<p>to spend $3000 on application fees</p>
<p>you either have to be</p>
<p>a)rich</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>b)retarded </p>
<p>though a combination of both isn't too hard to come by</p>
<p>Adcoms DO NOT confer to compare Ivy applicants. Not true at Yale. Not true at Columbia. Not true at any of them.</p>
<p>Why is it that important if someone applies to every Ivy League school?</p>
<p>Yes, they're all very good schools, and very hard to get into. But beyond that, it's a somewhat arbitrary set of schools. You might just as well ask if people have applied to all of MIT, Penn, Caltech, Stanford, WashU, Yale, Brown, and Columbia.</p>
<p>
[quote]
A Columbia Univ. representative came to my high school campus and basically said that if a student is found applying to more than 4 Ivys, it looks terrible. Apparently, the AdComm sees this move and assumes the candidate is not serious about attending their school. The rep also said that many AdComm talk to each other about their applicants [though I highly doubt this].
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
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A harvard rep came to my school and told us that ivy league schools discuss applicants with each other and pass and trade them around. I kind of didn't believe her, but I suppose it's a possibility.
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<p>I'm almost 100% sure they don't, and I have heard this from many adcoms.</p>
<p>Also, last year someone on CC got into every single Ivy League, Stanford, and Rice (I'm not kidding). So yes it could happen. No it doesn't "look bad."</p>
<p>But honestly, you don't want to apply to all eight. They are quite different from each other and it's a waste of your money and your time. Find out which ones match you the best and apply to those. And remember there are schools outside the Ivy League.</p>
<p>"I'd estimate my high school charging at least an additional several thousand dollars for those services."</p>
<p>Several thousand dollars to send out transcripts?! Mine charges $2 for the first, $1 for every one after that. Several thousand dollars is ridiculous. Talk about a greedy school.</p>
<p>And as far as Ivy adcoms talking to each other, I doubt they ever discuss applicants, and if they do it's probably only the amazing ones. But I have heard that they share names so if you apply to two of them ED or something you're screwed. And if you apply to all 8, they'd probably see that too.</p>
<p>
[Quote]
A whopping 60 applications.
Which of course means that the person probably had his/her choice of any school (s)he wanted since the family must've been incredibly rich ...
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<p>At about $100 per application (fee, test scores, stamps, etc), the total is $6000. Don't forget that this is nothing compared to the $40-45K annual cost at the privates, that too for four years. The person wll get to pick the university he/she likes and with the best financial aid, if that is the goal.</p>
<p>The point is this: Application cost should not dictate how many places you want to apply to.</p>
<p>"I know people at my school who are applying to the top 15-25 schools in US News (which of course includes all the Ivies) plus one or two safeties. This is the craziest (and most expensive) schnazz I have ever seen in my life. What's equally loony is that, in these cases, the parents are completely behind their kids' go-crazy-with-apps decisions".</p>
<p>I would totally believe that! Most of the postings on CC seem to be from overanxious parents with 8 million posts. Their kids tend to be the hyper ones with the 60 applications. The pressure trickles down.</p>
<p>I had heard at my old high school, a senior applied to... 24? schools or so</p>
<p>Rejected at all of them so far, including one safety.</p>
<p>It's too bad a friend of mine who applied to every Ivy this year won't know how the rest of her decisions will turn out, since she was accepted to Princeton ED. It was a huge waste of money on her part, too, since she had already completed her applications to the top 18 US News schools prior to being accepted to Princeton.</p>
<p>A person I know applied to all the Ivies, was actually contemplating whether she wanted Harvard or Yale, got rejected at all of them, and went to her one and only safety which was apparently a really easy school to get into. Talk about being conceited. lol</p>
<p>The Ivies are just such different institutions that I could not understand wanting to go to all of them. I planned on applying to Columbia and Brown (accepted ED to Columbia) but simply was not interested in any of the others.</p>
<p>I wouldn't want to apply to Brown or Columbia, but places like Dartmouth interests me greatly. However, Penn, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale are... <em>drool</em></p>
<p>There are some great things about those, and if I got in, I'd be jumping up for joy, while they are fundamentally different from University of Michigan(which is where I will be going). (Dartmouth vs Michigan)</p>
<p>Well, ses, I know of one particularly questionable justification for applying to every Ivy college, and it was that of my friend:</p>
<p>"I just want to go to a school with a great name."</p>
<p>I understand that. But I don't think it's a good reason.</p>
<p>one of my friends last year applied to every ivy AND mit, stanford, duke, georgetown, northwestern, caltech, and a few other very prestigious schools. i think he blew atleast 1.5k on just applications itself... he's at cornell now, lol.</p>
<p>Last year, a senior applied to six Ivies and I think two other prestigious schools and got into MIT and Harvard.</p>
<p>
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"I just want to go to a school with a great name."
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<p>Ha, I used to think that too. But, then, I wasn't talking about prestige: I was talking about a GREAT NAME. MIT didn't qualify... neither did U Chicago, or even Yale. But Macalester, Grinnell, Emory, Pacific... now those are great names. (I have since gotten over that.)</p>
<p>Seriously, though, I agree completely. And yet if I hadn't gotten in EA I would have applied to 5 Ivies total (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, U Penn)... as it is, I still applied to the first 3.</p>
<p>I think a guy from my school did that last year... he was first in the class, 1450+ SAT (old format), started his own charity, multiple varsity sports etc. etc. all at a fairly well-known and competitive private high school... got wait listed/rejected everywhere except Dartmouth.</p>
<p>I was going to apply to UPenn and Cornell, Penn because I loved the school when I visited, Cornell because I figured it was the easiest to get into. I didn't think I would be able to get into any of the others (Penn included), but in retrospect I think I was wrong to not have intended to apply to Brown, the other Ivy which I would have loved to go to. </p>
<p>In any case, I got into my first choice, Amherst, ED, so I'll never know how everything would have turned out. Luckily, I was holding off on submitting payment on my other apps until after ED decisions came out. In all, I probably saved around $400 in postponing payment on the other 9 schools I was applying to.</p>