My DD is a year behind you, @CavsFan2003. So she is just starting to scope out colleges online as she starts to think about where she wants to go. She still has junior year and the standardized tests to go, but she’s done amazingly well.
If she came to me and said she was going to submit 22, or even 15, apps, we would both be very upset. She: because she had to fill in so many apps; me: because I would be the one paying for it all!
There are other CCers who are far more knowledgeable about this than me, but one thing I’ve learned is to break the school lists down into safeties, matches, and reaches. Do a little bit of research on the numbers (UW GPA and standardized tests being the most important) and then take your interested list and categorize the schools as safeties, matches, and reaches. Then see which schools you really want to go to and, if possible, see if you can visit them. Whittle out the ones you don’t want to apply to from there.
I would spend some time each day on this, but you should also be prepping for the SAT and ACT, since both of those are coming up in August 2021. Your SAT score, while good, should be a bit higher, especially for math, to get into some of your reaches, but your GCs can advise better on that or Naviance, if you have access to it. And please don’t sell yourself out by not having reaches. They will be difficult for you, but they will be difficult for anyone. However, if you don’t apply, you’ll never know. And your list of reaches, matches, and safeties might change if your test scores go up.
The other thing is that the Common App goes live on August 1, and some schools have already announced their supplemental essay prompts. As soon as you get the prompts, I would at least start making quick outlines of what you plan on writing about in your essays so that you are not spending all your time writing essays from scratch during the fall of your senior year. School will be resuming soon, so at least plan on how you would write your essays so that you are not overwhelmed with starting the apps just as school starts. But keep the focus on the standardized test prep, rather than the apps. Once the tests are finished, then focus on school, the apps, and still being a kid!
The key to all of this is time management and work. If I were you, you might consider making a calendar of each day of the summer from now until you take the standardized tests and then school restarts. List out what you want to accomplish each day and leave a bit of time in case things don’t go to plan. And most importantly, make sure you leave enough time for fun stuff! It is summer, after all. If you do that, it becomes less overwhelming and sort of a map for the next several weeks.