I’m looking at all the Ivies but I am still looking for some safety schools as well. How much is too much and too little?
Depends on how much you’re willing to spend and how many essays you can write well.
It is hard to create a quality app if you go over 10, and even that requires planning & pacing yourself to do avoid job. If you choose carefully, that should be plenty. My kids applied to 8.
But someone who is applying to “all the Ivies” isn’t choosing carefully.
Looking at your other threads, you have no standardized test scores yet, and your GPA is from home schooling. ECs are not strong for top schools, although you are probably a URM, which is a hook. You should be looking at a much wider range of schools, as you have no test scores yet. You need to find MATCH schools, not just safety schools.
Why the Ivies? In particular all of them???
Once you have a safety school that you really like, can afford and are sure of getting into, how many others you apply to depends on your own needs. If you go with all reaches and a safety, be prepared to attend your safety. If you pick some less selective schools, you may have more choices - and how many choices you want in April is a matter of personal preference.
Applying to ‘all the Ivies’ makes it sound like you are trophy hunting rather than actually trying to find schools that match your interests and goals. Assuming you are that insecure, you may want to keep it to yourself. It’s not very attractive.
I will echo former members and say that “all the Ivies” is a very lofty goal.
For me, living in Chicago, I’ve applied to 12 colleges, of which 4 were Ivy league, 3 were non-Ivy league prominent private low admission, 1 was a public low admission school, 2 were public safety schools, and 2 private “safety schools”. Now not everyone can do this, and it was very costly and time consuming. However, as you can see, I have a nice range of options, both location wise, quality wise, and acceptance wise.
For example, if you were to apply to 3 colleges, make one an Ivy League, one perhaps a prominent public school with mid-range acceptance, and a safety school where you know you are guaranteed to get in.
You have ambition, but you would lack foresight if you were to “throw your eggs” into the single basket that is the Ivy Leagues.
Also, look into whether the Ivy Leagues offer a good program for your major.
Best of luck!
To echo N’s mom, “all the ivies” is a bad way to apply. They are all very very different from each other in character. There is little to no chance you would fit into all of them equally be it intellectually or socially. For example Cornell, Dartmouth are very rural, Princeton, Yale, Brown are in smaller towns, Harvard, Columbia, UPenn are in major ciities. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer 1 type over another? Similarly GE requirements/core at each of these is extremely different.
In real life, once you get to the why this college section of the app, believe me the admissions officers will be able to see through you if you are just trophy hunting or playing the probability game. And finally, dont you think its a better idea to actually make sure you know about the colleges before applying in a blanket manner?
To be fair to the Original Poster, s/he said that s/he was looking at all the Ivies, not applying to them all. One can look at all the schools and then start crossing some off the list. It’s the applying to all the Ivy League schools that in my mind is a bad idea.
Back to the original question. The answer is “It depends.” If your top choice school is a safety and you can financially afford it, one is enough. If you absolutely, positively need merit money to attend, 10 might not be enough. In most cases, IMO, 10 should probably be the max unless any over that number require no additional essays; I can’t imagine being able to right a really compelling “Why X” essay after the 10th application.
If very few of the schools have a supplementary essay, or the essays are short and sweet, there really is no limit. It is dictated by your budget and your time involved as 1st semester of senior year will be very busy. My S just crossed 2 schools off his list bc he just feels he doesn’t have time for the required extra testing!
Also, your school may place a limit on how many they will process per student. Check on that! Have fun looking:)
@skieurope the OP should look at all schools that fit his/her criteria.
And then apply to a blend of reach, match and safety schools.
As many have pointed out here (including you) applying to all the Ivies is a bad idea. It is highly doubtful all 8 Ivies are a fit. Just as applying to each of the U.S. News Top 25 - they are just so different.
10 that have a supplement , 12 at the most. But universities that don’t have a supplement and just use the commonapp are easy to add since they don’t require any extra work.
The process should be like this:
1° identify the common points between your favorite universities (big city, college town, south/warm, north/cold, liberal, conservative, core curriculum, few requirements, quirky, intellectual, preprofessional, high PHD production…)
2° identify universities with 40%+ admission rates that have similar common points; run the NPCs to make sure they’re affordable (share the NPC results with your parents)
3° prepare your two safeties’ application first
4° apply to your match schools - 3 to 5 or more.
Once you’re done with all this, add your reaches one by one until you can’t bear it. 
The application list should start with a safety that you are assured of admission, assured of affordability, and willing to attend (has the academic and non-academic characteristics that are important to you).
Once you have that, any number of other schools, within your budget for time and money spent on applications, can be added.
Time and money is the absolute limit. However, even with unlimited time and money, you should focus on a more reasonable number. I would suggest 10 or less so that you can spend more time on the essays. Note that many schools have the “why this school” essay and you do need time to study about that school to write a good one.
More important is the balance of the list. You need to have matches and one or two safeties before adding reach schools. Receiving rejection notice is depressing even if you have no expectation from those reach schools.
If you find in the end your list is still “too long”, don’t worry. As I was advised, do all the ED and EA’s first. From those results, you likely will be able to drop some schools you’ve not applied to yet. And you’ll probably have an acceptance or 2 in your pocket when you apply for the rest, relieving some pressure. Or you could just be done!!
There is no limit unless your HS imposes one on its students. Check with your guidance counselor. But I agree, that more doesn’t always mean better. Be sure to spend the time you need to develop quality applications – in the end that will be more important than quantity.
@clarinetdad Agreed. However, with new posters in particular, I am a big proponent of just answering the question asked. Or answering the question and asking some additional probing questions. What I personally try not to do is scare the precious snowflake away so that s/he will never return and has no other avenue to find out info. There are some posters, and I’m not saying that you are one of them, that have a tendency to provide good information, but in a rather brusque fashion. Now if they’ve been here a while and ask a question such as this, all bets are off. 
Anyway, to add additional texture to my earlier post, my GC strongly recommended limiting the applications to 10 (3 reaches (in which category all the Ivies would fall), 3 matches, 3 safeties, and the state flagship) There may be extenuating circumstances which would necessitate a wider net.
D went through admissions process last year applying to 20 colleges about 9 of which were reaches 4 Ivys, U.Chicago, Amherst, Williams,Georgetown and a few others. Applying cost on average $85/college. She was accepted to all safety and target schools and rejected or waitlisted to all reaches. What we learned is applying to too many reaches just dilutes the strength of your application without appreciably improving your odds. The little supplemental essays for a school like Yale need to be given a lot of thought. Academically strong students get admitted to safety and target colleges based largely on stats but this is definitely not the case for the top 10 or 15 colleges in the US
On the other hand, I applied to four schools and only got into my two safeties. Admissions is competitive nowadays…strike a happy medium between four and twenty. And have that all-important safety.