<p>3togo gave my response–his friends had a strategy that worked well for them, unless they were rejected by all their reaches. The problem is that two similar kids can apply to ten reaches each, and get into two each–but two different ones–for no apparent reason. I’m an advocate for more reaches, if your kid really wants to go to a reach school.</p>
<p>Ive always believed, given the randomness of college admissions, that you need to have the greatest number of options possible. The upside to having nice choices seems very worth the downside of spending time on apps. </p>
<p>The worst case for applying too many places is too many acceptances and a couple hundred bucks. The downside is a terrible financial aid package or worse ending up at a safety…which isnt going to be the ideal regardless of how much they like the school.</p>
<p>One story to heed. My valedictorian applied to harvard, amherst, and a bunch of safeties and matches. He ended up getting rejections from the first two and had very poor choices. I know he regretted not having the choices the next 20 kids in our class did who applied to lots of schools. </p>
<p>I dont believe you need to visit or deeply know a school to apply. Get some guidebooks, do the research online, and send them in too see the results. If you need financial aid its also better as you can negotiate offers between schools.</p>
<p>You can set some limits if you want. </p>
<p>I would insist on at least 2 financial safety schools where you know for sure all costs are covered with assured merit and family funds. This way he’ll still have a choice to make if his other schools don’t work out. Everyone still likes to have a choice! :)</p>
<p>Some parents insist on a couple of “parent picks” to make sure that a financial safety is included and perhaps some other good choice.</p>
<p>And then tell him he can apply to X more schools. </p>
<p>It seems to me that 8-10 schools would be fine…2-3 financial safeties and 6-7 others.</p>
<p>Another downside to too many applications is that you don’t do full justice to all of them. This could especially be the case if you get tired of writing supplemental essays.</p>
<p>But I think that this is outweighed by the chanciness of reach admissions, at least up to a point–I don’t think anybody could really do a good job on thirty applications.</p>
<p>With the caveat that what a kid likes now may change by May 1 when the decision has to be sent in, can your son articulate what he likes about his choices – beyond smart people? Would he actually be happy at a LAC like Macalester, or is Duke more his style? Places like UChicago and Reed are excellent places for certain types of students and would be a complete disaster for others. Or does he just want bragging rights after acceptances come in, and postpone thinking about what he really values until later? If that is the case, he may not do as well on the “Tell me how much you love me” application supplements.</p>
<p>Disclosure: DD’s list currently has six schools. We are a family that will need to compare financial/merit aid packages. DD is very particular, so a number of schools have fallen off the list. This relatively small number makes me nervous, but if she knows she will truly be unhappy in a rural environment with quirky kids, it seems like a waste to apply to those many LACs as long as she recognizes that she could end up at her financial safety. </p>
<p>I feel like I am walking around with Goldilocks in a world of princes with Cinderella’s slippers.</p>
<p>Number of applications is less of an issue then how they are selected.</p>
<p>Have at least one safety, preferably two or three, where the student will be happy to go to, is essentially guaranteed admission, and is guaranteed to be able to afford attending after considering cost and guaranteed non-loan financial aid.</p>
<p>After the safeties have been selected, look at all other schools under consideration. Remove any which the student will not choose to attend over any of the safeties. And remove any which are unlikely to be affordable based on cost of attendance and reputation for financial aid. This may allow trimming the list considerably – if it results in a more manageable list, you won’t have to worry about too many applications.</p>
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<p>It is the case at Yale. I don’t know about Stanford.</p>
<p>Older kids applied to only 3-4 schools–carefully chosen fits for major/geographic location/sport/merit aid/religion. Senior S is looking for big merit aid and will probably apply to only 2 schools that are his best fits. No question that he will be admitted to both schools (if he gets his applications in on time. . .) He’ll probably attend the one that gives him more money.</p>
<p>“Have at least one safety, preferably two or three, where the student will be happy to go to, is essentially guaranteed admission, and is guaranteed to be able to afford attending after considering cost and guaranteed non-loan financial aid.”</p>
<p>That’s an excellent answer, in theory. The problem is, where do you find a school with <em>essentially guaranteed admission</em> where the student will be happy to go, if the student wants a school that is not a big state school and is academically challenging, with programs that he is interested in, that will be affordable? Such a safety may not exist, let alone three of them. Perhaps what you’re really saying is, he needs to find a school that will offer him essentially guaranteed admission, and learn to like it, no matter how different it is from that “fit” that he’s been encouraged to figure out.</p>
<p>That can be an honors program at a smaller state school, or a place with predictable merit awards to attract students with stats like this student. But, yes, ultimately if your idea of fit is a Mercedes Benz, and your budget is a Kia, and you are not positive you will win one of the lotteries where you pay for a Kia and they give you a Benz, it is time to start appreciating all the positive qualities of a Kia, or find another affordable car you will like to drive more if you don’t get the Benz. That doesn’t mean “fit” is irrelevant; it means ability to pay is part of “fit”.</p>
<p>It should be the number that makes sense for your kid. Last one of ours applied to 8, which seemed like a lot to me, but here’s how it worked out:</p>
<p>2 reaches: both mid-size universities w/lots of applicants<br>
2 matches (both smaller LACs)
1 OOS state school impelled by Wifely
1 OOS state safety schools
2 “financial aid safety schools”, one large and one mid-sized LAC (these are schools that are matches and either have a low list COA - like an in state flagship - or that are likely to provide lots of $$ for the student) </p>
<p>In retrospect they all made sense except for Wifely’s OOS school. We had good assisatnce from GCs and I frankly was dead on about the FA safety schools :-)</p>
<p>I had to force adding the Financial Aid Safety schools, since I wanted the net Cost Of Attendance to start with a 2 (e.g., McGill, all in a t 27k per year)</p>
<p>Process worked: “no” and “wait list” at the 2 stretches, all others acceptances.</p>
<p>Kid now attends the LAC financial aid safety school and is waaaay happy . . . and we are too since the gave good $ for kid to attend.</p>
<p>BTW- national median is 4, but we all know that here on CC all our kids are special :-)</p>
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What a great way to put it!</p>
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<p>Affordable isn’t negotiable, so that leaves the other three factors (not a big state school, academically challenging, interesting programs) as the wild cards. As the Stones sang, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.” 
One of the nice things about big state schools is that they often do have interesting programs. They also usually have some students who are up to any academic challenge via an honors college. That’s two out of three. </p>
<p>Or go pursue merit money at a private school which maybe isn’t quite as academically challenging but which does have interesting programs. Or vice-versa. An academically able student who is given a nice fat merit award is going to be able to draw on the resources of faculty advisors who will be more than happy to find opportunities for a bright hard-working young adult. The student might even find that the coursework is tougher than expected. One long-time CC poster’s daughter took a full ride at Rhodes over paying big bucks at Yale in order to save money for med school. During one bio class, she told her dad something like “hey, this is HARD!” She received a Goldwater fellowship, and is now in med school…at Yale. :)</p>
<p>Love all the great suggestions.</p>
<p>My DS applied to 11. I just requested that he not apply to any school he would not go to if they gave him full tuition (my dream).</p>
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<p>Big state schools often have a wide variety of programs to interest most students, and can be academically challenging for those who seek the challenge (e.g. honors courses or honors programs, or the ability to take more advanced courses including graduate level courses). If big state schools are automatically eliminated, then finding suitable safety schools (for both admissions and cost, as well as fit) becomes much more difficult.</p>
<p>Unless the student is willing to go to an open admission community college as a safety (and community college may be a very good choice for some students even if they could otherwise get into a four year school), the student needs to find a safety or few among the four year schools s/he applies to. Otherwise, s/he may be one of those distressed students next April who gets “shut out” (rejected everywhere, or admitted only to unaffordable schools with insufficient financial aid).</p>
<p>One strategy to cut down on the number of applications is to apply EA. If your S gets into a school he likes early in the process, then he can cut out all the safetly schools and go for the reaches. </p>
<p>However, it doesn’t always work. My D was defered REA from one of her two favorites schools, and in a bit of a panic applied to 11 more. Her school recommends applying to 3 safety schools, 3 possibles, and as many reaches as she (or her parents) can stand. She got into her second top choice, but was not accepted by every school - one of her safety schools waitlisted her. We are happy with the results and glad she applied to so many schools since she had some nice options and didn’t need to pursue any waitlists.</p>
<p>JHS: Even if you can afford to put budget issues aside and look only at academic fit, an honors program at a smaller state school is not an essentially guaranteed safety: SUNY Geneseo, for example, might be a safety, if it weren’t for its acceptance rate of 37%. Great, you say, so it’s a match; but its 75% percentile is still almost three hundred points lower than my D’s SAT score. It’s not unreasonable to want to have a peer group that challenges you. And she still wouldn’t have a safety. I’m not whining, I’m just saying that finding a safety <em>that you love</em> is not just a matter of taking off your USNWR top-50 glasses, or getting over unreasonable expectations.</p>
<p>Thanks all for the opinions. Was the college application process this much of a headache when we were students? I don’t remember having to make so many decisions. I applied to 5 schools, which was probably more than average 30 years ago. My husband only applied to 1, which he attended, but he wishes he had tried some other schools (he had poor guidance). </p>
<p>@Hunt – one of my main worries is that the quality of the applications will diminish as the quantity increases. Nearly every school on his interest list of 15 or so has supplementary essays, and a few have extensive supplementary requirements.</p>
<p>We’ve actually been having a family debate about ED at Duke. My husband is for it, but I’m unsure about it, and our son has little comment. He likes Duke, and has spent his entire life hearing from me what a great school it is and how he should go there. But it’s not necessarily his first choice, and I suspect he may be better off at a small LAC. Duke is intense, both academically and socially. He thinks he’ll be fine with that, but he’s intrigued enough by the alternatives to hesitate to mark Duke as his top choice.</p>
<p>It’s a very good point about casting a wide net to have more choices next spring. </p>
<p>One of the most confusing aspects of this has been trying to categorize the schools into “reach” or “match”. His stats are not perfect, but they are high, and when we plug them into various help sites, or compare to admitted student profiles, we see that it puts him in the midrange – or “match” range – of the highly selective schools. Yet if a school admits less than 30% of applicants (some say 40%), it is automatically a “reach”. So far his matches are mostly reaches. A couple of months ago, we were alerted to check out Macalester, and that looked like a true match because it had a 43% admit rate (from the college board site), and appears to be a great fit for him. But recently I saw a story that Macalester is now a “hot” college and has gone to the Common App and applications have skyrocketed, so we should probably move it to the “reach” category. Even Grinnell, which should be a match, is borderline reach due to increased competition, and it’s probably too rural for him anyway.</p>
<p>I guess what really got me thinking about limiting was Yale. He had not previously considered applying to Yale but received one of their mailings last week (Yale even sent me a separate postcard) and was wowed by the sell job. Having heard about all the Ivy League rejections from other parents, I was suspicious that Yale was mailing this 33 ACT kid merely to enlarge its rejection pool and I was annoyed at the thought of forking over even $50 for that dubious privilege. Perhaps I’m being unfair. Or maybe I have a subconscious negativity about Yale. After all, my son has been getting near weekly mailings from the University of Chicago for almost 2 years, and despite knowing that it’s a big reach, I’ll be happy to see him apply there.</p>
<p>As for cost, I’m told by friends who have been through this recently that they were surprised to see that the effective cost (after financial aid, either need-based or merit) of some of the out of state privates were lower than our in-state publics. Our state is a financial disaster and the universities keep raising tuition and lowering aid. A friend’s daughter received very shoddy financial aid to our state flagship last year and her parents struggled mightily to pay her freshman year tuition. For her sophomore year it is worse – all of her grants and scholarships have been replaced with loans. $10,000/year in student loans seems to me a bit exorbitant for undergrad. Now that I’m thinking this through aloud, I’m coming to the conclusion that finance is a good enough reason for casting a wide net.</p>
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A careful look at those requirements might allow for quite a bit of recycling.</p>