Assuming that you don’t get a waiver and have to pay for the app fee. How many colleges should you apply to at max? Is it worth applying to colleges that you know are reaches?
Provided you have at least one place where you are flat-out guaranteed admissions due to your stats (for some students this will be their local community college), that you know you can pay for without any aid other than guaranteed aid, and that offers your major, everything else is gravy. If you want more options than just that one, find another definite safety (or two). Add on a few matches and reaches if you’d like. Just do yourself (and whoever is helping you pay for all those applications) a favor, and make sure you have a good reason for applying everywhere other than the first dead-on safety. Don’t apply anywhere that you don’t like at least a bit better than you like your safety.
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want to apply to mid selective colleges like USF, Purdue ,UC-Irvine, and NYU.
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It’s probably not a good idea to apply to schools that won’t be affordable. You’re OOS for at least one of those publics. And NYU gives lousy aid.
If USF is San Francisco, it doesn’t give great aid, either.
What is your home state?
Do you know how much your parents will pay each year? Have you had them run the NPCs?
If you have the money and you’re willing to put in the time, why not apply to all the colleges you want? Fees add up , but it’s your only chance and college in general is an investment.
Just remember that it’s not just the app fee - it’s also the cost of sending SAT/AP scores, and the cost of additional transcripts if your school charges for them. I’d say the total cost of applying is ~$100 per school - but a single college class at any school is worth well over $1000 when you consider the costs of housing, tuition, and more.
There’s limits, of course - there’s no reason to apply to Yale with an unhooked 3.0.
I think that most applicants should whittle down their list to, approximately, a couple safeties, a handful of matches, a couple high match/low reach schools, and a few high reaches. Make sure all of these are schools that you would actually want to go to (read as: do your research, and visit if you can), and if there are too many schools that you could see yourself at, choose the top so and so amount in each category: the ones you think are the best for you socially and academically (and in terms of weather and whatever other factors are important to you) and that you really, really, dig.
You want to spend a good amount of time on each application researching and writing, so the admissions people know you care about getting into the school (which you should). Taking time to do your applications right can add up to a lot of time spent applying to college, so another factor in how many schools you apply to is how much of your year you want to spend on college apps, taking into account whatever else you do outside of school.
Yet another factor is the type/size of the school. In my opinion and from my experience, it is good to apply to a few different types and sizes of school (all that you feel like you "fit at), in case you change your mind as to what you want after you are accepted. Personally, I applied to mostly large schools, and was convinced that I wanted to attend one. After decisions came in, I realized that I would like it better at a smaller school. However, the smallest school that I got into that I felt would be a strong enough academic challenge for me still had 8,000 or so undergrads, and I ended up going there. While I am certainly happy where I am right now, if I were to do the application process over again, I would have applied to more small liberal arts colleges. After talking to some other people from my university, it seems I am not alone in that sentiment.
If I had to put a number on it, I would say between 5-12 schools, depending on the person. Fewer can rob you of choice after admissions decisions, and more can suck up too much of your time.
PS @trackandfield23 I am loving your username 
It’s pointless to be firing at game that is CLEARLY out of the range of your shotgun; game you don’t ever intend to eat; or game that is too massive to haul back no matter how you slice it up.
“Shotgunning” can be very expensive and a lot of work but it worked for at least one applicant last year. Baloney1011 applied to approximately 30 schools and was accepted to one IVY (Cornell). Guidance counselor Gwyeth Smith is quoted as saying he had seen cases of shotgunning work in the book on college admissions called “Acceptance”. YMMV.
Whether this advice is good or bad depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If you have a strong desire to go to a reach school, then this isn’t very good advice, especially if the schools are the kind that are reaches for everybody. For a student who wants to go to a highly selective school, I think a couple of safeties, two or three matches, and then as many reaches as you can afford the time and money to apply to–I think for most students, the ability to put together good applications will top out at 7 or 8 reaches, probably.
^^Yes, the Baloney thread was very illuminating. I think shotgunning may be somewhat useful to a very small percentage of applicants who fit a very specific demographic. The strategy seems most useful to certain Ivy applicants with some less than stellar stats (Baloney), and a small percentage of other applicants chasing merit aid at LACs.
For 99.9% of applicants, though, a total waste of time and resources.
Our GC recommends a total of 8 +/- 2 for most students. 2-3 safeties, 4 matches, 2-3 reaches.
Basically agree MidwestDad3. I think shotgunning might work if the applicant is applying from a state with tons of high-stats students like New York (Baloney), California , New Jersey or Massachusetts. Applying from those states a high-stats student can seem indistinguishable from tens of thousands of other applicants.
Googling Baloney for the thread “how hard is it to get a 3.9+ at Gabelli.” And you see that he got in as a guarantee transfer and not as a freshman. He is also from NY, I think that option might not be available to non-NY applicant.