I kind of agree. Sure, if you have expert guidance you could nail it w/ 3-4 apps, but for most people I think you need 15-30 apps to take a good sample of the options out there for you – esp. if you are prioritizing financial aid offers.
If somebody wants to reduce the number of apps, they need to provide a system that provides much better intel to the applicants, to let them narrow in on their best prospective colleges and to not waste time on those with low odds of acceptance/affordability. Websites like Niche and College Raptor try to do that but fall very short, IMHO.
Expert guidance does not exist. Even at elite private schools, unless your choice is a small set of private LACs where you are ED ing into the school. Counselors don’t know enough because college admission have been quite unpredictable. What they tell you is that if you apply to a broad set of strong schools ( for a strong student), you are likely to land somewhere where you will be happy.
My child will be applying to 12-13 schools. We would like to narrow it down, but with a competitive major and looking for the best academic and financial match, it’s tough.
Admissions at highly ranked universities has indeed become very highly unpredictable. I think that this creates a lot of stress for students. Not only do they not know where they will get in, they also do not know what they need to do in high school to improve their chances.
What is not as clear to me is whether admissions has become unpredictable for strong students applying to universities that are very good but not “top 50” schools. What about someone from NJ applying to Rutgers, or someone from Massachusetts applying to U.Mass Amherst, or someone from New Hampshire applying to UNH? Could they realistically plan to be “one and done” if they wanted to?
I grew up in a suburb of Montreal. This meant that a few (not many) academically strong students from my high school only applied to McGill, knowing that they would get in and planning to go there. A few more only applied to McGill plus one reach. I think that having a safety at this level made the entire process way less stressful.
Could your in-state flagship (or number 3 or 4 or 5 in California) serve the same role today for many students in the US?
A strong student can be one and done at Rutgers. I disagree that Rutgers (or some other top 50 school) is comparable to a top 20 school. I have a kid who just graduated from Rutgers a couple of weeks ago, and I can tell you that it has been incredibly hard to get interviews from Rutgers at some places. It is not comparable to a top 20 school in terms of outcomes. Kids wanting to get into a top 20 school will not be happy with Rutgers as the outcomes won’t be the same — however you measure what a top 20 school is.
McGill takes in about 10k new undergraduates per year, compared to a provincial population of about 9 million. For comparison to California, 9 UCs take in about 52k new frosh per year, compared to a state population of about 40 million.
So the equivalent of the high achieving Quebec student applying to McGill is a high achieving California student applying to all of the UCs and being willing to attend any of them. But, as we see on these forums, many high achieving California students look down on some or most UCs, so the UCs that they are willing to attend may include only the more reachy ones.
I don’t agree with this. Expert guidance exists. Most people do not have access to it though.
This is a reasonable approach for folks who are chasing merit aid. If just looking at need based aid, for a lot of people (though not everyone), the net price calculators will do a good job of giving a sense of what they should expect to pay.
I will say, a down side of 20+ apps for a strong student, depending on where they applied, is that they could end up with 18+ acceptances that they have to weed through and make a decision on in a matter of 6-7 weeks in the spring. That can be a stressful proposition in its own right.
We had access to this, and the college counseling offer was excellent as an essay reader, collecting feedback across the school, writing excellent counselor letter etc, but not capable of making predictions at the very top of the pile.
Quote <I will say, a down side of 20+ apps for a strong student, depending on where they applied, is that they could end up with 18+ acceptances that they have to weed through and make a decision>
Most people doing apps will think this is an excellent problem to have, because they have a pretty tight idea on where they want to go. They don’t even come here for advice.
I also saw external consultants that cost 25k/season that were pretty poor. Objectively bad.
I wish you luck if you think someone can bracket a tight outcome with 3-4 apps into the top of the pile of the college list.
Anyone applying almost only to schools with <10% admission rates is, unless they are a development admit or has some other massive hook, going to be chasing that golden ring with a likely poor outcome. But it’s not impossible, if one is looking for fit and maybe merit money, to apply to an auto admit, maybe another safety, a couple of likelies and those 3-4 reaches. Not impossible to keep the application numbers at 10 or less. Then of course there is ED.
I think major plays a role, my Rutgers grad is a CPA, turning 30 and still working where she did her summer junior internship. My TCNJ is 28, finance major, and still working at his junior internship company (and he ED’d, only had a 3.4 30 act senior year of HS). My CPA also has a pretty full time gig as a musician so works the least amount of billable hours as she can get away with, but it pays the rent.
I was not suggesting someone could apply to 3-4 sub 10% admit rate colleges and have success. That is a different question than whether expert advice exists, which was the claim I disagreed with. If your goal is a sub 10% school, there are experts who can tell you where you have the best shot and help you build a list that does not involve shotgunning 25-30 schools. They can help build a list that includes some excellent fits that are downstream from your highly rejective dream schools which you can more confidently get into. Any of the quality experts who exist will tell you applying to 3-4 of those highly rejectives only is a fools errand absent some outlier type hook (absolutely top athletic recruit or something).
The 3-4 school strategy that works quite well is an excellent student who loves Penn State. They apply early and get in. They have 3 other schools that they might want to go to ahead of Penn State. They apply to those regular and see what happens.
if they have a tight idea of where they want to go, I don’t see why they are applying to 20-30 schools then. That is what was being discussed when I responded. Seems excessive if there are only a small number of schools you want to go to.
In theory, expanding the list should be a great idea.
I don’t see it playing out in practice. The kid whose dream school is Princeton- sure, go ahead and apply. The HS’s own data shows that not only do kids with his/her stats get rejected from Princeton– every year going back since as long as they’ve tracked the data, but that kids with significantly better stats ALSO get rejected. (Nobody likes looking at rejection data, right?) The GC says “sure, apply, and then pivot to your more realistic schools”. But once Mom and Dad and the guy at the bagel store weigh in- the list is 30 schools, and at least 20 of them are of the “nobody from our HS with stats like yours gets in to these schools).
Waste of time and money IMHO. Kid, take your shot at Princeton. Hope and pray that Northwestern sees something in your application that isn’t reflected in the admissions data at your HS. But then don’t double down with Harvard (because why not?) and U Chicago (hey, they sent me a postcard!) and JHU (just in case I decide I want to be a doctor and heck, JHU has a med school and I’ll bet going there for undergrad gives me a leg up) and on and on and on. And by the time the kid is writing a “why Skidmore” essay he is convinced that his life will be over if he ends up at Skidmore or Lawrence or Beloit or- horrors- Rutgers.
The fact that nobody can predict with certainty the outcome at top 20 schools does NOT mean that kids should be applying to all of them in the hopes of increasing their odds.
It does appear largely gone are the days the officials at top private schools could simply direct traffic, telling which of their top students would be going where.
However, the college counselors at S24’s feederish private HS did a very good job helping kids figure out better and worse ideas. Every kid I know about got into one of their Targets at least. Many got into at least one of their softer Reaches (late in the process, Reach colleges where the counselor thought they had a particularly good chance based on that counselor’s experience and analysis would get this sort of categorization). Sometimes kids got into most or all of their Targets and softer Reaches. For harder but still realistic Reaches, the hit rate was lower, but much more than just their general admit rates.
So none of this seemed at all pointless to me. Not perfect, there was plenty of uncertainty. But they were really too good at identifying the most promising Targets and softer Reaches, and in fact even harder Reaches, for me to conclude they weren’t adding value.
I wasn’t implying it was all pointless. Your kid goes to a solid Catholic HS and the college counselor says “You are on the cusp for Georgetown but I think BC is a realistic “soft” reach and Holy Cross is a great match”– I’d take that to the bank. It’s the “GC’s don’t know anything” trope that I’d push back on (if nobody in your HS has ever applied to Pomona, then the GC won’t be helpful there– but might be VERY helpful with Williams, Amherst and Bowdoin predictions…). And the notion that the more the merrier seems a little strange to me. Lots of time, money and aggravation. And other than those heartwarming stories in the press where a kid who grew up in a homeless shelter got into all 45 colleges she applied to- in real life as we all know it, that is a true outlier. And as you and others have pointed out- kid can only attend one (at a time).
I’m in the school of ‘no more than 10’ applications. My kids were both ‘one and done’ because they both submitted applications to their preferred schools in Sept and were accepted immediately. One was an athlete but found a school she really liked. She signed her National Letter of Intent in Nov so was pretty sure that was it. The other found a school we could afford and she liked so was done looking.
I suggest of the 10 schools, one have rolling admission and be a financial safety. The student is assured of an acceptance, and then can apply to 9 schools that can be reaches or safeties, east coast/ west coast, schools with merit, T-20, etc. The more research they do early, the better the match to those 9 schools will be. But the rolling admission school has to be one the student would like, attend, and respect. My system doesn’t work if, come April, the student won’t attend that rolling admission school.
Different people have different perspectives on this. I am just sharing one school of thought. Suppose you have a strong kid — near or at top of class. Naviance shows good outcomes in the past. As an example, suppose you want to do CS. And some other areas as a minor. Suppose you live in NJ. You think Rutgers is your safety. And now you think what are the other public schools that I would pick over Rutgers for 2x the tuition, and what are the privates that I would pick for 3X the tuition — based on a whole bunch of research I have done — talked to my high school alums that went to those colleges, looked at job outcomes from those colleges etc. I get a long list like this — UT Austin, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, Georgia Tech, U Washington Seattle, Purdue, UMich, UIUC, maybe UMD, maybe UMass Amherst, and among the privates — Cornell, Brown, Caltech, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Yale, CMU, Harvey Mudd, Princeton, UPenn, Duke. Out of laziness, I left out some schools like Rice. So that would become my full list. Why would I drop anything from this if I am not lazy? I would prefer all these over Rutgers. And only Rutgers is my Safety. If I am a Georgia resident, and my safety is Georgia Tech (because I am instate, and they have a preference for some instate kids), my list may be a bit shorter because I may prefer Georgia Tech to some of the schools on this list — like drop UMD, UMass, UCLA, UMich, UCSD. Harvey Mudd, Purdue, UW Seattle. People making these decisions are very rational. Because it is genuinely easier to get many kinds of jobs from these schools than from Rutgers. Also because there is some 20-30% chance that I step away from CS (my current field of interest) and try other things and some of these schools are better than Rutgers in many different areas — and lend to better job outcomes for different majors if I choose to change my major. If I am a parent or a kid that is currently in the application process, I will not be doctrinaire about some random 8 or 10 limit. That would be irrational. Unless I can’t afford some of these schools. Kids applying to other majors may have a different list, but still long.
Maybe Rutgers is the wrong safety based on your anecdote. If a kid really wants the CMU, MIT, Caltech, Harvey Mudd experience, then drop Rutgers and focus on WPI, RPI, RIT, Virginia Tech. Etc. The experience of attending Princeton is so different from Cal Tech- what is the kid looking for besides prestige?
I don’t think your example speaks to being rational. Being rational means figuring out what you want, and then matching that up to what the college wants. And places like Cal Tech and MIT are not at all mysterious about what they are looking for. And for a solid student from a HS that regularly sends kids to the schools on your list, it’s even less mysterious. The AP Physics teacher has likely written dozens of recommendations for the kids who have gotten into Cal Tech and MIT and Princeton, etc. So when the kid asks “Will you write my recommendation for Cal Tech?” and the response is “what does the rest of your list look like”– you can likely take that response and understand it for what it represents. A kid can have a 4.0 and be on the math team and have done some fun coding projects and the teachers can STILL write the hackneyed “Joey is a diligent and hardworking student” which is Cal Tech speak for “he’s not your guy”.
I dunno. Folks make this harder than it needs to be. And after watching my kids go through the cycle, I just cannot imagine someone doing a high quality and focused application after about the 11th or 12th.
I’m not a fan of the “genuinely easier to get many kinds of jobs from these schools than from Rutgers” mode of thought. It takes many inputs and smooshes them all together. It over simplifies the labor markets, assumes that someone can predict 5 years out what those labor markets will be looking for and where the demand will be, etc. And it completely discounts individual performance and rigor– which in my mind after decades of hiring for big corporations in dozens of different departments, roles, disciplines, etc. are the two MOST important elements of a successful job hunt, not a trivial rounding error.
It is hubris on our part to think that the kid doesn’t know his own mind to know that he doesn’t want RPI or WPI, and also hubris to think that he should want Princeton or Caltech only for the “correct” reasons. They are simply schools that place exceptionally well for a CS kid.
And indeed Rutgers is the correct safety for a NJ resident in these circumstances. Nothing else in the list is a safety.
And you are genuinely more likely to get called for interviews from most of these places than from Rutgers. Don’t be theoretical about it. This is our lived experience. We may have gotten 30 cases of going to an interview or an online assessment from over a 1000 resumes. From Rutgers.
I’m not arguing that it isn’t easier to get an interview at McKinsey graduating from Princeton than it is graduating from Rutgers (I ALSO have lived experience). But my point is that for a 17 year old to focus on THAT particular outcome, 5 years out, is illogical. Kid doesn’t know what he or she doesn’t know. And to ignore the actual education– the content, the analytical skill-building, the rigor- in favor of just a brand name, seems facile to me. There are kids coming out of Rutgers who do very, very well in the job market/professional skills. And kids that flounder (just like at every college). Focus on being the star, not the goat. If the kid isn’t lazy (your terminology) that shouldn’t be hard.
There is no “wrong” reason for wanting Cal Tech. But if a kid WANTS Cal Tech, there are a lot of U’s significantly easier to get into (let’s call them safety schools) vs. doubling down on the “long odds” colleges vs. finding “more similar” safety schools.