I’ve always figured if you get into half your match schools you probably got it about right. I feel for NEPatsGirl who got waitlisted at so many places. She was clearly a viable contender and ran into some bad luck. I hope she’s has a fabulous time wherever she ends up. My kids who were high school class of 2007 and 2010 applied to 7 or 8 schools, but if they were applying now, I’m pretty sure the lists would be a little longer.
Number of unique recommendations is the sensible way to apply limits if the concern is that teachers and counselors would get overloaded writing recommendations, or that a student applying to lots of schools could “crowd out” other students for the teachers’ or counselor’s recommendation writing time.
It is much more efficient and cost effective to apply to a bunch of schools first. Then spend your time and dollars second visiting schools after you know the admission decision and the dollars.
It is more time consuming and expensive to visit widely just so you can apply narrowly.
As a college counselor, I counsel the “actually go” test (after determining a budget for applications.) Are you applying to colleges you would ACTUALLY GO to? Often I find some of the schools are either “my parents made me apply, but I would never actually go” OR “The college waived my application fee, so I applied, but I would never actually go.” I don’t think the length of the list is as important as the quality of the schools. I usually counsel around 8, but I have students applying to as many as 21 this year, because financial aid is critical to them. And in that case, the student would “actually go” to any of them (and chose a full ride amazing scholarship with summer stipends for research every summer in a honors program at a large southern university over Stanford)