D applied to one school, her first choice school, and was accepted so didn’t feel the need to apply to any others.
If your kids can find at least one rolling admission and one EA school that they really like and have the stats for, then the can greatly reduce the number of apps needed. My D applied to 5: an in-state public that she liked and that was within our budget; to three EA schools that were matches, but where she knew attendance depended on the amount of merit awarded; and to one OOS public where the school was a safety but the Honors College (which is what she really wanted) was a high match/reach.
Because merit deadlines were early (like November - December 1), she was forced to decide early on which schools were her favorites and where she had the best shot at merit. That meant some tough choices; e.g., she liked both Emory and Tulane quite a lot, but Tulane was the better bet for merit, so Emory dropped off the list of apps when she realized she did not have enough time to do a good job on both supplements by the merit deadline. She ended up accepted to all 5 schools, with merit from all but one (the in-state safety). COA ranged from $21,000 to $45,000, which meant that 3 of the 5 were within our budget. All acceptances, including merit offers, arrived between mid-November and mid-December.
She did not buy into the idea that, “If no one rejects you, you didn’t reach high enough” so she did not add in any “Hail Mary” apps at the end just to see what might happen. She had considered applying to Brown, Vandy, and/or WUSTL, but knew that all were reaches (Brown for admission as their need-based aid would have been sufficient, WUSTL and Vandy for both admission and merit as their NPC showed insufficient need-based aid). Since she was already accepted and within budget at her two favorites, she decided not to apply anywhere else as more options (even if a longshot) would just have complicated things unnecessarily.
I would not object if there were a 10 school limit for applications. Some high schools do limit the number of transcripts they will send out, and yet their students do get accepted and do attend college so the limit must not be all that life (or dream) crushing. Asking a high school to send out 15 transcripts is too much, and 25 is ridiculous. Having to go in and delete and add schools to the FAFSA causes a lot of errors. How many of those Ivy apps don’t even have a full 1 minute review because they were ‘just a lottery ticket application’ and the student has absolutely no chance of getting into Harvard or Princeton. If you want to buy lottery tickets, go to the store and buy them.
If the number of apps were limited to 10, I think students would pick more carefully. Ten applications still gives every student 1 or 2 long shots, still allows the dream to come true. If the student doesn’t know what type of college or program he wants, maybe a gap year is in order, or pick a large university with lots of options.
There was a student on CC last year that was applying to 31 schools, using a ‘shotgun’ approach. Don’t know what happened to him as he stopped posting. He spent about $5000 just on applications.
@SlackerMomMD, precisely my point.
“Asking a high school to send out 15 transcripts is too much, and 25 is ridiculous.”
In this day and age, transcripts, recs, etc. are submitted electronically the vast majority of time requiring a click or two of the keyboard.
I don’t disagree that 20+ applications and applying to all 8 Ivies is unnecessary but I personally think 10-15ish is a perfectly fine number.
Turn the thinking around…if kids are patting themselves on the back for applying to more than 10 colleges then the kids need to understand that this was not a good thing, this was a poor thing and due to lack of research…research is something they certainly need to do in College so not a foreign concept. Since the advent of the Net price calculators, the dearth of information readily available about who is “good” with financial aid and who is not, the understanding that the “merit” dollars clearly go to the very tippy top of an admitting class and is strongly GPA and score driven and all the reported information available in iPEDs and the Common Data Set there is zero need for parent to “buy in” if their kids are taking a shotgun approach or whining “but mom I need to apply to 15-20-or more colleges, everyone one else is”. There really is no need unless the homework as not been done in my opinion and frankly not “everyone” is taking this crazy route.
Kids often ask why the FAFSA is limited to 10 colleges and I want to say "well kids, do you think the adults might be sending you a message that you need to do alittle more thinking about your list before you send apps, apply for aid, and make a whole lot of people do a whole lot of work they might not have to if you gave it a teeny tiny bit more effort in selecting and decision making. 15, 20, 25 applications…not something kids should be proud of in my opinion.
My older son applied to two schools EA they all deferred him. One of his safeties had a priority application (maybe based on NMS status?) and he got in there early. He applied to 8 total - and was rejected by 3, waitlisted, by 1 and accepted by 4. His list was 2 safeties and 6 reaches.
Younger son had 8 on his original list, but when he got into U of Chicago EA he dropped one of his safeties. Ended up with 4 acceptances and 3 rejections. The rejections were all from schools even harder to get into than Chicago. He had 6 reaches and 1 safety. Though it was hard to tell what a reach was, he had lopsided scores and his school reported GPA included 8 semesters of orchestra which gave him a considerable bump even though it was unweighted.
I am not sure how we can limit student applications in a free country. If we do, then we should also limit the number of applications that each university can accept.
How may applications should we limit Harvard and Stanford to? Who decides that after x number, Harvard accepting more applications is unnecessary?
D1 had a number one choice, but threw applications at a total of 5 schools. She did not have enough financial safeties in her final list, but it all worked out.
D2 applied to 7 schools, although she could have easily narrowed that down to 3-4. We did not visit all the schools before applying. I think that was part of the reason her list grew to 7. What if I visit and don’t like it?
I don’t think anyone is suggesting we place limits on student applications. We are pointing out that often there is no need to send out 20+ applications, unless cost is an issue and the student is going for merit. For most students, getting 10+ acceptances is overkill. Really, students should aim for, at most, 5 acceptances. If cost is an issue, I can see why 10 acceptances may be necessary because maybe only 4 or 5 are affordable. There is a lot of information out there nowadays. With careful research and selection, even students aiming for schools with the lowest admissions rates can limit their applications.
I don’t see the logic in limiting the number of applications a university can read or evaluate even if students are limited.
Well, some schools (high schools) do limit it. FAFSA limits the initial list to 10 and it would be easy to say the limit is 10, you cannot change the FAFSA application until the following year. Wouldn’t prevent you from sending in 100 applications, but you could only apply for FA at 10. ED doesn’t limit the number of applications submitted by a student, but I’m sure it greatly cuts down on the number. Not that I want to give CB any more power, but the number of SAT reports could be limited to 10 schools.
It’s not going to happen, I just think it should happen. CB and the schools don’t necessarily want it to be limited because they are making money on the volume of applications.
I really doubt any students from my children’s high school applied to more than 10 school. Most I know applied to 3-4 (many to only one as Florida has a very early cycle, so students apply to one school, find out in Dec., and they are done), mostly instate, and the guidance counselors sent the transcripts electronically. They had 430 seniors to get out the door, they had another 1400 to help with course selection and discipline issues and teacher problems. They focused on helping the most students in the best way they could, and that was getting the info to the state schools, on time, and helping with the big things like testing and graduating (and signing up for Bright Futures, as that was important). They tried, they really did, but they did not have time to send 20 transcripts for each student.
I think the past year or so and certainly going forward there is plenty of information to allow a family to understand whether it has a chance of being affordable so I’m not sure I buy-in to the theory that you apply broadly if you want merit, if it’s only money a student is after the list would include only colleges where they are at the tippy top stats-wise and you probably would have zero reachy colleges. Twoinanddone…I don’t think that there is a high percentage of kids that are abusing the concept of college applications, clearly every year we see when they ask how they get-around the FAFSA limitation. Colleges and universities probably don’t care as they aren’t going to staff up a huge admissions department, they will just work faster and skim more which hurts the kids that sent our a reasonable amount of applications and really care about a college or uni being used as a fishing expedition by another student.
Earlier this week I saw an article about a kid who applied to and was accepted at 22 schools, including all the Ivies. Seems excessive to me, but I guess he did a good job on all the supplements since he was accepted everywhere.
Sorry if it’s a clueless question - is merit always awarded only on hard core stats like GPA and SAT/ACT, or is it a more holistic approach like college admissions? If the latter, then there is really no way for a top student to foresee what kind of merit aid packages s/he will get before applying, is that right?
From my own family’s experience, it isn’t purely stat driven. I’ve seen merit scholarships that specifically state that a determining factor is leadership or some other less quantifiable element.
My daughter applied to 16. Accepted at five, waitlisted at 3 and rejected by the rest. Yeah there were a few too many reaches. If I had another kid I’d do it differently. But one of her friends from summer camp claims to have applied to 27! 
Back when I was a teenager in the dark ages I applied to six and was accepted by all of them.
D’s chosen college awarded her a scholarship based primarily on her leadership skills, though her stats also mattered. One of the required things she will need to do in addition to keeping a certain GPA is to join a minimum of 2 groups and be active in them. College websites state pretty clearly what merit or other scholarships are available-some are automatic, some must be applied for, others are “possibles”. D knew that merit was needed if she wanted to go out of state to the colleges she wanted and we researched the options carefully before she even applied. Once she had at least one affordable option, she stopped working on the local flagship app.
“I don’t see the logic in limiting the number of applications a university can read or evaluate even if students are limited.”
I am suggesting that I don’t see that we have any more right to limit an individual students applications, than we have to limit the number a school can accept.
Submitting a lot of applications is smart for a student who needs the best possible financial aid, who is trying to understand which elite schools will admit them, or both.
Wow a lot judging going on in this thread.
It isn’t purely stats driven at a lot of schools, but you can get a flavor from looking at the Common Data Set. You can see what percent of students get merit and the average amount. Say 10% of students get merit. I’d say you’d better be in the top 20% stats-wise to expect any, and you may get nothing, and it may be less than the average amount. Also carefully read the web pages on scholarships merit, and look at threads of accepted students for those schools to see who seemed to get the merit. Based on those three things, you can get an idea of where you may be a candidate for merit. Not foolproof, but there are good hints there. Schools are intentionally cagey about it, though – a regional school might sweeten the offer for someone from a state where they don’t have much representation, for example. They want to have the freedom to tempt the students they want most, so they don’t give specific stats.