Do you think there should be a limit to the number of schools one can apply to?

No limit, or perhaps a high limit like 20.

Who are you trying to help with a limit?

  • Not the family that feels the need to cast a wide net (usually for legitimate reasons: chasing aid, unconventional kid, uncertainty on where kid will be happiest...)
  • Not the colleges who, according to what we read on cc, love having lots of apps and app fees.
  • Not even the high schools and teachers in this day of Common App.

I think there is a mistaken belief that when lots of kids apply to 15+ schools, that it hurts MY child’s chances at the schools on her list. But I think this is totally wrong. If anything, excessive # of apps pushes down the yield rate so colleges must accept more students in order to fill the class. It is a wash. Your kid’s chance of acceptance to any given college is the same whether everyone applies to 5 or 20.

So if your kid can get away with 5 well-chosen schools to apply to, hurray! Lower stress for your family. Just laugh or shake your head at the neighbor doing 20.

Students at elite prep schools may be able to apply to fewer colleges. Those schools have well resourced and connected dedicated college counselors who can be a big advantage for helping students find which colleges will see them as good matches. Also, most students at such schools are not financially constrained, and those who are may get better FA and scholarship advice there than at a typical high school.

Yes, some will say that “any student can find this information”. But the reality is that some will basically have it handed to them, while others will have to do a lot more work to find it – only to find that colleges often prefer the former students anyway rather than being more impressed by those who had to work for it on their own.

“
no possible safeties?” You telling us they need to apply to 20+? What, all Meet Full Need or high merit opps? No culling possible? Remember, I’m against potshots. I want more kids to match themselves. Besides, that comment doesn’t refer to all kids.

The issue isn’t having info handed to you. It’s more what you do to find and refine choices. I knew there was little sense in trying for the Harvard sort of generosity, D1 wouldn’t get in. Nor did she qualify for our flagship’s merit. Someday, I might tell more about her hs record.

Yes, poor kids don’t have the same resources. Some have great support, not all. But the fact of that, or lousy FA at your instate, is that enough to say 20+ targets? Especially if you don’t know those schools?

I would like to see kids limit their college applications to more realistic choices. Here’s a reality check. Selective colleges love to boast about their “great” programs, but they’re accredited the same as any other bachelors degree. The secret is just restricted supply. It’s the same marketing stunt as Popeye’s chicken sandwiches. You pair effective advertising with restricted supply, and you can get people trampling over each other for almost anything.

Black Friday is bad, but it’s nothing compared to what it was 15 years ago before Amazon stepped in, no doubt saving many lives. The media had statistical death tolls of people getting trampled at Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Amazon discovered that you can make more money increasing supply and charging reasonable prices.

Selective colleges haven’t figured that out yet. All the other universities have. Regional universities like Texas State and UTSA have nearly tripled in size in the last 15 years by opening their enrollment and offering innovative degree programs with high employability. Those are the schools you want to be going to.

No one has mentioned that in the UK students can only apply to 5 universities. They can apply to Oxford or Cambridge but not both. Such an arrangement would not work in the US.

In the UK, most of the universities are less opaque about admission, and cost is much lower.

Competitive merit chances are generally opaque, so they are generally all reaches from the applicant’s point of view.

Half of kids will see parental divorce, so they are unlikely to get FA at many colleges, and their parents are unlikely to be able to afford much. So they need to go merit chasing. If they do not qualify for automatic full rides, their lists will be all reaches.

Reducing the number of applications per student has to come from the colleges and how they set up their incentives.

Particularly for moderately selective public universities that admit by stats, more transparency in admission thresholds (by division or major if applicable) would help many students know what can be a safety or match, instead of guessing, thinking that they may be guessing wrong, and applying to more just in case, or applying to unrealistic reaches.

Better in state financial aid and merit scholarship transparency at such public schools will also help, reducing the need to apply to more in search of competitive merit money.

Private schools have their own incentives to increase the feeding frenzy, but if the feeding frenzy can be limited to private schools, that can help many students.

“If they do not qualify for automatic full rides, their lists will be all reaches.”
Crazy. It sounds like you think the more reaches one applis to offers some chance of admit. Not.

It feels like you’re missing the point that the colleges pick the kids they think fit. Not every 10th kid (whatever number you want.)

So really, we’re cycling back to my comment kids need to better self match.

And no merit goes to kids who cannot get admitted, in the first place.

I think it means that there many kids whose parents cannot provide much or any financial support for college due to divorce (or other reasons). These kids need as much merit as possible including room and board. They need to be able to apply to more than 10 schools due to the competitive nature of these scholarships. That makes the schools reaches. Not necessarily because of academics but because the cost is too much. For this subset they are self matching. That’s the way I read it.

I don’t think anyone thinks that the more schools you apply to the better the odds of being accepted. In theory all the schools acceptances/denials should be mutually exclusive.

I don’t fully agree that my kid isn’t hurt by the large number of schools her classmates apply to. There is a local rep, and part of this whole stupid game involves making yourself known to that rep for competitive schools. when 60 kids from her high school all flood the rep visit, it’s hard to be noticed. and many of these kids have no real interest in the school. the valedictorian is applying to 30+ schools- many of her safeties are dream schools for some of the other kids. Is she taking their spot? probably not, but she might be preventing them from getting excepted in the early wave, and might be siphoning merit aid away.

I am not sure there is really much logic to my feelings against kids applying to large numbers of colleges. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test to me- just feels wrong somehow.

Yes. As the parent who pays for the application and each test score sent, I limited my older daughter to 5 applications. My youngest is applying ED this season. If she doesn’t get in, she’ll apply to one other school. This whole system is madness and only you can control how much you get sucked in.

Calling it a self match because College X offers generous FA and you need generous FA is not what I mean by self matching.

You need to be able to get an admit. You need to understand what it takes
beyond your financial need and their generosity.

Imo, this isn’t about yield or number of applicants. Not when you choose to apply to an excessive number of colleges you know little about, hoping some dart hits the bullseye.

Five was it for us too. We didn’t get a single application fee waiver and paid to send most of the test scores too because things changed from the time he took the tests to the time he applied as far as his school list. We put a lot of research in the ones we did apply to though and they are all places he thinks he’d be happy attending and that we can afford. Now we’re stuck trying to decide between these 5 as he got in them all. Sometimes more choices aren’t better. He’s very conflicted on what to do.

For kids whose parents can’t or won’t help pay for college this is exactly what it is. Trying to hit a bullseye. That’s the only chance they have. By limiting apps your taking chances away from these kids.

If you’re fortunate enough to pay then great. In that case I agree that you should limit apps to 10 or less.

Here in Ontario the cost to apply is $150 and that gets students up to 3 applications. Students can apply to more than that if they wish at a cost of $50 per additional application. The process here is generally straight forward and there is no requirement for teacher or guidance counsellor recommendations though there are a few specialized programs that have supplemental applications that request a contact name and number for them to be able to verify the submitted information. The guidance department digitally submits the transcripts for all graduating students to a centralized processing centre. Students create an account on the centralized portal and indicate what schools/programs they want to apply to. The centralized portal then co-ordinates the transmission of transcripts to the appropriate schools. Once received the schools contact the students and have them set up an account on their admissions portal. Any supplementary applications materials (essays, references, video interviews etc.) are all managed by the student through the online portals and their high school is no longer involved except to send periodic marks updates to the central processing centre. The processing centre also manages applications to a few out of province schools. Otherwise students have to arrange to have their transcripts sent to their school of choice if they are applying out of province or country. As easy as the process is the average number of applications submitted is 5.

Every family is different with different needs. Each family should decide how many application should be submitted. Already too many rules to impose a limit on applications.

My son applied to 4, my daughter 5. Each had a definite safety. In a much older era, I only applied to 2; a reach and a safety.

I say, no limit. However, I can see a teacher limiting the number of recommendations they would do for one student or having a generic one that would be sent to any school the student requested. It is the teachers and GCs that I have pity on at application time.

It would not be surprising if many successful “self match” admits just hit the match by chance, rather than because they knew (or were told) that they were matches for the college’s wants.

I am always surprised when a family which is watching pennies very closely announces that their kid is going to a pricey SAT tutor and hiring a private counselor. And then applying to 20 schools because “we need the best deal we can get”.

To me (I’m good at research, I know a fair amount about dozens and dozens of colleges because I’ve been hiring new grads for big companies for decades, and I’m REALLY FRUGAL in some ways) it seems like a total waste of money. And I’m way too cheap to have allowed 20 schools and we knew we were full pay going in.

But everyone isn’t me, and I don’t get to tell people how to spend their money. But I have observed many instances where people are spending LOTS of money on applications which could be better spent on actual tuition. And it’s only after the fact that families realize that the extra thousand bucks which went out the door so quickly during application season ended up getting admission to colleges they couldn’t afford (researching the NPC ahead of time would have told them that) and getting admission to a bunch of schools their kid didn’t want to attend. And applying to Harvard AND Yale AND Princeton doesn’t “triple” the odds that their kid will get admitted to mega generous U. It just triples the amount of dough that goes out the door in application fees and sending test scores.

It’s sad to watch, but how do you save people from themselves?