@MWolf @hebegebe That’s good to know. Rankings are always confusing and hard to trust. I probably should look for fit and try to visit, but with all this COVID stuff going on it’s quite hard (managed to visit UIUC, Wisconsin, Michigan, CMU, and NU last summer as I was in the Midwest for something else) Cost is not an issue for me, and in the case that I get rejected to all my schools, I can always attend UNH on a scholarship or take a gap year. At this point, my main concern is time. I have no perception of how long each application takes.
I’m quite a perfectionist in that I will spend a lot of time making sure what I do is as high quality as it can be—with this work ethic in mind, how time consuming will college apps be if I apply to, say, 15-20 schools? Would I have to sacrifice quality? And do essay prompts between schools have overlap? Obviously applying to that many schools isn’t the best idea but I want a rough estimate.
Let’s assume I start in the summer just as portals open, and I would be applying to quite a few EA schools. Soccer season is always very hectic for me, begins in mid-August and ends late October/early November. My senior year courseload will also be quite rigorous.
Edit: By the way, I sifted through my schools’ Naviance today and yesterday. Our acceptance rates to top universities are horrid. Of the 110 applicants since 2010 who have applied to MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, Yale, USC, Stanford, and Northwestern, a total of zero have gotten in. The two top schools we send the most kids to are Dartmouth and Cornell—of the 112 applicants since 2010, 10 have been accepted. Most other top schools have around 2 acceptances out of 30 applicants.
However, I don’t think my school has ever seen someone as motivated as I am. Maybe I can make something happen.