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<p>Narrow down to 20? I agree that, if financial aid is a determining factor, one should apply to at least 10 schools, but 20 schools, let alone 30, seems ludicrous to me. I’m the only kid at my school who’s even applying to more than a few schools: almost everyone else applies to our state flagship, LSU, and perhaps one or maybe two other in-state colleges. Last year, two students in the entire graduating class of 110 or so seniors went out-of-state. Yay for poor public schools.</p>
<p>once had a friend that applied to 20+. Was like a ton of LACs and state schools. Got accepted to every one except waitlisted by the University of Wisconsin or something random.</p>
<p>i applied to 28 schools. i was going to apply to 32 but it was just too many essays and i ran out of time 
i got into 21 of them tho!!</p>
<p>"Most of them use the Common App, which doesn’t take more than an hour to fill out (minus the essays). Even if every single college I am applying to had separate apps, it honestly would not take a significant amount of time to fill out everything other than the essays. "</p>
<p>keellota; I hope you will let us know if that’s how it turned out. I believe my D applied to 14, five or six of which were UC’s, and about three others which did not use the common AP. Not only did GOOD supplements require an investment of time and emotional energy, but they also required a lot of follow up, in terms of did each school get the transcript, the letter of recommendation, the SAT scores, the interview, etc. All that, while trying to keep your grades up, participate in EC’s, do some college visits, and enjoy your senior year. NOT the senior year we/she was anticipating, at least until spring semester. That was nice. </p>
<p>BTW, she got into all except UCLA.</p>
<p>A girl from my school wants to apply to around 15. That is super high for here! One of the college counselors told her she really thinks she should scale it down to at the most 10. I think most students apply to between 3 and 6 at my HS. That is why I’m always amazed at hearing about kids who apply to not only 10-15 but 20+ schools.</p>
<p>I applied to 35 schools my year.</p>
<p>^ 35 schools! Holy monkeys.</p>
<p>yeah holy crap! I think im going to apply to 4 maximum</p>
<p>World record for the least number of colleges applied to…two.</p>
<p>Plenty of people only apply to 1 if they do ED or EA and the EA is their first choice</p>
<p>Or like one of my friends who only applied to one school RD… her grandfather was the dean, though</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that my school didn’t seem to mind me applying to so many places. They basically said that whenever we needed them for something, just let them know. To make it easy for my guidance counselor, I typed up a list of addresses for each school and what each school required; if anything, it was more work for me (but I didn’t mind nor did it really feel like a ton of extra work…just forced me to be organized senior year).</p>
<p>My “senior buddy” 3 years ago (every freshman at my school is paired up with one senior as a mentor) applied to only one school: Stanford EA</p>
<p>he had already gotten into UCSB through ELC and he was happy with it if he didnt get into Stanford. </p>
<p>He got waitlisted then accepted, So to say the least he was happy.</p>
<p>and as for who are wondering why he didnt apply to UCLA and Berkeley. It was very simple he wanted a relaxing non-competitive environment.</p>
<p>I applied to 14 - USC, UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, UC Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Stanford and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>It was not a smart decision on my part to apply to so many schools, but I was very insecure about how good of a school I could get into. I figured that if I sprayed and prayed, maybe I could get into one of the better schools. The fortunate downside is that I ended up getting into more schools than I predicted, so I had to decide between a few of them and I didn’t have enough time to look at them thoroughly.</p>
<p>Breaking it down, it doesn’t seem like so many schools to me:
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn - these schools have such great academics that if I apply to enough of these, I might have a shot at one! Who knows, maybe an admissions counselor will like me!</p>
<p>Northwestern, Duke, USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley - This was supposedly a very hard admissions year so even “match” schools were tough to get into. In my mind, I might as well hit up enough match schools to ensure I can get into a couple.</p>
<p>UCSD, UCSB - Safeties…applying to both were probably unnecessary.</p>
<p>In hindsight, I probably should have only applied to one HYP, Stanford, Dartmouth, UCLA, Northwestern, and UCSB. I ended up going to Dartmouth, by the way.</p>
<p>The record set at my school, according to the registrar’s office, is 60.</p>
<p>60 is absolutely ridiculous. I’m applying to only 6 & that feels like a lot but I’m trying to be very thorough, so I can’t imagine doing it ten times over.</p>
<p>I know someone who applied to 21, including 3 EA. I don’t know how she did it. I think she got in to almost all 21, too!</p>
<p>D applied to about 18 schools. Different schools for a variety of different reasons, which I gave her the freedom nd encouragement to do. Each represented geniune interest, and at the time of application, appeared logically viable. She had a very wide range of interests and the usual filters (size, geography, private, public, etc) did not signal definite deal breakers in terms of having strong preferences. Scholarships were not absolutely critical but given considerable weight. </p>
<p>It took a little more effort but defintely paid off. It minimized some of the uncertainty and provided the benefit of having some really great choices over which she controlled the process of elimination more than a limted number of admissions offices. In the end, the school she chose, after fully knowing exactly what was on the table, emerged above several of the others that were initially on the short list. In fact, had she been limited to only applying to a small number of schools I"m not sure the one she currently attends would have made the cut – she knew enough to be curious and resonably confident about it, but not enough to be fully committed to it relative to some of the others. Yet so far it’s turned out perfectly. Thus, I couldn’t be happier that I gave her the freedom to cast a very broad net. </p>
<p>Having said all that, it’s not a strategy I would recommend for everyone. Each applicant has different needs and perspectives. But there are certainly a number of students out there for to whom I would recommend that approach, and for whom it would be entirely logical to do.</p>
<p>I know a guy who applied to over 9000 schools.</p>
<p>OVER 9000!
What a champ.</p>
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<p>I think I’m going to top that</p>