<p>Baywood,</p>
<p>Thank you for answering that. I was one who wondered. Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Glad to have you aboard. Btw, yes, I think you are crazy… just as crazy as we are 
(14 apps here!)</p>
<p>Truly, I am in awe of those families who manage to shepherd their children through many applications. Happykid only applied to the local CC two years ago, and this year has a transfer list of two!</p>
<p>I find it surprising that so many parents seem troubled by OP’s actions. But the way I see it, it’s a relatively small marginal cost to apply to a college. For me, I really liked all the competitive schools I applied to, which made up the bulk of my application. But on top of that, I couldn’t be sure that I would be accepted by most of them. It’d be really unlikely, but I could actually be rejected by all of them come April. So doing another essay (and having my parents pay another set of fees) didn’t seem like that big of an issue instead of having the wrong set of options later. And it’s not like my parents had to spend a lot of their own time: I did the apps because I wanted to.</p>
<p>I think OP is the same, except this time, it’s with merit aid. Stuff like that can be unpredictable too, so I think having a good set of packages to chose from doesn’t sound too bad in exchange for doing some more apps. As long as you have the time to write the essays and they are financially feasible, why not?</p>
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</p>
<p>I’ve been at two local CCs this past year, and they sucked the soul out of me every time I went on campus. (Luckily, one of my courses was online based and I only had to make the trip in order to take the midterm and finals) You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to go back there!</p>
<p>Our S applied to 9. And that was plenty – keeping up with senior year classes and ECs was tough when he had all those essays to write. Several schools required two extra essays in their supplements, and I don’t mean short essay questions. Anyway, it was crazy and stressful for him. His original list was 10 schools, but the 10th was a serious reach, both academically and financially, so he decided to nix that one. Result, he has been accepted into 7, still waiting on the other two, and only one of those remaining is a bit of a reach. So, he’ll have a big decision come April. The merit awards have been a surprise in that they are all over the map. Very little at one school where we expected he’d be especially courted, and about twice what we expected from a school that was a high match. Point being…you just can’t know for sure where the kid will be accepted, and how much merit aid he’ll be offered, so I guess we were right to tell him last fall that he had earned the right to apply to any school he could honestly see himself wanting to attend. (We also toured all but one in person; extreme distance kept us away from the one.)</p>
<p>S visited 11 schools and decided to apply to 7, one of which he did not visit. He already knows he would be happy at the 6 he visited. He loves his safety, it is affordable, and was already admitted there, so the waiting will be a hopeful time with some likely rejections. It will all turn out the way it should! (I did not sound this “chill” on December 30 before the apps were submitted!) :)</p>
<p>Oh, and, YES, I think 21 schools is crazy!</p>
<p>He’s our first kid to this age, so we’re rookies, worried about missing opportunities, too open to everyone’s advice. Our S is maddeningly open minded, and unfocused. We visited one small, med and large school, and he announced he didn’t want to visit any more, because any would be fine. He agrees that a small school would be nice for personal teacher contact, but likes big school sports. He would hear from a friend that a school was great, and want to apply there, too. His GC would recommend him for a merit scholarship, we’d see advice on CC about great merit opportunities, a friend’s brother thinks the physics program at his school is wonderful, etc., it just became a hurricane. We had said early on that we would pay the fees for any college he felt enough desire to complete the application for (mistake!).</p>
<p>We have a high EFC, without the ability to really pay that much. He’s level headed enough not to want much debt. So the objective factor of cost was at least something to start working with. But, bizarrely, you don’t know the price before you apply, only after! So the pressure to apply to a lot, so as not to miss any great deals. And with the chances of a large merit award, the cost range is staggering.</p>
<p>Frankly, I am worried about decision time, and have been posting here for advice on advantages of small college physics vs. large (great mix of well informed answers, nothing that settles the questions for us.) How can anyone in their right mind turn down a nearly free ride at Michigan State Univ.? But, maybe he’ll land a great merit award at a liberal arts college, where close work with a professor (NOT a grad student!!) will change his life? I expect that the results will produce a list of about 4-8 in the range that we can pay and leave him little debt. I also expect him to mature a bit (us too). Then, we drive.</p>
<p>Man, I hope this will be easier in two years for my D. She will have very definite opinions.</p>
<p>Physics is a relatively uncommon major, so many small schools have rather limited offerings in the subject (although freshman and sophomore level courses will generally be available as breadth courses and for students majoring in subjects like chemistry, biology, and engineering). </p>
<p>Check each school’s course catalog for junior and senior level courses in analytic mechanics, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, physics lab, and electives like astrophysics, particle physics, plasma physics, etc… Check also that they are offered frequently enough (some courses may be offered only once every two years at small schools). Junior and senior level courses will be smaller than freshman and sophomore level courses, even at big universities.</p>
<p>My daughter also applied to a number of schools, a number similar to the OP, after visiting about 35. All of the schools she applied to are need blind and offer good aid (except for perhaps for the UCs). Although she definitely has preferences, she only applied to colleges she would be happy to attend. Our finances are such that my daughter will need significant financial aid to attend a private college and in researching colleges I concluded that, generally speaking, colleges offering the best aid are also the most difficult to get into. In addition, my daughter also submitted a music supplement and it was difficult to determine where playing the viola might make the most difference in being offered admission. So, for us, because of the combination of our need for financial aid, applying to very selective colleges, and the music supplement, it made sense to apply to a large number of colleges that some would judge to be “excessive”. </p>
<p>Those that are critical of those applying to a large number of colleges often cite the cost of doing so. I think that such a view is potentially a case of being penny wise and pound foolish. It probably cost us an average of almost $100 for each college applied to. So, applying to so many colleges probably cost us an additional $1,000-1,500. While this is a substantial amount of money, in pales in comparison to the potential savings that might result from additional financial aid. Financially, the worst case scenario is that we wasted the $1,000-1,500. Best case scenario is that it will save us tens of thousands of dollars. We decided that the “investment” of $1,000-1,500 was worth the potential benefit. Others might disagree, but I think it was a good decision.</p>
<p>Of course the financial cost is not the only cost of applying to colleges. While all of the colleges (except for the UCs) use the common application, all of them required additional essays, often multiple essays. So, my daughter probably ended up writing 40-50 essays, many of them over the Christmas break. But, she was willing to spend her vacation time writing them. While applying to so many colleges is not for the faint of heart, it made sense for my daughter to do so.</p>
<p>I think that those that do not need to (or choose not to) apply to a large number of colleges (because they are accepted early somewhere, because they don’t need financial aid or scholarships, because they have a clear number one dream school, etc.) should not be so quick to criticize those of us that do. We are all just trying, based on our personal circumstances, to make the best decisions possible for our children. Just because your personal circumstances do not justify applying to a large number of colleges, does not mean that it doesn’t make sense for others to conclude otherwise.</p>
<p>Like CountMonteCristo’s I also chose to give up my winter break writing admissions essays. Yeah, it was pretty terrible at the time. But I don’t regret it now, and I got to spend plenty of time (maybe too much) with my family. Right now, I would’ve regret it more if I didn’t apply to a school just simply because I didn’t want to write the essay.</p>
<p>Clearly, what I did isn’t the right way for everybody. In fact, I don’t think it’s the right way for the vast majority of people. But based on my own situation, I’m not going to have a lot of regret when the admissions letters roll in later for better or for worse.</p>
<p>In my opinion there are valid reasons for a kid to apply to many schools. In my son’s case he applied to 17 schools. He was my second to do the college thing and I have wished so many times I had known with the first what I learned before the second go-round. We had major financial issues, after having started early with a Texas Tomorrow fund, my husband, in the spring of our daughter’s senior year, had a stroke while working out of town and due to the fact that he was alone, was unable to receive medical care early (it happened during the night, before Easter Sunday, so no one was aware until too late)leaving mental damage that couldn’t be reversed. I drained our savings, sold the house in order to get out from under the mortgage (luckily about 6 months the bottom dropped out of the housing market), cashed in every bond and stock we held, all in a vain attempt to find someone to fix it. Leaving not a dime of money for college. Daughter’s school, where she had already accepted her admission offer, thankfully threw in more than enough money to make it happen for her. So four years down the road, I’m coping a little better and really starting to panic on what to do for son. Community college would have been my only option before I learned strategies from this great site (I know some people probably think College Confidential is a waste of time and overly concerned with prestige, but there is wonderful information here that would work for everyone). But looking two years down the road, I knew community college might get us through the first two years, but the money situation wouldn’t be better and transfer aid sucks, to put it mildly. </p>
<p>To further complicate matters, son didn’t know if he wanted public, private, in-state, out of state, big, little, engineering school or school with an engineering program. College counselor said, don’t put limits yet, she helped with vouchers and waivers for testing and application fees, so we applied to 17. Some we were able to visit beforehand, others he applied to based on research. We visited almost all 17 his senior year, (school was also understanding about absences). </p>
<p>Counselor did encourage him to think hard about what he wanted, because she pointed out, as said in earlier posts, what if he gets into all of them, he has to choose. I didn’t think that would be a problem, as he wasn’t a 4.0, 2350 kid, but turned out, of the 17, he was rejected by 2, wait-listed by 3, and got into the rest. One of the schools that wait-listed him was his first choice (Rice) and he took it pretty hard. Counselor gave him excellent advice, when she said, look at the schools that want you, he did take his place on the wait-lists for the 3, but after thinking about what she said (and she had a speech), he took his name off the wait-lists (and by the end, I don’t think he wouldn’t have gone to Rice if they had come through with an admission offer). </p>
<p>There would have been more schools on the, but because we put them in order by deadlines, and visited schools based on area of the country, and dates that were available, there were a couple of schools he ruled out from the visit, before the application was filed. He was much better at saying what he didn’t want then stating what he did want. </p>
<p>Bottom line, 5 schools gave him plenty of money to attend without a ton of loans, 2 instate, 3 out of state, 3 public, 2 private, but only one of those 4, would have been on the original short list, meaning he would have had only 1 school we could afford (and it was the school that he would have been in the top 10% of their admits by stats, so probably not the best program). So yes, he still would have been able to go, but by widening the net had many more choices to consider. </p>
<p>It seems to me, that in cases where finances are the deciding factor, or in students whose stats are either so great (because admission at the very top schools is completely unpredictable) or so mediocre, where there is a real possibility that the student can’t get into any schools, then the only logical choice is to apply to many schools because it would be horrible for May 1st to roll around and a student not have any choices that will work.</p>
<p>Now for the kid whose parents can pay with little or no problem and the kid who’s application is so strong that admission isn’t a doubt, yeah, those kids can get by with just 4 or 5, but for situations like ours, there has to be more schools on the table. Of course it helps when the high school makes it possible by providing time and resources, teachers don’t mind doing the recs, headmaster is willing to overlook many absences, teacher’s will help proof essays etc… I can’t see a kid doing that many without a good support system.</p>
<p>21 apps is crazy.
Our GCs suggest no more than 10.
A well honed list prevents the apps race.</p>
<p>Consider this–no one can LOVE all of the ivies for example.
They are so different in culture/campus etc etc. Why apply to them all?
Yet every year we read about kids applying to all of the ivies…frankly IMHO it is ego not real introspective “matching” and lack of mature guidance.</p>
<p>If your student has already been accepted to some schools she’d prefer over others in the RD round that she hasn’t heard from…AND they offered aid etc…
Then
I suggest she pull her apps from schools she’d like less than ones she is holding…and wait and see about the other schools that are higher on her list.</p>
<p>It is true that there will be students who want to go to those schools.</p>
<p>This gets discussed every year. When a person is hoping for the best FA package, they commonly cast a wide net. However, the risk of doing 21 apps (assuming its not simply a matter of sending multiple common apps but involves extra essays and perhaps several of the “why XXX school” essays) is that it is hard to really put the time, energy and detail into a really bang-up application, especially if many require multiple essays. Not impossible, just hard. IMO, 12-15 apps is a lot. 21 is a bit over the top. But thats just me. Certainly its hard to know which schools will come through with the best FA package. So, good luck and keep us posted!</p>
<p>There are many types or styles of decision making. This process is about decision making first and foremost. While I said earlier that I thought 20 applications was too many this is an opinion and formed probably through my decision making process (and beaten into me through Kepner Tregoe training) and genetics…my kids are all very decisive. The scattershot approach with the belief that this is the “best” way to unearth financial value is a legitimate part apparently of this OPs decision making process just as some people cannot be happy unless they have turned over every rock. Simply different decision making style. The end game is that kids can only attend one college. I tend to prefer the approach of find one or two colleges the kids are willing to attend and round the applications out with some that the kids also would like to attend. I tend to have the opinion that this mad rush to send out more than a handful of applications has a diminishing effect since the college admissions teams haven’t expanded exponentially and it has only limited their ability to give all applicants time on the apps. I also tend to believe that if common wisdom is that a college is not generous with financial aid that is probably true…but I also know that lightening strikes and it’s a matter of whether you can walk away if the number isn’t what is needed. I just don’t play the lottery or stand outside when it’s lightening. Financial aid is also a finite number and I have a sneaking suspicion that when Suzie, whom the college wanted bunches, turns down the offer the college does not turn around and give Harry the money…or all least 100% of the time. But of course, that is an opinion. I wish the OP a good outcome.</p>
<p>chaosakita - Happykid’s CC is arguably better for her major than the next most affordable option, and she really wasn’t interested in leaving home just yet. She’s had a very good experience there, and now is ready to move on. Her list is short by choice, and she’s been accepted by the “safety”. Writing the essays for the “financial” reach has nearly killed her. If the list were any longer and required this kind of effort for the essays, we’d all lose our minds for sure!</p>
<p>Yes, 21 applications is crazy! Apparently you didn’t do your homework before class and now you’re trying to get an A? This is not a good lesson to teach your kids. </p>
<p>IOW, if you did your research ahead of application time, you’d pretty much know where you like, where you’d get in and approximate FA. By doing that, you are far more likely to get an A (as in an acceptance letter). I bet many on your son’s list will not even be a consideration when you hear in March/April.</p>
<p>Heh, I only applied to 5 schools.</p>
<p>I could definitely have applied to more, but I know I would turn down many of those schools in the end, so I don’t want to take an acceptance away from another applicant.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to take an acceptance away from another applicant.”</p>
<p>You wouldn’t be taking an acceptance away from anyone. Because of yield, colleges “accept” many more then they actually intend to enroll. If not enough applicants decide to accept, they will then take someone off their wait list.</p>
<p>Baywood</p>
<p>You really didn’t have to apply to 21 schools to find a financial safety or two. They are easy to find, especially with all the CC data. </p>
<p>MSU? Explain the nearly full ride. What were you offered. Just curious. It was on my older sons list (as he is a big Spartan fan as I got both my degrees there). With his top stats (valedictorian, top ACT and EC’s etc. ) he was offered instate tuition and opportunity to compete for one of the full rides (yes, compete as in take a test on campus with a ton of other kids- we opted out), great other perks, but the instate tuition was the only merit he got upon acceptance letter. Are you instate and then given merit money?</p>
<p>You will see, looking back, 21 was overkill. Too many you can’t afford /don’t want to pay anyway!!</p>
<p>Now that acceptances are coming in, look at $$$ carefully. No debt is great debt! Your son will do well at most schools and if he is like my friends son, (small LAC undergrad physics major) and then on to free PhD physics program as they teach/do research. Your son will do well!! (And MSU is a great school. Go Spartans!!)</p>
<p>Perhaps Count, but an applicant that applies with no real intent of attending is taking time away from other kids by virtue of consuming an admissions person’s time and effort in reviewing the app, is consuming the high school offices time in sending transcripts and consuming their own time. Applying to random colleges where an applicant isn’t seriously considering is a rather self absorbed activity and in my opinion shows a lack of critical thinking skills or a kid who could use some stronger mentoring.</p>