I’ve made pretty clear that my approach to college applications is to treat the search like you’re beginning a relationship, and to watch out for the “am I worthy?’ mindset. There’s another common approach—one that I think stills falls into that mindset—that is both common and rational. Let’s think about it as the Transactional Approach to college admissions.

The Transactional Approach treats college admissions like a large purchase. (Of course, college really is a large purchase, costing thousands of dollars and putting most students into debt. But what I’m talking about here is choosing and applying to colleges as a purchase as well.) It treats the facts of your application—grades, test scores, activity list, and essays—as currency, and asks what’s the best school I can get into with this application? It usually bases “best school” on selectivity and rankings. So for example, a junior will have colleges in mind based on their GPA and PSAT scores. And then, senior year, if their grades or test scores move up or down, they’ll adjust their college list based on the highest selectivity and rankings they think they can get for those numbers. It’s all a transaction, a sale.

If you find yourself asking “what are my chances of getting into this college based on my grades, test scores, and extra-curriculars,” you’re probably working within the Transaction Approach. Any counselor will tell you that you should apply to schools based on fit, but the Transactional Approach feels like fit to the people who use it. Instead of thinking of “fit” in terms of campus culture, they think of “fit” in terms of where your stats fit into the school’s stats. So saying “focus on fit” doesn’t help keep people away from the Transactional Approach.

When you work with the Transactional Approach to admissions, you think of safety schools as insurance policies. Transactional Approach students apply to schools with high acceptance rates just like homeowners buy home insurance: because they know they need it just in case, not because they actually plan on using it. It’s often chosen as quickly and thoughtlessly as possible. It’s often chosen on someone else’s recommendation and chosen for the lowest cost or ease of application, not for quality or ease of use.

Let’s start with the positive: what works about this approach? Why is it so popular? For one, it’s logical and rational. It uses basic economic ideas to maximize what you get in exchange for what you have to offer. It reduces something complex and nebulous—which institution among thousands is the best for you as a student and person—to something concrete and quantifiable—acceptance rates and rankings, GPAs and ACT scores.

It also feels like an efficient use of your limited time. You don’t spend too much time and energy applying to schools you don’t expect to be accepted to, nor do you spend too much time applying to schools where you’ll feel like you got a “bad deal.” You focus on places where you can get the best product—school reputation—for the cost—your transcript and scores.

But there are problems with the approach, major problems. For one, it’s too economic, too reductive. Your past four years of experience aren’t just a currency to be tabulated on a sheet, and colleges aren’t just commodities to be traded to the highest bidder. You’re a real, complex person. And colleges are real, complex communities. The Transactional Approach ignores the less tangible, but just as important, aspects of college. It ignores the fact that you will be doing things, with other people, at college. College isn’t simply an Honor Roll for high school students, where you want to make sure you’re on the highest one possible. So you should think very hard about what all you want to do at college, with what kind of people, in what kind of atmosphere. That’s where you’ll find a better fit than comparing your SAT scores with a college’s midrange.

How can you avoid the Transactional Approach? Should you just ignore selectivity and reputation? No, you shouldn’t. You obviously have to keep those things in mind. You can’t just decide that Pomona, with its 7% acceptance rate, is your best fit and only apply there. That’s too risky. But you should think about selectivity and reputation toward the end of your process, not the beginning. Find schools that you really like and that are a good fit for you in terms of focus, size, geography, campus culture, and specialties. Then you can reduce your list to a manageable size keeping selectivity in mind. Think about selectivity and acceptance rates toward the end, not the beginning.

Over the past few weeks I’ve made five recommendation lists for current high school juniors. These are people that I’ve spoken with for at least an hour, most of them two or three hours, about who they are and what they’re looking for. Based on that, I put together a list of 20-30 schools I want them to have a closer look at. And for each of these juniors the list includes a wide range of selectivity. There’s nobody I think is “not good enough” to include well-known schools with acceptance rates under 20% if those schools seem to fit what the student is looking for. Nor is there anyone I think is “too good” to look at schools with acceptance rates in the 70%+ range if they seem like they may be a good fit for the student. For most people, about half the schools on my recommendation lists end up having acceptance rates between 20% and 60%; there’s no quota or strict rule I go by. The important thing is that no future data will change that balance for me. If one of those juniors comes back to me with big gains in their GPA or really high test scores, I don’t shift the recommendations toward more selective schools . Selectivity and reputation are things to always have in the background but never have in the foreground. If I were speaking to a group, I’d repeat that with emphasis, so let me do the same here:

Selectivity and reputation are things to always have in the background but never have in the foreground.

Your past (and present) self is not a portfolio of assets to trade for a college reputation. Your future is not a purchase to maximize branding power. Please don’t forget that.

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2. Read these related posts: Should you apply to all the Ivy League schools?, You’re not trying to impress anyone, Stop paying attention to acceptance rates!

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