<p>Curm, there is nobody you have to justify your personal decision to. I’ve said that. I just meant that I personally find it unnecessary to apply to 17 or 19 colleges and cannot think of a reason to myself. You must have had your reasons and that is all that matters. It is a choice. I see some drawbacks as well to that many apps and won’t take the time to list them. But as with anything, people make decisions and think through the pros and cons of those and it is up to each of us to decide such things.</p>
<p>No problems , jym. We’'ll be back on the same side before ya know it. Go help the neighbor.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen you two go at in all the years I’ve been reading and over two threads no less! Rest assured BOTH of your responses have given thought to the new college seeking parents.</p>
<p>So jym, sorry I did not read every post…but after 8 apps, your school does allow a student to send more if they pay? I would not mind that as long as they allowed it. I do think it is up to the family. I can see a high school discouraging TOO many apps but there are situations where more than 8 are needed. Many of my advisees have 11 or 12, for example, for good reasons.</p>
<p>I don’t think we ever have, and it wasn’t that fun this time neither. Maybe we’ll have another eon of civility. And then another tussle. ;)</p>
<p>re Post 120: So, because the families at a few private schools are limited to a set number, the rest of us should be also?</p>
<p>As I said earlier in the thread, my D will be applying to fewer than 6, and my son applied to 8, so we are not in the Very Large Number group. However, I couldn’t care less what other people decide; I don’t even bother formulating an opinion about their decisions.</p>
<p>What is the mind-set here? Do people really not care if they lose all control over this process?</p>
<p>
Hey. I doubt anybody learned much but I hope it was entertaining. Now, really. I have to go back to obsessing about the med school application process and learning how to game that …uhh…I mean work within that system. Always, your crazy Uncle Curm ;)</p>
<p>midmo-
This thread was started to pose a HYPOTHETICAL question, a spin-off from another thread. For my family, however, it wasn’t “hypothetical”. I posted the head GC’s reasoning in an earlier post. I cant say how many schools my kids might have applied to if this rule wasnt clear to all from the get-go. But knowing the motivational levels of my guys, I doubt it would ever have made it to the double digits. That said, this wasn’t our family’s choice. It was the school policy. It is what it is. </p>
<p>OK-- dehumidifier is picked up, fan about to follow. Thank heavens we redid the threshold at the basement door before DS left for school. Otherwise we’d have a big mess in our basement right now.</p>
<p>Actually I do think people can learn from the different approaches schools/families take to the admin process. Its all relevant. I still want to know how a person arrives at the “this is enough” point w.r.t the # of schools to apply to.</p>
<p>19 schools seems to be a bit much from my standpoint. Neither my kids or any of their friends applied to more than 6 - a couple of safeties, a couple of matches and a couple of reaches. As far as trophy hunting, its usually the parents not the kids who exhibit this behavior.</p>
<p>
Oh, my apologies.</p>
<p>I assumed that since it’s normal on the Parents Forum to rehash the same points over and over again in overly lengthy posts, someone should make the comparison that inevitably gets made every time someone suggests this cap. My bad!</p>
<p>^^^ I care, IBclass06. Several of our HS students elect to go to school in England, Ireland, Scandanavia, etc. Hope you didnt feel unwelcome here. You are right about the same old, same old dance here. Your post was, IMO, a refreshing, welcome change!</p>
<p>My kid was far too lazy and too much of a procrastinator to send out a large number of applications. The Common App. helps, but there are still all those pesky supplements. The only thing that helped was that he applied EA to two schools and was able to recycle most of their essays.</p>
<p>As for the original hypothetical, I agree with who ever said that it might require more strategic planning, making sure the safeties are really safe. Maybe skipping match schools all together for some top applicants.</p>
<p>At S2’s school, the first transcript is free; every one after that is $5 a pop. The GCs at both their schools recommended 5-6 apps. </p>
<p>S1 had ten schools on the list that he had researched and to which he had sent scores. Based on EA results, he dropped three. Could have dropped two-three more, only none of us were comfortable applying to only four schools (three of them reachy for anyone), and we were hoping to see how merit $$ played out.</p>
<p>S2 has 12 on the list, all of which he has researched, visited and chosen for specific reasons; depending on EA results, he may cut back the list or contemplate an ED II. </p>
<p>If we pay for a couple of transcripts and scores for apps that are never completed, it is not the worst thing in the world.</p>
<p>This issue is a big one for my D right now. Just like OP’s son, my D has a strong preference for truly highly selective mid-sized universities. If she had no limit, she would apply to 5 colleges with acceptances below 10%, 4 colleges in the 10-20% range, 3 in the 20-30% range, and 2 in the 30-40% range. That would make 14 colleges. </p>
<p>Problem- her (independent private) school wants them to limit the number of colleges to a maximum of 9.</p>
<p>I am not sure which ones would make the most sense to remove from her list. And we don’t even have to worry about financial aid (we won’t qualify).</p>
<p>Keeping fingers crossed for the EA round.</p>
<p>PS: No trophy hunting here. If she gets in on the EA round then she will only have 2 other applications to send in.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Vicariousparent, again, I don’t believe a high school should limit the number of apps, but I also don’t believe your D needs 14 schools. If I recall her situation, she is a top applicant, though we all know that the schools with less than 20% admit rates are very reachy odds for anyone. I don’t know her whole profile or her list of schools. And I typically work with the concept of “reach, match, safety” and not “admit rate stats only”…But a very rough suggestion given the “list” you gave which was:</p>
<p>14 colleges
5 colleges with acceptances below 10%
4 colleges in the 10-20% range
3 in the 20-30% range
2 in the 30-40% range </p>
<p>Soooo…</p>
<p>9 colleges (apparently required)
3 w/ acceptances below 10%
2 w/ acceptances in 10-20% range
2 in the 20-30% range
2 in the 30-40% range</p>
<p>OR
9 colleges (required)
3 w/ acceptances below 10%
2 w/ acceptances in the 10-20% range
3 in the 20-30% range
1 in the 30-40% range</p>
<p>IBClass06: </p>
<p>My apologies for a snippy comment. Of course, if one is considering going to school in UK, it is quite important to know how it is done there. Although there really isn’t an excuse for the tone of my comment, my reasoning is that I think the way higher ed is done in other countries if of very limited relevance to how we do it here, for a long list of reasons.</p>
<p>Again, sorry for the snideness.</p>
<p>Curm-</p>
<p>having all this fun without me!!!</p>
<p>And yes I remember the circumstances your daughter had which dictated the number of apps, as did Suz’s 2 daughters one for MT with graduating a year early and her other daughter’s arch degree with a love of skiing (very, very fast).</p>
<p>My kiddos (1 in particular) applied to more than curm’s lovely daughter and for us it was all about the benjamins. Lots and lots of them. When you have need-blind schools offering aid packages that can vary 20K PER YEAR its the lottery to the tenth. Add in some gapping on one end and lots of preferential packaging on the other and the predictors for success go way down. </p>
<p>Son’s hard work during app season paid off, he is now in Curm’s daughter spot of dipping his toe in the md/mba pool. Fun.</p>
<p>Kat
ps go with what works, but having more than 1 peer acceptance with a tight FA package definitely made all the difference for my 5 kiddos</p>
<p>soozie: Thanks. I think I am going to ask her to simply make a list of her colleges in her order of preference and then go down the list until she reaches number 8, then she will add her safety. If needed she will test the limit of this arbitrary 9 college limit that the school recommends. The counselors are not unreasonable and I doubt the school policy is too inflexible.</p>
<p>vicariousparent…that is a good plan. I honestly think it benefits her to narrow it from the 14 now. But I don’t think she should have to necessarily limit it to 9 and if she can explain her reason, I hope her school bends. But it is good if she can whittle it for many reasons from 14, in my opinion. </p>
<p>Katwkittens, I do recall your son who is at P having a lot of schools too but I recall the financial need in your case and he also had various military academies in the mix and regular colleges. He also had one of the most impressive acceptance lists I have seen! Wow, he is up to grad school apps? Isn’t this fun…all over again. Did that with D1…and the grad school process she was in was also uber selective and she had ten of those. Frankly, much more can dilute the efforts per app and she was doing this all while being an UG student as well. I really think we are done in my family as my younger one earned a professional degree in her field as an UG and so is off in the working world now. Only have one left to support (ironically the older one) who is a student. It is kinda hard to wrap my mind around that one of my kids is not in school after being in school her whole life practically. She’s just 20. Well, even though I am done with the app process for good in my family, I relive it every day with all the kids and families I am helping. </p>
<p>Anyway, each student and/or family, needs to do what works for them. In the end, there are a lot of successful kids represented just on this thread alone even though each went about it a little differently and came from different backgrounds as well.</p>
<p>I’m interested in how it works in England, because that was what I was wondering: what would be the effect of a nationwide limitation on the number of applications?
As we’ve seen from the stats that somebody posted, a limitation like that would affect only a small minority of students. I suspect it would primarily impact those looking at reasonably selective schools, even if the primary motivation for applying to multiple schools is to compare aid packages. For students happy to go to state universities (and that’s a lot of students), the issue of the aid package is probably less severe.
I think it’s interesting that Oxford and Cambridge don’t have to compete for cross-admits.</p>