How many colleges should I apply to?

@twoinanddone , I simply elaborated how I categorized my reach, target and safety schools. If people don’t agree or not in that caliber, they can make their own classification. They can ignore my ( ) and fill in their definitions.

It depends on the schools. Some schools require minimal effort to apply (Alabama, Clemson, Ole Miss, Iowa State).

8 max. Keep the reaches at a minimum

If you get too carried away with the college list, you either wind up with a bunch of rejections or a list of colleges you can’t afford. You’ll need to make sure the college is something you can 100% afford, otherwise you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. When I say affordable, I mean if you have to take out any more than the max federal student loan cap of $27k, you can’t afford it. Private schools should always be in the reach category because there are limits on how much need based aid they can give. In my experience, after need-based aid, they generally end up costing the same as an out of state university. Really, you don’t need more than 4 or 5 schools. 1 reach, 2 matches, and 2 safeties. All of them should be in-state…unless money is no object.

And what experience is that, exactly? The NPCs I’ve run (married parents, one kid, wages jobs, cash savings, house, nothing else - so the NPCs should be reasonably reliable) have private schools ranging from “cheaper than list price of an in-state directional” to 2.5 times that much. The majority of OOS publics would cost us more, sometimes much more.