<p>I would mst definitely agree with you that 30 is indeed absurd not to mention ridiculously expensive. So many of the schools our D had applied to were what we considered to be reach schools. For her it was not about the name; she had researched them all thoroughly and argued why each would be a good fit; hence, we didn’t have a problem paying for the fees because we knew how fiercly competitive the process has become. She applied to fewer than 20 and had 3 flat rejections and the rest were waitlists and acceptances. She ultimately chose a school that initially was not very high on her list. This school might possibly not had made the list at all had she applied to 10 schools like many in her class did. For her, it was a good stategy to apply to many because she had other low reaches to fall back on when Vandy didn’t pan out. The month of April brought many surprises for us – we never would have expected so many waitlists nor would we had expected her to choose the school she did. As for safeties, our daughter’s second safety, Pepperdine, actually made the final 4 because of the very generous scholarship they offered, and yes, she would have been happy to have gone there.</p>