<p>I've recently heard a bunch of gripes about being asked "what other schools are you applying to?" during admissions interviews.</p>
<p>Why is this such a big deal? Should I be cautious in how I answer it? What if I'm applying to a thousand schools? What's wrong with that?</p>
<p>From what I've gathered, most interviewers aren't really supposed to ask you that.
But if they ask you, I wouldn't give your full list, just a couple schools, maybe three or four tops. I don't think they really care that much. The question is just to figure out why you'd want to apply to the school you're interviewing for, is it a complete safety, or is it an ivy that you're applying to just because its an ivy, that kind of thing</p>
<p>All my four interviewers so far have asked me that. I had a better answer each time but I was still very uncomfortable.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Why is this such a big deal? Should I be cautious in how I answer it?<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Because it has nothing to do with your qualifications or achievements, but yet how you answer it may decrease your chances of being accepted. For example, Pomona College has long had a reputation for being sick and tired of being Stanford's backup school. So if the Pomona guy asks and you say you are also applying to Stanford, that may serve to get you rejected from Pomona despite your high qualifications so that they won't face the prospect of losing yet another cross-admit contest with Stanford.</p>
<p>Exactly. The only school that asked me where else I'm applying is my back-up school. >_> And I'm going to assume it's because out of everyone that was accepted, only 29% actually go. It makes me think that they're asking just to see if they're my back-up. They said it's for statistics they send to the Princeton review, but I'm not buying it.</p>