on a whim. The rationale I am given at that point tends to be irrational or half-baked. A student may have spent months on the first three essays for the early action school to which he applied, but writes the last twenty essays for the remaining regular decision schools in two weeks. The essays are ill-conceived, full of grammatical errors and platitudes, and even include some spelling mistakes for good measure. The student rushes through the applications on the list in a tizzy and delivers essays that greatly reduce her chances of receiving an offer from the school.
You can see the problem here: the student will in all probability ruin his chances of getting into schools where he may have thrived. When April comes around, the applicant will receive 25% to 50% fewer offer letters than he would have with the Smart List. That “dream school” will just remain a dream.
How Do I Start?
How do you organize your list? The best way is to edit it down to 9-12 schools with 40% target schools, 40% reach schools, and 20% safety schools. You don’t have to put as many safety schools because the odds of getting into each of them is high. I recommend submitting an application to your state school, so you know you can count on that option. Also, choose a good private university with higher than 70% acceptance rate (they do exist!) for your second safety school. Your parents’ alma maters might also qualify as safety schools.
Secondly, do not just focus most of your energy on “reach” schools because unless you are in the top 10% of your class at a very elite private school (a so-called “feeder school”) or a highly selective public, magnet school, or your parents are alumni of that school, the probability of you getting in is not high enough that you should expend most of your energy on them. You should have target schools that you are excited about, and these should be the focus of your verve and vigor. It’s just not good strategy—or good self-care—to focus the greater part of your psychic energy on schools that are unlikely to be real possibilities.
Thirdly, apply to the safety schools first. You will only have two to three safety schools on the list, and more likely than not, they will have few or no essays (most university systems that have the word “state” in them don’t require essays). Apply in September or October to these so you can enjoy some emotional sanity. Psychologically, you will feel like you are on firmer footing knowing that you have options, which you actually like, and that you are confident will offer you a spot. If they have rolling admissions, even better: you will be applying to the remaining schools with confidence. Make sure the safety schools are places where you can see yourself being happy. If your safety schools are places the thought of which makes you break out into a cold sweat, the whole process of applying to colleges will be harrowing. You will be tyrannized by dread of four purgatorial years of penance for your high school sins, rather than joyfully anticipating the beginning of the rest of your life.
Four Easy Steps to Make Your Smart List
1. Apply to your safety schools in September or October!
2. Once you know which schools are your priority, put the five priority schools at the top of the list, regardless of the deadline. These include “reach” schools, but should be mainly “target” schools: 2/3 or 1/4 are good ratios of “reach” to “target.” Then take those five schools and order them by deadline. Remember, if both your parents went to Princeton, and you are in the top 10% of your class, then Princeton is a “target” school, regardless of the fact that for almost everybody else it is a “reach” school. If you are sixteen and already won a Pulitzer Prize, most likely everybody else’s “reach” will be your “target.” If you have been recruited by the head athletic coach of a university, that school will also likely be a “target.” If your parents are both professors at Williams, your chances are good enough of studying in the Berkshires that this #1-ranking college will also be a target. So, be careful that how you qualify a school is also adapted to your circumstances.
3. Create a second list of schools that are further down in your priorities. These are places that are not as good a match (based on the criteria from your ExecuTutor College Visualization Exercise and objective factors). Now organize these by deadline.
4. Create a final list of low priority schools. The last list should include schools where you have less than a 10% chance of being accepted (to determine this, read How Do I Know What My Chances Are?) and schools that are still good matches, but for whatever legitimate reason (weather, campus, part of the world, etc.), you are not as keen on.
Now that you have your Smart List sorted out, you can be sure that you will not short shrift good options because they have a later deadline, because their national ranking is lower than another school, or because they happen to begin with a W rather than a B. I realize most students will still work through their school list based on chronological deadline or national ranking, but the smart students will have more thick envelopes in their mailbox come April if they use a Smart List.