How many college applications are too many?

<p>Well, what if you have a fee waiver?</p>

<p>hey invoyable, I was asking Rsmattu if he had read my post with the links in it!!. I guess your post was written while I was writing mine and made it appear I was talking to you!! Sorry!</p>

<p>"'Anyhow, how does that make any sense? Whether you apply to 10 or 20 schools, I don't see how it reduces your chance. Unless you mean, if a very qualified student applies to 20 and gets accepted to all 20 that's reducing chances for others...""</p>

<p>It actually makes perfect sense. Think about a cup of pure juice, for example. Now add water to it and it dilutes the concentration. Applying to a lot of colleges dilutes each application's personal quality (cmon, five applications stress people out: think of writing 25 essays in your seniors year. Frankly, I think you would begin sending out crappy applications just because you are sick of doing them. Just my opinion). Other than that, you are giving colleges more applications to refuse. Considering that there is always a student out there better than you (you know, those people with 5.98 graduating GPA), it increases your opportunity of being rejected. </p>

<p>Or maybe consider economics: what happens when you flood the market with too much money? All the money becomes lesser in value. Should it make sense? Should it really work that way? Shouldn't it give you the spender more purchasing power? But it doesn't. Shoulda woulda coulda besides, that's just the way it is! </p>

<p>So it's just a fact of life that applies to more than economics and applications. You flood the market or college admissions scene, you are diluting your own chances of acceptance (and your pocketbook as well). </p>

<p>And Rsmattu, even though money is no problem, dude save that money for a "rainy day" when you are a hundred miles away from home with no money available!! </p>

<p>I'm no expert, and I'm not telling people how they should spend their money! That's not my place! But that is what I would do/how I'm approaching my personal situation.</p>

<p>"My school suggests 2 reaches, 2 matches, 2 safeties."</p>

<p>This may be good advice for some students, but it is no longer (if it ever was) good advice for students with reasonable aspirations to the most selective schools. If your stats place you in the "zone" for the top 25 schools, you need to apply to more than 2 reaches. Go read results threads on these forums; you will find many, many students who were accepted at a couple of Ivy League schools, and rejected at others. The two you like best are not necessarily the ones most likely to accept you. While you shouldn't apply to schools that are a bad fit, many students would find a good fit at dozens of schools.
So I would say: 2 safeties, 2 or 3 matches, and as many reaches as you can manage effectively, taking into account cost of applications, the time it takes to prepare a quality application, and logistical issues like recommendations. Would 10 reaches be too many? If you only get into one of them, it wouldn't seem like too many.</p>

<p>For most candidates an inverted pyramid approach is generally the one that will yield the best results. You should probably have at least twice as many matches as safeties and twice as many reaches as matches. </p>

<p>If you only apply to 6 schools a 2-2-2 breakdown between safeties, matches and reaches will have a most likely outcome (mode) of 1-0-0 or 2-0-0. You will get into a safety and most probably nothing else. </p>

<p>If on the other hand, you go for a 1-2-3 or 1-3-2 breakdown will have greater likelihood of a 1-0-1 or 1-1-0 mode. You increase your chances of getting accepted to a match or a reach school. A 1-1-4 approach may have a 1-0-1 mode which could be optimal with acceptance to your safety and at least one reach. </p>

<p>If you target the most selective colleges you may have to go for a very aggressive strategy such as 1-4-8 with one safety, 4 matches and 8 reaches. With yields avering 75% at HYPSM you can actually estimate that less than 1 in 4 applicants on average gets accepted to more than 1 of these schools. Even if you look one level below the top tier schools at the other Ivies and top LACs, few of the ENROLLED students were actually accepted to any other school at the same level. Most of the students accepted to one of these schools were also accepted to HYPSM and enrolled at one of them. This is because these schools were matches not reaches for these applicants. When given the choice, an applicant is most likely to enroll at one of his reaches than a match or safety. </p>

<p>In summary, no matter what your qualifications, you need to apply to many more matches than safeties and many more reaches than matches if you want a greater than 50/50 chance of admission to at least a school in each group.</p>

<p>
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Frankly, I think you would begin sending out crappy applications just because you are sick of doing them.

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</p>

<p>Well if you're enthusiastic about writing -- I don't know.</p>

<p>I didn't really celebrate Christmas last year -- I spent every single hour (that I was not asleep) during Christmas vacation pumping out essays.</p>

<p>For the Chicago essay I actually wrote essays for all the different options before settling for one I liked. (Alas, it didn't work -- I was waitlisted.) </p>

<p>Although I was rejected from Penn, the optional essay became my main essay for my UVA application and it seems to have worked out well. ;)</p>

<p>
[quote]
Or maybe consider economics: what happens when you flood the market with too much money? All the money becomes lesser in value. Should it make sense? Should it really work that way? Shouldn't it give you the spender more purchasing power? But it doesn't. Shoulda woulda coulda besides, that's just the way it is!

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</p>

<p>I can't believe you're talking about economics without using game theory.</p>

<p>In actuality, each individual is trying to promote his self-interest at the expense of others' self-interest.</p>

<p>Since colleges are like monopsonies (you generally enroll at one), and because they have market power already, this already enhances their existing market power. That is to say, the buyer is an application-maker, not an application-taker. But situations like that would only work out well if there were more colleges than students (that is, where buyers outnumber sellers).</p>

<p>It really is like a prisoner's dilemma game. A very large prisoner's dilemma game, involving the (couple of)hundreds thousands students who apply to "top schools" each year. The students could truly maximise their individual chances if they could find out how to increase their chances without hurting the others. But that itself is only an allocation problem. The Pareto optimal is in fact to send out only 2 or 3 applications, if you had collusion among the hundred thousand students. But such collusion would itself be a feat.</p>

<p>The dominant stable strategy is to send out as many applications as possible (betray, betray x 100,000 ), even though the optimal strategy is (stay loyal, stay loyal, x 100,000).</p>

<p>Very interesting. Maybe my analogy is a little flawed! I am not sure! Anyway, sending out a lot of applications has been proven to be detrimental. I may not be able to explain, but maybe college board can!!! (And does)</p>

<p>All of the above is great advice, but just consider the paper work involved in the application process. Guidance offices do make mistakes and ultimately you are responsible for following through. A friend's son's paperwork for several colleges never made it to some of his top choices and a decision had to be made without the counselor recs. (He was denied admission at both schools). Another friend said her transcripts never made it to one of her schools (she caught it early)...although this is a rare case, these things can happen.</p>

<p>what hunt said is sorta what i was thinking... like seriously... if i apply to a crapload of reaches and get into one then it would all be worth it... and the idea of the "diluted applications" only applies to somebody who doesnt put the work in... and if i look at the flooding market idea is that since the currency is already worth soo little i need to use as much of it as possible</p>

<p>but thanks for all the input guys</p>

<p>As of now my D is planning to apply to the following colleges
Ivies + S + M + Caltech - 11
Duke + NW + UChicago + Rice + JHU + W. U St Louis - 6
UCs - 1
CMU + USC + CWRO - 3</p>

<p>21 applications</p>

<p>Rsmattu, I applied to about 9 colleges, and that was stressful enough for me. Good luck applying to 20. I seriously doubt that you will be able to put in any quality time into all of them.</p>

<p>I say apply to 10 the most, and go and enjoy your life. People are becoming insane about applying to colleges. It used to be that 6 was the average number, but 20?</p>

<p>ParentOfIvyHope, that seems kind of desperate to apply to all the Ivies (let alone 21 schools). It doesn't seem like you and your D actually considered what schools she would actually want to go to, but really just applied for the sake of reputation.</p>

<p>I agree with catsushi. I applied to 10 and in retrospect it was too much as is. I think a good number to apply to would be about 7 or 8. 3 reaches, 3 matches and 2 safeties is not a bad way to go</p>

<p>The crapshoot idea isn't always effective. Don't you have something better to do with your time than spend it on 21 college applications? What about EC's? What about friends?</p>

<p>What no one has mentioned is that colleges see where else you are applying. From that list they can take an educated guess about where they are on your list and Tuft's syndrome can kick in.</p>

<p>Parentofivyhope, it's pretty hard to get out 20 quality applications. Sounds like your DD needs to get real about where she stands and cull the list.</p>

<p>I'm going to ditto the paperwork concerns in post #29; folowing through on hundreds of details is hard, especially when you have to depend on others (like school counselors) to follow through too. A lot cannot be done until the fall when certain materials become avaialable, so there is but so much you can do this summer. Also, in addition to application feels, there will also be fees for SAT and AP scores, for trancsripts, and for postage.</p>

<p>
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What no one has mentioned is that colleges see where else you are applying.

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Not true unless you tell them. </p>

<p>
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Good luck applying to 20. I seriously doubt that you will be able to put in any quality time into all of them.

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</p>

<p>Considering most schools use the common app, it is actually fairly straightforward. For counselors and teachers, it is not much more work sending transcripts and recommendations to 20 rather than 10 schools. It's not that they write different letters for each school anyway. </p>

<p>
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Sounds like your DD needs to get real about where she stands and cull the list.

[/quote]

How do you suggest her finding out where she stands unless she applies?
Culling the list is not always easy as you don't know which schools will admit you and which will reject you. Unless you don't plan on attending anyway, you maximize your options by not second-guessing your admissions prospects. Our D ended up applying to 16 schools in 07 and it was certainly worth it, as her acceptances were not the ones we had forecast. </p>

<p>
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Also, in addition to application fees, there will also be fees for SAT and AP scores, for trancsripts, and for postage.

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Fees are an issue, but if getting in to a selective school really matters to you, the only sure way of not getting in is to not apply in the first place.</p>

<p>"Considering most schools use the common app, it is actually fairly straightforward. For counselors and teachers, it is not much more work sending transcripts and recommendations to 20 rather than 10 schools. It's not that they write different letters for each school anyway. "</p>

<p>But you do have to call each school to see that each piece got there and then go back and have it resend if it didn't go. My D applied to 15 schools and this got crazy. Scheduling interviews for schools that require it can get crazy too.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Anyway, sending out a lot of applications has been proven to be detrimental. I may not be able to explain, but maybe college board can!!!

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detrimental? I think the game theory thought was the best ... I think a case can be made it's detrimental to the overall community of applicants if everyone applies to a ton of schools ... but it's in one applicants self interest to have as many as high quality applications out there as possible. There are issues ... how many high quality applications can one person do? How many schools are really a good fit (it could be a lot IMO)? I actually think the cost of the apps is a red herring ... we could end up paying almost $200,000 per kid for them to go to college ... whether the tests and apps cost $250 or $1250 is noise on top of the $200,000. BTW - I only think the high application strategy makes any sense ofr people shooting for the top 50 or schools (with lousy admit rates) ... below those schools admissions are predicatable enough that a more typical 8-12 apps should be fine.</p>

<p>
[quote]
But you do have to call each school to see that each piece got there and then go back and have it resend if it didn't go.

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Our HS sends out several thousand transcripts a year, so a few more is unlikely to make a difference. We never had an issue with lost mail. Most colleges now have a web site wher you log in to check that all documents have been received.</p>

<p>As far as interviews, not many schools require them. Most LACs and State U schools don't offer them. Our D had interviews with about 8 schools which was very manageable. </p>

<p>We actually found that once our D had completed the two or three essays she used over and over again, the rest was fairly mechanical. From a quality standpoint, it would have been the same if she had completed 3 applications or 20.</p>

<p>"whether the tests and apps cost $250 or $1250 is noise on top of the $200,000."</p>

<p>You say that now, but come fall of senior year, it may feel like the last straw..Did that school get this test? No? Should I rush it? Will that school accept rushed scores? Why won't anybody answer the phone? Oh, THEY want to fax it...should I go to that schools open house or be true to my commitmnet to my EC? Which looks better? So glad it's done. Retrospectively I don't think she could have predicted the outcome but she probably wouldn't have done so many.</p>

<p>"Our HS sends out several thousand transcripts a year, so a few more is unlikely to make a difference. We never had an issue with lost mail. Most colleges now have a web site wher you log in to check that all documents have been received."</p>

<p>Well we had missing items at at least 3 schools, and it was a blessing our D's school is small enough that they were willing to rush to resend in hours on one occasion. And I agree about the interviews, but someone seems to be saying we are talking "top schools".</p>

<p>Anyway, I don't mean to discourage the OP; you sound really committed. I'm just saying how stressful it was in our house to deal with 15 apps, plus all the other things that go on in the fall of senior year. I'm glad it works out so well for others.</p>