D applied to 8 schools in total. She applied to one in-state safety and her top choice reach school EA and was accepted to both. Since we didn’t know if her top choice would be affordable at that point, she applied to a mixture of 6 matches and reaches RD. The EA school ended up being affordable, so the other applications weren’t strictly necessary but it is nice to have options!
@jym626 It is updated with the new SAT. My daughter took the ACT though, so it is irrelevant in her case.
I forget if I answered this already, but our goal was for our kid to have four solid choices when April rolled around, and since we felt a lot of uncertainty about how that would play out – both with his stats and about whether he would ultimately want a small liberal arts school or medium-sized research university – he applied across a broad spectrum, 13 schools in all. In hindsight, I’d say the list was over-cautious, with a few too many likelies he wasn’t all that interested in, but we couldn’t know that at the time, and I was glad he had them, because if it had played out another way, it would have been very good to have all those schools to choose amongst. All would have been good fits, it was just a matter of finding the best option from amongst those that proved possible.
So 13 schools: 4 likelies with EA, ~5 matches, ~4 reaches. (What’s a match vs. a reach is probably up for debate.)
I applied to only two schools. I got accepted to Baylor and was CAP’d by UT Austin
I don’t put too much store into what Parchment says. Admissions isn’t just a numbers game, especially not at the highly competitive ones that practice holistic admissions. Last year there was a girl at my D’s former school who was valedictorian, top scores, etc. She got waitlisted from every Ivy and top ranked university she applied to. It was shattering for her. She’s now at NYU and happy but her parents especially were convinced she was a “top candidate”.
Someone posted some interesting stats a few months ago about admission percentages to top schools by GPA and test score. The data confirmed the somewhat obvious, which is that those with top GPA’s and test scores while certainly not guaranteed admission, still stood a much better chance. I consider holistic a catchphrase more than a philosophy – most competitive private colleges are holistic to some degree but GPA is usually still the top weighted predictor. More than test scores, EC’s, application particulars, etc. (Not counting recruited athletes or other exceptional hooks of course.). So, sure, when you are talking HYPSM and their LAC equivalents, having a 4.0 UW and 1600 or 36 is not that unique, it still makes you more statistically likely than otherwise having all the same facts and a lower GPA. Parchment is broadly correct in its bracketing more often than not specifically because of this – it relies on objective data points and those clearly are right more often than not. I ran it after the fact for my son just out of curiosity and it was right on in the sense that all the schools it gave the lowest personal percentage chance to are the ones he was denied or waitlisted at, even in the cases where the schools he did get into had lower overall percentages of acceptances than the ones he was waitlisted for. Similarly, if I look at Naviance for his school (where there is 8 years of data for approximately 400 graduates a year), I can take his weighted GPA, add +0.15 to it and compare it to the average GPA of accepted students from his school for any given college and perfectly predict where he got in (with one waitlist exception). I call the 0.15 bump his EC advantage because he was ahead of his school’s peers in variety, interesting/leadership EC’s for the most part. But the point was factoring in a +/1 for EC’s in his case, GPA was still a solid predictor even among elite LAC’s.
My son applied to 7 universities – accepted at 2 with rolling deadlines and waiting to hear from 5. Got a full ride at UTD and a juicy scholarship at Baylor.
@exlibris97 Very good point! I’m sure we’ve all heard of the high stat kid one would assume had a high chance of admission but was denied, as well as the lower 25% range kid that was accepted due to attributes revealed in the holistic review.
@citivas Thank you. This perspective was very helpful.
It’s a little too early to tell for my daughter but she’s so in love with 1 school that she’s working like crazy to hone her application ED for that one school. I am pushing her to apply to at least one EA school at the same time, an EA safety, in case she’s rejected from School that She Loves. A safety net to a perfectly lovely school. So maybe Round 1 at this point looks like just 2 schools if mom gets her way. More if she is rejected from School that She Loves. She would apply to maybe 2 more for EDII etc.
My son applied to 14, but they are chunked in groups, such that the work wasn’t really for 14 schools & it was spread out over 5 mos. I think the best advice we got from other parents was to apply to a rolling admit safety, a few EAs & an ED if your kid has one. Our son applied to OOS public safety, private safety EA (fee waiver & no extra essay on Common App), his #3 school EA (match) & his #1 (at the time) - a lottery level ED school. His results are 3 acceptances & a deferral from ED. He then decided to complete his apps to other schools, all of which are match & reach level schools, and when he got a nom to USNA, that became his new #1. Originally, his list was only 11 schools (including 2 UCs, which is the same app) - but as the deadlines were approaching in late Dec/early Jan, he decided to apply to one LAC (fee waiver & no extra essay), USC (his dad went there & a lot of kids from his HS get in) & Cornell (interesting program in CALS). I guess he was bored over break & wanted to write more essays…
My D applied to 9 EA. Mainly because she hadn’t narrowed down the type of school she really wanted. She was deferred at one (still waiting), waitlisted at one (reach school) and accepted at 7. As we finished visits she decided she really liked the smaller liberal arts so she applied to two more regular decision and we are still waiting for those.
Mine applied to one. He was guaranteed admission to our state flagship, and that is where he wanted to go. We knew we could afford it, so why apply anywhere else? He was admitted two days after the received his application. (Like I said, it was guaranteed admission.)
It is a great school, affordable, and where he wanted to go. So there was no need to apply anywhere else, even though he had the stats to get in many other places.
The next one up is also an auto admit to the state flagship and leaning towards it. He may pursue the athletics route elsewhere, but he may just his do his sport at the flagship on the club route.
Youngest is likely going to go the D1 athletics route.
Mine applied to 8. I remember back in my day I had only applied to 1. Times they be a changin’.
Applied to:
NC State
UNC - Chapel Hill
George Washington
Stetson
Rollins
Duke
UVA
UNC Wilmington
Got accepted to all but UVA and Duke
The way we thought about it was that the potential regret from ending up having a few more than you need is not very much. In contrast, the potential regret from having too few is very high.
^^^Along that line of thought, mine applied to too many, but had lots of choices and didn’t wonder, “What if?”
Our twin DD’s applied to 16-17 schools each. Not because they wanted to torture themselves with college applications, but because they understood what a reach was and had worked like crazy for years to put themselves in position to have a shot at one of their reach schools, albeit a small one.
Yes, they have ended up with great choices with acceptances at Bates, Carleton, Colby, Colgate, Hamilton, Kenyon, and Oberlin and were waitlisted at Middlebury, Notre Dame and Wesleyan, but they were denied at almost every super reach school they applied to - 7 denials in all.
While they knew what super reach meant, to not get admitted to any of them hurt them a lot. That said, we are proud of what they’ve accomplished, and they’ll feel that way soon as well.
I continue to read that acceptance rates are plummeting as applications increase, but seats in the colleges don’t - so much so that a mid-teens acceptance rate is becoming the norm at top-15-25 universities and LAC’s, not just the top-10-15 as many of those are in the single digits.
it’s getting really tough for kids to keep the flame burning.
@Chembiodad This is tough for hardworking teens, but I think part of “understanding what a reach is” has to mean also understanding that simply applying to MORE of them isn’t necessarily going to change the outcome. They’ve done well and have great options and can deploy that flame to the rest of their future.
It’s a bigger problem than any one of us, but it’s math. If more people are applying to more schools, all trying for the same brass ring, it’s inevitable that more of them are going to be disappointed. I’m hoping that by the time it’s my younger kid’s time to apply, the equation will have changed somewhat, and so many schools won’t be encouraging so many applications, and it won’t be such an arms race, but I think that’s unlikely.
I’m not looking forward to it, frankly, since my second will take disappointment harder than my first. Trying now to simultaneously encourage #2 to make the most of the HS time (including staying happy and sane) and also manage expectations. It’s a difficult dance. We will be focusing on embracing realistic options, but at this point, I have no idea what those will be.