FAFSA harms admission?; Schools seeing me apply to 30 schools

Applying to College
1

<p>So one school I’m applying to says to get Fafsa in by Jan10 in order to get status on Fin. Aid by May 1. If I did this, however, this school, and all the schools which need Fafsa before their admit decision, will see that I am applying to aprox. 30 schools. I figure that this may hurt my admission chances as I look like someone who is indecisive.</p>

<li><p>Would an admissions office see FAFSA, or would it not factor into the decision process because only their financial office would see it.</p></li>
<li><p>If they did see it, would it hurt my admissions chances. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks</p>

2

<p>Typically the admissions office and the finan-aid office are separate. I am surprised that some colleges say that they need to have the FAFSA before they can make an admit decision. This is rather the opposite of need-blind. Admissions might see it and then care about the number of colleges. The degree to which a person would think that they would depends on how careful/paranoid they are. I personally wouldn’t worry about it, and there is nothing you can do about it anyway.</p>

3

<p>You are insane for applying to 30 schools. 20 is too many.</p>

4

<p>30?? That is so many it is foolish. 12 is even too many!
7-9 is the “optimal” number.</p>

5

<p>Ehh. My school recommends 12, counting all UCs and CSUs as 1. I’m applying to 14. I think 30 is way too many though, and it isn’t really necessary - I’m sure you could cut that list down and save yourself a lot of time and energy.</p>

6

<p>You should not be wasting around $1500 on application fees and I can’t even imagine how much work that must be both for you and your GC. Please cut off at minimum half of the schools. Some of them might look like they “round out the list,” but you need to consider each individually and say “okay…could i go HERE?”</p>

7

<p>are you sure you want to apply to 30 schools? or have you already? how much work was that?</p>

8

<p>Ifind it ironic that you are applying to 30 schools (at appx. 50 bucks a pop) and applying for financial aid. Maybe some of that $1500 would be better spent saving for college!</p>

9

<p>some people are poor for a reason.</p>

10

<p>You shouldn’t be worried about hiding something from colleges. If you think 30 is a problem, then 30 should not be the number.</p>

11

<p>Yeah, 10 should be.</p>

12

<p>30 r u crazy?
wow i pity the teachers who write ur recs. They will totally suffer.</p>

13

<p>Wow…</p>

14

<p>30 is insane. I applied to 4 schools, 2 if you count the three UC’s as one.</p>

15

<p>I would be laughing my arse off if he gets rejected from all 30 just to show how ridiculous applying to all of them is.</p>

16

<p>mirror<em>of</em>dirt—for some hideous reason, I want to see that happen!</p>

<p>just for kicks tho</p>

17

<p>Many schools have free applications. I hope most of those 30 are free.</p>

18

<p>30 is fine…i applied to 22; its all good…cause i applied all ivies and **** law or large numbers</p>

<p>i dont give a **** about my teachers writing the rec, they think im a good boy well wE its your duty to write a good rec.</p>

19

<p>Thanks everyone, especially dufus. Saying that I am insane is not really helpful though. I would love to know why you think this, however. </p>

<p>I have applied to 11 schools which were very simple apps or combined together. I have applied to two others. I have 17 to go. 12 within the next 10 days. The rest in the weeks and month following aprox.</p>

<p>Here’s my take on it:</p>

<p>If you are paying 50-200k for college after food, tuition, etc., why not expand your initial choices if there is a good chance that you will improve the overall worth of your time? The benefits are potentially very high, while the costs are small realative to the cost of the following 4 years, and the time spent is not extensive really.</p>

<p>Further, admit process involves a chance, chance occurence(acceptance) repeated more times results in higher chances for that occurence. By applying to more schools I believe I increase my chances.</p>

<p>Also I don’t know where I want to go really, what I want to do, etc. Hopefully I get into a few colleges(I am not a super strong candidate, so applying to good universities means I will certainly be rejected by at least many of them), and then I can decide what I think is best.</p>

<p>Kcircsh- I did do that, and can imagine that for all of these.</p>

<p>As far as my teachers, about a dozen of these schools did not need recs, the rest are spread out over a few teachers and different dates that are needed ot be due. Also, there’s just one short letter per teacher and about 3 minutes to fill out the questionaire per college. So I’m not really imposing on them much more than the avg. college bound student, I am also really sincerly appreciative of their time.</p>

<p>So I think that this is a good idea. So far I’ve heard no reason why it is a bad idea. I think the strongest reason I’ve thought of against it is that it may compromise time I could’ve taken to complete less applications with a higher quality, but I am rushing everything anyway and don’t know how much time I’ll actually spend on each app.</p>

<p>Cheers.</p>

20

<p>It’s a bad idea because you’re wasting your time and energy applying to a lot of colleges you probably could get by with not applying to if you did a little more research.</p>

<p>Yes, if you apply to more, you’ll increase your probability of getting into one. So why doesn’t every high school student in America apply to 300? The simple reason - it doesn’t make any sense. You don’t need to exhaust so much time, money, and energy into a bunch of schools you won’t end up going to.</p>

<p>The idea is you figure out what you want in a college and you get a general list. From that general list you work down. Figure out some things that you really desperately want/don’t want out of college (“I want to be warm” “I want good academics” “I want an xyz major” “I don’t want any Greek life” etc etc) and see if every school on your list matches those wants.</p>

<p>It doesn’t make sense to apply to so many schools because if you just pared the list down to your favorites, you’d be just as happy.</p>