<p>There is the law of diminishing returns with the application process-- </p>
<p>Some private school guidance counselors will limit the # of schools simply because they do not have the time to follow up on 12-15 applications … they would prefer to actually get involved with the adcoms, especially at highly selective colleges, and don’t have unlimited bandwidth. There is a limit to how many letters they will write for a student.</p>
<p>Then there are the teacher/other recommendations. How many letters of rec can you ask your APUSH teacher to write on your behalf? Generic letters don’t do as well as letters targeted to a specific university. “Shining Student will thrive at XXX because of XXX’s unique approach to YYYY, etc.”</p>
<p>Now, if a student wants to apply to 20 schools that do not require teacher/counselor/other personal letters of recommendation, I guess there’s no harm in that… other than whether applying to 20 reduces the quality of the application to the 3-4 the applicant REALLY wants to attend. For example, applying to UCLA and applying to UCLA+UCSB+UCB+UCSD+UCD+UCI+UCSC+UCM+UCR takes the same single application and single SAT report, with $60 additional for each campus. None accepts letters of rec anyway, so that’s not an issue.</p>