<p>DC, who is now at Blair Academy in NJ, managed to do a fair number of applications, but used the Common App wherever possible. It cut down on the workload considerably, and from the results, did not seem to hinder acceptance at all. Perhaps more important than the number of applications would be your ability to get to know the schools you apply to as well as possible. Go well beyond stats, perceived prestige, and what everyone else is doing, and think long and hard about what you really want in a school, then go find out as much as you can about each one that interests you.</p>
<p>In DC’s case, what was seen and felt during visits was exactly what Blair (happily) turned out to be. I hope each of you find the school where you can thrive, enjoy your high school years, and make life-long friendships.</p>
<p>I know it’s A LOT of work to apply to prep schools, but you should apply to as many schools as possible. I only applied to 4 schools, but I have a friend who applied to 13 schools and refused to use the common application. Here’s the take-home message:</p>
<p>A) Apply to as many schools as possible to keep your OPTIONS open
B) You might die of exhaustion after writing so many essays, but promise to treat yourself after you submit your last application</p>
<p>Would applying to about 12 schools the upcoming school year be too much? (considering about 10 with a less than 25 percent admissions rate, and I’m considering about 1-2 with a lightly higher admissions rate. To top it off, I’m going ot also apply to a highly selective public magnet school in my area. Will that be too much?</p>
<p>It will mean a lot of work and a lot of pressure. You will have to write a lot of essays(min 12-15 which is a lot trust me!), run after teachers to get recommendations, and there are many parts that are different in each application. If you think you are able to do that and work hard on the ssat and maintain good grades at school, go ahead. </p>
<p>It will be no easy fall for you though, and sometimes it is better to apply to 5 schools but read the applications and polish those essays until everything is perfect, than apply to 12 schools, and end up doing a nearly good job at each of them… It depends on you however.</p>
<p>I applied to three schools very selective school in my area, and basically for me it was either a top school or a public school, which was why I only applied to so few schools. We didn’t want to travel too much either.</p>
<p>@needtoboard deerfield, sps, choate, groton, taft, hotchkiss, lawrenceville, thacher, cate, nmh, kent
(i cant remember the other two :P) I was super lucky and ended up getting accepted into 7 of them. My top two choices were thacher and deerfield, but in the end I decided to attend deerfield.</p>
<p>@stargir3 haha thank you! I had to write a lot of essays and for some reason I wasn’t able to reuse most of them :S</p>
<p>I got really scared because just in my grade alone there were about 20+ people applying, and we were international applicants.</p>
<p>Just cause it seems to me that those two schools are so completely different in so many ways. Deerfield, a great school by ANY measure, has always seemed to me to be extremely appearance conscious in that sort of classic blue blood, prepster, Church-y, pontifications-engraved-in-stone-and-portraits-hung-on-walls way AND Thacher seems, at least from the chatter on this site, to downplay all those trappings in favor of other characteristics and be much smaller. I figured (wrongly!) that a kid likely to be attracted to one would self-select away from the other.</p>