This girl in my class just told me today that she applied to 36 colleges! Despite not qualifying for fee waivers, this girl applied to almost every school in the U.S. News Top 25 (Princeton, Yale, Harvard, UChicago, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, etc.), an additional 12 colleges in the 26-40 range, and 4 state schools in Florida as her safeties (our home state, FSU, UF, FAU & UCF - she said she’d take a gap year if those were the only schools she got into). I know that she has been stressed about college since she always talks about her older sister who got into Harvard last year, but I don’t understand why she would need to apply to 30+ colleges to try and get into just 1 prestigious school.
I’m just having a hard time getting over this… is this somehow normal or justified? I know everyone has the right to apply to as many colleges as they want to, but applying to 36 colleges feels really unnecessary. I can’t tell whether I’m feeling jealous or simply dumbfounded. We have a screen outside of our high school that posts the colleges that seniors have gotten accepted to, and I feel like this girl applied to an absurd amount of colleges to somehow seek approval or recognition from other people. I don’t understand.
Any thoughts on this or experiences with other people you know that are/were like this?
No, that’s not normal, and I’ve never met anyone like that. The most I’ve personally heard of is 16, and that included the whole UC system. I applied to 10, three of which required no essays at all. 36 highly-ranked schools would require a huge amount of time devoted to writing supplements. Are you sure she wasn’t pulling your leg? If she was telling the truth, don’t let her aspirations get you down. She is a very abnormal case, and you need to do what’s best for you, whether that’s applying to zero colleges or 36 colleges.
Edit: Also, if we assume the average application fee was $70 and she spent $12 sending scores to each school, the cost of applying to 36 schools would be nearly $3,000. Yikes.
Yes that is a ridiculous number of applications. The biggest risk is that she spread herself too thin and did not spend sufficient time on the supplements of the colleges she most wants to attend. But it isn’t your concern or your problem so forget it and move on.
It is her family’s money and her time. I assume her parents are pulling their hair out over providing all the needed tax info in all the various formats & timetables if she applied for FA! It would be hard to create effective applications or make a meaningful decision if she gets into a lot of schools. Just be glad it isn’t you – that is an unhealthy amount of effort and attention to college admissions.
That’s crazy. Not only would she have to write an insane amount of essays that is an incredible amount of money on application fees, transcripts, standardized test scores, and much more. It also is not a good strategy in general, even if you have the funds. Because no one is going to be able to fit into any of the top 30 schools just perfectly and thrive, it honestly sounds like she was indecisive and possibly insecure about where’s she going to college so she decided to apply for all of them.Her attitude suggests that she is mainly interested in prestige and not things that make each individual school special.
Also some of her supplements (especially the ones that ask Why_____?") may not be as strong because of less detail or time dedicated to each of them. Admissions officers can see through bland, generic essays or people that are solely interested in prestige. I thought it was a lot when a kid at our school applied to 16.
Nevertheless, like others have said, it’s not something to be overly concerned about. I wouldn’t trade places with her because I’m guessing there are other issues at play if you are applying to more than 36 colleges.
Doesn’t Common App limit to 20 schools only? She must have applied through other means, such as Coalition, UC, UTexas, etc., to get around the limitation.
Although 36 is a lot, I can understand her logic. Since the top college admissions have become lotteries, the only way to give herself better odds is to apply to more colleges.
Wonder how many interviews she’ll fit in and if she’ll start to confuse colleges in her head… Lol, this defines indecision, crapshoot, throwing darts at multiple moving targets.
@Muad_dib our school does something similar - non-digital, but the student’s name and senior pic and schools. But it’s compiled through an e-mail survey sent out by guidance so 1/2 the class wasn’t included since they didn’t bother to read their email! Or didn’t want to be included. It was all self-reported; I would guess this would have to be the same way or it does seem to violate privacy.
My son’s girlfriend at the time posed with a Harvard pennant she had at home and wore her Harvard lax shirt. Caused quite the stir!! (she didn’t even apply to any top schools! LOL)
Our school only posted college names on a bulletin board, not student names. After May 1, when final choices had been made, student names were added and the extra colleges removed.
We had a tour guide at one college who told us he had applied to 40!
It’s none of your business, really, so don’t worry about it. She has created a lot of work and expense for herself, and even if she were 100% successful, she can only attend one and will have to whittle the list down.
You can narrow the list before or after you apply, but at some point, you need to be decisive!
This is a sad consequence of college rankings (particularly US News because it’s so popular). As more students apply to more of these top-ranked colleges, acceptance rates at these colleges will continue to drop. As acceptance rates drop further, students will have to apply to even more of these colleges in order to have a better overall chance of being accepted. The vicious cycle continues…
This only indicates her naive and laziness. One should research the schools before applying. It is not only expensive, it affect the quality of each application and lower the admission chance of each school.
Totally agree with this. Even if some applications do not have supplemental essays, I’m sure many of them did, certainly all of the Ivy League schools and many of the top 25 did. Even with repurposing some essays, many/most of them were probably less-than-stellar. As they say in carpentry, measure twice and cut once. Prior planning would have eliminated the need to apply to so many schools.
Regardless, don’t worry about other peoples’ application, and certainly don’t be jealous.
