My sister applied to:
Reaches: 4 (all Ivies)
Matches: 6
Safeties: 3 or 4
Applied EA to one of her matches and got in but still applied to the other places because she wasn’t sure. Financial aid wasn’t a concern.
4 reaches
8 matches
3 safeties
9 6 7 want a lot of options haha
I’m planning on applying to 10- 4 safeties, 5 matches, and 1 reach. I can’t afford most elite schools so I didn’t think there was a point in applying to many.
D applied to 8, roughly 2-4-2. Got into all 8, but between fall and spring basically changed her mind on four of them. By April she had 4 great choices to choose from, including some with significant merit aid.
I’m applying to 10 I think: 5 matches, 4 reaches, and 1 safety 
R: 5 (accepted at 1, WL at 1)
M: 4 (accepted at 3, WL at 1)
S: 3 (accepted at all)
It was a bit complicated for me, since some of these included music school auditions, for which there’s no such thing as a safety. In the end, though, I was accepted to Brown with a likely letter, and that’s where I’ll be in September! It’s honestly just a bizarrely random game, as I was one of Brown’s 150 favorite scholars but wasn’t accepted outright at any of my other reaches, none of which were Ivies.
I applied EA to my top choice and got in, so my story is kinda different I guess. Here’s what I would recommend: knowing nothing about you, I would say have 2 safeties: your state flagship (unless you are in California in that case go crazy and lucky for you for having all of those great state schools), and one financial safety that can give you a ton of money. I would then choose 3-4 matches (and make sure they are ones that you would actually like to go to). I only had one match school that I really would have been happy to go (but applied to more to be safe). For reaches, if you have the time, shoot for the stars, but make sure that if you do a lot that other applications don’t suffer. You never know honestly. You could do anywhere from 1-10 in my opinion. I think I had planned to apply to 8-10 reaches, if I didn’t get into my top choice (I know it sounds like a lot, but if you are really diligent and have the money and are willing to put in the time, you may actually give yourself a better chance.) Ultimately, though, if money is a concern, especially if you plan on going to grad school, if you have a half decent state flagship it might be worth going there unless you get into a reach. Better ROI usually.
I wouldn’t recommend applying to more than 10 schools. 4 reach, 4 target, 2 safety.
I applied to 12. 2 safeties, 4 matches, and 6 reaches. Got into a reach ED2.
Safeties: 5 (accepted to all)
Match: 5 (accepted to 3, rejected from 2)
Reach: 11 (accepted to 4, waitlisted 1, rejected others)
Super stressful, would not recommend. I had no clue what I wanted in terms of a college so my strategy was to apply to a huge range of schools (liberal arts, technical schools, research universities, big, small, public, private…) to see where I got in, and I figured I would do more research after being accepted.
However, my reach list comprised of mostly top 10-15 schools. I applied to the entire Ivy League. As an international, perhaps that was a necessary strategy to get admission to top schools.
(The ‘reach’ schools I was accepted to were Columbia (Scholars), UPenn, Dartmouth, and Johns Hopkins. Will be attending Columbia next year.)