Seniors Hedge College Bets, but Now It’s Time to Choose

Like lots of ambitious high school seniors, Joe Kelly applied to a passel of colleges for this coming fall, 16 in all. And with his strong record at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, he was accepted by half of his choices.

But making a decision is proving complicated as Kelly faces the annual May 1 pick-your-school deadline widely enforced by four-year campuses around the country.

Kelly still hasn’t received details of the financial aid packages due from some schools, and he isn’t sure whether he will qualify for Cal Grant assistance from the state. He was disappointed to be rejected by his top choices, USC and UCLA, and has been awaiting word on his appeals of those denials.

“Basically, this decision sets me on the pathway of where I’m going to go for the rest of my life,” Kelly said. “A lot of thought has to go into it.”

April is always a time of difficult decisions for college applicants. Lately, a big factor increasing the tension is that competitive students often apply to a slew of places, trying to boost their odds of getting into a top-tier school.

At elite private schools and leading public high schools, seniors commonly fire off applications to 10 or more campuses, a practice that college counselors say was rare less than a generation ago. In a national survey, UCLA researchers found that 16.1% of this year’s freshmen at four-year colleges applied to seven or more campuses, up from 1.8% in the late 1960s.

The shift to electronic college applications, including those at California’s public universities that permit students to apply to multiple campuses with a few extra computer keystrokes, has fueled the trend. J. Michael Thompson, USC’s dean of admission and financial aid, said it also stems from a growing preoccupation among parents and students with strategies to get into high-status schools.

But he and other admissions experts say that the scattershot approach to applications can hinder students from figuring out what colleges are best for them. More students are holding off on committing until close to May 1 because, Thompson said, “they’re really uncertain about what is the college experience that they’re trying to have.”

Hector Martinez, director of college guidance at the Webb Schools in Claremont, also tells students to narrow their list of potential colleges early in the application process.

He normally urges a 10-school limit, although he loosens that cap for students applying to more than one UC campus. Occasionally, he acknowledged, students defy him. A few years ago, a student applied to 22 schools, and this year one senior applied to 19. “What usually happens if you over-apply to colleges, is that you probably will mess something up, and you’ll send the ‘Gosh, I really want to go to Oberlin’ letter’ to Whitman College,” Martinez said.

The practice, he added, also raises ethical questions about whether applicants are overburdening colleges and hurting other students, by “hogging up admit letters all over the country.”

Competition for spaces at selective schools is intensifying as more children of baby boomers are reaching college age. In all, 3.04 million Americans are expected to graduate from high school this year, up 20.6% from a decade ago. The result: lots of students are getting surprise rejections in March and early April, forcing them to pick one of their backup choices in a hurry.

Some of these students are sending in their deposits to reserve a spot at one campus, even as they hope to be pulled off a waiting list in May or June by a higher-ranked school. That maneuvering is not only creating headaches for students, but is also complicating enrollment planning by colleges. To make sure they don’t wind up with too many or too few freshmen, schools appear to be putting more students on waiting lists, admissions officials and college counselors say.

Andrew Breitman, a senior at the private Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, applied to 14 schools, winning acceptances from four -- and landing on the waiting list at five others. For now, he is focusing mainly on two of the schools that accepted him, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and UC San Diego.

But the aspiring engineering major said he hasn’t stopped thinking about four of the schools that put him on their waiting lists: Brown, Cornell, Washington University and Caltech. Breitman plans to write each campus again soon to say, “I’m still here, and I still want to go to your school.”

For students from low- and middle-income families, anxieties about getting the best financial aid package also can prolong decisions. They are squeezed by the ever-rising cost of higher education, cutbacks implemented and proposed in the state’s Cal Grant program and colleges’ growing emphasis on merit scholarships rather than grants based on economic need.

At various prestigious private schools, incoming freshmen next year who don’t win any scholarships or grants will need $45,000 to cover a year of education and living expenses.

Add to that the traditional questions -- What are the advantages of a small school versus a big one? Is it a good idea to stay close to home? -- and some students still are unable to commit.

“We’re getting down to the wire, and kids are feeling the press of May 1, with some of them still not having a strong preference,” said Roland M. Allen, director of college counseling at St. Margaret’s Episcopal.

“It’s a changing terrain every day for kids, as they hear from different schools, or as they’re waiting for financial aid offers, or if they’re considering wait list options, or if they visit a place they thought was high on their list and it just didn’t go well.”

(Because May 1 falls on a Sunday this year, UC campuses and some other schools are accepting replies postmarked or e-mailed May 2, but Allen is advising students not to wait until then to submit their enrollment deposits, which typically range from $100 to $300. Cal State schools are maintaining the May 1 deadline.)

Students such as Sarah Stone of Sacramento find the uncertainty draining. Stone, who was accepted by eight of the 11 colleges where she applied, said: “I almost wish I got rejected from everywhere I wanted to go but one college so I wouldn’t have to do anything. I’d just mark the ‘yes’ box and send it in and be ready to go.

“It’s good to have options but ... you always wonder if it’s the right choice,” said Stone, who recently visited UCLA and Georgetown, two of the schools where she has been accepted. “It is a big decision.”

Her mother, Cindy Stone, noted that other activities -- such as taking senior trips, studying for Advanced Placement exams and getting ready for proms -- also preoccupy students around this time of year. “There’s a lot for a senior to do in April,” she said. “It would be nice if seniors could have April off as a reward for their good hard work.”

Isaac De Haro, a senior in the magnet program at San Fernando High School, has struggled with his decision. He first selected Cal State Northridge to stay close to home and help his mother, who is single and supports De Haro and his 12-year-old sister working as a seamstress.

But in recent days, he withdrew from Northridge and switched his allegiance to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo because of the stronger reputation of its engineering programs.

“All these things, I had to take them all in perspective. I realized that this is affecting my life, too, my future,” said De Haro, who expects to cover his college expenses next year with scholarship and grant funds and a work-study job. “I’m thinking about the future and how in the future I can really help [my family] with a good education. That’s what basically made my decision.”

De Haro also noted that San Luis Obispo is much closer to his home than are the other campuses where he was accepted, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Kelly, too, has focused on staying in California. He would like to stay within a few hours’ drive of his family’s Laguna Hills home to be able to help his mother, who was widowed 18 months ago and who cares for his ailing grandmother.

Kelly -- a varsity baseball and football player who scored 1300 on his SATs, holds a B-plus average and is taking four AP classes this year -- was hoping to attend UCLA or USC. But unless one of his appeals comes through, he will be heading elsewhere.

To help decide, Kelly has zipped from one campus to another this month. Last week he visited Loyola Marymount University, and this week he is heading to UC Irvine and UC Davis. Kelly also has received admissions offers from UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, San Diego State, Cal Poly Pomona and the University of San Diego.

Kelly doesn’t expect to make up his mind until next weekend’s deadline, yet the need to decide soon is adding stress to his life.

His older brother, a fourth-year student at UCLA, told him not to agonize over the issue. “But,” Kelly said, “it’s hard to maintain that attitude.”