<p>I see a lot of kids here applying to 10, 15, even 20 schools. So my question to the parents who are picking up the bill for all the college applications/transcripts/test scores. How many is too many? I'm a transfer student myself and I could barely afford to apply to 5 schools with how much with how much money I'm dishing for transcripts from the myriad of Colleges I attended during my stint in the Army.</p>
<p>Our D applied to ONE U as a transfer. S applied to 7 or 8–for him & us it was too many as he wasn’t really interested and willing to complete the essays. For some who want to compare merit & FAid offers, applying to a wide range of schools the student will consider can be a good strategy. A friend’s S applied to 15 and really put work into each of them. He was able to go to the one that gave him the best financial package, where he graduated from & then went on to med school. He is now a pediatrician.</p>
<p>I think you will get many different answers to this question. My older daughter applied to 8, but I already know that my sophomore will apply to more. I am hoping to cap it at 12 to 13. Her chance for decent merit aid is high so she is casting a wide net.</p>
<p>My D applied to five - 3 safeties and 2 matches. She should have applied to only 4, because she had no real interest in the fifth school and never even bothered to visit. But she had a pretty good idea what she wanted (a big state flagship) and we had a good handle on the financial situation.</p>
<p>D had friends who applied to more than a dozen schools. These tended to be kids who had very reach-heavy lists. I know of other students who applied to a large number of schools because they didn’t know which schools would offer the best merit aid, and finances were a concern.</p>
<p>I would have paid for a few more applications had D wanted to apply to additional schools (I thought getting out with only $225 in application fees was pretty good!), but fortunately she didn’t want to write any more essays (and none of her schools used the Common App). A good friend of mine spent over $1000 on application fees alone for her D - score reports and transcript costs were on top of that - but she had no regrets and her D ended up at a school that’s a great fit for her. I guess a family that can pay over $60,000 a year for college can pay the application fees to get the student there in the first place. Those application fees really add up for most people, though.</p>
<p>Our first D applied to 9, our second D applied to 5. Both girls said they applied to too many, but the comment was made after all decisions were in.</p>
<p>For us, less is more.</p>
<p>DS applied to 9. Only one was a wild card. He was accepted into 4 (3 with great $$), had 4 rejections and 1 waitlisted him. He was accepted into 2 safeties, 1 possible and 1 reach. He was rejected from one far reach, two reaches, one safety. His waitlist is with a possible school. Three were public schools (2 instate) and 6 private. All had noted game design programs and offered a variety of other interesting programs. As mentioned, do your research and spread out the schools - interest, size, location, town, etc. Years ago an exclusing boarding school admissions person said the following. Prestige is for graduate school. The game for undergraduate is to attend a school where you will be happy and thrive … and they are paying the bill (or in others words, they want you and will be supportive of your success). It is another matter if graduate school is of no interest. </p>
<p>Only apply to schools that really interest you. It can be felt in the essays if you are only going through the motions.</p>
<p>IMHO, if you apply to more than 10 schools then you haven’t done your homework. It is a fallacy that applying to MORE schools increases the chances that you’ll get in SOMEWHERE. If all of those schools are reaches, or all have acceptance rates below 25%, you’re just wasting your time filling out the applications and your parents’ money paying the fees. Take the time to find schools you like and for which you match their middle 50%.</p>
<p>Apply to 2 - 3 reaches, 3 matches, and 2 - 3 safeties. Max of 9. Do your research online (and in person if possible). Do NOT apply to every school that happens to belong to a certain athletic league. Do not apply to schools simply because they are “prestigious.” </p>
<p>Be sure your safeties are safeties - and here’s a hint: if the acceptance rate is below 25% it is NOT a safety, even if you are the Valedictorian with a 4.0 UW and a 2400. A true safety is a school at which you are above the 75th percentile, you can afford it, it has your major, you LIKE it, and the acceptance rate is above about 35%. Don’t be such a snob that you only apply to schools that “no one” gets admitted to, or you’ll find yourself getting admitted nowhere.</p>
<p>Remember there are a LOT of good schools that fall between the Ivies/MIT/Stanford/Chicago et al and your local state U. Every year CC is full of bright, hard-working kids who apply to a dozen extremely selective colleges and throw their state flagship in as a safety - and end up with only the acceptance to their state U and feeling like “all my hard work was for nothing.” I’m sure there are plenty of other good, selective colleges who would have offered them admission (and maybe even merit money) if they hadn’t been so blinded by prestige and refused to consider them.</p>
<p>My S applied to 7 schools, and my D applied to 5. She was planning to apply to 7 until she kept procrastinating on the last two and we all realized it was because she did NOT want to go to them. So she didn’t apply.</p>
<p>Both my DS and DD applied to 8 - but their high school advises to keep to a limit in this range.</p>
<p>Worked out fine - both were accepted to 6 of 8 and wished that they had a crystal ball to only have to apply to their top 2.</p>
<p>Application fees are small change compared to the college bills. Some students apply many places hoping to get the best Merit or Financial Aid package.</p>
<p>We gave our son a fixed $ that we were willing to spend on applications. He got offers to apply for free to a couple schools. In total, he applied to 8. I know some musical theater kids who apply to 12-15 because the odds of acceptances is so low - but it does get to be very expensive. Luckily, low income kids can get free applications (just ask your counselor to send a letter to the school).</p>
<p>DD applied to three schools initially…all matches. We asked her to apply to one school closer to home, and she asked to apply to one reach. Those last two schools were a waste of time and money. DD agreed. Her top choices were the first three and she attended one of them.</p>
<p>DS applied to 7 schools as a music major and he said that was too many. Auditions for all 7 had to be scheduled (he was very lucky there were not any conflicts).</p>
<p>I think Lafalum is right that if money is no object then 10 should be more than enough, but if money is important there seems to be too much unpredictability in the offers (particularly the loan vs no loan part) that you may need to apply to more. I do understand the feeling that your kid needs to go to a tippy top school - I felt that way about my oldest. He’d never been really truly challenged and I thought it would be good for him to have to compete with the best and brightest. He applied to six reach schools and two safeties. My younger son seemed to mature so much senior year and his grades and scores were all sufficiently lopsided it was hard to know what would happen. He had sky high verbal scores, but math was under 700, A’s in lots of courses and B’s all over the place as well. We cast a wide net - he would have applied to more places but when he got into U of Chicago EA, he ditched one of the safety schools and one of the match schools - so he had one safety and six in the reach zone.</p>
<p>Long after applications were in, we had dinner with friends whose D attends a private school that is known for its strong student counseling services. Our discussion turned to college admissions, and I was surprised to hear that her college counselors recommended that she apply to three super reaches, three reaches, three matches, and three safeties. Seemed like A LOT to us, but it did work well for them since she has more choices than she anticipated (she transferred to private school after performing poorly at our public high school her sophomore year).</p>
<p>Kid #1 - 4, kid #2 - 3, kid #3 - 3, kid #4 may pick his school early and only apply there. In any case, I don’t see him applying to more than 3 schools. IMO, more than 5 or 6 is too many.</p>
<p>I did apply to fourteen, but as some have mentioned here, a large part of it was due to financial aid/merit scholarships. </p>
<p>I applied to a whole bunch of academic match/financial reaches that would have only been affordable had I gotten their full-ride merits (so a reach but a worth it one, IMO), had two or three financial and academic safeties, and then a number of reach schools (again, for financial aid). My parents were willing to pay for $x in application fees, and money from work/summer paid the rest.</p>
<p>^^^^Ditto what purpleacorn said for our D’10 and S’13 because of financial aid and scholarships. We figured 15 was a good stopping point but it was a manageable number as far as doing justice to the applications. We payed for the test fees and S’13 payed for his apps with his summer stipend. It totally payed off for both of them but they are very high stat kids with interesting resumes…very good choices in the end, including 3 of what most call the ‘big five’ (which give fantastic aid, even if income is fairly high) with big $$$ from scholarships and/or need based packages without loans. Well worth the time and money up front. YMMV.</p>
<p>I applied to 7. I have many friends at school that applied to 10+ and a few ‘crazies’ who applied to 20+.</p>
<p>We all agreed we applied to too many schools. Each application takes a ton of work, money and time to outline. Unless you expect to do it for your child (which I don’t recommend), encourage them to apply to no more than 5.</p>
<p>A good breakdown from what I planned:
- 1 safety
- 2 matches
- 1 reach</p>
<p>Exchange 1 match for a reach if the student is confident in their test scores and extracurriculars.</p>
<p>First of all, I think it depends, and second of all, the cost of the applications pales in comparison to the cost of the education. Consider $500-$1000 vs $240,000+, or 4 times your EFC. It’s pound foolish to not get it right by not applying to enough schools. </p>
<p>If merit scholarships are required, I think you need to apply to a lot more schools hoping to get one. It’s more like fishing. </p>
<p>Otherwise, I developed a little algorithm that helped my kids limit the number of schools and focus their attention. Basically, for each school, you calculate the probability that you will actually ATTEND the school.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Rank order, or approximately rank order the schools in order of your preference. </p></li>
<li><p>For each school, using Naviance and your stats, estimate to 1 significant figure (0,10%,20%,…,90%,100%, etc), the probability of gaining admission. Basically count the green dots around your stats and divide by the total number of dots around your stats. </p></li>
<li><p>Now going through your ranked list, calculate the probability that YOU will attend. For the top choice, it’s equal to the probability of getting into the top choice. For the second choice it’s P(admission)*(1-P(admission to top choice)), etc. For each choice, it’s the probability of admission times the probability of getting denied at more preferable schools. </p></li>
<li><p>Now eliminate a school if the probability of attending is less than 5% UNLESS that school has the potential to be your top choice after due diligence. Then recalculate. </p></li>
<li><p>Add two safeties so that in April you have to reject at least one school. Should you face a lot of rejection, it’s a catharsis to turn the tables on at least one school. It also forces you to put the one you will attend in a positive light, because you had to carefully consider which one to choose. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Basically, if your 5th choice, for example is still uber selective, you’ll quickly find that the probability of you attending that school is very very small, and not worth your time. Keep in mind, as you go through the process, there will be changes and you have to recalculate. I did this on an Excel spreadsheet. </p>
<p>Using this algorithm, it’s really hard to get to 10 schools. Both kids found certain match schools that they liked, that weren’t quite THAT hard for them to get into, creeping up the list and making more selective though less desirable (to them) schools drop off as a waste of their precious time (and our precious money).</p>
<p>My child applied to 15 schools . . .it did seem like a lot, but I felt that it was a small investment compared to the enormous amount we were about to spend on college itself. I think a child can change a LOT in between the time they start visiting/applying to schools and the time they actually finalize their decision . . .so in our case, I felt it was acceptable.</p>
<p>He was rejected at 5 of the 15 and waitlisted at 3. I felt three of the five rejections were truly reaches/pipe dream type schools (and one of those there was legacy so who really knows). The other two rejections were definitely feasible. </p>
<p>It was very hard for us to ascertain which schools REALLY were safeties and that was part of the concern for us because the child’s SAT scores had a huge spread (200 pts between CR and Math). We weren’t sure if the focus would be on the high score or the very low score. </p>
<p>I think my younger child will apply to many fewer schools . . .</p>
<p>My daughter applied to 7 schools. It seemed like the right number for her . I don’t think she could have thought of many more she was interested in. She knew where she wanted to be geographically…and also where she DIDN’T want to be.
She made the right choice .
The funny thing is, she applied to 3 of the same schools again for grad school . The one she was least interested in then is the one she chose now</p>