<p>My three applied to 4, 6 (because both college and conservatory) and 2. The one who applied to two applied early action to schools she had a reasonable chance of getting into, got in early, and had no stress whatsoever. All 3 got good financial aid packages: we researched their aid policies before the applications.</p>
<ol>
<li>In hindsight about 4 too many.</li>
</ol>
<p>My daughter applied to a handful of matches and safeties, and an embarrassing number of reaches. She got accepted into all of the matches and safeties and was rejected from all of the reach schools. None of it came to her either as a surprise or a disappointment. It was like playing a really expensive lottery. You know you are not going to hit jackpot, yet you remain hopeful and play anyway.</p>
<p>Where we live .08 is the legal limit. Obviously 3x the legal limit to much and will cost you a lot of $$$. I will encourage my son to stay under 8…</p>
<p>It depends on the reason for applying to more than a couple schools. Our kids applied to 9 and 10 schools because they were looking for the best merit packages. They came in a wide range (well about a $10,000 swing). For a full pay family with 2 going off to college, $20,000/year is a big number to swallow.</p>
<p>They paid app fees at 3 schools between the 2 of them. The rest had free online apps or were given a code for a free application after a campus visit. They sent scores off to some schools when they took the ACT, most of the rest actually just accepted the PDF of their score reports–which surprised me but we asked. All but one school would have accepted their test scores on their official high school transcript, but their high school doesn’t put those scores on the transcript. It cost us about $300 for the 2 kids to apply to colleges–way better than the $10,000+/year difference in cost.</p>
<p>Ity really depends on multiple factors. Where does your kid have a legimate chance to get in, how much financial aid do they need, and what programs/atmosphere would be a good fit… For most, I think 6 is reasonable- 2 reach, 2 match, 2 safety assuming all are reasonable/good fits for the student.</p>
<p>We did a dozen but paid for about half the app fees as the others were free, on line, on site and so offered. Too many, but a lot of them were state schools so the apps were really quite easy. And the rest were common app schools. Not a problem at all. Was accepted to all but one. </p>
<p>But since about half were state schools, no love had to be shown. Two were extreme safeties that also needed no love. So there were just 4 that needed the visits and show of attention. It was really no problem at all. I’m glad we did it because it gave our son a range of choice in terms of school types and costs.</p>
<p>Sorry, it was 15. Forgot three schools. Still not an issue with his choices.</p>
<p>@ClassicRockerDad, I am going to try your algorithm on my junior DS stats and see what comes out. </p>
<p>My concern and question is regarding naviance. I found the naviance acceptance gpas and SAT score acceptances much lower for my DS’ school than listed. Not all, but most, except for the tiptoppy Ivies and selected schools don’t seem to “like” kids from our schools while some seem to “love” them. So I thought that sports, athletics, urm, may come in to play but then obviously not all kids accepted to school X would be recruited athletes, urm, etc. </p>
<p>So for those who have naviance access, how accurate was it for predicting outcomes?</p>
<p>We checked out Naviance, and it was not great in predicting outcomes for my son. I could have predicted the same as he had low test scores, but good, not excellent grades which made nearly all name recognition schools reaches for him. When on that lower 25% crest, it becomes dicey since it seems like everyone has top grades when looking at those things. That’s partly why we went with so many schools. We expected about a 25% yes, the counselor said 50%, and we got about 95% yeas. He also got some merit money, which was the real surprise.</p>
<p>I think looking at naviance and all the published overall acceptance rates for these schools can be a bit deceiving if the program your child is applying to is super competitive, even at safeties. My DS in particular is interested in finance so e.g. with NYU an acceptance rate of 32% actually is closer to ~20% for Stern. So, I think for next year we will also have quite a few on our lists taking this into account, as well as financial aid. </p>
<p>@cptofthehouse, congrats! 95% is fantastic! With merit money too!</p>
<p>It is different for each kid. How much do you love your safety? If you love it a lot, there is very little rationale for applying to a lot of schools. for students that need FA, you could benefit from applying to more because it is so difficult to reliably calculate what the FA offer will be. You have to apply to find out. Best of luck.</p>
<p>I found Naviance to be very predictive for both kids. </p>
<p>I defined reach, using 1 significant figure probability estimates, as 10-30%, match as 40-90%, safety 100%. </p>
<p>For D1, who had stellar stats ended up applying to only 5 schools. Let’s call them A, B, C, D, E, in that assumed preference. </p>
<p>Naviance predicted for her:
A-80%, B-50%, C-40%, D-30% and E-100%.
This was done crudely by taking a small circle around her “circle” on the plots and counting dots. </p>
<p>The schools’ overall admission rates the year before were about (again to within 1 significant figure)
A-30%, B-10%, C-20%, D- 10% and E-100%. </p>
<p>B and C were the clear top choices going in, but D and E were intriguing enough to her to be potential first choices. </p>
<p>She got into E rolling admissions in October, into A and B Early Action in December, was waitlisted by C, and denied by D in March. She didn’t stay on the waitlist because by that time, she had chosen A over B in a decision that would have been controversial on CC because B was ranked much higher, and she was excited to send the deposit in. </p>
<p>For D2, her initial top choice had an overall admissions rate of roughly 30%. </p>
<p>From Naviance, we learned that both prior applicants who applied ED got in and had worse stats than her, and only 1 out of about 15 who applied RD got in, and that person had much better stats. If that isn’t great information, I don’t know what is. Naviance effectively told her that if this was her top choice, apply ED. </p>
<p>We made sure that D2 did all of her due diligence visits to other potential top choice schools before the ED deadline so that she was sure of her decision, and then she applied ED and got in. She also got into a rolling match school and two schools that Naviance determined were safeties EA. One of the EA schools that Naviance determined to be a safety had an overall admissions rate of about 30% also. The one school with too little Naviance data to make an assessment that I thought would be a rolling safety was a waitlist. It was a trivial application. Go figure.</p>
<p>Agree that the number of schools student apply to should stay in the single digits. Maybe, MAYBE of one needs to explore a lot of FA packages, then maybe 10-12 might be justified, bet even then its getting excessive. The number of schools students are applying to is getting absolutely ridiculous. To me, with the right research, a balance of safties/likelies, matches and reaches, a student can do well with 6-8 apps. My s’s applied to 2 and 4 schools respectively.</p>
<p>@ClassicRDad, thanks for the detailed explanation. Your DDs most likely attend a large school, right? It seems that using your method wouldn’t work with our school - it is too small. Data sample is only 320 kids for the past 4 years. Each graduating class about 75 kids. Trying to count the green dots around my DS circle is impossible since there are so few to begin with and they are pretty much scattered. </p>
<p>What a great way though to do your own research and to narrow down the list. Not to mention the reduction of stress. </p>
<p>Also, interesting analysis with your D2 regarding ED data. I haven’t looked at it carefully or were not able to draw conclusions like you have, but I will now pay closer attention.</p>
<p>Thanks. Yes our HS is larger, though still not that large, maybe 300 per class. </p>
<p>I would say the analysis allowed my DDs to reduce and focus their efforts on the schools that they would most likely attend, so it was more of a reduction in work than a reduction in stress. Basically it allowed us all to judge what the expected return was on every bit effort and to weigh that against other life demands. </p>
<p>I haven’t figured out how to reduce the stress, LOL. It’s stressful to want something you that may not be able to get and have all of these real live quirky human admissions officers sitting in judgement over your entire life.</p>