How?? The Common App only allows twenty colleges and its usually not advised to not apply to so many. I mean, I would love to apply to a lot because i really like a lot of schools but it seems advised against. International student from the Caribbean and I will be applying for Fall 2017.
@TomSrOfBoston I actually can narrow down my choices and I already have. This is simply inquiring people’s opinions on the approach taken by the two individuals in the aforementioned articles. I simply want to the members of CC’s thoughts, personal experience, etc as I live in the a British overseas territory and talk about North American universities is limited.
Thank you very much for your keen observation on my threads
Let us say you apply to 20 matches and get in…then what? You have to decide.
So do that narrowing down now and save time and money.
Let us say you apply to 2 matches and 28 reaches…do you really want that many geographically/size/location disparate options? if you have to apply to 28 reaches then maybe those are not for you.
30 apps also makes your guidance counselor and high school do more work.
Do the research now and find a college where you are at 75%tile of SAT/GPA and you will be fine.
Not all colleges take common app and for the ones that do the common app is not the only way you can apply. So that’s how some people can apply to more than 20 colleges. The reason people apply to that many schools may vary. One reason could be they’re chasing money.
Personally, I think that 30 is simply too much work and too much money! But I would say that if you are applying to many schools that are reaches but not necessarily impossible (and hence expect a lot of rejections), it’s okay to err on this side of applying to too many (although not this many). If, however, you are applying to schools where you have a good probability of being accepted, narrow your list now! We were advised to apply to about 15, mostly because the list included selective SMALLER schools and it just wasn’t clear – although they were matches and near reaches – how well DC would fit their institutional needs. It is NOT a good thing to have extensive choice in April because you’ll have only a month to visit, and the schools will have only a few days for admitted students’ visits. I DO agree that you may need to apply to more schools if you’re looking for money, and the ones who are the most likely to provide it are the ones for whom you are at the top end of the applicant pool. They could accept you but provide insufficient financial support, in which case, they won’t complicate the decision-making. Does that help or not?
Do you need a lot of financial aid? Then yes, it may make sense to apply to a large number of places. It is very difficult for international students to get enough financial aid.
If some of the schools that you are applying to accept the Universal App, you can max out the 20-school limit on the Common App and utilize the Universal App where possible to go beyond 20.
My daughter did this and ended up applying to a ton a schools in Fall 2014 (in part because of CC-induced paranoia about her odds of getting in anywhere!).
Since she was applying for financial aid, the adcoms had access to information which made clear to them she was applying to lots of school. This didn’t really hurt her at the elite university level (where her success/failure was largely predictable based on her credentials), but I think it did hurt her with some of the top liberal arts colleges, which tend to be concerned about yield and which thus want to offer slots to applicants who seem deeply invested in their particular institution. As a result, she was waitlisted at a number of LACs which were–statistically speaking–“easier” to get into than were some of the universities at which she was accepted.
The moral of the story is to be judicious in the application process, particularly if you are seeking financial aid and are considering multiple LACs!
I strongly recommend not going over 15 schools. You should ideally have 3-5 reaches, 3-5 matches, and 3-5 safety schools. It is a lot of work that goes into each application, even with the Common App- each school generally has their own supplemental questions.
I think the people who apply to massive amounts of schools are either really nervous about not getting in anywhere, or want the “pride” thing of being able to say they got into loads of places. Either way, it makes your senior year much harder and makes you have to spend a lot of time in April making decisions.
If you need FA focus on the schools that offer need based aid to international students.
If you don’t qualify for need based aid then apply to a few schools where your stats give you automatic merit and a few where you might have a chance at competitive merit.
