Q&A with Charlotte: How Command Helps Students Build Their Perfect College List

A: It’s pretty common for students to start visiting schools of interest during the winter and spring of junior year. With this in mind, I typically recommend that students start jotting down the schools that they may be interested in during the fall so that they can plan campus visits in advance. Tour spots fill up fast, so being proactive about planning matters.

By the start of summer before senior year, we try to have a first-draft list fleshed out—this list is usually longer than what a student will ultimately apply to and reflects a broader list of the schools that could be a good fit. Over the summer, we explore them further through websites, virtual tours, and in-person visits, so that by the end of summer the list is close to finalized, particularly the early decision and early action choices.

I always tell families that a lot comes into focus after August 1st, once supplemental essay topics are released. Knowing the prompts can help students decide which school makes the most strategic early decision or early action pick, since different prompts let them show different sides of themselves. So: winter and spring is for visit planning, early summer for a preliminary (longer) list, the rest of summer for narrowing it down, and the supplemental prompts help finalize the early decision choice.

A: Generally, we recommend that students apply to 4–6 reaches, 4–6 matches, and 2–3 safeties, so roughly 12–15 schools overall. This can also vary from student to student depending on their goals. For instance, if a student has a list with a lot of high reach schools, I tend to encourage them to apply to fewer low match or safety schools so that they aren’t drowning in supplemental essays. Alternatively, if a student is applying with lower stats and grades, I encourage them to apply to more schools to maximize their odds (and we tend to include a good volume of state schools, which tend to have fewer supplemental essays).

A: While students want balance across reaches, targets, and safeties, a few other factors should shape the list. First, I encourage students to think about location. Remember that this is going to be your home for four years—if you hate the idea of living in a city, NYU is probably not for you. Size is also an important component. Odds are, the student who would thrive at a small, liberal arts college in small discussion-based classes is not a student who would enjoy a large state school. And knowing that you don’t want a 40,000-student flagship state school already narrows the list significantly. Finally, students should consider academic fit. If a student has a niche interest, they should look for schools with a program or facility that matches it (for instance, Yale’s computing and the arts major will be a draw for a very particular type of student). Finding that kind of alignment gives a student a genuinely compelling basis for fit. Even if they don’t have this kind of niche interest, students should think more broadly about what type of school and program will best align with their learning style and academic goals.

A: Every member of our team would give students the same answer to this question: a student should not apply to all the Ivy League colleges. The Ivy League schools are vastly different from one another—Dartmouth is rural, Columbia is urban, Princeton has a small town feel, Cornell spans everything from agriculture to hotel administration across a much larger student body, and Brown is liberal arts focused, allowing students to design their own curriculum. They’re all excellent schools, but they're not interchangeable. Demonstrating genuine fit is the single most important factor in an Ivy League application, and it is nearly impossible for a single student to be a good fit for all eight.

A: When navigating this process alone, families often end up with a really unbalanced list. Generally, families encourage students to craft lists that are way too reach-heavy, because the Ivy League and other brand names are the schools everyone knows. Families also tend to know one solid safety, often their state’s strongest public university. But the match category is the most important on the list, and it tends to be where people need the most guidance.

The other common mistake is misjudging how competitive schools have become. A lot of colleges have rebranded, invested heavily in research and specific programs, and grown far more selective—and families don't always realize it. I’ve worked with families who assumed that Tufts is a safety school, not realizing that they have a 10% admissions rate. For most students, Tufts is a high reach, not a safety.

A: I get a lot of pre-med students because of my own background. I worked with a student who was STEM-focused but had a strong humanities lens, so a very interdisciplinary profile, rather than a pure STEM researcher. She had planned to apply as a biology major, but I didn’t think that was the right fit given how much service and interdisciplinary work was in her background. I suggested that she pursue health studies or health humanities instead, which turned out to be a much better strategic fit for her.

That single shift changed her entire list, since health humanities and health studies are specialized programs found mostly at certain liberal arts schools. It also shifted her away from large state schools. Based on how she talked about her high school relationships with teachers, I could tell she wanted smaller classes and close faculty connections. So her list moved away from big state schools, where I thought she’d feel overwhelmed, toward smaller, academically strong pre-med schools like Tufts and Emory.

A: Our team brings a wealth of firsthand and data-backed insight about both the universities out there and the work that goes into applying based on the list a student assembles. We are deeply familiar with how long it actually takes to craft acceptance-worthy applications, especially for reaches and high reaches, so we guide students to make sure the list has a strategic balance of reaches, matches, and safeties that will maximize their odds while ensuring none of their applications are half-baked.

When it comes to the schools themselves, our expertise is valuable in helping students determine what are truly the best match options for them. We help surface schools families may not know about (we call them “hidden gems”), like strong academic, small liberal arts colleges that aren’t household names like Harvard but offer excellent programs and grad school outcomes. No two balanced lists look the same because no two students are the same. The advantage of Command’s mentorship approach is that we work with students one-on-one over time. Because we get to know students on a personal level, we can recommend schools where students would genuinely thrive, not just based on their scores or generic knowledge of their interests, but a real understanding of their personalities, goals, and preferences.