<p>@151Andrew151 I did one essay/per weekend so about 5 months or so</p>
<p>Wow thanks everyone! </p>
<p>Are you able to re-use essay’s? Are the prompts the same, so you could re-work the same idea in multiple essays?</p>
<p>@151Andrew151 There are many similar prompts but their word/character limits might vary so be careful when you’re repurposing essays. I did work the same idea into multiple essays and it worked out fairly well. Just be careful to respond to what the school looks for, because colleges have different ideals.</p>
<p>@dividerofzero Thanks! How many schools did you apply to?</p>
<p>@151Andrew151 14 (1 Safety, 4 Matches, 9 Reaches) but if I could do it all over again, it would be 7 (1 Safety, 2 Matches, 5 Reaches).</p>
<p>@dividerofzero Did applying to 14 schools take forever? Did you do a lot of them in the summer before senior year ?</p>
<p>Another question for everyone…did you visit all, most, or some of the schools that you applied to?</p>
<p>I think like a lot of people, our list narrowed as reality set in about likelihoods of sufficient money and admission, and so we didn’t end up visiting as many schools as we thought we would around this time in the process. In fact, the school my D ended up at was the last school we visited (first visit in March!) and that was no accident. It became obvious that this school that had accepted her in October (but that wasn’t at the top of her list) was the best of the remaining possibilities. In addition, one school we visited in the previous July and drove 8 hours to get to thought we didn’t show enough interest, so go figure.</p>
<p>To answer some of your questions, yes the essays are the most time consuming part. Some can be repurposed if you have an underlying theme, but I’d be careful of matching the question and word count. I personally visited all the schools but two that I applied to (free application, merit scholarship, strength in field). Otherwise, how else are you going to know about the college and see if it fits you? There were some I was thinking about applying like a “hmmm maybe” sort of school, but I crossed those off.</p>
<p>IMO, every college you apply to you should have good reasons for applying to and should be able to answer the “Why____ College” with ease. Visiting is a big part of that. If I couldn’t come up with good enough reasons to apply (to overcome things like distance, cost, or simply not enough reasearch) then I simply dropped it from the list, especially if it was on a whim and didn’t visit. </p>
<p>There is very little time to visit when the school year starts an April, after the acceptances come out, will be very tight if you want to do some additional visiting (ideally, this should be the time where you revisit your top 2/3)</p>
<p>Also, it is different for everyone. Take things on here with a grain of salt, because it is up to YOU to finish your applications and you know yourself better than anyone. Don’t apply to a certain number just because a friend or someone else told you to. One of my good friends just applied to 3 schools, one of them he was certain he wanted to go to and was sure he could get in. He is happily attending the state flagship and doing very well there.</p>
<p>So what I’m saying, is truly narrow down your choices, through visiting and deciding how much passion you have for the school. Otherwise, it may not be worth the effort.</p>
<p>Wow that was long, GOOD LUCK OP</p>
<p>@151andrew151 I did not visit any of the schools that I applied to. My reasoning was that I would visit once I got accepted no need to waste my time applying to schools that I was not going to get accepted to. I also thought that I would be happy at almost all of the schools that I applied to since most of them are within the top 20 in the country whats not to like haha. Finally, these schools have so many different people that you can almost certainly find your niche in each.</p>
<p>Visiting schools, haha. I had similar reasoning to the poster above (will visit after I get in/chances are, I won’t, so why). The schools I applied to didn’t care about interest anyways, so yeah. Also my parents wouldn’t take me to see any of the colleges even though they weren’t too far away, but whatever. I ended up visiting one, my ED reach, but only because I was in that city for a few months with my sister who took me. I ended up hating the tour (not the school) and information session/found them very unhelpful (didn’t help that my tour guide was really bad…), so I didn’t mind the fact that I wasn’t really going to visit my schools until I got in.</p>
<p>I visited a few of the schools but I think the tours are not the best way to actually know them. The ones where visits matter the most are yield-protecters like WUSTL (and I’m starting to think Rice as well, but that’s conjecture). 14 applications aren’t too many; I just had a tough senior year (not academically; it’s just kind of depressing to have multiple people close to you die unexpectedly) and I didn’t research the schools enough because most weren’t the type of CE/CS programs I was looking for.</p>
<p>I applied to 8 last year (3 reaches, 3 safeties, 2 low matches). Said no to all I was accepted to, and am applying again this year. I had 15 on my list and after visiting have a lot of “maybes,” and I’m hoping to widdle it down to 10-12. Currently 1 (maybe 2) safeties, 6 low matches/matches, 8 reaches/high matches. IMO, 14 is way too many if you have to do supplements for all. I was overwhelmed by the 8 I did in my senior year, and 3 of them didn’t even have supplements. My counsellor said to the senior class that you should plan as though applying to colleges is another class - make sure that you have time for it all, haha.</p>