<ol>
<li>It was too many.</li>
</ol>
<p>I did 8, which was too many. I have 4 acceptances, and that's probably all I'm going to get. Of those, I can only feasibly go to 3.</p>
<p>It ended up costing way too much money, and a few of them were out of my league.</p>
<p>i applied to 7 and i feel like it was too many. given the chance to do it again i think i would try to narrow it down more.</p>
<p>I applied to alot, but the schools that i applied too are not the best choices. I applied to MIT and caltech, which are extreme reaches for me, and obviously got rejected from both. I advice you juniors to not make the same mistake as i had. Rejection is a pain that will rot you alive. On the other hand, my safety colleges were what you would call "ridiculously easy to get in". I should have chosen colleges more carefully, but then again i joined this forum after i have applied to majority of the colleges.</p>
<p>A.
my safety was ridiculously easy too, but then it turns out they offered me a 120,000 scholarship for 4 years a totally free ride. so now my safety is my college. i dot feel totally clean about my choice cause the other schools may have challenged me more, but i can get a good LAC at my safety and be in the honors program there, and ig ot a special leadership scholarship whcih will make me do community work, and then use the money i saved for grad school and real life--it all a tradeoff, but i hope i mde the right decision.</p>
<p>so maybe your safety has something to offer...</p>
<p>well, i truly believe that the job of gc is way too easy to get for some.
my gc actually said that i could not or most likely could not get into some schools so i did not try. and he encouraged applying to schools that kids with way lower scores and grades get into so that was wasted time and money. if i could do it over, i would do one safety, two matches (i got into all safety and all match, don't know reach yet),
and put my time and money into reach. you just wonder if gc's know what they are talking about? what gc lets a kid send out 24 apps. Mine did not want me to do 8. He wanted it at 5-6. discouraged any reach? what a loser.</p>
<p>anonamous, i am with you. the easy were way too easy. and the match were way too easy! and the reach, well, i applied to 3 that are probably all going to be rejection. my gc did not guide much. he did discourage applying to extreme reaches but now that I read some of this stuff, i wonder if those were any more of a reach than my normal reach. like he said no to uva cause no one from my school EVER gets in. but after reading cc, that would have been no more of a reach than my reaches. make sense? exactly what quals does a gc have to have cause they suck.</p>
<p>i applied to 4. already got one acceptance which is my safety. waiting for the other three schools to reply, however, i kind of hope that they reject me though because i want to go to my safety.. then i won't have a problem deciding haha. weird?</p>
<p>3...i'd say they all were reaches.</p>
<p>i have the fear of not being accepted anywhere</p>
<p>Notbeingacceptedanywherephobic</p>
<p>^well you have very good reason to be if you only applied to 3 reaches...</p>
<p>this from a couple of days ago but i thought i'd share because it makes me feel better re: the record high number of applications coming in.</p>
<p>combatbaby,</p>
<p>Can't read that without a NYT subscription.</p>
<p>I applied to 11 total, after I got rejected ED I freaked out and added about 4 safety schools to my list</p>
<p>March 21, 2006
In New Twist on College Search, a First Choice, and 20 Backups
By ALAN FINDER</p>
<p>Michael Martin has done well in the college admissions sweepstakes, having been accepted by eight universities and rejected by one.</p>
<p>But he expects to hear from 12 more colleges in the next few weeks, including Georgetown, Wake Forest and the University of California, Los Angeles. Worried about the increasingly competitive race to get into the nation's top universities, Mr. Martin decided he needed to apply to as many colleges as he could, 21 in all.</p>
<p>"Compared to my dad's day and my grandfather's day, it's much harder to get into college," said Mr. Martin, 18, a senior at St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. "I just think I needed to get my name out to many schools."</p>
<p>His strategy is no longer that unusual. A generation ago, high school seniors applied to three, four or five colleges. But now students aiming for the most selective universities frequently apply to as many as 10 or 12; a significant number of students, especially in the last three years or so, apply to many, many more, guidance counselors and college admissions officials said.</p>
<p>The main reason for this, guidance counselors and admissions officials say, is a growing anxiety about admissions, stoked by college ranking guides, the news media and, often, parents. Some students are desperate to do anything to get into a brand-name institution including applying to many of them.</p>
<p>The growth of the common application, which more than 270 colleges accept, has contributed as well by making it easier to apply to a large number of institutions; so has an increase in the number of colleges that waive fees for online applications. Most colleges charge about $50 to $75 per application. And some students cast a wide net to increase their chances of snaring a substantial merit scholarship.</p>
<p>At Millburn High School, a public school in an affluent northern New Jersey suburb, students routinely apply to 12 to 15 universities. "We have a high here of probably 30, and we have a solid 10 percent who have applied to at least 20," said Nancy Siegel, Millburn's head counselor and coordinator.</p>
<p>Julia Sein, a senior at a magnet high school in Jacksonville, Fla., planned to apply this year to 21 colleges, before winnowing her list to 15. Neeta Kannan, who graduated from a Pittsburgh private school last year, applied to 22 colleges. Rahel Birru, who graduated from the same school a year earlier, applied to 23 (and was accepted by every one).</p>
<p>At New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill., another affluent suburban public school, about 15 to 20 seniors apply to as many as 20 colleges each year.</p>
<p>An annual survey of college freshmen indicates that students bound for all kinds of institutions are filing more applications these days. In 1967, only 1.8 percent of freshman surveyed had applied to seven or more colleges, while in 2005, 17.4 percent had done so, according to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at U.C.L.A., which conducts the survey. The survey began asking recently if the students had applied to 12 or more colleges; that proportion increased by 50 percent from 2001 to 2005.</p>
<p>"Anecdotally, I know that many students do this almost as if a game, to see how many letters of acceptance they receive," said Andy Morris, associate director of admissions for the State University of New York at Binghamton.</p>
<p>But many others are deadly serious, convinced that they must apply to myriad colleges to be assured of admission to at least one. Sometimes they apply to a vast range of colleges and sometimes to a dozen or more that are essentially the same.</p>
<p>"They are just so nervous that they won't get in anywhere that they just keep coming in with applications," said Stephanie Lapasota, guidance director at the Farmingdale school district on Long Island.</p>
<p>"It's not good for the kids," Ms. Lapasota added. "It's feeding an anxiety."</p>
<p>Ms. Lapasota said the top students at Farmingdale apply to 8 to 12 colleges. "Every year we have a student who applies to 23," she said. Last year, a senior applied to 28.</p>
<p>"We have kind of a counselor's pool each year as to who can get the right number," Ms. Lapasota said.</p>
<p>Instead of taking a scattershot approach to applications, guidance counselors said students should concentrate on researching which colleges were a good fit for them, and not wait to make the hard choice until they have won admission to multiple institutions.</p>
<p>Guidance counselors at public high schools said it would be difficult to limit applications. "I could never justify a limit," Ms. Lapasota said, "but we try to talk to them and get them to be reasonable."</p>
<p>Some private schools are already limiting how many colleges students may apply to. The Sidwell Friends School in Washington, for example, allows up to nine applications. St. Margaret's Episcopal School in Southern California plans to impose a limit of 10 next year, after having some students apply to 25 or more. Schools typically provide transcripts and letters of recommendation among other information.</p>
<p>At The Ellis School, a private girls' school in Pittsburgh, a new policy permits students to apply to 10 colleges, with a $35 fee for every application exceeding 10. Joanna Schultz, the school's director of college counseling, said she had reluctantly agreed to the fee because it was usually unnecessary to apply to 15 or 20 colleges.</p>
<p>"You can apply to all of the Ivy League schools, and more often than not our students either get into all of them or none," Ms. Schultz said.</p>
<p>While the increase in applications per student has helped swell the number of applications at many colleges a trend they like to trumpet even some admissions officials would not be disappointed if more high schools imposed limits. They said it was not good for students to be offered admission to a dozen or more colleges and then have only a few weeks in April to make a choice.</p>
<p>Sometimes a student has good reasons for applying to many colleges. Ms. Kannan, who went to the Ellis School, applied to 22 last year because she wanted to go to medical school and considered programs that combined undergraduate and medical educations, as well as traditional undergraduate colleges.</p>
<p>Ms. Kannan, now a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh in an eight-year program that includes medical school, said she was accepted to 14 or 15 universities, including Harvard and Brown. But she is confident she made the right choice. "I just like the thought of having a guaranteed med school as well," she said.</p>
<p>Ms. Birru, who graduated two years ago, hopes to go to medical school and to earn a doctorate. She said she applied to 23 colleges among them, Wellesley, Colgate, Carnegie Mellon, Dickinson and Lafayette to see which would offer her the largest merit, or non-need based, scholarship. She selected the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, which admitted her to a scholarship program that promotes research careers in the sciences, especially for members of minorities.</p>
<p>Mr. Martin, the senior in Southern California, is hoping his broad strategy produces similar results.</p>
<p>"I kind of did it shotgun different campuses, different places, all across the country," said Mr. Martin, who said he hoped to become a wildlife veterinarian.</p>
<p>He was asked what he would do if 15 or 20 colleges offered him admission.</p>
<p>"That," Mr. Martin said, "would be a great problem to have."</p>
<p>Applied to 15</p>
<p>Saint Louis University - In
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - In
University of Illinois U-C - In
Purdue - In
Auburn - In
USC - In
Olin College of Engineering - Out
Harvard - Pending
Stanford - Pending
Columbia - Pending
Princeton - Pending
Cornell - Pending
Ohio State - Pending
North Dakota - Pending
And one i cant think of - Pending</p>
<p>I applied to eight schools...free with the right connections...</p>
<p>exactly i loved fee waivers</p>
<p>i applied to 12</p>
<p>applied to 2. jesus christ. u kids applying to 5+ colleges. why? i got into both my colleges. and how much money are yall spendin on applications oh my god.</p>
<ol>
<li>And i don't regret it one bit. I would go to any of the schools I applied to.</li>
</ol>