How should I answer questions about where else I am applying?
Don't, say many high school counselors. "Full disclosure is not in the student's best interest," says Judith Williams, a college counselor at the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pa. The reason is that the information may be used against you. While some schools just want to figure out what college criteria matter to you (all the schools on your list have strong journalism programs, for instance) so as to better market their campus to you, others want to assess how likely you are to attend if admitted. That's potentially a problem at colleges attempting to boost their yield, the fraction of admitted students who ultimately enroll. Such colleges may preemptively reject (or wait-list) top candidates with more popular schools on their lists.
So what to do? Some counselors suggest answering with a few similarly competitive schools from your list or stating that you are still undecided. Willard Dix, college counselor at the University of Chicago Laboratory High School, usually recommends leaving the question blank (on the application) or declaring yourself uncomfortable with the question (in an interview). "I don't want to put kids in the negative position of lying or prevaricating," he says.
Don't be surprised if an interviewer pushes for an answer. Mark Geyer says a Tufts University alumni interviewer asked four or five times what other schools he was applying to. He tried to evade the question, he says, but the interviewer persisted. The experience left Geyer with "a sour aftertaste." Although he was admitted to Tufts, this fall he enrolled at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. But for the most part, colleges will let unanswered questions slide. "I respect a student who says they prefer not to answer," says Michael Frantz, vice president for enrollment services at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
