I was all open to apply to many schools and whatever my son wanted but in our case he run out of schools to apply to. Between his major (Business school stuff) , his yucky gpa (high SAT and great ECs) and what we could afford (not our EFC) there were only so many schools left. After he miraculously got into our flagship and an OOS uni EA we seriously struggled to find schools that had all of the above and somehow were better than those two unis. One of his best friends though that was applying for poly sci mostly in LACs and small colleges and could afford his EFC ended up applying to 20 schools as most of the schools in his list did not have EA and he was not sure where he was standing as he was a bit of controversial applicant with the really wow ECs, the perfect SAT and the roller coaster gpa.
My son applied early action (for rolling admission) to the instate flagship. He could have been one-and-done before Christmas after he was admitted and offered merit money that would pay about 50% of his costs. But in the end he applied regular admission to 5 more, 1 public and 4 private. He attended UChicago, which offered a nominal NM cash award. This was a fairly undemanding process, especially because he didn’t get worked up about it at any time and made no pre-application visits to colleges as part of this process. (He had visited the instate flagship in summer debate camps.)
I would like to add that the choice of major can influence the # of schools. My D wanted a BFA program where the top schools often accept less than 5%. She had the academic stats, but a big part of the final decision would be subjective- an audition. So we bumped up the school list, and she ended up applying to: 3 safeties (academic, and no audition), 3 matches (academic, and less selective, meaning maybe 20% audition acceptance rather than 5%) and 5 reaches (both academic and audition). She ended up accepted at 7 schools - including one of her dream programs, which is her school. BUT- the others in her audition year (including the parents on the arts forums here- if you ever want to see a TOTALLY different way of approaching college applications go check them out) often applied to FAR more. The top national coaches for BFA auditions (which my D did not use) recommend a MINIMUM of 10 applications- and advise more- 15 - 20 are common…
…but all students only end up going to one college in the end…some are just more efficient about it.
My child applied to 1 and got in 1 ED.
^^ I guess you win!
I still find it mind-boggling people would be allowed to apply to so many colleges. Especially considering when I attended my public magnet HS, the college office had a strict limit of 8 TOTAL APPLICATIONS…one of which had to be to the state/local public college systems(SUNY/CUNY)*.
Any student trying to apply to more will not have the excess applications processed by the college office(sending out transcripts, GC report, etc).
The college office also placed limits on how many reaches, matches, and safeties one had among their 8 applications. No way would they’d allow the vast majority of even the top students apply to all 8 Ivies/peer elites and conversely, they’d also strongly stop/discourage students who applied to an excessive number of safeties in the context of their stats/past results from prior graduating classes.
For instance, my GC recounted how he felt the need to strongly discourage someone from a graduating class a few years ahead of mine with Ivy/peer elite contender stats from applying to BC because when asked about his reasons, they were mainly centered around the fact he was a big BC sports fan and little else. There were also concerns he may unnecessarily impede students who had more well-thought out reasons for attending who were in the middle-bottom of his graduating class who tended to be the majority of students who end up attending BC after being admitted. That older classmate ended up getting getting admitted and matriculating at UPenn.
- One can apply for up to 8 SUNY/CUNY colleges and have it count as one public college application by our college office.
Wow. My D only applied to 3. I had to push her to apply to the 3rd, lol. All were RA and were basically safeties.
Merit received from all three. Only one was I not prepared to pay full price for, but I was certain she’d get some merit… and she did.
As for free stuff sent… D received a small, frameless nylon backpack from one of the schools that she decided not to attend. She loves the backpack though, and uses it constantly now, as a beach bag, overnight bag, when riding her bike… Of course, it has the name of the university on it, and everyone keeps saying “I thought you were going to other school?” I asked her if she was going to continue wearing the pack to the other school she enrolled in next fall… she said Maybe, it depends on how rabid school spirit is there, lol.
She also wears all the tee-shirts she received from all of the schools we visited last year.
Partially because of seeing several kids from my old neighborhood and some extended relatives coming to the brink of or being forced to transfer/drop out, an unspoken rule I had was to avoid wearing HS*/college wear outside of campus until I have successfully graduated with diploma/degree in hand.
After graduation, I regularly wear my HS/undergrad t-shirts when I’m not forced to wear suits/business casual for work or to dine in certain establishments.
- Yes, I did change out of my HS wear when I was about to leave the school for the day.
Majors offered was definitely a factor in limiting the number of schools D applied to. At one point, she decided on a few different majors that must be available in case she wanted to go that route - and it was stuff like Classical Studies and Anthropology, which aren’t offered everywhere.
We toured a couple of schools, in addition to the three applied to, that she really liked - but she decided not to apply at all because they offered those as a minor only, or not at all.
She also limited her search to total # of undergrads - she wanted more than 2k but less than 20k. That pretty much left us with small state schools. And in the end, she was left with the three… (a few others fit her criteria but she didn’t like the geographic location).
@cobrat, what was your school’s logic with this limitation? Is it really their place to limit the student? Who benefits from that approach?
I am really asking, I am not arguing either way. I just don’t understand why they would limit it.
For the record, I hope my kids go the ED way successfully! Well, I can dream…
My son only wanted to apply to one school EA. But that was crazy, so I forced him to apply to two safeties as well. However he received notices that his applications to the safeties needed some other information from him (what I’ll never know) at the same time he found he was accepted to his first choice, so he never completed his other apps and deleted their emails. So in a way he only applied to one college and was accepted!
For both kids, we’re following the merit money.
D1 applied to three schools. By the time one of the schools let her know they had not received her transcript, she’d been accepted to the other two and picked one. Easy peasy.
D2, a rising senior, is a different kettle of fish. She wants a school no smaller than 5,000 undergrads that has both aerospace and mechanical engineering, and is not located in the Southwest or where polar bears roam the campus. We identified four financial safeties (guaranteed tuition +) pretty early on, and have visited three. She really likes two of them and would be happy to attend the third.
However, with her ACT and GPA we know there are other possibilities. We took the list of ABET accredited schools with her preferred engineering majors and compared it to the automatic merit schools, then the list of schools that awarded competitive scholarships of full tuition or better. Our next step will be for her to visit the websites of the automatic merit schools, and for me to search common data sets / websites for the other schools to see how competitive their scholarships would be, and to make sure the schools meet her other criteria. I think we have 12 or 13 to look at.
I’m confident we can narrow her total list down to <10. Then I’ll research to ensure that all of her picks have adequate medical care for her autoimmune disease nearby before she does applications. (That’s a limiting factor I was NOT originally prepared for!) Once we get responses with merit aid offers, she can visit any that she is particularly interested in before she makes a decision (and re-visit any of the original three if necessary.) I think this is a solid plan – if any of you disagree, let me know!
Interesting how different the process can be from one child to the next, and how totally wacky compared to the days when H and I applied – one and done for both of us!
@cobrat Back in the 90’s that (8-10) probably seemed like more than enough. Back when I applied (early 70s) I had three colleges on my list: Harvard (reach), Brown (match), U Penn (safety). Times have changed!
I’d like to think most kids could apply to 8-10, but if you are chasing merit money or tiny highly selective programs, I full recognize you may need a few more. Maybe even twice as many.
The main logic was to curb the already cutthroat level of competitiveness among most of the student body…especially those in the top 25-33% who were viable contenders for Ivy/peer elite college admissions.
They didn’t want a situation where the very top students/gunner types basically monopolized all the admissions to Ivy/peer elite colleges at the expense of students whose estimated class rank* just slightly down from them…especially considering even students who were in the middle to bottom of the class were academically strong enough to have been viable contenders to be top 10% or even val/sal in academically average high schools…whether public or private. In short, it was a way to “spread the elite/respectable college admissions wealth” across a greater pool of students deeper into each graduating class.
It’s also a reason why most of the 1/6th of my graduating class admitted to Cornell for Engineering/Arts & Science weren’t likely(or would have been allowed to apply by the GC based on their assessment of the individual student’s records) to have applied to more than 1-3 other peer elites as there was a strong mandate to apply to matches/safeties…including the 1 mandated application to the state/local public university system.
- My public magnet didn't officially rank students beyond the val and sal defined strictly as the #1 and #2 by HS GPA.
8 was the absolute max allowed by my public magnet’s college office when I attended…and one application must be to the state/local public college system(SUNY/CUNY).
Any classmate trying to apply to 9 or 10 would be called down to the college office, given a harsh scolding, and be asked to decide which apps beyond the maximum 8 he/she wanted to cut out or they reserve the right to refuse to process any of the applications because the student violated the rule about the 8 maximum apps.
@postmodern- As @mathmom said, back in the late 90’s when cobrat was applying to college, applying to 6-8 schools was likely enough. That said, my s’s’ (private) school also had the “apply to 8 schools maximum” rule, much later than @cobrat applied ( 5-9 years later). Only at the time the younger one was applying did they loosen up on this rule a bit and say if someone wanted to apply to more than 8, their additional application(s) went to the bottom of the pile and the materials were sent out only after all other students’ letters and transcripts went out. Their thought was, if you did your HW well, and identified, for eg, 2 likelys, 2 or 3 matches and 2 or 3 reaches, you were good. And every student got into a 4 year school. Don’t know what the current policy is.
I am sure it was an exceptional school, and a good rule for your class of a few hundred kids, but doesn’t that put your kids at a disadvantage against the other 1.6M kids from other 3,000 schools that don’t have that rule? I know about feeder schools, but you are not suggesting your school had an allocation? (And for the record, I do think 8 is more than enough for most kids. I applied to one.)
I realize you are being hyperbolic, but this I take issue with. Any GC who would give a “harsh scolding” for something like this is not an asset to the school or the students and should do something else. The “G” stands for “guidance” as I understand it.
Our GC has told us “target 5-10” – and it is a good “target”. But many kids apply to more, and if they have good logic and do their homework they should be supported.
To be clear, I am not suggesting any specific number for any specific family. Sauseech his own, as we say in NJ. I am saying that arbitrary and absolute rules set by the school at this critical juncture are inappropriate.
Actually, more like several hundred as my graduating class was slightly under 700 students.
And no, I don’t think it put us at a disadvantage. Especially considering ~25% of my graduating class was admitted to at least one Ivy with 1/6 of it admitted to Cornell Engineering & Arts & Sciences. If we include peer elites, that would increase the proportion to around 1/3 of my graduating class. The only HYPSMCC school which admitted students in the single digits was Princeton…they admitted 5 in my year whereas all of the others admitted ~15-30 each.
Even among feeder schools of which my public magnet is considered to be one by some folks, college counselors do act to encourage/discourage applications to certain colleges and limit total number of applications so a larger proportion of the class gets at least one acceptance from an Ivy/peer elite college.
This tamps down competition among students during college application season and “spreads the elite college acceptance wealth” deeper into each graduating class which bolster’s the PR image of the given HS/boarding school.
At least speaking for my public magnet’s campus culture with its student driven competitiveness which can reach cutthroat levels at times, allowing unlimited college applications even back when I was applying to colleges would be the equivalent of dumping an oil tanker’s worth of blood into shark infested waters.
There’s also the factor that most of the student body at my public magnet came from low income to lower-middle class backgrounds so the limitation also substantially mitigated the advantage of classmates from upper/upper-middle class families who had no issues funding the fees for 10-20+ college applications.
No, I wasn’t being hyperbolic.
And I wouldn’t say the GC was being unreasonable considering the 8 application maximum rule was clearly spelled out to us in our HS handbooks and repeated by the GCs multiple times during our HS years.
Any student who proceeded to ignore all that by applying to 9+ schools would have been viewed by the GC and even by some classmates as someone who felt him/herself so entitled as to exempt himself from that clearly stated hard rule and dressed down accordingly. This was one rule where no exceptions were entertained for any student.