<p>I think of “reach” college admissions as a two-step process: </p>
<p>Step 1 is to determine whether an applicant is or is not competitive for the college. This is not at all random and there is no lottery ticket element in this determination. Any good high school counselor (or reader of this forum) should be able to make that determination.</p>
<p>Step 2 is to determine whether an applicant actually gets offered admission to a particular top tier college in a particular year. This is the part that is unpredictable and introduces the “lottery ticket” element to the process. NOBODY, not even the college admissions officer, can make that determination in advance.</p>
<p>I believe that if Step 1 places an applicant firmly in the “competitive” pool for top tier colleges, then the applicant can maximize chances to get in “somewhere” by increasing the number of colleges applied to. Step 2 is pretty much random and is determined by factors such as who actually reads the application, whether the essays are well received, etc, etc. Just because it went one way at Harvard, doesn’t mean it won’t go the other way at Yale. In fact, just because it went one way at Harvard today, it doesn’t mean it won’t go the other way at Harvard tomorrow. </p>
<p>If you can’t make the cut in Step 1, then you are wasting everyone’s time by applying to the reach colleges. Those colleges are actually not “reach” for these applicants, they are “out of reach”. </p>
<p>But if you are firmly within the “competitive” pool, in Step 1, then you only hurt yourself by limiting yourself to only a few reach colleges.</p>