How many should I apply to?

My parents, esp Mom, say that they would be willing to pay for as many apps as I want and that I should apply to all the schools I want to. I’m a pretty indecisive person though, so that just makes me feel more confused…

There are lots of safeties that I want to apply to as well as reaches. So where do I stop? 5? 15? 20? I know my parents are fine with paying, but I don’t want to just throw money away. At the same time, reaches especially are tempting just because “what if” I could get into that amazing school…
Is there a smart goal or medium number to shoot for? How many safeties should I apply for? How many targets, and how many reaches?

As I said on your other thread, you need to look at the common app and see the work that requires. And then the amount of questions/writing that goes into the supplement for each college that has one. Your apps to various schools are your self presentation and you don’t want to get bogged down with too many “what-if?” schools.

You are researching colleges, right? Not just coming up with names. Because if you do want tops, part of the app/supp is showing you know how you match what they want. Need to know what that is, to do it well.

@lookingforward sorry, I didn’t realize it was actually time to write apps… I’ve been stressing abt ECs and classes and I have been researching and touring colleges, but my disordered mind just…didn’t connect the two…
I know this isn’t an excuse but I guess I was more focused on AP exams up until now. I’ll definitely check out the common app this weekend. Thank you for the reminder.

The greatest challenge with the question of “how many colleges” is simply TIME. Because you’d need to tailor each supplementary essay to each college’s prompts, it’d be very wise for you to select the right colleges to apply to as opposed to how many. My son chose his colleges based on the right fit, particularly in terms of his major, and then grouped them by reach, match and safeties. Although he applied to 16 colleges and universities, after he was done writing essays from his top choice colleges, which were about half on the list, he ran out of gas and motivation given all the rest of brutal schedule he was on. As I’ve stated elsewhere, it was interesting to note that he got admitted to most of his top choices for which he had given his full attention in writing essays while he was either waitlisted or rejected by most of the back up schools for which he had spent much less attention to their essays. Choose your colleges wisely and as many colleges as you can pay fullest attention to.