I have sent 2 children to college and now my youngest daughter will be graduating from HS in 2020. May I also add that there is 11 years between my middle child and my youngest so in essence I am starting this venture as a newbie because many things may have changed. With my older children we visited colleges, selected 6-8 to apply to and awaited results. results came in, we narrowed it down to 2 or 3, attended admitted students day or made another visit and made a decision. I now see that people are applying and getting accepted to 50 -150 schools and wondering what the purpose for this would be. I don’t know or stand in judgement of anyone else’s situation but don’t really understand the benefit or purpose. Can someone help me out on this one because if I’m missing something I really want to know. Thanks.
Those crazy stories in the news are generally for students who applied to HBCs where you can apply to 50 schools with one application.
Carefully craft a good mix of safety, target, and reach schools and you don’t need more than 10. My daughter applied two cycles ago to 8 schools. That translates to 19 essays. No way she could have done a detailed job on her applications if she applied to more.
My advice, since you’ve had a big gap between children, is to not assume that schools that were safeties 11 years ago are still safeties now. Acceptance rates have changed drastically for some schools.
What? 50-100? The only kids doing that tend to be at charter schools and the like where they incentive kids for applying to college. It makes for a good headline.
No, people are not regularly applying to that many colleges. Not at all. I would say that 20 isn’t uncommon now, but those people tend to fall into two camps: kids hedging their bets by applying to a lot of tippy tops, or kids looking for the best merit or financial aid.
My kid just applied to college. He submitted 7 apps. He was accepted to five, and given a conditional offer at a tippy top for sophomore transfer. That number is still very normal and common. My D submitted 12 apps four years ago, and it was definitely too many. Here is the key: apply to a range of good bet, match and reach schools that your child would be happy to attend and that are affordable. Doing some research is much better than submitting twenty apps to schools just because they are prestigious. Too many people these days don’t research properly. They are in for a shock when they underestimate just how much work an app is. Don’t let your child fall prey to that panicky mentality.
And I totally agree with the above about not assuming that a safety then is a safety now. But that is why she needs to research.
We have made several road trips so far and visited about 13 colleges. We realized that what you see on paper does not always match up to the reality. My son went to an Ivy but that was not necessarily the best fit for him and we learned a valuable lesson from that experience. He graduated and is doing well now but I am definitely doing things differently with our youngest.
If you are looking at fairly selective schools, you’ll probably want her to apply to a few more than your other kids did. If you live in CA, you should know that pretty much all UC schools are another level of difficulty harder than they were 10 years ago. If you aren’t looking at schools in that ‘top 50’ category you probably can use a similar strategy to what your older kids did.
(My oldest, high school class of 2015, applied to 10 schools although 4 of those were UCs . We haven’t decided yet how many applications for D20 coming up…she wants to do early decision which could cut it down to just her top choice school and maybe UCs if she applies to any of those. Or it could be as many as 10 or so if the ED school doesn’t accept her).
In my college prep high school, 10 is probably the typical number.
@Sarrip , do I remember correctly that your DD is at BS? If so, you’ll get pretty good guidance on expected outcomes from the CC there. The # will depend on how many reaches, size of the schools, whether you have a rolling admissions school that you like enough that you won’t need additional likelies if you get good early news, merit needs, etc.
And while you may feel like a newbie again given the time that has elapsed since the last time you did this, you are clearly so so so far ahead of the game in understanding how important it is to make the right match for “fit”.
@gardenstategal, You are correct! Time does fly doesn’t it? We have a fantastic college counselor who gave us an exhaustive list of match schools. We were able to narrow some of them down as DD20 wants a smaller setting and does not want to be farther from home than she is now if possible.
I’m in a similar boat - I have a D20 and a D10 (and DD12 and DD16.) It’s changed dramatically since D10 (D16 was auditioning for theater schools and that’s a whole other ball of wax.) D10 had 9 schools, applied to one ED, got in and was finished. D12 had 10 schools, applied to one EA, got in and was finished. D20 has 12 on her list now and that will probably go up to 15. It’s just so competitive in the range she’s targeting (T20s and just under) - they are almost all “reaches” although on paper she should be able to get into them. But the 100-150s? That’s social media driven and looking for publicity. I don’t know anyone in real life who is doing that. The most I’ve heard (outside of theater where 15, 20 and even 25 is common) is 17.
@4gsmom, my daughter does have one school she wants to apply to ED. I have never done this with any of the others but there is something about it that scares me. She is the only child left at home, we are middle class. DS was able to graduate debt free because we didn’t take out loans. We want her to graduate debt free also if possible.
ED is definitely NOT the way to go if you need to compare FA packages.
Sounds like your GC is great and already helping you by showing your match schools… you are way head of where we were 2 years ago when my D18 (just finished 1st year of college). Our GC was super sweet but not experienced enough to handle kids aiming for somewhere past the in-state safeties. She hasn’t even heard of 3 of the schools we were applying to!) So many public school GCs do more counseling than college guidance these days.
That being said D18 applied to 11 colleges - a mix of safeties, semi-selective and reaches based on her stats (but it’s so ‘holistic’ now days that number stats (GPA, ranking, ACT) are just the starting point… ECs and leadershi, community/volunteer work, athletics/music/dance/art, and essays truly do count in admissions past the rolling state flagship schools!). She got into 9 (UAB, Auburn, Uof Alabama, Bham-Southern, Furman, William and Mary, UofRichmond, UVa and Vanderbilt), was denied 1 (UNC-Chappel) and waitlisted 1 (Wake Forest).
We had visited 16 (those mentioned plus W&L, Georgetown, Duke, Elon, Rice) and she narrowed it down based on whether she could see herself somewhere for 4 years and if they had the focus of classes/reputation for what she wanted to major in (Chemistry and Education).
My advice is to apply EA (typically by end of October - but not financially binding like ED) for as many schools as you can on your list … get that last ACT/SAT testing done this summer and be prepared to fill out the FAFSA on October 1st. Good luck! It’s such an exciting time!
@4gsmom Yes, I agree we had a substantial monthly payments to make for DS14 which we managed to do but I would like to continue eating myself while DD14 is at College :-).
“What’s the benefit?”
Assuming that you’re applying to “abundance of colleges” that are matches and safeties with a good number of acceptances, one benefit is that it’s now your turn to be selective. Not just in terms of an ideal fit school but also the one with the best FA package.
Of the seven admitted schools that we had, the results in FA offers were quite different from school to school. You want to put yourself in such a position to now be selective in which one to commit to. The ultimate goal for college application ISN’T just being accepted; it’s finding the ideal school that’s also affordable for your family.
This makes absolutely no sense, of course, if you apply to mostly reach schools. Makes no difference then whether you’re applying to just a few or 50 of these.
@Sarrip @4gsmom how many to apply to depends greatly on how much you want to pay and what state you are in/are your in state publics good options. Finally, how many essays of high quality your kid is willing to fill out/spend time on. If you have good state publics and can use naviance/are accurate in predictions and don’t care about getting into the most highly “ranked” school, there is no reason to apply to more than 6 or 7. (this assumes you aren’t fishing for merit or need financial aid) . First kid applied to 7, second kid 3. In retrospect reached too high for first kid ED school, but do over would probably apply to 5 instead.
Of course if the kid will be miserable if they don’t go to a top thirty than that probably requires applying to 30 schools
I tend to target 10 schools with my college kids and start with them. Only once did I have to go beyond that.
@anon145 , that requires more than 30 apps for sure. Applying to more top colleges does not improve the odds of getting into them. It would be 30 apps, plus more for match and safety schools.
30 app fees for 30 tippy top schools, btw, will cost over $2500. And remember with the Common App, you can apply to twenty schools max.
The “benefit” of applying to 100+ schools is you get a story on TV/radio where people who have no clue marvel at how smart you must be and how you got “millions” is scholarships. All while wasting the time and effort of a lot of people.
My D applied to 7, and one was because it was a free checkbox on the common app. She was well qualified for all of them (got into all), wasn’t interested in reaching beyond her stats, and most had decent acceptance rates. For those applying to elite, low acceptance schools, I can see adding a few more, plus safeties, but over 10, or certainly 15, seems to be unnecessary.
there’s really no reason to go beyond 5-7 unless someone needs merit aid or wants to shop financial aid. If you have a great public flagship or two where your kid is a safety no need to go above 5 (again assuming aren’t looking for aid)
“Applying to more top colleges does not improve the odds of getting into them. It would be 30 apps, plus more for match and safety schools.“
Yes and no and it depends on what you consider “top colleges”? You see kids here all the time apply to 15 colleges but only get in to a few. How do you really know which ones of the selective colleges your application will spark their interest?
Lookforward states all the time that you need to match up what colleges wants/needs with your own “resume”, essays, and overall application. Maybe your “package” resonates with a few adcoms, you don’t know, but one thing is guaranteed if you don’t apply, your odds of admission is ZERO.
Example, know a freshman at BU that applied to 20+ colleges and had a very low chance at BU (her private counselor even told she would not get in!) but she applied anyways and was admitted (Spring 2019) and is loving college. Had she listened to the conventional wisdom at CC to not apply to so many colleges, especially reach colleges, she would be at UW (Madison) or Chapman right now.
Secondly, some complain that you shouldn’t apply to too many colleges because of the cost? When you are talking about 100k - 300k, an extra $70 is a drop in the bucket. These kids have worked very hard in HS and are making a very important, life changing decision on where to spend the next 4 years of their life, don’t let $70 keep you from applying to multiple “good fit” colleges.
Just my 2 cents.