Thanks everyone for the advice! I’m glad that I’m not the only one who thinks applying to 36 colleges is absurd…
Jeez that’s a lot of supplements.
Yup, it’s absurd! I’m a guidance counselor, and so far the record for me was a student last year who applied to 33. (And that student had a terrible time keeping track of what each college needed, what was sent, etc. He kept asking me to help him call schools, ask for extended deadlines, etc. It was a MESS!) You really need to be Type-A super organized and get the majority of them done in Aug/Sept if you’re applying to that many.
It definitely lowers the quality of each application. I tell students to aim for 7. But my own kiddo did 10. I don’t start judging until you hit 15! 
I’m going to guess a lot of that was attention-seeking more than any real selection process. Mature people don’t act this way. There’s nothing to differentiate the 26th from the 36th schools, much less the 16th, so the inability to choose where to apply is just going to be deferred to the point where it becomes a choice of where to attend. Most kids do that growing up in September instead of waiting until April.
Advice: approx. 3 reaches, 4-5 matches, 2 safeties. Safeties preferably EA. Shortcut: 2 EA and 1 likely ED, all w/good financial aid. Every school on list should be a fantastic fit. Voila. Done.
My kids only applied to 5-6 schools. Both aimed at specific majors and affordable schools. For affordability, they are looking a lower tier schools as the in state flagship is much better anyway and is a near safety. With these considerations, there are not even 10 schools to choose from.
So if Mr/Miss 36 only gets into 10 of those schools, will that seem like success or failure?
Go with dumbfounded. Always the better choice.
Yuck. That doesn’t help at all.
At any rate, learning to not let other people’s bad choices and baffling behavior get to you is a skill you will need to get through the rest of your life. Now’s as good a time as any to practice it. (Really, it’s not as easy as some of the responses here seem to imply. At least not for me.)
A handful of “fits,” and truly Voila, done.
As her friend, you should scoff at anything under 37.
Maybe she spent so much time on her applications that her grades dropped…
What is the advice for a high stats/high achieving kid for whom a top school should be a “fit” but it has single digit admission? And a next tier should be a “match” but they might get rejected to protect yield, or the school has “Tufts” syndrome?
I get that it is easy to mock kids who have this number of apps…but really it is a product of how the system offers no predictibility especially to higher stats kids.
Agree with@1njparent and @CValle 36 is crazy. But blame the system. Schools that may have been 25% acceptance 2 years ago have dropped to 15%. Early decision is completely out of control with much higher numbers of apps. If you compare schools using naviance you cant be sure of statistics because you dont know who had a hook. “Yield” is a factor even though nobody cares about it outside us news.
^ That is a chicken-egg situation. The lower admission rate is the outcome of increase in the number of application per student leading to more application per school. The admission rate would continue to drop if more students are applying to more school.
@CValle I agree. Posters like to proclaim that applying to a ton of schools doesn’t increase the odds of a reach acceptance, but for high stats kids the facts don’t support that.
If the applicant is willing to write the essays, and is able to pay the application fees, who are we to judge? There is a definite logic to the shotgun approach for kids whose stats are “in the ballpark,” so to speak, but are unhooked.
@CValle: That depends on whether you are willing to look abroad and pay (full price, but that is still less than full pay at an elite American private and in some cases is only a little above in-state public costs) or not. Admission to most unis/programs in the UK and Canada (even the top ones) are pretty cut and dry. You meet their minimum requirements as a full-pay American and you are most likely in (exceptions are Oxbridge, LSE, and Waterloo’s CS/software programs).
Or try to find hidden gems that fit your criteria.
Affordable public LACs with small class sizes and student bodies with decently high test scores but aren’t terribly difficult to enter exist. So do honors colleges. So do various other paths (3-2 plan with guaranteed admission to Columbia if you hit certain criteria; likely admission to WashU if you hit some other slightly easier criteria; guaranteed admission to UVa from VA CC’s if you hit some criteria, etc.)
At what point does the number of colleges that someone applies to become “too many”? I’m seeing some posts that are defending my classmate for maximizing her odds – which is understandable – but I feel like things are getting way too out of control for future classes of students. They’ll see a post like mine and think that it’s justifiable to apply to 36 colleges… Any thoughts in agreement or opposition to this are welcome; I’m just trying to wrap my head around the madness that is college admissions these days, and my personal experience with the mania is what caused me to create this thread.
I knew multiple kids who applied to 25+ schools, and they all ended up going to fantastic top 20 schools that seemed like great fits for them. However, could they have reached the same outcome with less time, application fees, and effort? I really can’t tell.
It is justifiable to apply to that many colleges if that’s what families want. I think multiple factors drive the number of apps students submit. It’s difficult to predict acceptances. Financial aid packages vary by a lot and NPCs aren’t always accurate. Students may change their minds about the major or type of school they want so the initial list is no longer useful. Students may apply to the schools they know early in the process then learn about others, or learn that the ones they applied to aren’t academically or financially realistic. Some families need help to pay for college, and gambling a couple thousand dollars on apps for the chance at tens of thousands of dollars in aid is a risk they’re willing to take.
Why does it bother you? Your classmate is “stressed” because her sister got into Harvard and now apparently feels like she has to do as well in her search. That can’t be much fun. And she has the additional worry of realizing everyone will know her results because your school posts them on a screen in front of your school. Maybe you should try to develop some sympathy for her.