As far as schools seeing where you applied, each school can see 9 other schools. Be smart about how you order them. For us, with 24 schools, we ordered them alphabetically on three different FAFSA submissions, 8 each. We also split them up so that each FAFSA submission had a mix of reach, match, and safety schools. So, even though my D applied to 24 schools, no school ever saw more than 7 besides themselves. She looked like any other candidate. So that allegation/conclusion, @TheAtlantic, is just not valid.
@redpoodles Baloney isn’t that savvy.
Well, still,the FAFSA only processes ten schools at a time, so assuming he did it for every school he applied, he would have had to process 4 times (he applied to 31) and each school would have only seen up to nine other schools processed alongside it, so I can’t imagine that was at significant fault for all his rejections and waitlists.
@redpoodles My bad! I knew they couldn’t see all of them at once, but I didn’t know how many they could see. Thanks for the insight. I do wonder how much expressed interest may have to do with admissions though.
@MidwestDad3 Thanks my friend.
@TheAtlantic I sincerely don’t believe that financial aid offices communicate FAFSA information to admissions offices. Seeing what other schools an applicant applied to does not reveal in any way to a university what the likelihood is of that applicant enrolling. So if you’re saying that it’s some kind of complex yield protection system… I don’t believe that’s the case. And yes, I got waitlisted at schools that have an average ACT 5-7 points lower than mine. Forgive me for being a little confident about that. It doesn’t matter, of course, because as I said, the least prestigious school I can possibly graduate from now is Cornell, and I’m happy about that.
@CaliCash Wow, going to insults now, haha. I’m not very shrewd, eh? I’ll just disregard that. As for your earlier post, I don’t know why you would say that I wouldn’t be happy at Cornell. I guess this is where we fundamentally disagree. You see, unlike you, my happiness is not derived from the university I’m getting an education at, and I can make friends in practically any environment. I didn’t choose my high school, did I? And yet I manage to be happy here? If you’ve convinced yourself that you are only capable of being happy in a select few environments, then you’re gonna have a difficult life.
For some schools, expressed interest means A LOT. I don’t think my D would have gotten into ALL of the LACs she was waitlisted at (she did express interest in one (Bates) and still got waitlisted) but I would think that had she been able to tour and interview, she would have gotten into at least one of them? It’s important, no doubt about it. But not being able to express interest for whatever reason shouldn’t stop someone from applying.
Oppositely, sometimes you spend a lot of time on something–D toured Tufts, spent days on the essays, applied ED, even, and still didn’t get in.
I feel for this generation. It’s a much more difficult process than it used to be and it is not healthy, IMO. 
Congratulations @Baloney1011 - I followed your story on the other thread and I am happy to see you report your results and getting into Cornell*. The asterisk on the Cornell admission will be forgotten once you graduate.
While shotgunning may not be the answer to everyone, you made it work for you given the circumstances. I hope you can take learnings from this process, both from the act of shotgunning and from putting yourself through this public forum and facing constant (sometimes unfair) criticism and apply yourself better in future. I admire your resiliency.
And you SHOULD be happy about that!
I really only have one question for you @Baloney1011 : if you could have only applied to 10 schools, would Cornell have made that list, and if not, what schools would have?
I truly don’t understand why so many feel the need to attack @Baloney1011. While you may disagree with whether or not it truly was a success in terms of the final statistics, baloney seems happy with his results as he was accepted to Cornell. Also, it’s pretty rude and unfair to diminish the accomplishment of a Cornell acceptance because it was a transfer acceptance. If you don’t think that baloney’s strategy was successful, then you have every right to learn from that approach your college process as you wish! Baloney’s college process literally has no effect on your life whatsoever.
@TheAtlantic I can’t give you a definitive answer. Had I been limited to 10 schools… I really don’t know. I can’t imagine applying with a limit of 10 schools. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton would have made the list, as well as at least 3-4 matches and 2 safeties. Cornell - definitely most likely not.
@calipapa @cheesecake51 Thanks.
Alright, then I guess i see the value (for you) of shotgunning if you’re attending a school you probably wouldn’t have applied to otherwise. Enjoy your next year, and then the three after that!
@Baloney1011 The difference is, you don’t live in your high school. You don’t spend every waking moment there. You would be doing that at a college. It’s more than making friends. Obviously anyone can make friends anywhere. But if Cornell wasn’t a priority for you and you only applied there just for the sake of getting to at least 1 elite school, then no, you don’t want to go there. It’s about more than friends. It’s about the environment, and class sizes, and class structure, and student body size, and the political climate, and the accessibility of professors, and the amount of required course you have to take, and the housing, and the campus activities, and the layout of the campus and overall feel for the school. If Cornell wouldn’t have even made your top 10, I doubt that you would’ve been happy there. You can apply to 15 schools and even that isn’t shotgunning and if Cornell wouldn’t have even made the top 50% of your 30+ college list, obviously it the best school for you. Remember, you will be there for 3+ years. The benefits from a Cornell degree will happen once you are a senior or a graduate. But will you enjoy your first few years there? I doubt it.
And the sad part is, you probably would’ve gotten into at least 2 elite schools had you not shotgunned. And what’s even worse is that aside from it being an ivy league college, you haven’t pointed out one specific thing about either of the schools you’ve gotten into and from the looks of it, you wouldnt even be able to do that off the top of your head.
Isn’t this just beating a dead horse at this point?
And no, you aren’t that savvy.
savvy- shrewd and knowledgeable in the realities of life
Your approach was not knowledgeable and as a result, you didn’t get into any of your top schools and basically got 27 rejections.
“Interest” isn’t just about physically showing up to visit or interview. It can be in how the app “shows” a recognition of the same values the school has, its philosophy, what binds its community, what makes that school even a little unique, etc. Not all colleges have a “Why Us?” in their supps, but the competitive holistics look to see how the kid answers various questions. They’re looking for their version of match. I’m not sure how kids who shotgun can actually manage, say, 30 apps and do justice to each.
This is not an indictment. But these competitive colleges live their identities and want to see you “get it,” have been getting it through hs, and can express that. And even if you do, you still face their fine tuning for various institutional wants and needs.
In the end, reading this thread, I can get on board with those who can explain a rational need to apply to many schools. But just to play with some statistics (the more I apply to, the more acceptances I’ll have,) isn’t “rational.” If you don’t have what college X likes, wants, and needs- and if you can’t present it in the app- just applying doesn’t up your chances.
@TheAtlantic I’m glad you finally see the merit in what I did. And thanks!
@CaliCash Here’s a revolutionary idea for you. Maybe I don’t care about class size, or class structure, or student body size, or even political climate, or accessibility of professors, or required coursework, or housing, or certainly not activities and “layout of the campus” (whatever that’s supposed to mean). Maybe, I care about getting a job on Wall Street and being successful in life, and Cornell AEM is the path to that. Maybe, just because Cornell wouldn’t be in my top 10 schools, doesn’t mean I can’t make the most of it and enjoy it while I’m there. Maybe at the end of the day, a university is a university, regardless of the “overall feel,” and maybe, in all reality, most adaptable people can be happy almost anywhere. Maybe you should think about that.
As for your second point, there are no specific things I look for in schools, apart from prestige. You think that everyone has to have a preference for absolutely everything. I know you want every applicant to say, “I want a school of 5500 acres, at least 30% of which is green space, with 200-230 professors, at least 50 miles from a major city, with temperatures ranging from 20 to 90 degrees and no more than 10 inches of precipitation year-round, with no less than 3000 but no more than 4500 total undergraduate enrollment, with at least 50% of classes having less than 30 people, and with at least 5 ghosts on campus.” But to reaffirm my revolutionary idea to you once again - not all of us care about the number of ghosts on campus. The simple reasons I would enjoy Cornell - it’s a nice, pretty, peaceful area in upstate NY and it’ll give me fantastic job prospects. That’s it.
I’d also just like to remind everyone that I’m on ten waitlists. Maybe I’ll get into NYU Stern, or William and Mary, or even UChicago or Williams College. Then I’ll have a fantastic place to go to freshman year, and if I get into the latter two, I wouldn’t even have to worry about transferring to Cornell. Should I get into any of my waitlist schools I’ll update this thread in May or June.
@lookingforward, I don’t think colleges want to hear their own party line spewed back at them. They want to see how you operate, how you think, how well you communicate, how you contribute in your own world, what your potential could be and how you could grow their vision. My D got into BC despite putting down she’s not religious, and she chose the “Magii” question having no idea what they wanted to hear or what applicants who’d gone to Catholic school would say. We didn’t find out till afterwards through CC that you should talk about your service projects (she didn’t). She answered the question from her own personal perspective, using quotes from a non-christian African leader and it made sense. Hell, in her Tulane essay (where she got a huge scholarship and they even increased it when she didn’t enroll) She actually opened her essay with “To be honest I had never heard of Tulane and I only opened this application because you kept sending it to me and it was free. But when I took a closer look…” and she went on to describe something interesting she could bring there, and wallah. They keep calling.
@CaliCash, I actually fear for your happiness more than Baloney’s. What you say is like taking a semi-educated guess–ok, you researched, but until you get there and live it, it’s still a guess. I sincerely hope you love Northwestern or wherever you end up, but chances are you will not like a lot of things about it, and it’s also possible that Baloney ends up liking Cornell much more than you like whatever college you go to. Here is why: because of expectations. You have SO MANY. Baloney has none–he’s just gonna go and make it work. You could buy the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood with people who drive the perfect cars and have the perfect haircuts, but you could still end up with the psycho neighbor who won’t leave you alone. Why so much hate for Baloney? It’s really overboard, like a crush in a bad movie.
@redpoodles Of course he has expectations. I never said a school has to meet all of those things. But everyone has preferences in schools. There is no “hate” for baloney. I just think that he took a particularly unsuccessful approach to the college admissions process. Even though he did not publish a list of rankings, he obviously had a general idea of where he waned to go and if Cornell never would’ve made a list of say 10-15 schools, it’s because he never wanted to go.
I am not emotionally invested in this thread. It’s spring break, I did my homework, and I have nothing better to do.
The biggest problem with shot gunning is that it is a real risk in terms of dropping the ball (many balls) while juggling so many schools. and endangering the entire process for oneself. Most kids I know have trouble enough with 6-10 apps, and have to have some adult supervision and oversight. I have the greatest respect for those kids doing most all of it themselves, as they are competing against those who have a lot of parental help and now days even independent counselor involvement. It’s becoming more difficult and expensive these days. I was one who did the entire process on my own as a high school student. I’m in a community where that is ever so rare. I doubt I could have juggled that many apps on my own.
Also, it is difficult, if not impossible to show a lot of demonstrated interest with visits particularly a problem. There are ways around this, but require some savvy and knowledge, IMO. Not what most kids can do at the cusp of adulthood. The most selective schools could not care less about that factor, however.
It’s also a huge time commitment, dealing with all of this during an already very busy, intense senior year. My son was one of the lucky one who was done by November, and he could see a lot of his classmates struggling with all of the things that needed to be done for the college process, and still trying to enjoy senior year. Life is not all about getting into a selective college. Might not be worth too much focus, thought,stress, time and expense. That is the curx of the matter. A lot of time spent on this means loss of it on other pursuits.
I have a child I thought I would lose to a life threatening dx. Tough as nails, he was and is, and he has a strong sense of what’s important to him which includes savoring each day and the opportunities in it. When he picked his college, he looked and where and with whom he wanted to make his home, where he could find joy and enjoyment as well as get a good education, and was able to keep the prestige and name brand labels out of the picture. Out come was optimal for him. He turned down Cornell for a small little known college where he had a great time and learned so much. So much he is doing leading edge research these days with kids from Ivies and the such reporting to him.
I write all of this even as I will fully admit that shot gunning, applying to many schools does improve some outcomes. If that is something that a person wants to do, well and good. But there is a price to do this.