Q: Is it worth paying this much money to an IEC for college applications?
A: It depends. Let’s see how it looked for one student.
Students come to me with these lists, and they tend to think that this is the list they will choose their college from.
But they forget about the whole “sorting hat” process that happens in the middle.
IECs guide parents and students in a reality-based evaluation; there’s no such thing as a safety school, and many of these schools were highly unlikely just based on the numbers alone.
It’s a numbers thing.
Look at the acceptance rate numbers on the schools on this list.
The highest acceptance rate on this student’s list was 37 percent. 😲
Again, it depends on the student, but generally speaking, this is not a strategy to set a student up for success in this process, for a number of reason that we’ve covered in these videos:
Students should aim to build a diversified list of schools to apply to that includes three likely, five target, and one (maybe two, depending on the student) unlikely schools.
Students should expect to be rejected from schools on their list. If a student wants to go to college but gets rejected from all schools on a lofty, unlikely list, there will be no college to enroll in at the end of the process.
Students should be excited to attend the schools on this list if offers of admission are extended.
When this student first came to me, she had just started the process. As a junior, she Googled colleges, and she came up with her first, second, and third choices.
Only, she had zero likelies, zero targets, and eight unlikelies on that list.
That’s where we start the process as IECs of working with students and helping them to peel back the layers of what it is that they’re interested in studying and what kind of college or university is a good fit for them and their family.
Here’s what building a diversified list of schools to apply to looks like:
Download this worksheet here:
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