Hey, if you think it is practical and can afford it, by all means apply to a whooping 31 different colleges.
Edit: Do you even know the specific college/department names for all 31 colleges that you applied for?
Are you applying for FA? Come back and let us know how you are doing once you have jumped through all the FA hoops at all of those colleges. They aren’t as consistent as the Common App, and THAT will drive you (and your parents) crazy.
I wish I were rich enough to blow off $2500+ on college apps alone…can OP fund my college education?
@viphan If a business department was available, I applied there. If not, I applied to arts and sciences and selected economics as my intended major. I could probably name most of them off the top of my head, if that really matters…
@hopefulperson Stay hopeful.
Not a great analogy (apples to oranges). Many people send out hundreds of resumes/applications ITE, as that’s the only way to make sure they land a good job. Mass mailing is extremely popular. Granted, the people I know doing this are lawyers or want to work in gov’t, where 1000 applicants fight for 1 spot.
Edit: IMO, the only barrier to sending out 50 apps is money and time. If OP overcame those barriers, then more power to them and I wish them well.
That is BS. Example: D2 is looking for a summer internship. She picked 6 companies so far very specifically based on research of the companies and the fact that they are looking to hire interns in her field. Sent out resumes in the last week,and so far has 2 interviews lined up (including one at Amazon, another with a very interesting Silicon Valley startup). A professor she asked for a recommendation knows someone at a 3rd company on the list and is contacting them for her. She plans to target another 10 companies or so and apply before going back to school after break. Mass mailing is the worst way to land a job, whether internship or a “real job”. Making connections, building skills, getting and keeping appropriate certifications, targeting companies that match your skills and interest (and that are hiring), and having a strong resume and interviewing skills are key.
And colleges often can tell when they are “mass mailed”. I notice that the OP said his recommendations were “meh” on a chances thread. His scores are good, GPA fair, but if his recommendations are poor, he might need a lot of applications. Would have been better off to do what he needed to for great recommendations. Then he could have applied to 8 schools and been confident it would go well.
Is the reason students apply to so many schools because they assume that the more applications they send out, the higher the chances are that they’ll be accepted to one of the more selective universities?
I don’t understand the judgment. There isn’t one way to do this (or apply for a job, or find a house, or find a spouse…). There are as many ways to do this as there are applicants.
This approach is very interesting because it’s a little on the edge. But that’s what makes it interesting!
I can see how the $$ spent on applications is less or equal to what could have been spent on visiting even 1/4 of these schools. Transportation/hotel/food/taking time off work/etc. I don’t think people looking thoroughly at 8-10 schools really know how much they have spent!!
Financial aid will not be a nightmare. There are two forms, CSS and FAFSA, and some of the schools have additional forms. But it’s basically a matter of sending the two forms, which takes, like, 1 minute over and above the time you would have spent on applying for aid at just one of these schools.
The only issue I see is interviewing. OP, are you interviewing at any of these schools? I picture you stuck at Starbucks for like 4 days while alumni interviewers visit you one by one…
@austinmshauri If so, then they’d benefit from an introductory statistics class.
@austinmshauri
If one accepts the idea that the process involves some aspect of randomness and the premises that the process in each school in no way hurts the processes of others and that one’s efforts were not diminished along the process, then applying to many would in fact increase one’s chances. But this is a very simplified view, clearly.
For the record I have no issue with shotgunning, I just dislike provocative threads such as this one because they are essentially spam.
Ah… you haven’t sent your tax forms yet, have you? If you have any complexity in your taxes (and the OP says in another post that his parents have $150K in income, so they probably do, but he also says he is applying for FA), you will find out when you need to do that. Having to fax, mail, email, and iDoc your way to 31 colleges with your tax forms is a lot of work. I did it for 8 colleges for D2, and thought it was a PITA. Every college has their own due dates, some want different forms than others (small business forms, trust forms, etc), and not all use iDoc (which is its own special little hell, but at least it takes care of several colleges at once – this year they will now accept uploads to iDoc, but given that it is the first year for it, don’t count on it being smooth and bug-free). If my kid had applied to 30 schools, I am sure I would have killed her before the tax forms were all submitted just to get it over with…
Also, as the OP says he is applying for FA on another thread, add in the cost off CSS for 31 schools -
$25 for the first school, plus $16/school for $30 schools - that is another $505 in the application process.
I respect OP for their decision, but most people don’t have the money or time for that. I personally picked my top college and put 100% into that application instead of putting half an effort into many, many applications. I was accepted as soon as they started releasing decisions. My mom later suggested one other school as a backup in case FA didn’t work out at my top choice, but otherwise… One and done. I like my strategy.
I have not gone through and read all of the OP’s other threads. I am sure it will be inconvenient…but…a nightmare? Come on, first world problems.
The real cost of financial aid apps is the difference between the extra schools and the number of schools you would consider normal.
$25 first school + $16 x (lets say 10) = $185 he would have spent ANYWAY.
Subtract the 7 publics OP applied to that do not use CSS Profile.
That’s 13 schools x $16 which is actually a cost of $208 extra for shotgunning. That is no where near $500, and still cheaper than ONE college visit requiring a hotel.
I am not a mathematician so correct me if I’m wrong on the specific number but you get what I’m saying.
Some schools want 1099s… some don’t. Some schools want W-2s. Some don’t… One school also wanted final paystubs from the previous year. 2 of the 8 schools had an additional form on top of the CSS & FAFSA. Some schools wanted the business supplement. Some didn’t. And no idea if the OP has a non-custodial parent, but that is just a whole different 3 ring circus.
And…those schools don’t want CSS profiles, so there is a small cost savings there, but also give pretty much no need-based aid to OOS students. Given that the OP has said on other threads that he needs FA, how do those applications even make sense?
Still, all of that is easily doable with a xerox machine and a mail box. He built his bed and will sleep in it…maybe will have the choice of many beds, or none, but who knows! I’m interested to see how it turns out.
I can’t really address the inconvenience and time consumption posed by financial aid forms - which I admit is a legitimate concern for shotgunners and their parents - because my parents have been taking care of that.
However, I would like to address what @foolish said, which is the premise of my strategy. If one applies to College A and College B, both of which have a 20% acceptance rate, people with the mindset of @Evan111 would suggest that applying to both does not increase one’s chance of admission. However, because selective schools “shape” their classes to be diverse in all areas - academic, ethnic, extracurricular, etc. - every college has different student “needs.” In addition, all admissions committees are inherently biased to favor or to not favor any random aspect of one’s application. Why do you think some people are admitted to Yale and not Harvard, and vice versa, if both have 6% acceptance rates?
Therefore, it stands to reason that I or any other shotgunner increase our chances of being accepted to a selective university radically by shotgunning.
I’ve never taken statistics, although it looks interesting so I’ll have to pursue it, but it seems to me that no matter how many apps you send out you’re still only getting one chance per university. So a student has the same chance at university x whether he applies to 3 colleges or 30, because only one of those applications actually goes to university x. Is that sort of how it works, @Evan111?
I wish all students the best, of course, I just always hope there’s a real safety in the group when I see lists like this.
It appears that the chances are additive even though they are not independent of each other.
@austinmshauri You don’t need statistics - in fact all you need is common sense. You’re right, the chance of getting accepted to any individual one of the colleges remains the same. But the chance of getting accepted to any random college is not the same. Think of it this way - you reach into a bag with 9 white marbles and 1 green marble. Your chance of pulling out the green marble is 10%. But it also stands to reason that if you repeat that process 100 times, your chance of having pulled out at least 1 green marble is greater than if you had only repeated the process once, no? Now replace the green marble with an acceptance letter to a selective university, and a white marble with a rejection letter…
Also, I appreciate your worrying for me, but there’s no need to. I have a 35 ACT so that’ll at least get me into 5 or 6 of those schools guaranteed.