<p>I cant find the link now but this boy was last years Questscholar. He applied like, 34 schools and got in most of them: almost all top schools with ACT 26 though URM, fabulous GPA and ECs. He did get fee waiver and his GC was really accommodating, but on ethical issue, he was attacked by fellow students about applying to schools he had slight interest -like Pitzer, he himself admitted that after he was accepted.
In the very very end, Brown wait list came through and that is where he was headed, I think.
His theory was that he is not taking anyones spot by applying multiple schools because top schools know they are one of many options for any given applicants, what he did was fair enough compare to kids who can hire private counselor, tutor and could afford all around college visit grand tour etc that he himself is deprived from.
What bothered me was that, he would post I would be proud _whatever mascot!- excitedly only until something else thats better offer would come through, then, repeat.
I must admit he sure is an extraordinary kid, but if all these school know about 34 apps and all, would they chose him over someone really truly wanted to attend Pitzer?</p>
<p>Congrats on all those acceptances, Jolynne. What our school counselors said to us over and over in the many meetings we had along the college application process (parent/ counselor group meetings began at the end of 10th grade, IIRC) was that a focused list, even with FA needs, can address reaches, matches and safeties. The college counselors felt that having 3-4 acceptances to choose from was plenty. They argued that even with the unpredicactability of acceptances and FA packages, a solid list of 6-8 schools should more than address that, whether the student was in the top or bottom 10% of the class, whether their SATs were 2390 or 1590, and whether they were wealthy or not. In our state, the state schools are very affordable for those who had a B average in HS, and most students would pick one of the many state schools as an academic or financial safety (the big flagship U and Tech schools are not safeties for many). They felt that if students were aiming for the top schools, when they did their HW they’d find that some were great fits (size, location, academic specialties, etc) and some were not. </p>
<p>I never knew for sure whether they really charged parents $50 per application over 6 or if it was an idle threat to get kids to do their HW and get their list focused. The school expects all their graduates to attend college, and it was a BIG deal when one student a few yrs ago planned to take a year off and not apply anywhere (its clear from the time a student is accepted that they are expected to apply to and be accepted by a 4 yr college). </p>
<p>Your comment above about the time and energy the college counselors put into each applicant is exactly right. They start the process with the parents and students in the 10th grade, encourage families to visit local schools just to see if they want a large, small, rural, urban, HBC or not, etc. early int he process to see what they like. Made sense to me. We expected a lot from them and they from us. And it seemed to work. Understood that that ay not be true in all schools or all situations, but for this one it seemed to do just fine.</p>
<p>I am not going to say my daughter wasn’t bitter when a girl with a little better stats than her decided to apply to Princeton RD after got into Harvard EA, because she just wanted to see if she could get in. But it was her perogative.</p>
<p>I think what helps some families widen their choices are the number of free applications from colleges through the mail, visiting, etc. Without that, it can run into the hundreds!</p>
<p>There is only one private school that my son is interested in that is charging an application fee. Our instate public schools are charging application fees. We do need to pay, of course, to have the test scores sent to the individual colleges.</p>
<p>J-Smith said: “So he should have restricted his apps to the 6-7 schools that almost everyone in his HS applied to?”</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone here would advise that … . unless those 6-7 schools were also really good fits for your child . . . I am curious, though . . in retrospect, I wonder if you still believe that you needed 19 apps and 11 acceptances to obtain the information you needed . . in other words, in retrospect, do you think you applied to the optimal number of schools, or did there end up being redundancies . . . or, said another way, if a family with a student of your child’s profile was applying and they asked you what the optimal number might be, what would you say? </p>
<p>Not trying to question what you did, because that worked well for your family . . but for others who are entering that process this fall, what wisdom coudl you share with us?</p>
<p>Kei</p>
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<p>To some extent, I think he does have a point. If we’re going to say it’s ‘unethical’ to apply to more than 6-8 schools, why not say it’s unethical to:</p>
<p>1) hire a private counselor to give your child an ‘edge’
2) allow students to take expensive test prep courses to give them an edge
3) allow each school in the country to have it’s own method for calculating weighted GPAs
4) allow each school to set its own policy for letting kids into AP courses - in some schools all you need is a pulse, other schools make you earn the privilege and are very strict about it
5) allow schools to give As and Bs to students who take an AP course but aren’t able to pass the AP exam
6) allow colleges to bombard prospective students with ‘invitations’ to apply when these students aren’t likely to get in</p>
<p>Let’s be honest - it’s not a level playing field. While that kid was probably doing it for the wrong reasons -really 34 does seem rather gratuitous - I would still argue that there are good reasons for certain students to apply to a high number of schools.</p>
<p>In addition, I would add that many colleges encourage this behavior. My son (since the 11th grade) gets 3-5 pieces of unsolicited college mail a day<a href=“we%20literally%20have%20boxes%20of%20this%20stuff”>/u</a> and 5-10 emails a day. Many schools send weekly invitations, letters, etc. In fact, the more selective the school, the more mail we get from them. </p>
<p>It is clear that the colleges are playing a numbers game. They are looking to get as many applications as possible. The big joke among college counselors is the top schools are fighting to see who can get to a less than 1% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>My perception is the colleges are looking to increase their odds of getting the higher quality student, why shouldn’t the students do the same…increase their odds of getting into a more selective schools and/or increasing the odds of getting merit aid or increasing their odds of finding a good fit.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t see my son applying to a large number of schools, simply because it will be a lot of work that he isn’t likely to want to do but if a kid wants to do it, I say go for it!</p>
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<p>I am also curious about this. How many of those schools were reaches/matches/safeties? If you had to do it all over again, knowing what you know now, do you think your son would have applied to that many schools? Did he get into any of his reaches? Did he get a good number of merit offers?</p>
<p>There reason I ask is my son has a bunch of schools on his list that we can’t possibly visit anytime soon (time and money). Unfortunately, they make up the bulk of his '‘matches’. I have been advised, repeatedly, to let him apply and if he gets in, then go visit. Your post seems to indicate that strategy worked for your son.</p>
<p>“My perception is the colleges are looking to increase their odds of getting the higher quality student, why shouldn’t the students do the same…increase their odds of getting into a more selective schools and/or increasing the odds of getting merit aid or increasing their odds of finding a good fit.” </p>
<p>^^ I agree with this. It’s a business. Is it ethical for an institution to forward glossy, promising literature to a student to entice them to apply (for $70) when that student will ultimately not be accepted (because the brochure list was generated based on PSAT score, but their gpa would not qualify for admission)? I’m failing to see why application caps and and searching moral assessments of applicants’ motivations in applying to many schools, etc. is necessary, given the nature of this business transaction (including the repeated solicitations from schools w/tuitions of $52k a year, etc.). </p>
<p>What we learned? I suppose – applying widely, to geographically diverse schools can sometimes be productive. It also depends on the student, I think. In our case, my son had disparate test scores (v. high) and grades (lots of APs, but average gpa because of a disinclination to do homework at various points). We were not 100 % sure how much we wanted to go into debt for his school but the financial question really wasn’t a variable until after application anyway, since you have to apply to get a merit aid award (we had no need-based aid). </p>
<p>As such, we had to (in CC parlance) “cast a wide net.” Unless you are inside the admissions dept of a college, it’s hard to know how that particular school will weight gpa and SAT/ACT and factor in ECs and essays. </p>
<p>I’m certainly glad we did. Had I not been on CC and received the stellar guidance and suggestions from parents who had info re: my son’s particular major (something I knew little to nothing about) I wouldn’t have discovered that schools 1200 miles from us were tops in the country for that major (to which he then applied & was accepted). </p>
<p>Some kids might not have a specific college major in mind. That could impact the size of the list, I’d imagine.</p>
<p>It did cost us quite a bit of $$ to apply. However, we were contemplating co-signing for loans that would be our biggest financial commitment since our house purchase. Darn right we were going to ensure there were a variety of options on the table.</p>
<p>K, so your son would have happlly gone to each and every school he applied to. That each one had his major. That each one was the right size. That each one was in the right location. That each one he could see him graduating from in 4 years.</p>
<p>I don’t know any kid who can say that about more than 5-8 schools. tops. I think applying to over a dozen schools is just not necessary.</p>
<p>My Ds school doesn’t limit how many they can apply to. THey do help with making sure the list is a good one, not just throwing pata against the wall and seeing what sticks.</p>
<p>I bet if you realllly looked back at that list, you would see that a good number of those schools, your son would not have been happy with, either wrong location, to small, to urban.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t know of any kid, and I bet you would be hard pressed to find one here on CC that could list 19 schools that they could see themselves at, even if they were free.</p>
<p>If my D had been paid to attend some schools, she wouldn’t go.</p>
<p>Our experience with our D two years ago, largely matches that of Jolynne and her S.</p>
<p>Our D had a strong interest in a major (neuroscience) typically only offered by the most selective colleges. She had high test scores and was top 1% in her class of 500 students in a competitive public high school in the NYC area. No major hooks. </p>
<p>She applied to 17 schools, with 1 safety/4 matches/12 reaches. We defined each group conservatively. A safety was anything where her stats were above the 90% percentile of admitted students, a match a school where she was above the 75% percentile of admitted students and a reach a school where she was above the 50% percentile but below the 75% percentile. </p>
<p>Outside of her safety (her mom’s alma mater), even her matches with schools such as Cornell or UCLA (OOS) were not assured. Finally, with a sibling shortly behind her, we did not have the financial capacity to cover full tuition at a private school without taking on a lot of additional debt. FA was therefore another major factor. </p>
<p>She ended up admitted at her one safety, 3 of her matches and 4 of her reaches. She was wait listed at 3 schools and rejected at 6. She got a full tuition scholarship at her safety and the aid offers from the other schools were all over the map from all loans to all grants. </p>
<p>We had consulted CC extensively, met with an outside counselor to get ideas for additional schools and explored two possible options. </p>
<ol>
<li>A merit scholarship at a second tier school where our D’s stats would be in the top 5-10% of applicants.</li>
<li>Need-based aid at a generous top tier school.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>The first option ended up not really as an option as we could not find any second tier schools with strong programs in her major that also offered any significant merit aid. </p>
<p>Some of the things we learned along the way:</p>
<p>1.You can’t easily trim your list of reaches without seriously impacting your chances of admission. I often see threads where people suggest arbitrary limits on reach schools. It is virtually impossible to know in advance how a college is going to handle a particular application, especially from an unhooked student. You could be well above the 75% percentile (hard with top 10 schools) and still be rejected for no other reason than too many applicants with good stats. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Applying to a large number of similarly ranked schools is never a negative. Colleges respond to competition especially from their peers. In general, they have no way of knowing where else you apply and even if they did, they still need to assemble the best class they possibly can. Harvard competes for top students with Yale, MIT, Stanford and Princeton. The other Ivies compete among each other and with school such as Duke and Northwestern in their tier and so on. There are only so many high stat kids to go around and most of them will end being admitted to top tier colleges. They play a numbers game and so should you. </p></li>
<li><p>You never know where you will get admitted until you apply. Don’t presume anything. Most selective colleges don’t care if you visited them 20 times or that you love the architecture of their buildings. You may believe a college is a perfect fit, but the college may not agree with you. They may actually want to recruit students completely different from your profile. You may also believe that a particular school is simply too much of a reach or that too many students apply. Over 80% of students admitted to Harvard believed it to be a long shot. Had they based their decision to apply on that initial estimate they wouldn’t be there.</p></li>
<li><p>Personal preferences such as location, school size, are issues best handled after admission not before. You may believe a particular school is a better choice for you but how do you know you will even get admitted to it? Even if you are, another school may make you a better financial aid offer that your top choice school may feel obligated to match to enroll you. If you have no leverage, they have no incentive to improve their offer. Our D’s top choice improve their offer by $32,000 over 4 years from matching another offer we had in writing. </p></li>
<li><p>With some planning and organization, managing a large number of quality applications is very feasible. With the advent of common app, it is relatively easy to add applications without much extra work. If anything we felt we gained experience as we went along and that the last applications were among the best. We could finetune the essays for each school, add specific supplemental materials or recommendations and make it appear the application was truly custom made for that particular college.</p></li>
<li><p>In the end it is all a numbers game Based on on your stats, using tools such as Naviance for your school, sites such as CC, you can get a good chance for your odds. After that you have to rely on the law of large numbers. More applications will obviously not increase your odds to be admitted at a particular school, but they will increase your odds of being admitted to at least one of them.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If we had to do it again, we would possibly have trimmed one or two of the matches such as UCLA where we knew she would not get much aid under any circumstance, but that is pretty much it. In our D’s year at her HS, the valedictorian applied to Yale SCEA, was deferred and then rejected RD. She only applied to two other top 10 schools RD, was rejected by both and ended up at at the last minute at a LAC from which she transferred after one year. Not exactly what she had in mind.</p>
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<p>I would presume that he had some interest in each of these schools - otherwise, why would he have applied?</p>
<p>You know, some kids see things in black and white and some see shades of gray. I know my own son has yet to walk on any campus and go ‘this is it’. He is still at the point of thinking that most schools seem the same - they are buildings and dorms and students and classes. Hopefully, as he has repeat visits and attends some of the classes, he will have that ‘aha’ moment but, until then, there is no reason not to apply to the schools that he is interested in based upon his research. Since he plays varsity football, it will be virtually impossible to do repeat visits until after the deadline on some of these schools. Right now he has 10 on his list but I anticipate he will whittle it down some. On the other hand, he may add more.</p>
<p>Not trying to be a contrarian here, but I fail to see why people are even concerned about how many schools a kid applies to. Your kid applied to 6 and was happy with her choices and her kid applied to 19 and was happy with his choices. Why does it even matter?</p>
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<p>I don’t see why that is so unfeasible. Not every kid is of the “it must be less than 5,000 students and in the northeast and in a rural town and have a good football team for me to give it a look” variety. There are many students, I am sure, who could genuinely enjoy, fit and thrive at a wide variety of schools, whether large or small, urban or rural, Greek or not-Greek, etc.</p>
<p>Cellardweller : Very nice summary of your experience. Thanks for sharing it with us.</p>
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<p>Agreed. Some kids are very flexible in terms of what would work for them. Just as some adults can live and be happy in a variety of size towns, jobs, etc. while some only want small towns or big towns or small employers or large corporations. It’s all a matter of personality and values.</p>
<p>Cellardweller and Jolynne,</p>
<p>Thank you for your posts - this information is exactly why I spend time on this site, to benefit from your experiences.</p>
<p>What Pizzagirl said. I actually don’t know too many students (maybe one) whose interests and criteria are so narrow that they would only be matched by 5-10 schools. The kids who are most limited in their options are those who won’t look outside a particular geographic area. Otherwise, most students I know could see themselves happily attending many different schools.</p>
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And I think you’re wrong. I can name a dozen who can name more than that. 
So what does that leave us with? Difference of opinion? I can live with that. </p>
<p>For the record…17 schools and not a loser school in the bunch. </p>
<p>This process is personal. Each family finds their own way. IMO it’s very poor form to judge another family’s choice.</p>
<p>Calreader,
My older s was one of those kids that looked long and hard for a good fit, and had a hard time finding schools that he really liked. I felt like Goldilocks (this one’s too big, this one’s too small…) In all seriousness, we looked at 13 schools and it took a long time to find what he felt was “the one”. Some that he thought he was going to love and had talked about for years he found, when we visited, that he didnt think it was right for him for any of a variety of reasons that is beyond the scope of this forum. He didnt limit himself geographically. We looked north, south, east and west, urban and rural. He knew he didnt want a big U, so limited his search to smaller schools, and he preferred a residential college system, though didnt limit himself to that. He had a strong idea of what he wanted to major in, but also wanted to keep the option of engineering open (so the LACs that he initially really liked then came off the radar screen). He discovered when visiting his safety that the dept was steering away from the focus he had initially wanted for his major, so even though he’d have been willing to go, he wasn’t happy about that (understandibly). Sure, he probably could have found more schools to consider, but fortunately we visited one school that he said “this is it”, and fortunately he got in ED (and heard from his safety within a day) so we were done. He had 2 other applications half done that he’d have completed if he hadnt gotten in ED, but that was all. His safety was also a financial safety, and even though it was perhaps not a perfect fit with the issues going on in the dept, it was ok. So he compared all other schools to his safety (also a financial safety). So for him, there’s no way he’d have applied to even 6 schools. That said, his application time was 5 years ago, and times have changed.</p>
<p>As for the issue of whether schools know where else you are applying, with the sending of SAT scores (at least the first 4 free ones) and the common or universal application, isn’t it possible for schools to see where else these materials are being sent? And never mind those schools that come right out and ask where else you are applying. I think my younger s just left that info out when asked.</p>
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<p>A couple other people have already replied to this, but I just wanted to supply myself as a living, breathing counterexample. I have 15 schools on my list (Agnes Scott, Beloit, Brandeis, Carleton, Green Mountain College, Grinnell, Hendrix, Hollins, Kalamazoo, Kenyon, Pomona, Scripps, Susquehanna, Uni of Minnesota- Morris, Whitman). I might eventually eliminate one or two of these, but I am currently finding it difficult to do so. My criteria: English major, LAC, <4k students, good aid (preferably merit, but including one or two known for good need-based). Location, whether based on region or population density, doesn’t really matter to me, though I don’t want a school that’s really urban (e.g. in the heart of NYC). Preferably a diverse, liberal, tolerant, intelligent student body, but I am willing to compromise on this. Has to have a nearby hospital (parental hang-up).</p>
<p>I can see myself going to ANY of the schools I listed, which is why I’m finding it very difficult to eliminate any schools from my list.</p>
<p>Please, tell me why I’m wrong in including specific schools on my list. I’ll listen carefully to your response- I don’t particularly WANT a list this big, I just can’t stand to eliminate any of them.</p>
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<p>Collegeboard does not share the list of schools you send scores to with the colleges. The Common app does not ask you to list the colleges you apply to. </p>
<p>If an interviewer asked our D where else she was applying she would generally respond with a few names of peer schools. Nobody ever asked how many or for a complete list.</p>