Here’s the first one I’ve seen
She has more than 100 colleges vying after her, plus scholarship offers left and right, adding up to a whopping $4.5 million in offers.
I wonder how many of those colleges she’ll attend and how many millions in scholarships she’ll actually use.
I wonder how much money they spent on applications. I can’t imagine applying to that many schools.
I am not sure how to feel about this.
On the one hand this seems like a waste of effort. 100 applications is a LOT to put together. $4,500,000 sounds like a lot of scholarship offers. However, if this is spread over 100 universities, it is only $45,000 per university – although some universities probably offered more than others. $45,000 per university is a nice scholarship, but with a GPA of 4.1 is not particularly surprising.
However, I suppose that people enter a wide range of competitions for a wide range of reasons. To me this makes more sense than a lot of other competitions. Seen as a sort of competition I suppose this is not so bad. I have just been watching the skeleton Olympic competition, and then switched to watch a hockey player falling head first into the boards, so I suppose an “apply to universities” competition is relatively much safer.
If a daughter was either going to start training for the skeleton or luge, or might instead enter an “apply to 100 universities” competition, I would prefer that she try the latter, particularly if someone else was paying the application fees.
I just hope that she has found one university that is a good fit for her, has a good program in her intended major(s), and is one of the ones that offered a good scholarship.
This seems like an enormous waste of time
Remember that’s a four year total. $11,000 per year is a drop in the bucket.
I really would like to see this competition stop. Most of the kids doing this are ill-advised low income URMs and usually do not end up with even one good, truly affordable school. They are being exploited by the media, which is perpetuating the cycle of poor college decisions by those who can least afford it.
My DD, a URM, chasing merit, applied to 17 schools (includes Harvard where no merit is possible) and ended up with about $2.5+ million in scholarships. That total included 7 full rides and a few full tuition+ awards. The media (because of a friend in the business) wanted to interview her and we declined, and I am somewhat regretting it now, only because maybe it would have showed these families and administrators a better way - less schools, better targeted, bigger packages, many affordable options.
At least the student in the article has affordable options.
In the end, that’s usually what these sorts of application journeys are about. Finding an affordable option at the sort of fit the student is looking for.
I’m absolutely fine with any student applying to however many schools they choose. It’s her time and effort. If she chose to use her time to apply to 100 schools instead of playing a few extra games of Wordle or watching a few episodes of HotTVShow, what’s the harm?
I do not believe most are doing it to find an affordable option. The list of schools says otherwise and most do not end up with even one affordable choice. The best way to find affordable options is by targeting the right schools, not scatter-shotting. High schools promoting this application strategy have incentivized it and made it a bragging right, which is not truly in the students’ best interest.
a few years ago, the kid featured in one of these stories really didnt have a low-priced college option after all of it. I’m glad this girl does have options - looks like several full tuition /rides offers. But - why so many schools??? it all seems so random.
It could cut into time better spent on school work too.
Regardless, beyond the work for the student, it creates work for the HS counseling staff to have to send school profiles and transcripts to the colleges. We are seeing more HSs, including publics, limit apps to 8-12 (many say they will let students who need to merit hunt send more apps, but much of this is still new-ish).
While I have mixed feelings about these limits, it does reflect the time involvement on the school side. I do understand that in some cases one can apply to many schools with one app…e.g., HBCUs, UCs, but some app elements still need to be sent to schools separately.
I agree with this. Generally, I don’t think even merit hunters need more than 12 apps, max of 20 should suffice even in complicated situations.
My daughter applied to 20, she kept adding more, but I think some were Covid related and wouldn’t have been added in normal times. It was so time consuming, she worked 4 part time jobs (cashier at a garden center and pizzeria weekend evenings, babysat and tutored), was a 3 sport varsity captain, officer in a couple of clubs, and managed to squeeze in a social life. I’m sure her merit added up, not that she ever added it up. So many assume these students have tons of free rides, and believe there are so many free rides out there.
I just looked up the featured student’s high school. The actual cohort graduation rate is 56.6%. The state department of education rated it as an “F” school, and its population is 88.43% economically disadvantaged. Based off what I know about schools with similar statistics (I work in the education field), I doubt that this student had access to a lot of college counseling through her school. If her school even has Naviance, I doubt that there’s much of a track record of the high school’s alumni at a variety of institutions beyond the state borders. And she and/or her family may have had concerns about admissions officers looking up the stats about her high school, and then writing off much of her accomplishments (I think @UCDProf had some of that happening with his children’s school…which I feel as though was many levels higher than this student’s with respect to stats).
If she didn’t have much in the way of outside counseling, then her view of her way to college was through these articles of students shotgunning apps and trying to get a chance somewhere, anywhere, and hopefully at institutions where she would be supported financially, academically, and socially. Perhaps she was also trying to have choices and didn’t know how many choices she would get (perhaps her choices are limited to the 4-5 full rides she has received, and as most on this board know, getting a full ride anywhere is a reach).
If a full ride was her only chance to afford a college education without loans, then I could easily see her applying to 100 schools. We don’t know what her ACT/SAT scores are, but since they’re not mentioned, she likely applied test optional or did not have superlative scores. People might well have said her chances are 1 in 100 of getting a full ride. So she applied to 100 schools to find 1 that would give her a full ride. And with respect to application fees, my guess is that she got waivers for almost all, if not all of them.
Was it extra work for her high school to send the transcripts? Absolutely. But would her high school love to hold her up as an example to the rest of the school of the good things that can happen to students who apply themselves? That there is hope for the students at this high school to lead a successful life? Absolutely.
All I will say is congratulations to this young lady and her family, and wish her the best of luck.
Not that I disagree with targeting the better options, but that begs a couple of questions.
Which are the better options? Among all the thousands of colleges, the number that meet full financial need are a minuscule percentage of the total. And those are notorious for accepting a tiny percentage of applicants, and having a very difficult bar for stats+ECs. While many of the students involved in these articles have great GPAs, almost none are the type of students who would be considered likely admits for full-need schools - we all know (with the extreme exception) NO STUDENT is a “likely admit” to these universities. Thus, employing a strategy that primarily targets full-need schools is unlikely to result in an affordable option.
While there are schools that are more likely to admit, none are guaranteed to provide a healthy amount of FinAid. This means a student with high financial need might apply to 10 of these schools, and be accepted to 5 such schools in this group, yet still not have an affordable option. Maybe apply to 20 and be accepted to 10 schools in this group and not have an affordable option. Maybe even be accepted to 20 without an affordable option.
While there may be a magic number of schools from #1 + #2 to target and apply to, knowing which and knowing that magic amount requires a great deal of knowledge and experience. To be honest, most GCs do not have experience to prepare them for such a search. I’m not even sure we should expect GCs at public schools to have this knowledge, much less have the time to personally counsel students who wish to conduct such a search, much less manage and oversee such a process. Further, even fewer parents will have the experience+knowledge necessary to create a list of 25-50 target colleges for this student.
For students in this situation, they have two options most people (with little experience in this sort of journey) will advise. The first is to target in-state public universities which may not offer the sort of experience these students seek. These will be affordable options. Also, in some states, these may not include the flagships or even secondary flagships, so while they can provide adequate educations, again, these options may not provide the experiences these students hope for. The second path is to include some full-need schools which will be incredible reaches for admittance and likely rejections which will not advance the student’s goal to acquire the 4-year experience they seek.
The third path, which a lot of people apparently don’t agree with, is to shotgun dozens of applications to many types of schools. I agree that 100 applications could possibly be culled to maybe 50 very targeted applications. However, someone with a great deal of knowledge and experience has to be the one to cut the count in half yet retain the applicant’s best chance for success in this quest. And I think we all agree, through no fault of their own, the GCs have neither the experience nor the time, and neither do most of the parents.
In the end, if this student ends up attending an affordable option, how can any of us say she did anything wrong in her journey? She did what was necessary. She confronted this challenge the best way she knew how, applied the brute force of a ton of effort to complete the applications, and she ended up with some fantastic (to her!) options. I beg anyone to tell me where the failure is here?
I APPLAUD THIS YOUNG LADY! With no reservations.
PS - This is not a criticism of GCs in any way. I am simply acknowledging the limitations of the job/function of public school GCs. Unfortunately, the position is not designed to allow the bandwidth and skill for this sort of search. We have to be honest and admit that the position is designed more for a conveyor belt approach that fits the three main types of HS college-bound student - not a specialty approach catered to each student.
My neighborhood high school had similar demographics and was considered a very low performing school. I was able to go to a magnet high school, but my neighborhood school had contests to see who would get the most scholarship money and who got into the most schools. The top student ACT scores were put on display for everyone in the neighborhood to see. Only about 20 percent of my my neighborhood high school’s student body attempted to go to college, so there was a sense of civic pride about those top students and the counselors used those students as examples for the younger members of the student body.
The application fees are moot, because almost all students from my old neighborhood who apply can get fee waivers today and the use of the common app and especially the Black common app (you can apply to upwards of 65 HBCUs in about an hour) means that it is not as much of a waste of time as most think.
A student heading to college that will be able to succeed there can find a better way than applying to a random 100+ schools. Clearly it doesn’t work. Most doing this do not end up with sufficient financial aid. Let’s expect more of college aspiring students from all socio-economic classes and cultures.
I was a low income student in need of full financial aid back in the day. I applied to 13 schools, all carefully targeted. And I did not have access to the internet back then. There is no reason to apply to 100+ colleges, even if it’s easy, and even if the student has high financial need. There’s no need to apply to 50.
As for the HBCU app, most of those colleges do not offer full rides or meet need and that’s clear from their websites. So applying to all because it’s simple and you need a full ride doesn’t make sense.
I just went to the Black Common Application page, and after glancing at the list (included below) a number of the institutions do offer full rides, like Tuskegee and Alabama (State or A&M…perhaps both). And those just happen to be from what I know off the top of my head, without having done research on each one. Additionally, it appears as though the application is only sent to the four listed as your favorite, and then the applicant would contact the admissions offices of whichever other ones a student actually wants to review his/her application. So if the student in the article included the 65 schools here as part of the 100 applications, then that drops it down to significantly in terms of the number of applications completed. And I know of others on this board who have applied to more than 35 schools.
ALABAMA A&M UNIVERSITY
ALABAMA STATE UNIVERSITY
ALBANY STATE UNIVERSITY
ALCORN STATE UNIVERSITY
ALLEN UNIVERSITY
AMERICAN BAPTIST COLLEGE
ARKANSAS BAPTIST COLLEGE
BENEDICT COLLEGE
BENNETT COLLEGE
BETHUNE-COOKMAN UNIVERSITY
BLUEFIELD STATE COLLEGE
CENTRAL STATE UNIVERSITY
CHARLES R. DREW UNIV. OF MED. & SCI.
CLAFLIN UNIVERSITY
CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
CLINTON COLLEGE
COPPIN STATE UNIVERSITY
DILLARD UNIVERSITY
EDWARD WATERS COLLEGE
ELIZABETH CITY STATE UNIVERSITY
FISK UNIVERSITY
FLORIDA MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY
FORT VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY
GRAMBLING STATE UNIVERSITY
HARRIS-STOWE STATE UNIVERSITY
HUSTON-TILLOTSON UNIVERSITY
JARVIS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE
JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY
JOHNSON C. SMITH UNIVERSITY
KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY
LANE COLLEGE
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY (MO)
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY ¶
LIVINGSTONE COLLEGE
LeMOYNE OWEN COLLEGE
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY
MILES COLLEGE
MORRIS COLLEGE
MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
NORFOLK STATE UNIVERSITY
NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL UNIV.
PAINE COLLEGE
PAUL QUINN COLLEGE
PHILANDER SMITH COLLEGE
RUST COLLEGE
SAINT AUGUSTINE’S UNIVERSITY
SHAW UNIVERSITY
SOUTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
SOUTHERN UNIV. AND A&M COLL.
SOUTHERN UNIV. (NEW ORLEANS)
STILLMAN COLLEGE
TALLADEGA COLLEGE
TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY
TEXAS COLLEGE
TOUGALOO COLLEGE
TUSKEGEE UNIVERSITY
UNIV. OF ARKANSAS PINE BLUFF
UNIV. OF MD. EASTERN SHORE
UNIV. OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS
VIRGINIA STATE UNIVERSITY
VIRGINIA UNION UNIVERSITY
VOORHEES COLLEGE
WEST VA. STATE UNIVERSITY
WILBERFORCE UNIVERSITY
WILEY COLLEGE
WINSTON SALEM STATE UNIVERSITY
I can tell you from my own kids application seasons, they applied to the Black Common App (BCA) because they both had about 3-4 schools they were interested in out of the many schools on the application and it was easier and cheaper to apply that way than by any other method. You are right that a lot of the BCA schools do not provide a lot of aid, but both of my kids got around 10 full ride offers apiece from BCA schools and a few other pretty generous offers from those schools. The difference is that my kids did not consider most of those schools as options nor added up the scholarship totals.
We used a targeted search that ended up having some randomness from using the BCA. From my own upbringing, I believe that student’s high school welcomes the press and it is looked at through a different lens in her neighborhood than what many may see as wasting time and money. As long as these students finds the right “fit” for themselves (academically, socially, and financially), I have stopped worrying as much about how they got there once the application season is over.
Since you mention UCs, note that they do not normally use recommendations and use SRAR instead of transcripts on application (similar for CSUs). So a student applying to any number of UCs (and/or CSUs) does not impose work on the high school staff for recommendations or transcripts.
A more sensible limit from the high school perspective would be a limit on the number of unique recommendations per student, when students apply to colleges that impose this work on the high school staff.
Many teachers do limit the number of recs they write, so if you aren’t one of the first 20 (or whatever the number is) to request a LoR you are out of luck.
This student did not have to send in 100 separate applications. Many of these schools are on the shared application that includes about 75 school. Many of the schools have 100% acceptance rates for those who graduate from hs, so it i not a lot of work for the GC either. One set of documents. Test scores self reported.