How many colleges should I apply too? Is 7 too few or too many?
It depends on your situation:
- Most important, would you actually attend each of them, if only one accepted you?
- Next on importance, are they all financially in reach?
- And finally, can you afford to apply to them all?
Our take for my oldest was he really wanted to attend one particular college, so he applied ED there and EA two other places. He got into his ED school. However, we had a list of 11 colleges total:
1 ED (he had to go if they accepted him, which they did)
2 EA (he would not have to go if they accepted him, he could decide to go or not on the same schedule as RD schools)
1 apply early to be eligible for scholarships RD
5 RD
2 rolling admissions, due date after he would hear from the 5 RD schools
I suggest that you think about whether you’d really want to attend all seven, and if you can afford to apply to and attend all seven.
Seven is probably a good number, but I suggest you find one or two rolling admission schools, and cut down the number of RD schools. Maybe even some EA schools would be a good idea.
It depends on how deep you are trying to go into the highly selective / low admission rate bucket as they start to become crap shoots. So, I would say 12-15 if all top 25 schools, and 9-12 if top 50 schools.
Is there any point to apply to multiple state/safe schools? Right now I have 3 on my list
Unless one of your safe schools is an automatic admit, by test score or GPA, I would say three safeties is good.
It depends on your state whether it makes sense to apply to more than one state school. My state has various state schools with different focuses, and certainly they are in different areas, more or less residential as well.
And if you do get application fee waivers, that would be a good way to keep costs down.