I think you can apply wherever you want to but not be stressed if you become fully comfortable with a true safety. Often your instate public or something similar. My son that is currently in the process threw some hail mary passes to see if anything lands. No expectations. No stress.
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One of the best ways to avoid undue stress in the college admissions race is to avoid having a Top 50 or bust mentality. My S22 only applied to one top 50 (as a reach and it is at the upper end of T50s) - the rest were T50-75. So far he has been admitted to 4 and WL at 2. He hasn’t been rejected at any. Far from constructing a dizzying application, I’d generously rate his ECs as “average” – no leadership, no school clubs, no internships or summer programs. He did have good grades/rigor but he went TO. He did not spend hours “demonstrating interest” – yet, here we are with some nice acceptances to choose from. The most stressful thing so far has been deciding where to apply and completing the apps - otherwise it hasn’t been bad.
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In our highly competitive school district, very few of the ECs are undertaken with the sole purpose of personal enjoyment or making the world a better place. Under peer and/or parental pressure, kids indeed run themselves ragged.
I believe that, if the holistic admission is abolished and replaced by a stats-driven admission, 90% percent of the HS students will immediately drop their ECs or scale them down drastically (except maybe sports). Nobody will do university research on incomprehensible topics in the summer instead of hanging out with friends or going to the beach, and the number of HS student non-profits will go back to almost zero.
Based om my (distant) experience in high school, I also believe that organized activities do not make for more interesting people. In my country university admission was based purely on GPA and the results of the entrance exam. We did not do organized ECs. We spent our time reading for pleasure, doing unorganized sports with friends (hiking, skiing, ice skating, pick-up soccer for the boys) and just hanging out and talking for hours about boys, books, movies. We were interested in the world around us and had time to explore it.
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There is a separate thread from a young Native American male who applied to around 40 schools. While I would never encourage anyone to do that, his results, also posted, vary widely and are unpredictable at best, presumably as a result of our holistic admissions process. Given the lack of any discernible pattern in the results, I am afraid we will see more of this strategy, and that it is indeed rational.
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Back in the day (which means three years ago in CC land) there were posters who sagely advised applying to an acceptable safety with rolling admissions- so that there would be an acceptance in hand BEFORE all the other apps needed to go out. That saved time, MONEY, and stress. There’s no need to apply to 40 colleges if you already have locked in a choice you’d be happy with.
Maybe us old-timers need to revive this advice. 40 applications? I cannot even imagine what that looks like.
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Maybe that should be a litmus test for students and family? If it didn’t matter for college admission, would you still do it? If the answer is ‘no’, do something you love instead.
My D LOVED her ECs in HS. She was actually busier with EC senior year after it “didn’t matter” because she enjoyed them and she wanted to do even more. She continues to do those same types of ECs in college…because she loves them.
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I too would find it burdensome, but apparently the applicant did not and wanted to do so. In any event, he has interesting results which I suppose would not have been obtained with fewer apps.
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Here’s what feels like a weird cycle. Cal Newport suggested that in early high school a kid should read a lot of magazines etc. to figure out what truly interested them, rather than being a knee-jerk serial joiner at schools (sports, clubs, music…). Then he advised becoming pointy in that area of interest, avoiding “teenager” routes and diving into the field at the level of an adult (so as to stand out from other high-school peers). In theory that should have led kids to activities that they would do (out of interest) even if it was not going to help with college applications. In practice, it seems to have sent the whole “herd” of students toward spikiness, regardless of personal interest. So now another expert will come along to tell them that the best candidates are those that are authentically curious…and will give advice that eventually gets twisted toward inauthenticity.
Meanwhile…the truly curious are rewarded (in life if not admissions) and the serial joiners find less success than they perhaps anticipated (but we warned them…).
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20 apps seem reasonable to me in this environment. In two batches – maybe up to 10 for the EA round depending on your major, and another 10 for RD. This is a rational way of managing risk, having gone through the process twice now within the past three years.
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But what is the risk? Not gaining any acceptances at all? For a truly accomplished student that doesn’t seem likely as long as they apply to a variety of schools at various levels of selectivity. I guess it gets thornier if only a T50 will do, though I’m not certain there are 10 schools that offer a true EA option in that group.
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People make rational decisions :-). They look very closely at what happened in their school last year, and assess how random the process has become, and correctly decide that if the process is random, and outcomes are uncorrelated, then there are benefits to applying to a large number of places. The T20s have become more random. It depends on where you think you bucket into. With one kid we wanted to get into Rutgers and then try your luck. With one kid, he said if he doesn’t get into UIUC CS Honors, he will panic and add 4 more schools over the initially scheduled 16 3 years ago. It is a serious risk management exercise, as appropriate for each kid. Also it is expensive to physically visit every school to check them out. Cheaper to apply first and then visit the ones you get into.
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Most students don’t need to apply to this many schools, because many students don’t apply to that many reaches…and there’s no reason to apply to that many targets/highly likelies/safeties, with the possible exception of some who are merit hunting.
If we are talking top students for highly rejective schools, it is difficult for most students to do an adequate job on the essays for this many schools, and the application/essay ambition of many students really declines heading into December. It is difficult to adequately research schools and do a thorough job on the Why Us? essays, and there is no doubt these essays are critical to an applicant articulating fit with the school.
I have also been closely watching the results of the Native American student who applied to 40 schools, which I agree is very interesting. One important point about that student is at some schools being Native American is a hook.
Lastly I would encourage students who are full pay as well as those who can afford their EFC (and NPC is affordable) to use EDI and EDII at schools where that makes sense…at many schools there is still a statistical benefit to applying in those rounds (even though it’s not as large as it looks by comparing relative acceptance rates with RD round).
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The essays start in Feb of the senior year, and the research starts in junior year :-). Kids do what they need/want to do.
I am not speaking for the Native American kid.
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Yes, the results for that Native American kid are surprising. Accepted at Rice but not TCU. In at Bates, not NEU or Case Western. And the UC system results are just incomprehensible ( for this and other applicants). That thread ( titled something like “just in case”) is worth a read.
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Do you mean junior year? Not many students so motivated to start their essays in earnest junior year…getting them to do them in the summer is hard enough.
Suggesting that students apply to 20 schools just perpetuates the nonsense that is happening with high stat students. What is the proposed breakdown among reach/target/safety of your 20 schools?
If students have a balanced list there is absolutely no reason to panic. Ever.
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I completely agree on the surprising results of the NA student.
Counselors are probably never going to be able to sort thru the UC admission results, which is bad for all of us 
If I were working in the state of Cali I don’t even know what I would tell my students. For several years I have been encouraging my OOS students to not apply to the UCs, for many reasons. Some listen, some don’t!
I also see that as the symptom. Unlike some thread saying here (aim for less competitive colleges). Kids get peer pressure from competitive high school. That’s not necessary in parental control.
It depends on what you mean by Reach/Target.
List for my older one.
Rutgers, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, UTAustin, Columbia, Cornell, CMU, Caltech, UPenn, Brown, UIUC, UCB, UCLA, UCSD. Perhaps in that order. The schools that would have been added on a panic were GTech, Yale, Duke
Younger kid:
Rutgers, Penn State, UPitt, UMD, GTech, UMich, Madison, UMass Amherst, CMU, Cornell, WashU, Tufts, UIUC, Purdue, NJIT.
In the case of both my kids, the school list was not dependent on where other kid’s were applying to those schools. Usually this is not the case. Kids ask around where others are applying and change their EA choices as a result sometimes. If those were a consideration, things would have become more complex.
Adding Yale and Duke because you’re in a panic about not getting in to Harvard/Stanford/MIT is the OPPOSITE of a rational decision.
I’m starting to understand why the folks here who post about how much stress their kids are under have a point.
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Because Yale is bad for CS. He thought Yale wasn’t that hard to get into. The panic was not getting into UIUC because it suggested other similar outcomes for Harvard, MIT etc.