My college list has 10 schools – 6 of which are reaches, 3 match schools, and 1 FOR SURE safety. My friends are all applying to 10+ schools and have a lot of matches/safeties but I don’t see any reason to apply to any more matches/safeties because the ones on my list are the only ones I’d be happy to go to… I’ve done my research and I don’t think there’s anything else I like.
From personal experience, my older sibling got accepted into 3/5 of their reach schools, so all their match/safety school applications were useless anyway.
I’m not sure if other people’s lists are like this, but it’s okay to be reaches-heavy, right?
You should have more matches and fewer reaches, in my opinion. What worked for my kids was this: 1-2 safeties, 4-5 matches, 2-3 reaches; we wanted to keep the application lists to 10 or fewer schools. Some of the schools that you consider matches may surprise you in an unpleasant way with a waitlist or even a rejection.
Having more match schools is like buying insurance: it is protection against unexpected bad things happening to you.
You are not your older sibling, so his/her experience may be different from yours; it is not necessarily a good measure for what your college application experience will be.
To add on to what @gandalf78 says, it is also a different year, and as the 2018 admissions year showed, past experience is no predictor of future experience, particularly in college admissions!
Good luck!
If you can secure the safety acceptance early and you know it’s affordable (plus you’d be VERY happy to go) then this is ok. But if you’re not going to hear about a safety acceptance until March, I’d listen to the other posters’ wisdom.
Edited to add: but on the other hand, your thoughts and feelings about college may change dramatically between now and May 1st. Give yourself options and get at least 1 more safety, if not two more.
Considering my youngest lad had one match for his college apps and no other schools/apps… I’d say what you’re doing is perfectly fine as long as you’re ok going to your safety school. It saves time and money to have fewer apps out there. Quite the perfect set up if it works for you.
FWIW, my youngest had working as his Plan B if his college hadn’t worked out. It did. He graduated this past spring and all is well.
The only times I’ve seen real WTH moments are when kids have no safeties (admissions and financially) that they are happy to attend. I’ve never seen it with too many apps that end up not needed. I’ve seen regrets from applying to too many schools (in lost time, money, and effort).
My oldest lad applied to three schools and my middle lad six. All attended their first choice. None wished they had applied to more. They whittled down their list with visits and learning about profs/schools via the net prior to putting the time in to apply.
One more addition… At the local average public high school where I work, it’s rare for a student to have more than six applications to colleges. Not many have six either. There have been maybe one or two going up to ten (over the past 20 years), but it’s certainly odd.
This website shows me a different world, but this part is not one I want our school to adopt.
Imagine that it is May 1 and you receive an acceptance to your safety but all the others are rejections. Will you be happy or wish you had more choices? Will receiving 9 rejections take the joy out of the day?
My kids each applied to only one school. They were accepted (rolling admissions) and agreed that if something went wrong with the first and only choice school, they’d take a gap year. They were happy. They weren’t rejected from anywhere.
I think people underestimate the disappointment in receiving rejections from 4, 5, 6 schools. It’s hard.
I agree that if you can apply to your safety or matches via Early Action, and they are truly places you wouldn’t regret attending at that price, then there’s really no reason to look for more - unless you are surprisingly shut out, in which case you can react accordingly. If that strategy let’s you cast a wider net regarding your reaches, there seems to be some logic there.
Have two affordable safeties you like - keep hunting for the second one. In the Spring, you want to have a choice. Having only one safety, especially for a student with high hopes such as yourself, can make things very depressing if you end up having only one college and thus no choice.