<p>So I know that everyone says you should apply to 6-10 schools or whatever, but I am having I really tough time narrowing down my list because I am applying for a lot of selective schools. Quick stats: 35 on ACT, 4.0 UW GPA, 4.39 W GPA, 800 Chem SAT II, 780 US HIST SAT II, 5's on Chem and Hist, many dance accomplishments, Pres of dance club, NHS, overall high scorer on school science team, Math Honor Society, and many school spirit clubs. That being said, do you think these 15 are alright?
Carnegie Mellon Univ<br>
Case Western Reserve Univ<br>
Univ of Chicago<br>
Emory Univ<br>
Georgetown Univ<br>
U of Michigan<br>
New York Univ<br>
U of North Carolina Chapel Hill<br>
Northwestern Univ
U of Pennsylvania<br>
Tulane Univ<br>
Vanderbilt Univ<br>
Wake Forest Univ<br>
Washington Univ in St Louis<br>
Yale Univ</p>
<p>Make sure you aren’t applying to schools just for the names. You have a wide variety of location styles (city, suburban) on your list, make sure you aren’t applying just for the name and actually like the campuses. Also, if you can narrow down one or two favorites, it always helps to attend open houses/ prospective student events if offered. If you can really see yourself going to every school on your list, then apply to all of them if you can balance the essays. </p>
<p>Do you actually want to go to all those schools…? Usually you pick a handful of schools you really want to go to and also apply to some back up schools </p>
<p>If you really want to get into a reach, you should apply to one or two safeties and many other reaches.</p>
<p>However, you will need to write essays for just about every school on that list. Assuming an average of 2 essays per school, that’s 30 essays in addition to the common app one. Can you spend the next few months writing 30 beautiful, eloquent and meaningful essays? It is much easier said than done. After a while they become dull and uninteresting. Admissions officers will see right through it and you will likely face a rejection.</p>
<p>I think under any circumstances you should limit your list. Consider each school’s strength in the program you are interested in and go from there. For example, if you like Engineering, Emory and UChicago are obviously out of the game. Also, if you have financial need, you will want to do the net price calculators on each of the schools websites. Even for those that claim to meet 100% of need, each school has varying policies on how that need is calculated. Take out the schools that will be simply unaffordable.</p>
<p>I think you definitely need safeties. Right now the majority of those schools are matches to reaches. I think maybe one would count as a safety. While your stats are competitive, for most of these schools the majority of the applicants will have similar stats. Maybe think about what you want in a college and narrow it down from there. I’m looking at a lot of these schools, too and have visited many of the campuses so if you need help with narrowing your list down and/or adding safeties, I’d be glad to help!</p>
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<p>It’s a fine list, but I think that there are too many schools for someone with your stellar stats. Assuming that your top choices are your reaches, you need to do a good job on those applications. </p>
<p>Also, some of the schools are really unpredictable so unless you really like them, there is very little chance of attending. For example, WUSTL is very very unpredictable, and therefore it is a reach, but not because you don’t have good enough stats but because they are very unpredictable. Same for UNC-CH. Frankly, unless you are in love with these schools, I’d drop them. </p>
<p>Do you really need Case, CMU, Michigan, Emory, Tulane, and Wake Forest. You have a very good chance at going to one of your reaches. Do you really need ALL of these? </p>
<p>You should apply to UChicago and Georgetown EA. Perhaps also Michigan and Case also. </p>
<p>You should get into at least some of these by 12/15. You can certainly pare down the list by then. </p>
<p>If you are full pay, NYU is an admissions safety, IMHO. They tend to be very predictable but they don’t do EA. </p>
<p>If you have financial need than drop NYU because their FinAid is awful. Also make sure that you run the NPC and can afford these schools. Otherwise you need a financial safety.</p>
<p>Seriously, what I recommend is ranking your current preferences and see if you can drop some of the schools that you are least likely to attend. You will only attend one school. </p>
<p>ClassicRockerDad had very good points about the schools on your list. I only want to address your OP, are you applying to too many schools? I don’t think 15 is too many at all. For those who say that is too many essays…that is just silly. I have never understood the kids who antagonize over essays and rewrite them over and over for months. I see no problem in applying to as many schools as you want, more acceptances gives you more options to choose from 9 months from now.</p>
<p>Except that to get into the reaches the senior needs to be taking a rigorous courseload. There is only so much time to spend on applications. If the preferences can be ranked, and the probability of admission estimated from Naviance, one can calculate the probability of attending a school. That’s the probability of getting into that school times the probability of getting rejected from all more preferable ones. If one does that, it quickly becomes clear that wasting the time to write an “Why [insert college here]” essay for a school that you have a 2% chance of attending because you are 95% likely to attend a more preferable school is a total waste of time.</p>
<p>If in fact it’s faster to apply than to research the school (Case, Tulane?), then by all means apply. But if there is a fair amount of work in the application, I think one really needs to prune the list. </p>
<p>I think 15 is doable if one steps away from facebook, twitter, instagram and candy crush for awhile! 
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<p>No, I don’t think 15 is too many. Giving yourself options is a good thing, especially when you are applying to top schools where you may or may not get in. Good luck!</p>
<p>I don’t think 15 is too many but I agree with classic rocker dad, you don’t need to apply to that many. I would eliminate 2-3 that you don’t love.</p>
<p>I think it’s too many, personally. That’s a lot of essays (not to mention application fees/test scores to send/etc.). You seem to be interested in STEM subjects. Is that what you want to study in college? Do you plan to pursue dance? It’s hard to tell why you picked the schools you did–your list looks sort of indiscriminate to me.</p>
<p>This is a pretty random list of schools. The only pattern I see is the alphabetical ordering. </p>
<p>I don’t know if 15 is too many or too few. That’s up to you. Some people would find the essays daunting while other students love writing essays. I would suggest looking more closely at these schools and ask why you are applying to them. Penn is very very different from UNC-Chapel Hill. Prioritize the list and then add a safety or two (I couldn’t find it in your list). Apply to the safeties or near-safeties first. Then you can apply to as many colleges as you please.</p>
<p>If you’re in-state for UMich or able to be full pay then that would probably be a safety.</p>
<p>Agree that you need to identify your safeties first and then identify what common qualities are important to you to cull the list of unnecessary match/reaches. Finding safeties for high stat kids can be tough because they are qualified applicants at excellent schools but, with the unpredictability of whether they will, indeed, be accepted, cannot count on anything. </p>
<p>To find your safeties, start with your public flagship. You have Michigan and NC on your list – is either instate? If so, then get that app in and that should be a safety (though as a parent, I would probably still want one more). If you are not in state at MI or NC, and your own flagship is not strong, then consider some other strong publics that would like your stats – UW Madison, Illinois Urbana Champaign. Illinois has what is basically EA, in that apps completed by a specific date in the fall get decisions released on-line on a single date in December, I think. For an Engineering or Science kid, IUUC is a great school and could be a good in-hand acceptance that would allow you to cut some other schools off your list. </p>
<p>Since your ECs are math/science-y, then Case, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern seem to make sense in terms of your likely academic interests. WUSTL, Vandy and even Tulane are notoriously difficult to predict outcomes as they are very sensitive to being “Ivy back ups” and reject high stat kids who haven’t shown them the love. </p>
<p>How much do finances matter? Are you full pay but cannot really write a check for $60,000 each year (like many of us on CC) so that finding merit money matters? Or high need so that schools that meet full demonstrated need are important? If high need, then out of state publics are not advisable because they don’t generally give aid to out of state students.</p>
<p>As a parent who has been through this, I would recommend organizing your list more strategically. Are there a few schools that have rolling admissions (typically publics) or schools with EA that could get you some acceptances during first semester so that you could shrink your list for regular decision apps. Personally, I cannot imagine writing essays for 15 schools – if I wanted to write good ones. The time it takes to research, reflect, visit to be able to be intelligent about an application – there simply isn’t much of it in the fall of senior year.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Are you applying for need based aid? Every college has different deadlines, wants different tax forms, sometimes they have their own supplemental forms, and often have different ways they want the information sent. Huge hassle to apply for FA at 15 schools, IMHO. </p>
<p>Also, I do think that is a lot of essays to write well. My D2 spent several hours on each essay, revising and tuning. She got in everyplace she applied, including schools like U of Chicago that have really rigorous essay prompts. But you have to take the time to do them well – you don’t want a dashed off/generic essay for any of these schools.</p>