<p>Each GC at my school has about 250 students, but only a quarter of them are seniors. Our GCs suggest that we apply to 5-8 schools and don't exactl limit application numbers, but STRONGLY suggest we keep it under 10.They do try to discourage some students from applying to colleges a lot though, but they do it to help out other students. </p>
<p>Student A really wants to go to Harvard (and has a decent shot at getting in) and decides to apply to Yale just because. Student B (about the same level as A) really wants Yale. GCs at my school will very strongly recommend that A not apply to Yale, because it will increase B's chances slightly. They do this for not just HYP, but all relatively competitve schools. I think it's a good practice.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Actually, a student threatened to sue Brooklyn's Boys and Girls High School because their counselor only allowed top 5 students to apply to Harvard. Later city officials decided that citywide rules allowed students to apply anywhere they wished.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Kimberly Cummins made headlines last October when she was told by her New York City high school that she could not apply to Harvard University.
Confused and indignant, she pressed for an explanation. Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, she says she was told by her college counselor, allows only its top five students to apply to the Ivy League. With an 86.6 GPA, Kimberly was ranked 11th.</p>
<p>In Kimberly's case, her early-decision application to Harvard was deferred and then she was rejected in the regular decision pool. At Yale she landed on the wait list. Finally she settled on the University of Michigan - sometimes called a "public Ivy" - where she was offered a generous scholarship. It would seem that the Ivy League had been a realistic goal for her.</p>
<p>Kimberly says there is no ill will between her and the staff at Boys and Girls High School. (Her counselor asked not to be a part of this story.)</p>
<p>She says she understands that counselors and schools "have opinions and they have experience." But the way she sees it, "you just have to apply where you feel comfortable and go from there."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0531/p11s01-legn.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0531/p11s01-legn.html</a></p>
<p>My school has no real rules, but I would say that the gcs are VERY involved...so to an extent they decide where you apply to. We have about 50 seniors/gc. My gc did not want me to apply to Yale EA and suggested Princeton instead. If I pushed it, I could have applied to Yale but I decided liking Princeton more anyway after visiting. </p>
<p>We also have the rule that if you get in early (whether it is ED or EA) to a school you must attend and cannot apply to any other school. It's to prevent people from applying for the heck of it, and to lessen competition for the other students. It also works to our advantage because the EA school we apply to know about our policy and can be guaranteed that we'll go. This also hasn't been an issue finanially since most of my school is well-off. </p>
<p>I got a little off-topic, but I'm just saying that it's not that uncommon for schools to limit your "application rights" so yea, your school is allowed to do so.</p>
<p>"
And the college advisor doesn't get to know us at all. He makes us fill out a questionaire, then reads our essays, takes everything home during the holiday season and pops out 775 recommendations."</p>
<p>Popping out 775 recommendations is like popping out 775 college essays. After you write your college essays, perhaps you'll have more empathy for your advisor. I pity that person who must be spending night and day of their holiday season writing college recommendations, and not getting much appreciation or any overtime for this work.</p>
<p>Yes, s/he has the right to limit applications. S/he has only a limited number of hours, and an enormous number of students to help. Frankly, under the circumstances, I think that the advisor is being generous in allowing 6 private applications. </p>
<p>If you really feel you need more, then you needed to spend $ to go to a private school with more resources. Your advisor is only human, and there's only so much s/he can do with that huge workload.</p>
<p>Right to limit applications? Why? I would guess that most of the recommendations from that school are fairly generic and the schools see that. </p>
<p>Why couldn't the counselor say, okay, after 6 letters, anything else will be a "to whom it may concern"- with the same generic letter?</p>
<p>well zante, you go to a private school, so things are very different, cuz private schools have the rights to do pretty much anything.</p>
<p>The counselor probably is doing "To Whom It May Concern" letters for all of the schools. That's the way public school counselors usually do things, and colleges understand this.</p>
<p>Even with that, however, the counselor still has a heckuva lot of work to do in handling college apps for 750 students. S's GC complained about doing this for about 60 students at a public high school. Presumably, the counselor also is responsible for answering colleges' phone calls about students, arranging visits from colleges to the school, writing recommendations for scholarship programs, and many other duties.</p>
<p>To me, it's very reasonable for the GC to limit students' applications. I also have read that once students apply to more than 8 colleges, they tend to get fewer acceptances than do students who apply to fewer schools. This probably is because the more applications the student sends, the less most students have researched the colleges, and the less the students have individualized their applications.</p>
<p>yes, I wanna be brown, that is true, but I guess I left out the point that...even though our apps are limited, it doesn't seem to hurt anyone's chances, and we still manage to get into good schools. So don't just think more apps = better chances. I thinks it's very hard for one person to really like/love a lot of schools anyway. I only applied to 7 and I disliked two of them.</p>
<p>Really, zante, though - what are they going to do if you decide to apply to more schools after getting in EA? Your high school can't force you to accept, right? Or do you just mean they won't send off transcripts, etc. (which you still probably have a legal basis to get them to my guess is)?</p>
<p>Then they would call your EA school and make them rescind your acceptance? Probably not that dramatic, but a) they wouldn't send transcripts, etc. and b) the college you were accepted to EA had KNOWN that you would definitely go there (they are aware of our school's policy, it is included in the profile) so it is like a personal ED agreement for you. It would really be unfair to back out on that, especially since it would establish a bad relationship between the college and my school. </p>
<p>But for the most part, I don't think anyone's made a big fuss about it. If you wanted more choices, you could just apply RD. People who get in EA seem very satisfied and glad that they're done with apps.</p>