<p>koolkitty, come back to this post on April 1 and let us know how it worked out for you.</p>
<p>entomom - Thank you so much for that! I can’t believe we’d contribute no more than 10%. I really want to go to Yale now! 
(not that I didn’t before haha).</p>
<p>koolkitty - I don’t think I’m being selfish. If I came from a family with a high income, I doubt I’d apply to more than four schools. I’m not applying to more than 10 schools, but my family needs aid, so what else am I supposed to do?</p>
<p>My family needs aid too. If you’re family earns under $60,000, then expect a full ride. If they earn between $60,000-100,000/120,000, then expect a good portion of it to be covered. At least, that’s the rule for Ivy League colleges.</p>
<p>Hakuna Matata (No Worries).</p>
<p>Financial aid is meant for people who need it (apply to need-blind colleges). If you really need it, the college will most likely give it to you. Just apply a few weeks before the deadline</p>
<p>^ No rebuttal?</p>
<p>I understand that, koolkitty. But first I have to get accepted to one of these prestigious institutions before I can get FA. Haha. So to guarantee that I’ll get FA, I think it makes sense to apply to a few more, maybe 7 or 8. I’m not saying apply to 20.</p>
<p>“Maybe I’m just nice and considerate”</p>
<p>So if you were really nice and considerate, as you see the situation, you’d apply to only one safety school, to make sure you weren’t accepted at multiple schools, taking spots from others. Right?</p>
<p>Nah, I’d apply to 2 schools in my state (one public and one private) that I know would take me no matter what.</p>
<p>The other 3 would be out of state (because I really want to leave my state). The two would be schools that I would have a 60-90% chance of getting into. The last one would be my dream college.</p>
<p>The point is you have to have a back-up plan. That’s why you apply to a few. But you don’t apply to so many that you’d be spending over $500 in application fees.</p>
<p>I’d say apply to 6 at the most. Apply to colleges that are known for good financial aid policies (e.g. Princeton, Johns Hopkins is pretty good too, I guess)</p>
<p>^That means you’d apply to five schools, meaning four schools would accept you and you’d have to ruin the dream of four students who had dreamed of going there their entire lives… :(</p>
<p>Hahahaha I’m jk</p>
<p>^^ If accepted to more than one of these schools, you are potentially stealing spots from other students. How inconsiderate.</p>
<p>koolkitty, I was ready to just leave this thread and let lessons be learned the hard way. But I really don’t want you to be disappointed come next spring (now who’s being nice 
). Please have an open mind and spend some time reading various threads on cc. My family makes considerable less than $60K, and ds – with the aforementioned great stats, URM, etc – didn’t get a totally free ride anywhere. That’s something NO ONE should count on.</p>
<p>You seem to have taken some misguided moral high ground about the number of college apps a person “should” have. I’m glad things worked out for your brother, but you may not be so lucky. Read and learn from cc.</p>
<p>You must have not been accepted to any Ivy League colleges, then. Because they do</p>
<p>^ And your naivete is worse than I initially presumed if you are going into college applications thinking that you will be accepted to an Ivy.</p>
<p>Uh, yeah, ds wasn’t accepted to an Ivy. He didn’t apply to one. Not everyone wants to go to an Ivy (and I’m sure all those Ivy hopefuls are thankful he didn’t take a spot from them, thereby ruining their lives).</p>
<p>I was under the impression that we were trying to answer the OP’s question, and he was talking about Yale, buddy</p>
<p>OP is a rising senior and therefore hasn’t applied to any colleges so how could he have “not been accepted to any Ivy League colleges then.”</p>
<p>Why didn’t I trust my first instinct and walk away? Adios.</p>
<p>4 is the magic number. A safety, two targets, and one reach. There is, in my opinion, no reason to waste the money needed to apply to any more.</p>
<p>kitty, here is an article that explains a bit about how admission to many selective colleges works. You’ll improve your own chances if you understand the issues! :)</p>
<p>[Admissions</a> Messages vs. Admissions Realities](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/apply/news_and_articles/admission_messages.html]Admissions”>http://www.reed.edu/apply/news_and_articles/admission_messages.html)</p>
<p>^^I didn’t read the entire thread, so I’m sure I’ll be reiterating opinions already voiced elsewhere: if you have, say, more than one reach school that you sincerely love, wouldn’t applying to multiple of them raise your chance of getting into at least one? What if the three match and safety schools you were admitted to ended up offering terrible financial aid packages? What if your idea of an ideal school change over the course of the six month waiting period? What if your stats are really high and you want to aim for the really selective colleges, is applying only to two match schools… safe?</p>
<p>No. I don’t think that you have to apply to over 10 colleges to get accepted into one. I think that you need the right SAT scores, GPA, and rigorous course load/extracurricular activities. If you really wanted to get into a selective college, then you should’ve started working toward that goal during your freshman year in high school. You should’ve tried your best whenever you could and get the right standardized test scores in the range of the accepted applicants (or even exceed that range). My opinion…respect it</p>
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<p>What if, like many CCers, your favorate college happens to be so selective that over half of those with 2400 on the SAT are rejected?</p>
<p>Edit: ^^:confused: ??? But those were sincere, legitimate questions that I was asking…</p>