I’m not sure what her background is. But the application process-indeed, the entire senior year, is a group effort between senior teachers, administration (dean of students), volunteers from two organizations, and the counselor, who works with the entire student body, grades 6-12. The seniors meet once a week and discuss what they’re doing, what they need to do, etc. There is even a chart on the wall with each name and what’s been checked off. If it was a problem, someone would have brought it up by now
My hs senior son has eight applications submitted and is planning on two more if he isn’t accepted to his ED choice. My class of 2013 son applied to 15 . . .which seemed high to me frankly, but it all worked out.
Both my daughter and son each applied to six colleges and were accepted to all of them. Some were non-binding early action.
When DS applied he needed a number of rec. letters. At our school he had to fill out a form and give the teacher a stamped and addressed envelope. The envelope was then “sealed” with a school sticker and depending on the teacher they either mailed it or returned to him to mail. I assume that the teachers wrote the recommendation once and printed it multiple times for the different colleges.
My DD, HS class of 2010, applied to 10 plus the Schreyers Honors college at Penn State. That app had 3 of its
own essays so it was like applying to another school. Schreyers and 4 others were reaches. She got accepted to Schreyers and one reach school, rejected from 2, waitlisted at one and accepted to the six match/safety schools. She is a college grad now :">
DS is applying to 10 schools, 3 safeties (one is urban, one suburban and one more rural), 2 reaches and 5 matches. The matches are smaller in size so it seemed like a good idea to have more of them. My theory is that the smaller schools take less students so it is good to apply to several because you never know. I do think DS is applying to more than a lot of kids at his HS. But this approach worked well for my DD so we think the number works. The supplemental essays are grueling but overall, there seem to be less than when DD applied to her schools. She had several schools that had 2 or 3 supplemental essays. DS’s schools either have one full supplemental or two short supplemental essays.
For me, It’s quite a lot but then I guess you just wanted him to have all the options he could have, is that it? It’s quite fascinating actually. I’m curious, have you tried to make him apply for college abroad?
Wow. This is very interesting. We have a lot of trimming to do to get the list down to 15 or so by next fall. Hopefully between now and then my junior D will have more criteria than: “Somewhere that I don’t have to wear pants.”
My oldest applied to 10; my middle son applied to 23. My dad paid the app fees for middle son. The two biggest factors in his applying to so many places: he was applying to about six different majors, and some very specific ones at some schools (game design, industrial design, metallurgical engr), but towards the end of fall semester, after applying as an engr major to a number of schools, was struggling with pre-calc, and realized he didn’t want to be an engr major, or rather, didn’t think he could hack it. Second reason was that he was looking for one affordable school, and being that he was an uneven candidate (and a homeschooler), we weren’t sure where he’d get in, and where he could afford to go.
In retrospect, he could have knocked off about 6 colleges, and had he known he didn’t want engr., he could have knocked off about 4-5 more. Further, he threw in some schools purely for the good need-based aid (we’re Pell Grant recipients) that weren’t good fits at all (Dartmouth, Vanderbilt and WUSTL did not have the major he wanted).
In the end, it worked out well because the one highly selective school he got into was the one that was most affordable and the one that seems to offer a variety of majors that might be a good fit. He’s on a gap year (another reason why the college he chose got chosen) and still doesn’t know what he wants to do.
So 23 schools sounds insane, but it seems to have worked out. We’ll see when he actually gets to campus next fall.
Right now DD has 13 schools on her list. It was up to 15 at one time, then whittled down to 10; back to 13 at this point. I have no idea how many she will end up with. When my oldest applied 6 years ago, she had 11 schools and was accepted to all but one. I considered that a badly crafted list, looking back - too heavy on the safeties. However, it gave us a lot of peace of mind at the time.
I think 13-15 is fine, even if you are accepted to all of them. Maybe I feel this way because we are looking to see what various schools will offer in merit. This is very hard to tell without actually applying. My D will have to be happy to attend her final choice, but it would be a good problem to have, and she’ll have 3-5 months to decide in most cases.
Agreed. College admissions and financial aid are pretty unpredictable. My son got into 16 and WL at 3 out of his 23 schools, but the f. aid packages at only a couple actually made attending affordable without significant loans, and since my son’s main goal was to go to school with little or no debt, it was necessary to cast a large net.
And there definitely were surprises. For instance, I thought, based on his stats, he’d get the full tuition scholarship at UT Dallas since his SAT was in range. He initially was only offered the 6K scholarship. That was disappointing. He appealed and was offered the full tuition in late April, but that was too late.
Where I went wrong is allowing applications at the in state schools that I knew would be unaffordable. Since the Cal State schools gap big time out of the area even with Cal and Pell Grant (it didn’t even cover the tuition, let alone any room and board), I probably should have just had him apply to the two Cal State schools that I knew might be affordable, the local one and the one that had a competitive full tuition scholarship…though again, that still left room and board. It was a hard call all the way around, but since the Cal State schools were easy to apply to, I figured he could take his chances.
And the out-of-state state schools were completely unknown. Another surprise, but a good one, was how much he got at Purdue. They were the most affordable school apart from the school where he will be attending and the local commuter school. And probably, Purdue may have ended up costing very little with my son’s outside yearly scholarship.
That’s the other factor: the in-state state schools cap outside scholarship at where the FAFSA says your EFC is, so even if a student has more outside scholarships to bring the cost lower, the in state schools wouldn’t allow it. Private schools don’t have a cap like that, so if a student has outside scholarships (which is the case for both my sons), it’s more affordable to go to a private in our situation.
Anyhow, it was a learning experience.
I am sure that was true for your schools @sbjdorlo , but not for all private schools. My kid’s private caps her outside scholarships at her work-study award amount (since it is a no-loan school - if they packaged loans they’d have allowed outside scholarships up to that amount).
Her scholarships this year exceeded her WS award by a bit and that amount was taken out of her school grant award, not our family contribution. We pay our full EFC still.
S was looking at research institutions, not too big. Applied to five, couldn’t be bothered to do more. Got into three, all affordable, so had a real choice. I call that a success.
D16 has twelve on her list right now. All but her in state safety are small liberal arts colleges, many test optional, so that doesn’t seem like too many at this point. Several have no application fee if you apply online. Two EA apps are in already. We will see how many of the rest get completed.
@OHMomof2, that is a good point. It depends on their methodology, and that can change. My oldest son’s outside scholarship historically was able to be $6000 a year which covered the loan and work study portion of his aid, and we definitely paid a lot less than our EFC. This year, they even allowed additional scholarship to cover the student’s expected contribution, and since my son had yet another small scholarship waiting to be used, this year we’ll pay even less.
Older daughter (graduate architecture): 14, with 14 admissions, lots of funding, 3 top tier admissions, 1 full ride in top tier school where she is now. Sending GRE scores and paying app fees and slideroom fees (portfolio upload) was painful.
Younger daughter (NMSF, stellar stats): probably similar number, 10 minimum, likely around 14 also, lots of options.
In one calendar year (2015) we will have spent probably near $2k in app fees (older daughter applied everywhere in Jan 2015, younger is ED 2015+RD2015 by end of Dec), test fees, transcript fees,and the like. Younger girl already has a few full ride offers at flagship states but she’s waiting for the top top schools to smile favorably.
The oldest applied to 7 colleges in all, spread across the classic “reach, match, automatic admit” categories. The two automatic ones were rolling admissions (and offered major merit awards equivalent to full tuition), one of which he would have been happy to attend, so that made the whole admissions period calm. He applied to just one true reach. He got into all the colleges except the reach, and attended one of the matches, with modest NMS award. He had never visited the college he ended up attending until he went to “accepted students day” for an overnight. He wanted to attend a college where “it’s ok to be a thinker.” The next morning, when we asked him how he liked the college, he simply answered, “This will do.”
The process for the younger one was more complicated, because she applied to art programs/colleges only. No automatic or rolling admit cases. “I don’t want to find myself in my freshman year sitting in class with a bunch of kids from my high school.” She wanted to move on socially, and out of state, preferably in a real city in the East. She applied to just 5 colleges (for a 6th that she applied to she didn’t finish the required “project” because she became ill when it was due.) The process was so different from what her brother went through because she had to focus on developing her portfolio, attending National Portfolio Days, and so forth. We had no idea whether her application would be competitive. It would all came down to April 1st. Her backup plan? “I’ll go to the local community college for a year, and try again next year.” In the end she got into all 5. No financial aid. But everyone was happy with the outcome.
3 EA, 6 state schools on the same application and 9 more to go in RD round.
@mackinaw It is interesting how different the kids can be. We are on kid #3 and none of them have charted a remotely similar path. I wouldn’t be surprised if my son picks one of the places we’ve not visited either. We are in a similar boat because he has a good scholarship and one of his favorite places already. Everything has been easier since that came through.