Welcome to CC!
I’m an 8th grader applying to 9th grade as a freshman.
Here is my current school list this year:
- Choate
- Hill
- Loomis Chaffee
- Hotchkiss
- SPS
- NMH
- Episcopal
- Mercersburg
- Deerfield
- Andover
- Miss Porter’s School
That’s 10 schools. In my opinion, you should maybe think twice about applying to 20+ schools. Assuming that the average application fee is $50, that could be more than 1k in application fees. If you can pay that, great. You still need to think about 20 different interviews and possibly 20 essays as well, and it seems like you haven’t started on those essays yet. So can you apply to 20+ schools? Yes, definitely. Do I recommend it? Not really.
To answer your other question:
Do you know if they will be able to upload an identical rec letter to these schools, or does each of the school require the teacher to write something different?
No, they will not have to upload 20 unique recommendations (thank goodness). Of course, as @mondaydevil said, there could be a variance in prompts between different application systems, but in general, I think they’ve done a pretty good job of making doing recommendations not too much work for the teachers.
Additional Note: I would check out this amazing thread from a parent who was in the same spot as you a few months ago. It has so much great advice.
Completely inexperienced dad looking for some guidance