My kids each applied to about a dozen. This approach certainly doesn’t make sense for everybody, but it can make a lot of sense for somebody who really wants to attend a highly selective school like Yale. Even for highly qualified students, the single-digit acceptance rates make it very difficult to predict how admissions will go at those schools. If you look at results threads here on CC, you will often see kids who got into one super-selective school but not another, with no obvious reasons. Another similar kid gets the opposite result. It’s not unusual to see a kid apply to six or seven super-selective schools, and get admitted by just one of them. If he had shortened his list by one or two, he might be at a match or safety–not a tragedy at all, but just not the result he would have preferred.
People who need to compare financial aid offers may also need to apply to a larger number of schools.
“The kid may have preferred being in the Northeast, since that’s where most of the schools were.” More likely it is the other way around, because the Ivy League includes schools in the Northeast. Of the non-Ivy schools to which she applied, only one was in the Northeast.
About some schools not being perceived as STEM schools or whathaveyou: the general public may not see UIUC or Cornell as “engineering” schools, but businesses who hire engineers do. Brown, for example, may be more selective overall, but chances are a future engineer would not find it to be a better choice. Choosing a school just based on its selectivity and brand name to the “general public” is probably not the right way to go, especially if your major actually matters for your future job. What I mean is, some jobs do not require a certain major. You could get the same job if you major in history, poly sci, psych, English, etc. Just graduating from a good university is enough in this case. Some jobs do require a certain major (like engineering jobs). Graduating from from schools known to be good in those circles (even if not known by the “general public”) would be beneficial.
Back to the original question: The only thing you can do is your best when it comes to the SAT and ACT. Once you know how well you have done, then you can start looking at colleges to see what might be a good fit with your stats and interests.
@ramara6 – Interesting OpEd piece. Although I am certainly sympathetic to the columnist’s opinion, I don’t know that I would implement any mandatory limits. I just wish schools and parents would show a little more self-restraint.