Applying to Colleges

Parents Forum
21

<p>My D applied to 5 schools, all large state flagships. She wanted a large school with Division 1 sports and a wide variety of programs. Application fees ranged from $40 to $55, IIRC. Then there was the cost of sending test scores on top of that. Her HS didn’t charge for transcripts until you exceeded 10 or so. She was able to keep the number down (and actually could have applied to fewer schools) because she had a good idea of what she wanted, they were all safeties or matches so she was likely to be (and was) accepted to all, and financial aid wasn’t an issue. </p>

<p>Her friends who were applying to more prestigious schools or who needed financial aid needed to cast a much wider net. Most of them applied to anywhere from 10 to 15 schools, although some applied to even more.</p>

22

<p>If there is not a lot of synergy with essay topics, a lot of apps may mean a lot of time in addition to money. DS had to do 10 major essays. some with same topic but different work length. Of those, 5 were for MIT (which also had it’s own teacher form)</p>

23

<p>In our case, the state schools were about $55, Stanford $90 and LACs free when application was done through the common app. We also made liberal use of the free score reports for testing.</p>