DS (HS class of '15) was easy. One of our Big State U’s has a fantastic program in his major of interest, and he qualified for automatic admission so he knew he was accepted when he clicked “submit” on his application in mid-August. Official letter (a formality) came by mid-September. Just to humor me, he applied to our other Big State U (my alma mater) for a slightly different but extremely competitive major. Students I saw on CC who were accepted to MIT and Stanford were turned down by that university/major, so my DS had no chance. 
He did get a “general ed” university acceptance, ultimately, but would have had to finagle his way through two colleges/3 departments to achieve the classes he’d get in the specially-designed program at his auto-admit. GC (single meeting, although he did take a look at the essays as well) was fantastic – couldn’t have paid for a better conversation: why go OOS and pay three times as much for something you can get in your own backyard? Perfect. Done. Feet up the rest of senior year wondering why everyone else was so stressed out about the process.
DD (HS class of 2020) is just getting started. I know her journey will be much more stressful and challenging because she has no interest in that auto-admit Big State U (it doesn’t offer her interest area anyway) and she will probably want to go further away from home. She, unlike her brother, will not listen to any parental suggestions (about anything, really), so who knows how this will go. She did ask me as a freshman what her college budget is, so she’s clearly more focused earlier in the process than her brother was. Her HS class is half the size his was with more hands-on GCs, and they assure parents that they’ve got it covered. Hopefully that’s the case and we’ll be mostly taking her for some visits, paying application fees, and waiting for her decision when the time comes. She may or may not tell us the rest of her admission results. (HA!)
One thing I learned from DS’s experience is that they will find their place and things do work out. I had a number of parent friends with HS class of '14 kiddos, and that was a brutal year for college admissions. One friend’s daughter applied to 16 schools and ended up with nothing but two WL…the rest, even schools her GC thought would be easy-acceptances, were denials (we became aware of “yield” as a result of that). [She found an amazing gap year program involving world travel and is now a junior at her top choice, which was one of those WLs – GC inquired on her behalf about deferred admission for the following fall and got it.] I decided right then that I was not inclined to encourage either of mine to pay numerous application fees for the privilege of being turned down. Not worth it at all. I knew from my own experience that a motivated student can get a great education wherever they go, so the pressure of super-reaches, etc. is just not worth it. Plus, we make too much money to get assistance…but not enough to pay full tuition for the higher-end schools. I’m interested to see how DD’s journey goes!