Recently I was with friends discussing the colleges their kids plan to apply to.
Most said their child was applying to @10 schools.
This seemed really high to me and had me.
So…how many schools is your child applying to?
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Mine applied to 6.
D20 - 3 schools
D23 - 4 schools
S24 - (planning) 4 schools
15 and 21.
It’s all over today. Some 1, some 40.
It really friends on the kid.
Some know where they want to go, it’s a safety and they’re done - usually a local or state flagship.
Others want to compare prices so want to see merit. Or aim for perceived top colleges.
Some have a change of plans - while they’re applying.
My daughter is glad she applied to 21. My son - not so much at 15 but he found his favorite late in the process by luck - being invited with friends to go on a campus visit if a school he wasn’t interested in. Had he done that earlier, he’d only have applied to the one.
As long as you ensure you have an affordable and easy to get in school on your list that the student would be happy to attend, there is no # that’s wrong.
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My D20 applied to 3 EA. She had 3 more she was going to apply to RD if the EA choices didn’t pan out, but didn’t need to do so.
My D24 is probably going to apply to 5 or 6.
it’s become a numbers game. Unless you’re hooked (athletic recruit, genius, super talent, massive donor), applying to one school isn’t a realistic strategy to securing admission. The combination of test optional and colleges aggressively promoting applications has resulted in a huge drop in admission percentages over the past 20+ years. From a purely statistical standpoint, if your list includes schools with a 3-15% admit rate, and your not admitted ED, then it becomes natural to apply to 12-15 schools just to have a conservative strategy.
it would help tremendously if schools agreed to cap the number of schools an applicant can apply to. for instance in the UK, the cap is 5 universities.
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One school - It’s realistic if you meet the minimum requirements and know you can afford it and are going.
My son could have applied to Alabama and been done.
But he didn’t realize that was his top school until after he applied to 14 others.
A UTexas top 6% or A&M top 10% could apply to just one - if admission (not major) was the concern.
A UC could apply to one if they meet the guaranteed admission - knowing they might end up at Merced.
So sometimes one is enough.
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I think one private early action and 2 public early action, but one of those was a double app, school of music and liberal arts. Had prob 3 more ready to submit, but got in early to the private, chose to go with that.
D25 applied to 1 ED and 2 EA. He was accepted to his ED1 school so he was done. He probably would have ended up applying to 9-12 otherwise.
Sure it is, at least for engineering. My son could have applied to hundreds of schools where he would have certainly been admitted.
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Unless there was a significant FA need, our son’s HS tried to limit apps to ten: three reaches, three matches, three likelies, and the student’s state flagship. He applied to eight.
ETA: Once a student committed to a school, all outstanding apps had to be withdrawn as a courtesy to classmates still awaiting decisions. The college application process was highly curated by his HS.
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for clarity, a unified state school application which covers 8 schools would count as 8.
if one accepts it is a numbers game, it’s perfectly fine to apply to 3 reaches/3 matches/3 likelies/1 state flagship, but it is also fair to add xx reaches to increase the odds of acceptance into a reach school
My son ended up applying to a lot of extra schools because he wasn’t sure what he wanted, and changed his mind a couple of times. It wasn’t a very optimized process for us, but in the end, I’m glad that he applied to “too many” schools, because he learned a lot about himself, and also has a greater appreciation for the school and program he’s enrolled in now.
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My S23 applied to 10 schools, many of them LACs but also Pitt and Alabama. He was originally going to apply to just six or seven, but he added a few because there was no application fee and no additional essays beyond the common app. He was merit-hunting but the LACs mostly came back with similar bottom-line numbers, so in retrospect he probably could have submitted about 5 applications and called it a day.
Mine, who just graduated from college, applied to 8 - 2 safeties, 4 matches, 2 reaches.
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I don’t think there is a wrong answer unless you’re applying to more than the kid can handle without undue stress (for most I’m guessing that’s 10-12 tops, though many do more esp if there aren’t supplemental essays). My own kid did 4 EA and one ED for 5 total; she had a sixth ready to go had her ED not worked out (her second choice didn’t do EA). Having a couple of early action decisions is really important if you can manage it - my kid knew she was in at a school she liked on December 1 with a huge merit scholarship (we never actually saw financial aid as she got into her ED school about 10 days later and pulled her other apps but the merit was quite large and we were pretty sure FA would cover the rest). Even though that school was probably her last choice of the six it was still a huge relief to know she was in somewhere that she liked that early. And had things gone south early on there was still time to pivot and figure out additional schools to apply to.
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If our experienced counselors had their way, most people would apply to no more than 6 to 8 carefully chosen colleges, and some of those would get good news early and be done after like 2 to 3.
There are various reasons people might apply to more anyway. Better reasons include realistic chances of being able to compare financial aid offers (possibly including merit), unusual circumstances (eg, subpar grades their COVID year), and lingering uncertainty/indifference over big picture issues (eg, universities versus LACs).
Still, I think they would prefer that sort of thing to at most stretch to, say, 10 to 12.
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It is realistic to apply to one school if your top choice is an affordable safety.
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Our son, 4 years in the workforce, applied to 7.
Students seeking competitive merit scholarships may need to apply to more colleges because competitive merit scholarships are more opaque than admission in most cases.
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