<p>How many colleges should your child apply to? I really have no idea. </p>
<p>Also, how much influence should a parent have on which schools they apply to? I want it to be my daughter's decision (afterall, she is the one that has to go there) so I don't want to sway her one one or another. BUT, I want it to be the "right" decision. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>There’s no right or wrong answers here - just a wide range of possibilities. In my family - older son applied to 6 colleges - rcvd 4 acceptances. Younger son will apply to 4-6 colleges next year. I know some students who have applied to just 2-3 schools - usually that would be an ED application plus 2 safeties or just 2-3 in-state options where they are quite certain to get in. At the other extreme - my son’s GC told me about a student who applied to over 30 schools - which is clearly ridiculous. I think 6-8 is the norm these days - but a lot depends on the level you are shooting for. If you want a top 25 school - perhaps you need to apply to more schools, since the chances of acceptance to any individual school is so low.</p>
<p>I think parental involvement is very important - I see this as a family project - particularly since the parents have to establish the budget and set any boundaries such as location. I have not vetoed any schools either son wants to apply to - but I have firmly suggested some that I think fit them. For S1 - when it came to making his decision on where to attend - we eliminated one of the four acceptances for financial reasons - but beyond that - it was his choice. I think if parents do a good job with helping to create the list - and establish the financial parameters - then the final decision can and should be left up to the student.</p>
<p>My daughter sent three apps. The first was to a rolling admissions safety with an excellent honors college option. The second was to our State flagship. And the final app was sent to the school she signed a National Letter of Intent with. Had she not signed during early signing, she would have applied to five other schools on her list.</p>
<p>As far as how much influence a parent should have on which schools to apply to, I think it depends quite a bit on your financial circumstances and family dynamics. We warned my daughter about falling in love with schools that would not be financially feasible for our family. We also requested that she stay on the same coast. Also, I happen to believe that the fit has to be right not just for the student, but also the family. And since I am paying for a portion of the cost for her to attend, I get a say in where she chooses.</p>
<p>Great post Rockvillemom!</p>
<p>S1 applied to 3 schools. S2 applied to 2. All of the schools were state u’s. that they liked and we could afford so there was no need for more apps. Both had acceptances before Christmas making senior year fairly stress free.</p>
<p>First of all, thanks for the feedback. My daughter’s first choice is a school that is very selective and also very expensive. If she gets in, but doesn’t get a scholarship, she will have to look elsewhere. That being said, with the way they notify you if you are accepted being earlier than the time you know if you get a scholarship, she will have to apply to more than one school. (Unfortunately, her second choice is expensive also - although it is in-state and automatically gets some money because of her grades). We have only looked at 4 schools so far and wasn’t sure how many was reasonable. </p>
<p>Thank you all for your answers. At least I have an idea now. </p>
<p>One more question: Should she try for early admission to her first choice? And once you are accepted to one school, can you still apply to another school just in case scholarship money doesn’t come through?</p>
<p>Gluckie - since it seems finances are an issue for you, make sure you look for schools that have early action versus early decision. </p>
<p>In a nutshell, with early action you are telling the school it’s your first choice, but you can wait to see other financial aid offers before committing to the EA school. </p>
<p>Early decision is binding and you don’t get to “shop around” for more money. You can get out of an ED acceptance if you can’t afford to go, but there are 100 CC posts on whether or not such a course of action is advisable. Most ED schools tell you don’t apply ED if you have financial concerns.</p>
<p>Gluckie - you have to distinguish between early action and early decision. If the school offers early action - that is non-binding. You may apply to as many other schools as you want. But early decision is a BINDING plan - if accepted you must attend, with a loophole for not getting sufficient need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>So - this first choice school - check the admissions website to see what admission plans it offers. It sounds like she would need scholarship money to attend - which sounds to me like early action - if offered - would be a good idea - but binding ED might not be. </p>
<p>I would also suggest you read up on need-based financial aid and merit aid. Many threads on CC will be helpful - also recommend finaid.org as a great website on these topics.</p>
<p>I have never heard of EA. I will look into that. I’m pretty sure her first choice doesn’t offer that since they didn’t mention it during the info session at the visit we made there. (it’s Duke, by the way).</p>
<p>Duke does not have EA. It has 2 choices - binding ED and regular decision. It is a very expensive school - also very hard to get into. I would NOT recommend ED given your financial comments. Best suggestion is to assemble a list that contains some rolling and early action schools that are affordable - that way you have schools that both academic safeties and financial safeties - apply to a few of these - and the result should be a few acceptances by mid-December into affordable choices. Once you have that “base level” completed - then you reach for the moon and apply to a few regular decision schools like Duke that have January deadlines and apply for need-based FA. If you get some additional acceptances - great - if they are affordable - even better - but if they don’t work out - you still have the affordable acceptances from the fall to rely on.</p>
<p>FWIW, and the number of apps etc
OP</p>
<p>Our student applied to one where kiddo got the Likely Letter,
and had also applied to a private for a safety and also a state flagship for a safety. </p>
<p>Kiddo has about 6 other apps done and 2 others close to be finished, yet after getting into the EA school, didn’t press “send” on the others. We had planned to not have our kiddo apply to all of the schools until we saw how the EA app shook out, and yet had kiddo keep them ready in the hopper just in case. We didn’t want to be heading into the last days of December with apps hanging over head.</p>
<p>It is reasonable to help guide your student with the school visits, selection criteria etc
…ask open ended “why this school” etc…
also be sure to consider how certain programs in some schools may be stellar choices
and may be schools outside of your DD’s name recognition criteria.</p>
<p>In the end we expected our student to like every school on “the list” , no sense in wasting time and money if our student wouldn’t like attending…</p>
<p>Rockville’s post was excellent.</p>
<p>I am not sure we would/could qualify for need-based financial help. She should be able to get a merit-based scholarship. I guess what I am saying is that with her grades, her counselors are pretty sure she will get offered a scholarship (in addition to what she will automatically get if she attends an in-state school), so there is no need for us to pay out the nose for her to go to one particular school. The question will be if she gets a scholarship from the school that she wants to attend. She has other choices, but Duke is her first choice. I’d like her to be able to go to Duke, but don’t want to be obligated if the scholarship is not available to her. I will assume ED at Duke is not an option for her (the only reason we were considering ED there is because the admittance rate is higher per applicants). I think I said that wrong, but you know what I mean.</p>
<p>Thanks again for your help. I really appreciate everyone’s feedback. This is all new to me.</p>
<p>Mine applied to five. Four had early deadlines (two overseas, two state flagships), one was the ED choice. Got into the ED, but had four more applications in the pipeline just in case. </p>
<p>Don’t apply ED unless the school is your first choice, and you will not need to compare financial offers. If you look at the ‘common data set’ for most schools, you can find the admit rate for ED/EA/RD, but that doesn’t always tell the full story since ED/EA candidates as a group are more likely to be: recruited for sports, full pay and very good fits.</p>
<p>In our house, D’s school had a limit of 8 applications. Crunched the numbers and said up front this is how much we are willing to spend/borrow. Approached it from the perspective of if this is the only school that you are accepted to, will you be happy to attend. Keeping this in mind, she did not have 8 schools, so she applied to 7.</p>
<p>If you are looking for merit $$, then you should definitely cast a wide net and apply to as many as you need to so that you can have some choices and compare packages (and terms)</p>
<p>You should search the threads for curmudgeon, who was in your same situation and did an extensive search for merit aid schools with his daughter. Things eventually come full circle because his D was accepted ED to Yale. Financially they could not swing it, so she took the $$ money at Rhodes. She did beautifully there, killed her MCATs and is now attending Yale Med School.</p>
<p>Here is a great thread for you to peruse</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html?highlight=full+ride+scholarships[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html?highlight=full+ride+scholarships</a></p>
<p>Thanks. Checking out that thread now…</p>
<p>My S “cast a wide net” and submitted 13 applications, which included 1 of the 13 applications to 5 UC’s (we’re in-state CA and he was guaranteed admission to 2nd and 3rd tier UC’s based on class rank). One of the schools he applied to EA was Stanford. It is RESTRICTIVE EA, so he could NOT apply EA to any other private schools. One of just a couple exceptions to this rule was OOS publics, so he also applied EA to Michigan. I mention this because EA does not always give you license to apply to other schools EA.</p>
<p>My bad, </p>
<p>Welcome to the Parents forum and CC</p>
<p>also check out this thread</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52133-schools-known-good-merit-aid.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52133-schools-known-good-merit-aid.html</a></p>
<p>It’s easy to love a school like Duke, but the more important part of the college search is looking for schools that are MATCHES in terms of admissions and affordability. As a junior, have your daughter come up with a long list of potential schools, then spend the summer before senior year whittling it down to a reasonable number. Over time, the schools will settle into safety, match and reach categories.</p>
<p>If she needs to compare financial offers, her list should have at least 6 schools, and 12 would not be too many (although her high school may have rules about this.) She needs to settle on one or two safeties based on her junior year test scores and affordability, and applying to the safety as early as possible will reduce the senior stress in your house immensely.</p>
<p>As for mine, the two oldest applied to two high reaches, two low reaches, three or four matches and one safety apiece. They had identical results, although they are very different kids and none of the schools overlapped: 100% rejections by the high reaches, 50% acceptances from the low reaches, and 100% acceptances from the matches and safety. </p>
<p>One thing I would wholeheartedly recommend, if you can swing it, is to have her attend a pre-college program in the summer between junior and senior year. This helps them mature so much and settles many of the minor issues about colleges. It truly gives them a better starting point for the whole college process. Just researching and deciding on a summer program is an education in itself. After my kids did these, they were able to come up with their own college lists, with parents recommending one or two additional match schools.</p>
<p>My son applied to 18. Most kids he knows applied to 12-15 though one applied only to 6. Most parents will tell you “12 or so” when it is really 15. No clue why… If you are shooting forn top schools you will need a very wide net in my opinion.</p>
<p>5 and my in-state safety, though this was with a favorable EA acceptance in hand. Would have been around 12-13 had I not been accepted.</p>