Read the Menu Before You Pick the Restaurant

Every summer, I sit down with rising seniors who hand me a college list that’s too long, too top-heavy, and too exciting.

I understand the appeal. Reach schools are the ones everybody talks about. They’re the ones with the recognizable name, the campus tour that felt magical, the bumper sticker a student has already picked out in their head.

So when I ask these same students to spend real time thinking about the other end of their list—the schools where they have a genuinely strong chance of admission—I usually get a shrug… or worse, mild panic.

Why This Feels So Uncomfortable

I don’t blame students for this reaction. Nobody dreams about their high chance schools the way they dream about their reach schools.

It’s natural to spend more mental energy on the schools that feel hardest to get into. They carry more mystery, more prestige, more of a story to tell. Meanwhile, the schools where admission looks likely can feel like an afterthought, something to worry about later if the “better” options don’t work out.

If you or your student has been avoiding a real conversation about the less thrilling part of the list, you are in good company. Almost every family I work with starts here.

The Exercise That Changes the Conversation

I ask students to conduct a thought experiment by looking only at their high-chance schools. It sounds simple, but it’s more difficult than it appears. Ignore everything else on the list, every reach and every school in the middle.

Now imagine those are the only schools you got into. How do you feel?

I compare this to something I do before going out to eat. I like to look up a restaurant’s menu in advance, just to see what’s there. There might be a special of the day I won’t know about until I arrive, similar to the harder-to-predict schools on a list. But the online menu is what I can actually count on.

This is like looking at only the high-chance schools on your list. You cannot count on any of the other colleges—medium- or low-chance schools—to be on the menu when it is time for you to make your decision about where you would like to attend college.

When students do this exercise, I see three reactions:

1. Genuine interest: They look at their high-chance schools, realize there’s real variety worth exploring, and get a little excited as they think it through. That’s the goal.
2. Lukewarm acceptance: There’s exactly one school on that list they’d actually choose, and the rest feel like filler. That’s workable, but it’s not where I want a student to land after four years of high school.
3. Complete avoidance: Nothing on the menu looks appealing.

Building a List You Can Actually Live With

A strong college list isn’t measured by its most exciting entries. It’s measured by whether every tier—including the schools most likely to say yes—offers students options they’d genuinely be glad to choose from.

That takes real research, long before the applications are submitted. Not an afterthought search done in the spring of senior year.

It also takes an early, honest look at what a student wants and needs from their college experience, not just where they can picture themselves getting excited to visit.

Reach Out to Avoid the Scramble

This is exactly why I encourage families of freshmen, sophomores, and juniors to reach out well before senior year arrives. The students who avoid this scramble are almost always the ones who started building a thoughtful, balanced list long before decisions were due.

If your student still has time before senior fall, get in touch now so we can make the most of it.