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

Parents Forum
101

Johnny, you are completely misunderstanding how the math works.

And of course- in many instances, there are NO aid packages to compare because the vast majority of colleges in America DO NOT meet your need (nor do they claim to) and don’t care how much money you need to attend before enrolling- they will give you zip, you may be eligible for Pell and the Federal loan and if there’s a gap, god bless.

I.e.- accept/deny. They take you but you can’t afford to attend. To me- that’s as good as a rejection, and application fees and time down the drain.

Thousands of families do not understand this. They apply, they are then sad and disappointed when they get no aid even though they can’t afford to pay.

Hence Lookingforward’s earlier comments about scattershot. This is the definition of scattershot- college tells you upfront what you’ll have to pay, you ignore what the NPC calculator tells you, you then get aggravated by the sticker price and your kid can’t enroll. Multiply that by a dozen, or as they say on the shampoo bottle- lather, rinse, repeat.

102

Econpop, do you know how many postcards in the mail I get every week informing me of a beautiful 5 bedroom/5,000 square foot home in my area that has just gone on the market that would be perfect for me? Or how many calls I get reminding me that Mercedes has a no money down deal on a lease? Or a nice letter from a country club three towns away informing me that they’ve just upgraded their pool area?

Do I really think these are “invitations” to show up and bid on a house whose payments I can’t afford, drive a car I can’t afford, or apply for membership at a country club where nobody of my ethnicity/religion has ever been accepted? No, they are not invitations. They buy lists- zip codes, affinity groups, people who are members of alumni associations of various colleges in the area-- and hope that once the dust settles, they’ll have a couple of viable prospects in the pile.

But not me. They know it, I know it. If they knew more about me, they’d save the postage… but they don’t. I’m just a name and an address on a list.

103

“But applying to 20 well-chosen schools will increase the chances of getting a good package than applying to 10 well-chosen schools will.”

Well, the laws of probability and independent events, etc. aside, I don’t think hat is true for most kids. My kid is a total grind. He has three priorities in his life everyday: homework, whatever sport he is doing at the same, food. In that order. Always. Has never handed a single thing in late. Is often doing homework until 1:00 am. Yet he knew, and we knew, that he definitely had an energy limit to the number of apps he could do well. And the problem is that they all have different due dates…the natural thing is to do the one due earliest first. Even if they are dead last in terms of priority. My kid, for sure, would have been cooked by app #7 or so.

Golf is kind of like that for me. I can play quite well for the first nine holes. By 18, I don’t care any more. I can wear the cutest new golf skirt and be all proud of my middle game that day. Doesn’t matter… Holes #3 and 17…I am not the same golfer. Every time.

Our GC’s are keenly aware of the normal teenager’s limit. They sure don’t want dream school to be app #20 for a kid who is like me golfing.

104

Blossom, again, I have to agree to disagree.

And yes, in case you think I really am that clueless, I already knew that about DM.

105

Lol, I’ve shared this before. D1 mistakenly put down “legal studies” on the PSAT, thinking it covered law school. (Not.) She got “invitations” from every Tom, Dick and Harry school out there. Flight attendant programs, hairstylist schools, multiple calls from one hungry college in NYC, the local trade tech institute. We never took them seriously. For D2, UChi was after her. Oh, yeah, in your dreams.

106

After going through the process, I’ll note that colleges and universities have decades of experience marketing their product while high school seniors, teenagers, have one shot to apply to a school where they will spend the next four years.

The application process is heavily slanted toward students with savvy parents and skilled guidance counselors with time to spend with individual students. When the process becomes more straight forward you can start thinking about limiting the number of applications. Until then, applying to a larger number of schools may very well be in the best interest of many students.

107

I still shake my head at some of the arguments posted here…

The idea that forcing a kid who otherwise would apply to 20 schools to be limited to 10 apps will somehow make the remaining choices more “well thought-out” ?!? Realistically, that kid would be forced to pare down the existing list, not start from scratch with sudden newfound insight.

That colleges should make the application process MORE difficult to trim # of apps?!? DON’T push more of the burden/stress/essaywriting on the students. This proposal is totally backward.

Please don’t fix what isn’t broken. Colleges are filling their freshman classes just fine with a qualified, well-rounded group of students at great diversity of payment. There is currently a healthy spectrum of easy-to-apply, affordable, (as well as match & reach) options for virtually all students. Just because your or my kid didn’t get accepted to an Ivy isn’t evidence of a broken system.

And I will throw out a counterargument for all to consider… Is it statistically possible that the trend to larger # of apps per student actually benefits ALL students in admission to well-matched colleges? My logic: given the reduction in yield, colleges must admit a larger number of ‘well-matched’ applicants to fill the class (admittedly from a larger applicant pool. ) Overall it remains a wash, IMO. But for every kid bumped out from a reach by the better-qualified kid who sent an incremental app, there may be a borderline kid, otherwise rejected, who now grabbed one of the extra acceptance letters.

108

It seems to me that anything beyond 6-8 is overkill. Two reaches, two safeties and 4 “fit” schools. Given how good the NPCs are on school webpages are now, a student should get a sense of where merit money might be found.

109

NPCs may include stats-based merit, but tend not to include competitive merit. Competitive merit tends to be more difficult to assess chances for than admission (how many colleges give as much information on standards for competitive merit as they do for admission, and how many high schools maintain Naviance for “competitive full ride at ____”?). As a result, most applicants should treat competitive merit as “reach”, due to limited information.

110

It isn’t an “idea,” it is a fact. I observed it in my son. Once he learned he had a 10 school limit, he became much more disciplined about the selection process. And I hear the same from other students. They don’t ‘waste’ applications unless they are certain it is a good fit for them.

And colleges know that kids from our HS don’t apply unless they are reasonably serious. If a college knows that the app to their school is no

Not that hard to understand, really. When a resource is in limited supply, it is more valued.

111

Lol, the answer to “not well thought out” isn’t “apply to more.”

The problem starts with the assumptions that getting an admit is just like high school glory, a collection of titles, etc. And your dreams.

112

@cypresspat first of all you’ve already admitted your school’s 10 app limit is a fraud, in that one of those 10 can be a common app to 40+ schools.

I truly hope your son made a great choice for his college. Are you honestly saying his ultimate college choice would not have been on his list if the school allowed “unlimited “ apps?

113

The problem, IMO, is not that the kid who applies to 57 colleges is hurting other applicants. It’s that kids are wasting huge amounts of time and effort churning out applications that that are needless.

GCs, consultants, as well as dumb “journalists” who write about the students who apply to 1,670 colleges and get $7,520,000 in aid, should not advocate for students to apply to as many as possible.

There shouldn’t be any “hard” limit, like, say, 25, but the people who provide guidance and advice to explain that there are definitely diminishing returns beyond a certain number. That number does differ, based on a student’s profile, how those colleges are distributed among safeties/targets/reaches, how much aid a student needs, etc.

Personally, I think that 20-25 is a decent soft limit. So, as a kid approaches those numbers, they should stop and consider what benefits they have in applying to that many or more.

I do like the idea of some version of @socaldad2002’s idea of requiring that an applicant at least have some basic knowledge of a college before applying. That will limit the number of, I guess that I will call them “frivolous applications”. Things like “I want to attend an Ivy because Ivies are ‘prestigious’, so I will apply to every single Ivy League university”, or automatically applying to the top 20 colleges on some “best colleges” list. However, I do not consider mass application to the public universities of one’s own state to be in that category.

BTW, I would also prohibit universities from “targeting” students with mass mailings, especially low acceptance colleges “targeting” students who have almost no chance of acceptance. If colleges want to target specific populations of students, they should send out representatives to their high schools. I have seen a number of people posting here how they were “invited” to apply to some low acceptance colleges, when all that happened was that they received a mass mailed card. Looking at the colleges mailings my kid got, I felt that some colleges were purposefully creating that illusion.

Similarly to mass applications, I an OK with public colleges mass mailing students of their own state.

114

Re: “frivolous applications”

It would, however, help if public universities would be more transparent about admissions, so that students have a better idea of which ones are realistic ones to apply to.

The moderately selective stats-formula ones can publish their stats formula and past admission thresholds. This should be done by division and major when applicable (a common area where transparency is lacking, since overall school admission stats do not show how much more selective specific popular majors are). Of course, if they are confident enough that setting automatic admit criteria will not result in overenrollment, they should publish automatic admit criteria.

More selective ones with holistic or subjective admissions review can publish a grid of HS GPA or rank and test score ranges with historical admit rates for each combination. Again, a grid should be published for each division or major that admits separately.

115

Probably all of us here would agree that:

-applying to schools that are not financially realistic is foolish

-applying to no academic safety school is foolish

So let’s not act as though any of us doubts these.

But so long as a kid is applying realistically (academic credentials and finance) why place a limit, especially an artificially low limit like 8 ( jmnva06)?

I also think we all agree that kids applying to all 8 Ivies or trying for $500K+ in total scholarship awards are ridiculous. But I also believe these are quite rare. Sure there are a couple per year which make the sensational press.

And at the end of the day none of these practices, including multiple apps, hurts you or your kid’s chances.

116

The articles I’ve seen about being admitted to dozens of colleges and receiving millions in total scholarships (often includes need grants) all share one thing in common – the student used the HBCU common app at https://commonblackcollegeapp.com/ , which encourages students to apply to all 56 member colleges for a single $35 fee. Skimming through the CBCA common app, I don’t see a way to apply to fewer than all 56 colleges, although other sections of the website mention that it is possible. According to the website, over a million students have used this common app, so it may not be “quite rare.”

The first example article that came up in a Google search is at https://abc7chicago.com/education/student-accepted-into-39-colleges-awarded-$16m-in-scholarships/5174206/ .

The typical strategy with applying to all 56 colleges at once appears to be first see who accepts me, then review this more manageable number of accepted colleges in more detail including both fit and financial constraints, rather than read through all 56 colleges and learn about them first It’s not a traditional strategy, but it could work well under specific conditions since colleges that many would consider “safeties” appear on the list.

For example, I expect certain subgroups of students using the CBCA common app have subpar guidance counseling and a low rate of attending college. Getting this subgroup to take the relatively short time to fill out the app and pay the $35 fee could give them several good colleges to choose from and increase the rate of attending college. This strategy may be more effective in getting this subgroup to attend college than encouraging them to figure out which of the thousand of colleges they should a apply to on their own and applying to each of those few college individually. It would be better if they had a good GC or knowledgeable parent/family who could help them in the process including figuring out good fits, with good chance of a acceptance, that are affordable. However, not everyone has those benefits.

From earlier thread posts, I expect hard limit supporters were thinking about a different type of situation; such as the mediocre stat CC poster who applies to all Ivies only because they are prestigious instead of recognizing there is little chance of acceptance and/or figuring out which ones are a good fit. The problem with a hard limit is it gets applied to all students within the group, not just certain CC posters who might benefit from fewer applications.

117

This is a family choice, not a limit that should be imposed externally, whether it is a good idea in any one situation - in our infinite CC wisdom - or not.

As good as the NPC has become, it still doesn’t predict FA well for divorced families and businesses, so limiting apps in those cases doesn’t make much sense.

All this stuff about finding the perfect match and fit ignores the reality that many students will do well in many different colleges, the main fit factor may be cost. And cost is often opaque, still.

118

quote from above:
“From earlier thread posts, I expect hard limit supporters were thinking about a different type of situation; such as the mediocre stat CC poster who applies to all Ivies only because they are prestigious instead of recognizing there is little chance of acceptance and/or figuring out which ones are a good fit.”

Actually, I disagree. I think a lot of limit supporters are concerned about the high stat kid who applies to tons of schools he/she has no intention of going to, maybe fishing for merit scholarships but sometimes just out of neurotic-ness or because the acceptances are fun. I hear all the arguments that this won’t hurt my kid’s chances but I just don’t believe that’s true.

119

Why should other kids’ opportunities be limited to increase the chances for your own kid? There are probably students whose profile is somehow not quite equal to your kid. Should your child’s apps be limited in some way to increase the admission chances for those students?

120

I think the yield protection that occurs on the college side, because each student is submitting so many applications, absolutely does negatively impact everyone’s chances.