I sent in 8 applications. I knew next to nothing about college admissions when I applied. I had never heard of RSI or TASP, I didn’t prep for the SAT, I hadn’t read any college admission books, and I didn’t even know about early admissions. I had only visited a handful of in-state colleges before applying. I whipped out my applications in a few hours each and didn’t bother to have anyone read my essays. Result: 7/8 acceptances. The rejection was a reach, and honestly, it wasn’t that big a deal. </p>
<p>In retrospect, I think I would’ve applied to 6. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>How many kids really apply to 20+ schools? It’s just not that big a problem.</p>
<p>It’s like the definition of middle age (“ten years older than I am”):
How many applications is too many? Three more than I (or my child) put in.</p>
<p>Warblersrule86, I suspect that if you had more information about your admissions probabilities and thought through your own preferences earlier, then your optimal strategy might have been to only apply to 2 or 3. I’m glad things worked out for you and you didn’t have to waste too much time.</p>
<p>If your first choice is a safety, you should apply to 1. If your second choice is a safety, you should apply to 2, etc. </p>
<p>If your first safety is really your 25th choice, then you really need to do some serious evaluation of your preferences and some serious calculations of conditional probabilities of getting admitted and attending to eliminate those schools for which even though you prefer over your safety, your probability of actually going is negligible. That’s why some people apply to 1 school and some people apply to many schools. </p>
<p>I still contend that more information would lead to fewer applications overall.</p>
<p>The formula to reduce the number of applications per student:</p>
<p>Transparency = Predictability = Less anxiety = Fewer number of applications</p>
<p>The key is transparency. On the other hand, with all these holistic stuff and subjective evaluations involved, there will never be true transparency. How do you read an admission officer’s mind if she or he is to made a judgement? Until we move to a merit-based system (scores, grades and awards), the number of applications per students will increase every year with the convenience of technology until the adcoms realize that their subjective evaluation has lead to their own misfortune (tons of work leading to misjudgement to the detriment of the schools and students that they try to serve).</p>
<p>while i do agree that 20+ applications is quite a bit much (who has time?), i think 5 is also way too small. adcoms are well aware of the large number of applications sent out by a single student if not, they would only accept the exact number of students they needed in a class. </p>
<p>regardless, no matter what, the system will be unfair. people need financial safeties and the ability to negotiate. spending money on lots of applications pales in comparison to the amount of money i am receiving per year now as scholarship. if you say this is an excuse, i doubt you know what it feels like to not be able to afford your top school after being accepted. </p>
<p>i applied to 11 schools and got into 9. honestly, i didn’t know enough about any of them to love them. but i also didn’t know enough about any of them to absolutely hate them. i know right now that if i could only apply to 5 schools i would not have applied to the school that i now attend. i visited it 2 times, both after i was accepted, and honestly hated it the first time (the reason for the second visit). if i could only apply to 5 schools i know which ones they’d be, and i would not have been able to afford 4 of them. that would have left me with one true choice even though i was accepted to all 5. i applied to my school on a whim and the same is true for my roommate. how can you know enough about a school to logically eliminate it from the list in just a few months?</p>
<p>also the number of universities in the UK is smaller than the number in the US just by the sheer amount of landmass difference in both countries. i don’t have any sources to prove this, so it’s entirely possible that i am incorrect, but maybe the percents of total schools in a country that students in that country apply to are a bit more similar. there are just more options for applicants in the US than in the UK.</p>
<p>clearly the system is flawed, but no system can be completely perfect. while 20+ applications is certainly a lot, maybe the applicant has a justifiable reason not completely obvious to most people. in the end, the student needs to look after him/herself before another applicant. it’s annoying when someone else takes your spot at a top school, but if you are that strong of a student, surely you have gotten into elsewhere, and going there really isn’t the end of the world. there are many more worse things in life than being rejected by your “dream” school.</p>
<p>No limit should be made. If people want to spend more time and money to get good choices, then that is perfectly fine. This decisions affects the rest of your life more or less.</p>
<p>Seriously, the only reason that it would possibly be reasonable to limit applications is if being accepted to 20 colleges actually did take 19 people’s spots. Which it doesn’t. I’m definitely not the first person on this thread to say it, but this is precisely the reason we have waitlists; if your application pushes someone of the waitlist, they were not going to be accepted anyway.</p>
Many of the top colleges have overenrolled in recent years. I can assure you that this is not out of the goodness of their hearts.</p>
<p>The truth is, some of the elite colleges don’t know what to expect any more than you do. They have old data; they know who their rivals are. However, the applicant pools have been in such constant flux that any guess is just that- a guess. Chicago’s EA applications shot up over 45% this year- can you imagine how frantic they were trying to figure out how many people to admit? I think it’s a marvel they’re as accurate as they are!</p>
<p>I applied to 15 schools but only because of how competitive it all was. I figure, given how much work I had put into my academic career up until that point, it was well worth the investment applying to as many good schools as I could afford/want to go to.</p>
<p>I applied to 10 schools this year. Sure, there were probably 2 or 3 I could have cut out looking back on it.</p>
<p>But honestly? That’s my right. If I want to apply to LSU as a back up to my safeties, without any intention of wanting to attend, I’m going to do so. Did my application maybe possibly get someone rejected? Maybe. I don’t know. However, I really don’t care. I’ve worked hard enough the past few years and I feel I have the right to do so.</p>
<p>Now, I completely agree that 15-20+ schools is absolutely crazy. But who am I (or any of you) to say that they don’t have that right?</p>
<p>As to the argument about having to list the schools you applied to? Absolutely not. I have three top schools- I view them all equally. If they knew who the others were, I may be rejected if they thought I thought they were a safety (one of my top three is WUSTL. There is no way I’d consider telling them any other school in fear of rejection).</p>
<p>Professor 101: Even with the holistic stuff it could still work if they simply said:</p>
<p>Our formula for Academic Index is … => Now you know your AI
Our rubric for EC Index is … => Now you can estimate your EC Index
Then they could provide a matrix with AI on the x-axis and EC on the y-axis and provide probabilities, e.g.,
For people with AI of 8 and EC index of 2 the probability of acceptance last year was 40%. </p>
<p>You could then use census data to adjust your estimate up or down and use maybe 35% instead of 5%. If your box was 2%, you could just not apply. </p>
<p>Furthermore, such information would tell you more about the characteristics of your classmates and how the colleges weigh factors and make it easier to find your own personal fit. For example, clearly MIT’s AI weights the math and science scores more heavily than HYP. Clearly Chicago weights the essays, which would flatten out the matrix. This helps somewhat target fit, but having that matrix would be a huge help in devising an application strategy. </p>
<p>Warbler: From your article, the waitlist situation is becoming untenable. I think the transparency would reduce the number of applications and make the whole process, including estimating yield, more predictable. That would be a good result.</p>
<p>“The truth is, some of the elite colleges don’t know what to expect any more than you do. They have old data; they know who their rivals are. However, the applicant pools have been in such constant flux that any guess is just that- a guess. Chicago’s EA applications shot up over 45% this year- can you imagine how frantic they were trying to figure out how many people to admit? I think it’s a marvel they’re as accurate as they are!”</p>
<p>I think that root of the problem is the injection of subjective evaluations into the admission process and hence make the process less predictable. A merit-based system (scores, grades and awards) will make the process much more predictable. You can’t predict an admissin officer’s mind unless you are her or his spouse (even that may be difficult!)</p>
<p>If you go to Stanford or Yale or any other ED or EA thread and ask those who got rejected or admitted for that matter, they don’t have any clue! That leads a lot qualified students to think that the process is kind of random. Of course, in a random draw, the more applications you submit, the better is your chance.</p>
<p>If parents have a formula such as ClassicRockerDad suggested it would make it much easier. The kids would be raised to meet or rather exceed the numbers necessary to apply to certain schools. And for those kids that don’t meet those numbers, hmm…how about some type of affirmative action to make up for those kids with low numbers. I’m sure there would be reasons for those low numbered kids- poor school district, urm, low-income, and anything else you can think of.</p>
<p>There has been one mention in this thread already about a college with published admission standards at which an applicant who met those standards didn’t get in. Each year there is the problem that sometimes a college gets too many applications for its capacity, from “qualified” students. And colleges that use holistic admissions don’t have a grid. But if you like admission by more predictable processes, there are lots of places all over the world to apply. Why only consider colleges in the United States?</p>