Curious if there’s a limit the school imposes on how many he can submit? Or if you do? I know that lots of places have eliminated their application fee, in what I assume is an effort to juice applications and rise in the selectivity rankings? One of my kids applied to 10 schools and I feel like that’s a lot, compared to what I did. But I knew kids at college who applied to 20, back when every one charges a fee.
Who is that to?
Are you asking if the high school has a limit?
Or if colleges do ?
Colleges don’t but given you can do only 20 on the common app that is code for don’t do more.
But some do - you can do another mega app like Consortium or a school specific app such as Gtown, the UC’s and any school that continues to offer their own app.
10 today is a lot of course and likely far more than average but not a lot in the grand scheme of things. My kids did 15 and 21 and many do more.
Assuming that was asking me . . . our HS has no formal limit, and neither do I. But usually, our kids are encouraged by our college counselors to really investigate colleges closely, think very carefully about fit, and focus on something like 6-10 colleges that really fit them the best, with a mix of at least a couple likelies and then 2-4 targets and 2-4 reaches. To me that sounds like solid advice so we sorta tried to get there, but we are looking over right now.
The specific problem is reaches. S24 has 2 likelies (and he is already admitted to one), currently 4 targets, but currently 9 reaches. So that is 15, and he has only submitted 4 applications so far, and I am worried about the real feasibility of doing all those other applications at this point. I do understand part of why he has gotten here is he likes LACs, he has found a lot of LACs he likes, and while his numbers are good for LACs, there is a lot of uncertainty about the other stuff. The other part of why I think he is here is I think he now sees more of a gap between most of his reach LACs and most of his target universities, and he is only so-so on his one target LAC.
That said, the idea of adding a reach which has no supplement is attractive to me IF that means he can take off another college he has not yet applied to. But I also think it would make sense if he could trim off at least a few reaches on net.
But then some of those reaches are softer than others and yet ranked in his mind above most if not all of his targets, and so then does he really want to cut those? Maybe some of the harder reaches can go, though, if they are not above some of the softer reaches in his mind.
I don’t know, it is all very interesting to me we really started off this process with the shared mindset (including shared with his excellent college counselor) he didn’t need to apply to a lot of colleges, particularly not a shotgun blast of reaches, and yet here we are.
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Regarding campus size by acreage, I tend to like spatial variety, which seems more likely to arise at physically larger colleges, such as those with perhaps at least 550 acres. Dimensions in this vicinity also keep a school from being “landlocked” with respect to the planning of new campus facilities.
Yeah, S24 seems to like a bit of up and down, a variety of quads, maybe some woodsy trails . . . it is asking a lot to pack that all into a smaller campus.
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I love Susquehanna’s campus. I miss visiting it now that my daughter has graduated. The nearby river is gorgeous and there are hills and woods everywhere. The campus is very attractive although small.
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Can relate. I think what we hadn’t anticipated a year or two ago was how many public flagships + UCs we’d apply to during the early round. Our kids genuinely like these schools and would be happy to attend, but not only do they not give results until after the RD deadlines, the effort may have sapped some energy from the RD apps, most of which are reaches and therefore usually have supplements. Specific ones at that.
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And the people working at Susquehanna were all around among the nicest people - admissionsw administration, professors. 
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Right?? I was impressed with the school when we first visited it with our oldest son, in 2009, until my daughter graduated in 2020. One of her professors is still her mentor.
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I hear you. There has been little movement on S24s RD apps — most of them are reaches or hard targets and there are quite a few essays to be written. I am hoping he’ll get moving this week now that Thanksgiving is over but am not holding my breath.
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Same here. D24 has been working on 4 scholarship essays for one school (crazy but it’s her top choice school so she thinks worth a shot) and one app due 12/1. Not sure she’ll muster up the energy for 5 RD schools that are all reaches.
Yeah that’s the conundrum. If it’s an easy application and all you have to do is check the box on the Common App, fair enough. But if it requires a supplemental or two, a few of those can suck all the energy out of a kid.
But even the easy box checks… I dunno. Seems like it could just complicate things later on. If there’s a genuine interest, great. Check the box. But I have had to dial one kid back, push another along.
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Susquehanna’s campus seems small even though it encompasses 325 acres.
Hamilton College is located on a 1,350 acre campus; the largest NESCAC campus. The buildings, etc. however, are in relatively close proximity to one another, so it feels very community oriented/densely populated student-wise, however, the large amount of fields/athletic facilities, glens, hiking trails, golf course, etc. give it a wonderfully green, spatial feel.
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This aspect of Hamilton rises to the level of a tourist attraction. Those who have an interest in this will want to view the photos in this Tripadvisor site: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g47494-d6583105-Reviews-Root_Glen-Clinton_New_York.html.
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Yes, and the paths are all lined in shale. The gardens and arboretum are unbelievable, and they’re adding a large labyrinth. We’ve honestly never seen anything like it! Every time we drop off or pick up our D, we enjoy this- never gets old, no matter the season!
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That’s definitely been the case in my house. After D21 I swore S24 wouldn’t apply to UCs as they’re such a crap-shoot and the applications are ridiculous. Now, here we are, and S24 is putting the final touches on the UC and CalState apps. Such a time-suck. I wish they’d just use the common app like most everyone else, but alas, the UC/CalState system is a huge bureaucracy. UCLA received over 145,000 applications last year, how the hell can they give more than a cursory review to each application?
The CSU app is pretty fast and easy. No essays, no LOR, just a few multiple choice questions.
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Pulling over from the on-topic thread. I think whoever told carpathia this likely was a little misinformed, and I wouldn’t want it to impact their D’s feelings about a particular school. I’ve been doing a little research recently on collegiate club tennis. I’m the parent of a tennis player who until recently looked like he wanted to play in college, but seems to be reaching the conclusion that the sorts of schools he most wants to attend are the larger publics where he’s not good enough to play. He loves the sport but not enough that he wants to play at the next level so badly he’s going to let it dictate where he goes (he could play mid-high D-III or lower tier D-I, and those types of schools don’t seem to appeal to him, and he’s not quite good enough for the top 20 D-III programs, and not at all at the level of a Power 5 D-I conference). So he’s been talking about playing club.
It’s a completely different animal from varsity tennis. From what I’ve been able to glean, the average club tennis program at a large, land grant public university is nowhere near as good as even a midlevel D-III team. There will be 3 or 4 guys who could have played collegiately, like our S25, and then a bunch of kids who played in high school but weren’t playing USTA tournaments year round, or were serious until they hit 15 or so and then tapered down. A lot of these schools have multiple teams, too, with second squads filled with kids who were only casual players at best before college, so it’s truly just for fun.
It’s possible that at Pitt, which shut down its women’s tennis program in 2019, there were athletes who didn’t want to transfer so played club their last couple of years (and never lost a set, I’m sure). That might have made it seem like playing club was harder than it normally is. But those would all have been heavily recruited, top 150 in the country for their high school class types of players. Any future recruits would immediately stop looking at schools like Pitt the second they dropped their tennis program. They’re not pulled from the general student body, in other words, the way a club team is, so the club team at Pitt will be no better than the club team at Texas or UCLA, which still have varsity tennis programs. There might be a couple kids floating around any given campus who could have played high-level D-I tennis but chose not to, but not nearly enough of them to crowd out others from a club team.
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Thank you, that’s definitely something to think about. When I looked into it earlier this year they said they usually get ~90 students trying out for ~30 spots. Other large schools we looked at have a non tryout portion of their club team that anyone can play on but Pitt’s club team does not offer this option. If you are cut you can’t play. I think this is probably because they don’t actually have courts on their campus and go off campus for practices.