<p>A friend of mine, who also did IB, applied to 34 schools. He was in the top 10% but not the top 10, and he had a lot of business related extracurriculars. Anyway, he wound up getting into 2 schools (University of Florida and Brandeis), waitlisted at William & Mary, and rejected from everywhere else. He wound up at UF, like many of our classmates who only applied to 2 schools. </p>
<p>His theory was, you only apply to college once, so why not take a chance? However, he wound up doing applications at midnight, getting generic recommendations, and spreading himself a mile wide and an inch deep.</p>
<p>In my opinion, when you apply to more than 13 schools or so, the efforts per school may be diluted, as well as specific interest expressed in each school. </p>
<p>If someone applied to 34 schools and only got into two, then their college list was not appropriate to them. </p>
<p>You donât need more schools to yield results. You need an appropriate and balanced list.</p>
<p>It seems to me that 6 to 10 is plenty in all but the most unusual of circumstances. Start the process early and do some careful visiting and attending of presentations so that you can figure out what sorts of schools make sense.
Donât just blindly apply to all the Ivies, plus Stanford and MIT. They are all rather different places and the chances are that you arenât a good fit for all of them.
Find a safety that you can live with. Get over the notion that you must go to a âperfectâ school.
Be honest in your assessments of yourself. If you have an average resume, donât labor under the belief that applying to dozens of selective schools will get you into any of them. Yes - there is some randomness in the process, but that just means that not every student qualified for a school will find a place there.</p>
<p>When I applied in 06-07, I applied to 23, but 6 of them were for BS/MD. Of the other 17, I think I actually wanted to apply to 12-15 of them. But the deal with my parents was I could apply anywhere I wanted to, and they would pay for it, as long as I applied to where they told me to apply as well.</p>
<p>In hindsight, since I decided I really didnât want a BS/MD (after getting accepted) I would apply to probably 15 or so tops.</p>
<p>But from what I understand, schools at the top are also getting more selective now.</p>
<p>Our school put a cap to the number of privates you can apply to to 10. So many parents and students were complaining that they increased it to 12. Itâs almost a norm for students at our school to apply 15+ schools, not including UCs. Also, our office charges $5 per transcript you order. So that adds up. </p>
<p>Iâm applying to 10; luckily I was able to hone down my list from 20+ schools.</p>
<p>Some folks âblameâ this huge number of applications on the ease. Using the common app reduces some of the hassle, but not all. Thereâs still those supplements to complete.</p>
<p>Learning about colleges also couldnât be easier with the internet. Most colleges allow you to take âvirtual toursâ. Computers werenât even around when I considered colleges (I applied to one college and there wasnât âearly decisionâ.).</p>
<p>But nowadays, I think the primary reason why certain kids apply to so many colleges is a financial consideration. If they get a fee waiver, the list of colleges is limitless, sometimes 20 or 30 (like anonymous93). Thereâs just a huge difference between kids who actually pay for those applications and kids who donât. (And yes, some colleges waive their fees too.)</p>
<p>As part of that, there are also plenty colleges that made the list as the kidâs way to explore financial packages. Just as colleges are vying for the applicants, the students are much more aware that college is a huge financial burden, so they want to consider all aspects in that decision. But again, if they got a fee waiver, the number is sky high; if not, the number is more reasonable. (Example: âMy dad wasnât going to pay for anything at all, so I applied to 13-14 just because I needed aid offers.â)</p>
<p>Colleges are starting to balk too. Colleges that donât have in-depth supplements (like UChicago) have significant scholarship applications (like WashU). This year, Duke admitted they didnât even have time to read all their applications! Wonder what it will be like next year.</p>
<p>^I completely agree. The only way I was able to apply to 35 schools was because of the Questbridge fee waiver and other fee waivers offered by College Board and such. I think that definitely aids in skyrocketing the number of places students apply to.</p>
<p>However, I observe many people on CC who apply to a LOT of college (15 or more) who are not even trying to get financial aid. I find this completely unnecessary.</p>
<p>AmbitiousMind07: even though you could apply to so many, why did you apply to 35? Did the QuestBridge program simplify the process for you somehow? Did you still have to complete 35 supplements? I understand the reason to apply to a variety for financial safeties, but wow. 35 is a lot.</p>
<p>And soozievt: I think once kids hear that others are applying to so many (20-30), they figure 15 isnât overdoing it. It used to be 2-4 was the norm. Then it was 5-8. Once the common app became âcommonâ, the explosion hit. Now with fee waivers being so available (âand other fee waivers offered by College Board and suchâ) 15 or 20 is getting to be the norm.</p>
<p>limabeans, I am not convinced that 14 or 20 will be the norm. I work with a bunch of students every year and none have applied to more than 14 and many have applied to less. About 8-12 is common for most students I have worked with. A couple have done 13 or 14. None more than that though. And the ones that did more than 12 were applying to specialized programs that have extremely low admit rates (they all do in this particular field). For a regular college applicant (no specialized degree program or not seeking merit aid, etc.), it is rare to truly need more than 12 schools.</p>
<p>Iâll also comment from personal experience, seeing how much time and effort went into each of my own kidsâ eight applications, including the visits, expressing specific interest in each school, and so on. If someone applied to more than 15 schools, something would have to giveâŠeither the apps are not stellar, interest canât be shown in specific ways to each college, contacts with faculty, etc. at each school is hard to set up, ECs canât be a huge number of hours to make time for apps, or grades may suffer. My kids had extremely busy EC lives, rigorous academics (with excellent grades), visited each school, made contacts with faculty and others on campus, wrote letter expressing specific interest in each school and wrote multiple college essays. That kind of effort would be compromised with a huge number of applications or else something else in their lives would have had to give. And it wasnât necessary. Each of my kids got into most of their 8 schoolsâŠand one denial and one waitlist, in highly competitive processes.</p>
<p>limabeans: Questbridge made the process so much simpler. Some schools didnât require their supplements if I chose to use the QB app instead. Still, others requested their supplements to be submitted, but I honestly didnât see that as being too much of a burdenâmany of the essay questions were generally the same across the board so I recycled a few essays. There were, however, times when I had to write a completely new essay (ie. Stanfordâs roommate question). Honestly, I really enjoy writing essaysâI often times found myself having more fun with the college essays than with homework.</p>
<p>And soozievt, I applied to a few specialized schools as wellâŠfor acting. I only applied to two schools that required an audition though (VCU and NYU Tisch)âthe other one (Northwestern) didnât have an audition requirement. But for the audition schools, I really didnât find those other applications to be a burden on my audition prep or schoolwork. The only thing that took a hit was my desire to procrastinate; like I said before, time management was essential for me.</p>
<p>I do see the flaws in applying to so many schools though. People have provided anecdotes of individuals who did not do so well in the admissions process when they applied to so many places. The main reason why I applied to so many places was because I was misinformed. My high school really only pushed its students to stay instate (VCU, UVA, William and Mary, etc.) and I knew I did NOT want to stay in Virginia any longer than I had to. Unfortunately for me, I didnât know anything about out of state collegesâŠso, when Questbridge fell into my lap, I spread the net wide and figured Iâd do my narrowing down of places only if I got accepted. Needless to say, I didnât make my final college choice until April 30th, the day before the reply by deadline.</p>
<p>In my opinion, someone who applied to 67 privates and 24 publics and only got into 11 schools total, did not have an appropriate college list for themselves. More colleges on a list doesnât necessarily yield better results if your college list is not the right one to begin with. (not to mention that there is no way to have adequately individualized the applications to express interest and show fit and so on)</p>
<p>AmbitiousMind, I appreciate your sharing that you were misinformed and misguided. Iâm glad things worked out well for you. I didnât know you were into theater. I now notice you attend Brown. I have a daughter who graduated Brown and loved it. It is also very good for theater. I have a daughter who is in theater too and she graduated from NYU/Tisch where you also applied. I agree on the importance of time management. I think my kids put a lot into their 8 apps (and one of my kids had to do 8 campus auditions and that is separate preparation on top of the apps), and they were good with time management to do all that on top of very heavy ECs and academics. I just donât know how they would have applied to a huge number of schools knowing what they put into each application and college they applied to. You achieved all that and so kudos to you. Iâm not convinced that it is necessary, however. I realize it all worked out well for you. </p>
<p>As you can see by some other anecdotes on here, âmoreâ colleges didnât necessarily yield a large number of acceptances.</p>
<p>^I always knew Brown had a good theatre program, but I didnât know it was âthatâ good until I got hereâwhen I was introduced to the MFA program it has. They have some awesome and accomplished profs and very talented grad students (I always say this: even better than the professional actors at Trinity Rep! â Trust me, the grad students produce better quality work, in my opinion, than the professional company).</p>
<p>And you also helped me quite a bit last year with Tisch on the NYU boards. Thanks to you (and a few other posters), it became my top choice! I was psyched when I got that early notification in early March, buuuuuuut NYUâs notorious financial aid changed my plans, quickly.</p>
<p>Lastly, Iâm just amazed at all these stories of people who applied to so many places but didnât see huge results. 91 applications â> 11 admits is brutal! Now, THAT, I cannot imagine!</p>
<p>Oh, AmbitiousMind, forgive me as I did not recognize your name from last year and Tisch and all that. I honestly think Brown is not only an awesome school, but a very good one for a theater student. I have had a couple of theater students get in there. This year, the one who got into Brown, chose to go to Tisch instead. But money was not an issue for this particular student. I hope you have a wonderful second year.</p>