<p>What I mean is, if the Common Application only allowed people to apply to, say, seven colleges or less, high school students would be forced to make their choices carefully and reasonably, based on likelihood of acceptance. The ever-bloating number of kids applying to the most popular universities would fall, resulting in more self-selecting candidate pools and higher acceptance rates (although that would be countered to an extent by higher yields). There would be much less students applying to Harvard just because. And don't forget that the number of people applying to college in the US continues to rise; I think certain restrictions would help keep acceptance rates outside of the realm of absurdity.</p>
<p>(On the other hand, I think many colleges would oppose such a policy because it would mean less application fees to collect and higher percentages of applicants to admit.)</p>
<p>The idea came to me because of my slight annoyance with the many students applying to certain schools by default, regardless of things like fit and school ethos, but I haven't actually examined it in depth. I'm sure there are many pros and cons that I haven't thought of. Discussing them might turn out to be interesting, so go ahead! Give me more arguments for and against.</p>
<p>(Mods, I don't know if this should be here or in the Search & Selection forum. Feel free to move it if you think it's not appropriate.)</p>
<p>I agree with you in some respects. The Common App has been a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it facilitates the application process by allowing students to apply to several schools more easily, but at the same time puts an enormous burden on the colleges themselves. I’m not entirely sure how these various colleges go about reviewing applications, but I sincerely hope they have a huge team of officers doing it. </p>
<p>The Common App also made the practice of “safety-netting”, as I’ve sometimes heard it called, quite popular among self-selecting students. Often, the prestige-mongers will apply to 10-15 or even more schools, claiming that if they apply to more schools they’d have a better chance of getting accepted to at least one or two. Statistically, I can’t argue that this is necessarily untrue, but students have to weigh the consequences of this practice. It over-saturates the applicant pool with half-assed applications from students who often aren’t exactly sure they want to go there.</p>
<p>I like the idea of putting a limit on the number schools a student is permitted to apply to, but I cannot imagine it could be implemented without some serious backlash. I think Common App and the schools themselves ought to encourage voluntary restraint when creating college lists, whatever that may take. If it means adding two or three more essays to the supplements, so be it. That would help to weed out the students who don’t really want it.</p>
<p>There are good reasons to apply to dozens of schools:</p>
<ul>
<li>variable Financial Aid and Merit Grant treatment </li>
<li>lack of informtion – how much can you know about a school? You take a few hours, then roll the dice. AFTER acceptance, you take a lot more hours to look for fit.</li>
<li>unpredictabiliity of admissions decisions… what if Princeton is (unbeknownst to the applicant) targeting anthropology majors, and none of the other seven Ivies is?</li>
<li>fear of a total shutout by applying to seven top 20 schools, and no Top 50 or Top 100</li>
</ul>
<p>The reasons it might not be reasonable:</p>
<ul>
<li>each school costs ave. $65 plus $10 SAT sent = $75. 15 schools = over $1,000, which is not a small amount to a middle class family that doesn’t qualify for fee waiver</li>
<li>each additional new, non-common-app essay takes an hour or two or perhaps longer. Why our school? What do you hope to accomplish?, etc. Honors, scholarship programs, or special academic programs usually require a complex essay.</li>
<li>every interview takes time and possibly some expense to execute. LACs in particular are quite focused on the interview and fit.</li>
</ul>