How many apps is too many?

momofthreeboys
Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:56:41 +0000

I’m in the 5-7 camp, but we are different than you in that we visited before applying so both my kids had about 15 colleges on their maybe list which was narrowed to 5 (older S) and 6 (rising senior son) by the time the visits were over. Older S had all match/safety schools, younger S has a big reach, two matches and three safeties according to the school statistics. Visiting before application quickly narrowed down the kids’ lists but some families can’t or aren’t willing to spend the money to do that legwork before applications which is perfectly understandable. We didn’t have kids that looked all over the country and simply targeted based on their must-haves which which included “must be able to easily get to skiing” so that helped narrow the search quickly and we accomlished our visits in 2 or 3 short trips.