Guidance counselor says it’s crazy to apply to more than ten schools (which includes two reaches), but then I see articles like this (which suggest that if you are looking at selective schools, applying to a very large number of schools may be a good idea given that it’s hard to predict whether you will be admitted to a particular school of that level) and it makes complete sense to me. What do the wise parents of CC say? D is looking at selective schools, but not Ivies.
“This doesn’t mean that aspiring students can drop out of the college admissions rat race entirely. There’s a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses aspect to sending out applications. The Parchment data suggest that students who apply to many schools are more likely to strike gold than those who apply to only one or two, which makes sense given the idiosyncrasy of the admissions process.”
Just don’t apply to more than you can handle–you have to write essays for most, if not all, of them, and if you spread yourself too thin, those essays might not be as good as they would have been, had you had more time to spend on each one.
I think your number of applications will depend on a number of factors. One- how many ivy or ivy type schools is the student apply to? Two- is the family hunting for merit money? My first child applied to 13 schools. Too many? Possibly, but we she wanted a smaller private LAC environment. Merit money was a factor and caused us to cast a wider net. Second child same story but we also had a better gauge on what to expect. Second child applied to eight schools.
My advice, do as much research as possible. Visit as many schools as possible. Know your financial limits. If you need more than ten applications, that’s your choice.
I think the problem I’m having is that my D is listening hard to the counselor, and if the counselor only says to apply to two reaches, then that’s all D will do. Maybe that’s okay and maybe it’s not - but I’m feeling like maybe it’s not.
We did the couple reaches, target, safety thing. But if you’re list is reach or high target–apply. How many lottery tickets do you buy?..
If you don’t mind paying for the application fees, then who should care? You aren’t asking the GC to write the check. And most essays can be easily tailored to a specific school.
D: “Mom, the GC said I didn’t need to apply to all these schools.”
Mom: “DD, you don’t live with the GC and you might be living with crazy woman mom…do it for ME!”
Don’t listen to the GC unless the GC is going to be paying your kid’s tab for college. Limiting the apps certainly makes the GC’s life easier. Unclear whether that limitation will benefit your kid or your wallet. You shouldn’t apply to a lot of schools for no reason. But there are good reasons to apply to a lot of schools.
If you are applying to very selective schools, there's no assurance that your kid will get in. Applying to more may help the odds. But applying to more reach schools does not eliminate the need to apply to sufficent match and reach schools. Conclusion -- more apps. Although I am generally not a fan of bulking up on the reach apps,
For merit aid money, the only way to find out how much your kid will get is to apply and be accepted. If you are shopping for merit aid money, a wider net helps. Conclusion -- more apps. The HS GCs are generally completely clue-less about this category. They are not paying for your kid's college. And they typically don't have the income level that would put them (for their own kids) in the "donut hole" category -- unable to qualify for financial aid and also unable to pay full sticker price.
Schools in category #2 usually don’t require excessive amounts of school-specific application requirements. So it is pretty much $50 bucks and a send click on the Common App. The potential scholarship ROI on that small incremental time and money can be really big.
One of my kids is happily attending a great school that provided a great merit scholarship. We never would have found that situation if we had not applied to 13 schools (but only 3 reaches). It wasn’t that hard to do.
@ReadyToRoll Does your child have the stats to be qualified for these reaches? If so, 2 may be not enough, if she could handle applying to more. If financial aid is a concern, applying to more schools would be wise. Personally, I applied to 13 schools with 7 of those being reach/low match schools with 4 schools having acceptance rates < 10%. I ended up getting into one of those 4 schools. With colleges becoming more and more of a crapshoot, it can be wise to cast a wide net. However, if your daughter has a match or safety school that she would be perfectly content with attending, there may be no need for any reach schools at all. I think too many families are getting caught up in the prestige factor of colleges these days, which can end up hurting students.
If you have a high stats kid who also needs substantial money, whether that be FA or merit, you have to cast a wide net. How wide that net has to be probably depends on whether you are able to identify a true financial and academic safety that the kid would actually feel good about attending. We were not able to find one: the academic safety was not really a financial safety, as it turns out. The financial safeties were all lottery schools. He applied to 11 schools. In retrospect, two or three of those were unnecessary. But hindsight is always 50/50. The high stats exacerbate the situation because for such a student the “match” schools are all unacceptably high admissions risks.
Luckily, we–and I say we because the money makes it a joint venture–were not forced to fall back on the academic safety.
"Don’t listen to the GC unless the GC is going to be paying your kid’s tab for college. "
No kidding. How is it possibly any of the GC’s business anyway? Might as well ask the teller at the bank her opinion on whether I should buy that new blouse.
Is the kid applying to multiple reaches to please the parents…or is the kid applying to multiple reaches because those schools are her top choices? There is a difference.
And if the student had great match and safety schools that she loves, why all the reaches?
My kid applied to only one reach school…and it was an application she did in December…two months after all her others were submitted…all three of them. The three initial schools were her top three, and she felt no need to apply to a gaggle of safety schools just because. So she didn’t.
All three of my DDs initial three schools were very well within her reach for admission. She applied EA to two and the other was rolling admissions. She had all three acceptances by the first week in December.
I would suggest that all students apply to at least one rolling admissions school…and preferably one where they would likely get accepted, and would be happy to attend. They will then likely have an early admission…and will know they are attending someplace.
EA is also good, if schools have it. Again, if acceoted, student will know by December in most cases.
If the student is only aiming for reachy types of schools…or schools where they are in the mix, but not guaranteed acceotance…then maybe applying to more schools of this type makes sense.
My point was…maybe readytoroll’s daughter is happy with the OTHER schools on the list…and doesn’t care that much about the reach schools. If that is the case, two is plenty.
It is true that statistically, all things equal, the chances are better in getting an accept at selective college, the more colleges to which you apply, if the applicant is able to do all the apps consistently well and keep on top of the endeavor. From what I have seen, without a parent on top of this, one who knows what s/he’s doing and very much involved, there are risks of mix ups, errors, things not getting done, deadline issues. I was more involved in tracking these things for my kids than I wanted to be, even for my last two kids who are pretty diligent and responsible. Things do go wrong and with more balls in the air, the likelihood of a miss is greater, and sometimes the entire juggling act can come crashing down.
However, do undestand that the true stats are not going to go as if there is a true chance as given to each of those colleges. What many who calculate the odds don’t get,is that the chances are close to nil at some of the top rate schools, or really zero. Some of the hopefuls have no more of a chance of getting accepted than someone unhooked with a 1500 SAT taking non honors classes. We have no idea where that glass ceiling is and whether we are under or above it.
I was involved with a neighbor’s daughter’s apps some years ago. She applied to twenty something schools. Her first batch of 8 schools included a likely match and safety as well as her dream schools. Then she just applied to whatever “elite” schools that she would rather attend than the two that accepted her EA. She did get some hits in some of her later choices. She applied in three groupings and had she not added the second grouping, just stayed with her first 8,she would not have gotten the option of some highly rated schools that did not make her half dozen favorite pick. So yes, it can work well, but not necessarily gangbusters great.
Merit chasing definitely can require more applications unless the merit rules are clearly written somewhere. I think rules like “only two reaches” or “you must apply to match schools” are silly. The only hard and fast rule is that you should apply to a safety you can afford and that really is 100% safe if you don’t want to have an unexpected gap year or scramble in May. I prefer to safe schools so kids have choices. My favorite safeties are schools that accept you early - so I recommend trying really hard to find schools with EA, rolling admissions, priority applications or whatever so that you have an acceptance in hand in December. U of Chicago wasn’t a safety for my youngest when he applied, but it was when they accepted him - at that point he dropped one of his two safeties - he really liked the other safety and it looked like a good bet for merit aid.
My oldest was one of those top 1% of the class kids with top scores. Any match was a reach due to low acceptance rates. His top priority was a challenging computer science program and mine was that he be challenged all around if possible. This is a kid who doesn’t suffer fools and I didn’t think it was good for him to be the smartest one in the room - which he mostly was in high school. He applied to 6 reach schools and 2 smaller tech schools for safeties. One of them had a priority application (I think based on his being an NMF) so he knew that he’d been accepted with merit money in November. He got into 2 reaches, was waitlisted at 1 and got into 2 safeties - rejected at 3 schools.
The other kid (with not quite such high stats) also had a reach heavy list. He never found a match that he liked as much as his safety. So he applied to 6 reaches and 1 safety. (2 if you count the EA acceptance ;)) He got into 3 of the reaches and the safety, rejected at 3 schools.
They knew with reach heavy lists they could be looking at a lot of rejections, but limiting yourself to just two is risky.
I’m a ten or less person so if you apply to 2 reaches and 1 or 2 true safeties that still leaves 6 or 7 matches to hunt for merit money. If parent and student do a good job on the research it should yield something that works financially and the student is willing to attend. I do think the most difficult student to handle would be one for whom the reachy uber selective colleges looks like match on paper. In that case - apply to 1 or 2 true safeties and the rest can be those reachy-matches but I would advise limiting those with acceptance rates under 20 or 20% and make sure some of those matches had acceptance rates that were closer to 40-50%. I do agree with what mathmom is saying. Everyone is going to execute their own strategy and the folks that apply to 15 or gulp 20 or even more (OMG) are going to absolutely “defend” their position. Fortunately those kids are in the very, very small minority or admissions would be more of a train wreck than it already is.