<p>Do colleges know how many and which schools you apply to? And if so, does this effect their opinions regarding your application?</p>
<p>I am a Junior looking to apply to about 15 schools, all top top tier</p>
<p>No</p>
<p>Usually not. However, sometimes the school would ask you in the application which other schools you have applied. Also, it may appear on your FAFSA or CSS profile documents. In some case, that may lead to Tufts effect, but usually it does not matter.
15 schools is a large number. Make sure you have enough time to work on all those essays, although very often you can modify one essay for another school. However, those short question supplements can be very overwhelming. I assume you are applying to a lot of reach schools. Most students apply to 6-8 schools these days.</p>
<p>Even with the common ap, 15 is a lot to keep track of but, it’s doable. It is a lot of portal accounts, deadlines and supplemental requests. Stay organized and you can manage it.</p>
<p>Please also apply to a couple of safety schools. You don’t want to be one of the kids who posts about getting rejected everywhere. </p>
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<p>Add some safety schools to those 15. You can see (right now, given the day) quite a few 2300+ kids getting denied from all of their reaches and having no back up plan. </p>
<p>Thank you this was really helpful, and also I do have safeties on my list I just wanted to make clear that some of the schools I was applying to include the top tier</p>
<p>I applied to 16, but most were safety schools (10 or 11 of them!), so the apps were less difficult. Even with that, there are 3 schools that I wish I had applied to.</p>
<p>…please don’t apply to all the top-tiers - pick the 3 that best fit - there is a lot outside the common app on which you need to focus…</p>
<p>There was a thread a while ago about how if you submit a FAFSA with multiple schools listed, the schools can see your list of schools. And some schools believe that the order in which the schools are listed is likely to indicate the student’s rank order of preference. If you apply to schools that consider “level of applicant’s interest”, that can have an influence.</p>
<p>I applied to 27 schools. If you have a good range, good time management, and a good work ethic you can do this. Apply to as many schools as you would like.</p>
<p>I think 8-15 is a good range. If you do a lot of research, you can save time applying to schools you realistically would probably not attend. Think of it as frontloading a lot of work. I only applied to 8 schools, but I did lots of research on a list of about 30. I had 2 high reaches, 4 matches, and 3 safeties. The applications were very easy to manage and I had no trouble, even with about 5000 words of supplement writing. I got into 3 of the matches (including my #3 overall option), and all the safeties. The alternative is applying to all of those schools and only researching the ones you are accepted to, perhaps to find out you probably would have never attended. I personally prefer the first. 15 seems fine if you know you would realistically attend all 15.</p>
<p>I applied to 14 schools, 4 of those early. I definitely stress applying early, but don’t do something unrealistic and apply SCEA (HYPS), apply to all the schools that have EA programs early, and then that should let you know how many matches/safeties you really need to apply to/adjust your list.</p>
<p>Start your list with a safety that you know you will be admitted to, know you can afford, and which you like.</p>
<p>Any number of other schools can be added to your list once you have the safety.</p>
<p>Applying to 15 super-selective schools without a safety means that you are likely to be going to your default safety of starting at a community college.</p>