Brinda Ambal

Every year, there are people who haphazardly throw a few safeties and matches onto their list because someone told them to. When their reaches don’t pan out, they end up stuck somewhere they don’t really want to be. Avoid that fate by doing your homework in advance.

This guide contains tens of thousands of words about how to apply to college, but I’ve yet to directly address where to apply — or where to commit after receiving your decisions.

This is a section that’s particularly difficult to write because so much of this process boils down to your personal preferences. The most important general advice I can give you is to find schools that are a good academic and cultural fit for you. Regarding the latter, I want to emphasize that your college experience is about more than academics. This decision isn’t as simple as saying, “I want to study biology. Who has the best biology program?” Yes, you’re applying to these institutions to be a student, but you’re also choosing where you’re going to live and interact with peers, professors, etc. for the next four years. Your college years won’t be nearly as enjoyable — or “successful,” however you define that — if you’re miserable the entire time. If a school is a good fit, the social environment should enhance your academic experience and vice versa.

With that in mind, here is a brief outline for this piece:

• Factors to consider (the basics, academic fit, cultural fit)
• Helpful resources for researching schools
• Assembling a list of schools to apply to (reaches, targets, safeties)

Factors to consider

The basics (and some miscellaneous items)

• Cost: Run those net price calculators and look through those scholarship lists (see my college affordability post for more information) to get an idea of how much you might be paying at a certain school. Some colleges are also known to have more generous financial aid packages than others. Case in point: the Ivy League is sometimes cheaper than a big name public university for out-of-state applicants. If you think grad school could be on the horizon, especially a pricey endeavor like law or medical school, that’s another factor to take into account.
• Proximity to home and ease of travel: Is your goal to stay close to home — or, conversely, to get as far away as possible? How do you feel about the prospect of going from August to Thanksgiving without seeing your family? How important is it that you’re within a day’s drive of home?
• Administration: Does administration at School X act benevolently towards students? For example, how has that school responded to the pandemic, natural disasters, etc.?
• Housing: Does School X have a reputation for high or low quality housing? Are students required to live on campus for a specific duration of time? How are the off-campus housing options in the surrounding area?
• Student services: Would School X meet your non-academic needs as well? For example, think about healthcare.
• Food: This might be especially important to consider if you have certain dietary restrictions.
• Weather: This might sound trivial, but conditions like seasonal affective disorder are real. You’re deciding where to live for the better part of four years, which includes the accompanying weather.

Academic fit

• Academic calendar: Does a school use semesters, quarters *ahem*, Dartmouth’s jank schedule, etc.?
• Department quality: How strong are the departments that you would be studying in? Some schools are known to “specialize” in certain academic areas. Does this school attract the best professors in a given field? Do the available courses provide solid breadth and/or depth of study?
• General education and major requirements: Some schools have few or no general education requirements; others force you to spend the bulk of your first two years knocking out gen ed classes. For the subject(s) you could see yourself studying, what does the path to a degree from School X look like?
• Class sizes: Do you prefer large, lecture-based classes or smaller classes with more discussions? How much do you value getting to know your professors closely?
• Major policies: How easy/hard is it to switch majors, double major, etc.?
• Teaching and advising: Are the professors and advisors at School X considered to be helpful and supportive of students?
• Internship opportunities: Does School X help students land internships? Is School X in an ideal location for internships in Field Y?
• Study abroad programs: Does your school offer robust study abroad programs that align with your interests?
• Undergraduate focus: How much of the attention, resources, etc. go to undergrad students? Similarly, do the professors at School X work there because they love teaching or because they want a big research budget?
• Academic rigor: It might seem obvious, but classes at elite schools are incredibly challenging. Are you OK with the amount of studying (and risk of lower grades) that this may entail?
• Grade inflation/deflation: Some schools are known to “inflate” or “deflate” GPAs through measures such as generous/brutal grading curves. What ramifications might this have for grad school admissions, job applications, etc. One additional note: grade inflation/deflation might exist within individual departments as well.

Cultural fit

• Population: Socially, do you want a bustling campus where you’ll meet lots of people or a smaller, more close-knit community?
• Student vibe/atmosphere: Some colleges are known to have very collaborative student bodies. Others are known to be much more cutthroat. Stress culture, sometimes referred to as floating duck syndrome, can result in a toxic environment to learn in. What are students at this school like? What do they value? Do you see yourself fitting in among your peers? Like I said earlier, don’t underestimate the importance of choosing a school where you’ll be happy.
• Social/party scene: We’re talking about your late teen years and early 20s: you should have some fun too. Does the social landscape at this school align well with your personability and how you enjoy spending time outside of class?
• Location: Is School X in a college town, part of a big city, etc.? How connected/insulated is School X from the surrounding area? Is this a place where you would want to live for four years?
• Inclusiveness: How diverse are the student body and faculty? Beyond the raw numbers, do members of historically marginalized groups (BIPOC, LGBTQ+, etc.) feel welcome and supported at School X?
• Extracurricular activities, clubs, etc.: How involved are students outside of the classroom? Could you envision yourself participating in the extracurriculars at School X? Are students genuinely passionate about what they do or are they merely trying to pad their résumé?
• Sports and school spirit: This is a prime example of a factor that might mean a lot to some applicants and nothing to others. I’ve seen campuses that are pulsing with energy on gameday and others that are…not. The pride that people have in their school can be both a blessing and a curse depending on how you look at it. Either way, you can definitely notice a difference in the intangible “feel” of a college.

Helpful resources for researching schools

• Common Data Set metrics; can be found by searching “[School X] Common Data Set”
• Racial/ethnic diversity (Section B2)
• Percentage of freshman and total undergraduate student body that live on/off campus, join fraternities/sororities, etc. (Section F1)
• Student-to-faculty ratio (Section I2) and percentage of classes with 2-9 students, 10-19 students, etc. (Section I3)
• Percentage of bachelor’s degrees that are for [insert major] (Section J1)
• Niche
  • Student polls about professors, campus life, etc.
  • Niche also has decent quantitative and qualitative data about the students at a specific school.
• Social media
  • Most colleges have a subreddit, which is a good place to ask questions to current students, dig up past Q-and-As or simply see what students are talking about.
  • Even searching a school on Instagram or Twitter and looking through students’ posts can help you get a feel for the vibe on campus.
• School-specific websites
  • Of course, you have to take everything here with a grain of salt since schools are going to present themselves in the most positive light possible.
  • What I do find valuable from these pages is information about the academic nuts and bolts. What are the credit requirements? What classes were offered last year?

Assembling a list of schools to apply to

The first thing to do when creating a school list is to be honest about your admissions chances. A lot of kids (especially those eyeing top-ranked colleges) underestimate just how competitive this game has become and get burned when decisions are released.

You might have heard about three categorizations of schools: safeties, matches and reaches. Here is how I would define each term based off advice that I’ve seen from college admissions consultants:

Safety: You are guaranteed to be admitted based on your stats (i.e. grades and test scores). Some people expand this definition to include schools where your stats are above the 80th percentile. (You can typically estimate these numbers using the aforementioned Common Data Set and/or posts on the school’s admissions website.) That said, as one consultant put it, “those percentiles should be tweaked for how good of a fit you are for the school, your own risk tolerance and how strong of an applicant you are outside your stats.”

Match: These are also sometimes referred to as target schools, places where your stats are in the 40th percentile or above. (See below, however, for a major exception.) In other words, you definitely have a shot at getting in, but you shouldn’t place these colleges in the safety bucket, either.

Reach: Reaches are schools where your stats are below the 40th percentile. Additionally, pretty much every applicant, regardless of their stats, should consider schools with a 25-30% acceptance rate or lower to be a reach. To illustrate why, let’s use USC’s admissions data for Class of 2024 enrollees. The median unweighted GPA and ACT composite score were 3.87 and 32, respectively. It might be tempting, then, to label USC as a match for a kid with, say, a 3.9 GPA and 33 ACT score, but the acceptance rate was just 16.1%. For context, 25% of all applicants that year had at least a 3.95 GPA; likewise, 25% scored at least a 34 on the ACT or 1500 on the SAT. Why does that matter? It means USC rejected a ton of high-stats students because so many applied relative to the number of available spots. Quite frankly, no one should feel super confident about their odds at USC…unless…nope, I’m not making that joke.

Please, please, please find safety schools that you would genuinely enjoy attending. Most people will (understandably) fixate on reaches. Think about what characteristics of those schools appeal to you, then research less-selective schools with similar traits. Or if you’re not entirely sure what you want, apply to a variety of schools (big state school, small liberal arts college, etc.) to give yourself options. Every year, there are people who haphazardly throw a few safeties and matches onto their list because someone told them to. When their reaches don’t pan out, they end up stuck somewhere they don’t really want to be. Avoid that fate by doing your homework in advance.

Another frequent question is how many schools to apply to. This is where the concept of shotgunning, or applying to many reach schools, comes into play. A few warnings: shotgunning can be draining, expensive (assuming you don’t have fee waivers) and inadvertently decrease your chances of getting into an elite school if you place too much emphasis on quantity of applications over quality. I think a big reason shotgunning spirals out of control for some people is because they’re just prestige hunting, applying to top schools even if they aren’t a good fit. If you actually are a competitive applicant at highly-selective colleges, applying to a greater number (assuming your applications aren’t overly-rushed) does increase your chances of getting into at least one. It seems like obvious advice as I sit here writing it out, but an easy way to make shotgunning more manageable is to cut reaches from your list that you don’t actually like that much.

One other note on this front: applying to more schools allows you to diversify your financial aid options. The schools that are hardest to get into (i.e. reaches) often give the best financial aid packages. Similarly, applying to more safeties might give you a better shot at competitive, merit-based scholarships in case you don’t win a specific scholarship at School X.

As far as the ratio of safeties to matches to reaches, consider this perspective: “Many school counselors tell students to apply to a 1-3-1 ratio. I recommend that students apply along the lines of a 1-2-3 ratio, increasing the proportion of reach schools for those applying to 10+ colleges. This may seem like a risky bet. However, consider the following scenarios for students each applying to 12 schools:

• Student A applies to 2 safeties, 8 fits, and 2 reaches. They are accepted into both safeties, 5 fits, and no reaches. They choose one of the 5 fits and are relatively satisfied.
• Student B applies to 2 safeties, 4 fits, and 6 reaches. They are accepted into both safeties, 2 fits, and 1 reach school. They are thrilled to attend the reach school.”

I don’t have a specific ratio for you, but the underlying logic here checks out. I will add that if you have safeties and matches that truly excite you, it gives you more breathing room to shoot for the stars with reaches.

Finally, I want to discuss the idea of the dream school. It’s easy to get attached to one place and have your heart set on going there, but remember that a 10% acceptance rate means 90% aren’t getting in. One of the key reasons I was able to keep my composure throughout the college admissions process was that I didn’t allow myself to emotionally latch onto a school until after I was admitted with sufficient financial aid. Because I was realistic about the odds and loved many of the schools on my list, I knew that no single decision would crush me.