My 2 oldest completed a total of 3 applications between them. S1 applied to one out of state, plus the in-state flagship that was more affordable if he didn’t get a good scholarship at his top choice. Both were safeties, but that was what he wanted. S2 was a recruited athlete, so he only did one app ED.
For the majority of people here, including D21 for my family, the above scenarios are not realistic. I love looking at this stuff and helping her figure things out. But I’m dreading the application process. She will be one of the endless “average excellent” students. She has a couple of things that I think differentiate her pretty well. But if a school already has a few students like her on campus or in the offer pile, she will just be one of the many average excellent students hoping for a small number of spots.
It’s really a dilemma. She doesn’t want to fill out 20 apps, and I certainly don’t want to help her with it or pay those fees. But I’m struggling to see a way around it. Nowhere she wants to go will be easy to get into. So if you are applying to schools with quirky admissions and sub 20% acceptance rates (which is a pretty big universe of schools) I don’t know how else to have a reasonable shot at an acceptance. She will be happy at a multitude of different places, so I don’t think it makes sense to decide on 1 or 2 elite institutions and not apply to any others. She will do some screening and not just blindly apply to all the Ivies (Columbia is a particularly bad fit I think). But could I see her at Harvard, Brown, Williams, Davidson, Bates, Hamilton or Rochester and being happy? Yep. And if she wants into at least one of them I don’t know how you justify not applying to all of them.
It also makes it difficult to tour the colleges frankly. I don’t want her to get super excited about anyone, because really your odds at any particular institution are not good. We have only done one tour so far (WashU in StL) when we were in StL already. I could see her bouncing back and forth between getting excited and tamping down the enthusiasm since really no one short of a recruited athlete has a great chance at admission. At least she gets it. I’m guessing we fill out several apps to selective schools, and then 1-2 safeties. Finding a safety that she is excited about and one acceptable to Mom may be a trick. Thus far they have 0 in common on their safety list.