During all my Career & College Planning Presentations, I
encourage students to Explore Colleges
and think about factors like location, size, and Major or Program of interest
before they make their selection. Even
students who already think they know what college(s) they want to go to, I want
them to think about why they want to go to that specific college, consider
multiple schools, and weigh their options.
The reason that we want those students to have options is to
have a “Safety School” just in case their first choice doesn’t work out. It could be that when they visit the college
the student doesn’t get a good feel for the school like they had originally
thought they would. Another reason is
that not all students get ADMITTED into their first choice school. A safety
school is simply a back-up plan.
I was just reminded of this last week in talking with an
Admission Rep at a college/university here in Iowa. They had been recruiting a
high school senior who was a 4.0 student and had an ACT score in the 30’s. The student wanted to go to one of two Ivy
Leagues schools, both are highly selective.
The student just found out a few weeks ago that they were not admitted
into either Ivy League school.
Unfortunate, but it does happen even to great students.
This student had not applied to any other “safety”
schools. The Admission Rep from the
Iowa college told me that they had tried to get the student to apply before and
that they would still be able to. But
the real sad part of the story is they also had not filled out a Presidential
Scholarship application that was due in the middle of January at the
school. The scholarship would have given
this student a full ride to this particular Iowa College. This student can still be accepted at the
college/university but by not keeping their options open and getting in the
application sooner, it’s going to cost them a lot more money.
Students, who are in the middle of the college search
process, don’t let this happen to you. Keep your options open and fill out
admission and scholarship applications by the deadlines. We would hate to see any other student fall
into this predicament.
Erick - ICAN Ankeny/Des Moines Centers
