You are making too many assumptions and not considering the obvious elephant in the room that all these schools are better regarded than Rutgers for many different majors, and it is easier to get jobs from these schools. There is entirely too much ghosting when you go from Rutgers. Even if you are a strong candidate. My son got ghosted from random companies with low paying job postings.
And especially because the state of the job market may change 4 years from now, I want more safety by picking prestige.
I suspect that when a CS student’s application list looks like this:
And their job search looks like this:
My assumption is that the 1,000 resumes aren’t generally going to an insurance company or a big manufacturer to develop CS programs that will help improve the organization’s performance. My suspicion is that the vast majority of the resumes are going to companies/positions that are amongst the most coveted by CS students.
And getting numerous interviews with what I assume is the type of position applied for is very impressive (heck, it’s very impressive no matter what the field and how prestigious the firms/positions). And the Rutgers grad has received multiple job offers, with at least one job offer’s salary a multiple of a different job offer. All of that sounds like success to me.
From my experience being on interview committees, however, the name of a person’s undergrad has never been a factor in whether a candidate was offered to continue in the interview/hiring process. It was based entirely on the performance during the interview and/or performance tasks. Do I believe that people with certain “elite” colleges on their resume may get a closer look of their resume or perhaps an extra flyer at an interview? Sure. Once they’re at the interview stage, however, I don’t think the college name makes a difference.
But I think we’re getting pretty far from the OP’s original question. @Belmopan, is the discussion about outcomes from various colleges helpful in your family’s process of determining the number of colleges to apply to?
Before the mods shut us down- the current job market for new grads stinks. Rutgers, Yale, URI, U Michigan. It stinks. It stinks worse for CS majors because the cutbacks and layoffs and cutting of hiring targets hit the tech sector first– and is going on even as we speak. A company laying off 2500 people on Monday doesn’t want the optics of bringing on a “class” of 350 new grads on Tuesday. So while I am aggravated along with you that your son has struggled, you cannot outrun a lousy job market. And the fact that he’s from Rutgers likely has little to do with him getting “ghosted” if by ghosting you mean sending in resumes to random job postings and not hearing back. I heard a statistic last week that by some estimates, the response rate on Linkedin and other postings is about 1%. So apply for 100 jobs- hear back from 1 of them. Which is NOT an interview by any means- often it’s just an “invitation” to take an online assessment which has to happen before an interview.
Good luck to your son. Happy to help with some productive job searching tactics if that would be useful.
@Belmopan how does this point resonate for you? Would the potential greater optionality on a job market from a school with greater perceived prestigious in some markets be something attractive for your family, or would future job uncertainty make your family more inclined to save extra money to provide cushioning for future job market difficulties? Depending on your perspective, that might sway the number of colleges your kid might want to apply to.
There is also lots and lots of ghosting in this job market with strong candidates coming out of UC Berkeley EECS… at least that is what I hear from my son who is there. It’s probably pretty similar to what your son is seeing, I would not be too quick to blame it on Rutgers. Good luck to your son!
I’ll just note again merit is in fact a real possibility for “top of the class” kids.
I wouldn’t agree that everyone who puts in the time and effort to carefully investigate both the academic and non-academic qualities of different possible colleges (including as relevant merit programs), reflects carefully on their personal priorities, chooses the ones which are actually the best fit for them overall, and then writes throughtful, personal, informed, and authentic supplemental essays for each (including as relevant special merit essays), is “lazy”. They have instead done a lot more work at earlier phases in the process, so that they can concentrate on actually writing their best possible applications to the best choices for their list.
They aren’t lazy. They are choosing where to put their time as NiceUnparticular Man states. OR- they are excited enough about many of their educational options that they don’t need to “optimize”. So if it’s 1 out of 5 or 2 out of 10– they don’t need 5 out of 20 to be happy with their choice!
My D took 1 1/2 years to put together her final college list. There was nothing “lazy” about her process. She had over 20 schools on the original list, we toured 15, and she whittled it down to 8. She wasn’t looking for prestige. She was looking for a carefully curated engineering experience that would work for her.
As it was, she still had 19 unique essays to write and it was a great deal of work just applying to those 8. She was done with applications in October and spent the rest of her senior year keeping up her grades in an extremely rigorous course load (which paid off in spades with AP/DE credit later), piloted a project based engineering class for her school, was able to do all three theater shows that year, she competed in a number of piano competitions, led an academic team to states, led her senior retreat (a huge time commitment), went on a habitat for humanity trip, hiked part of the App Trail, etc…
Lazy is the last adjective I would use to describe my D and her college process her senior year.
Unfortunately ghosting is the norm in the job market these days. I am a highly educated mid career professional who was RIF’d in 2025. I can count on one hand the number of “no” emails but the vast majority of applications have been ghosted.
When literally hundreds of candidates are applying to open roles, HR teams just aren’t bothering to respond. I highly doubt this is a Rutgers issue.
I don’t disagree that ghosting is widespread, but I have some visibility about ghosting at Rutgers and UPenn this season, and the extent of ghosting at these two places is wide apart. I offer UPenn as just an example. I am talking about relative difference of outcomes. Of course the UPenn student may also feel stress relative how things were at UPenn 2-3 years ago. But the current difference between the experience at the two schools is not negligible.
Just a quick observation: we know from controlled studies and such that people who had the attributes necessary to get admitted to Ivy+ sorts of colleges but actually go to other selective privates and flagship publics and such instead are just as likely to have successful professional careers.
However, those basic statistics don’t tell us what process it took to get there, and I think it is very much true that in some circumstances it might require more hustle, more aggressive networking, and so on. What the studies suggest is these particular people are capable of doing all that successfully, but that doesn’t mean it won’t take any extra effort.
So that is a consideration, but then you have to weigh that against other considerations. Like cost of attendance, or being at a college where you will thrive overall. I personally would never advise picking a college for this reason which was not also comfortably affordable and not also a well-considered choice for that individual kid to thrive.
But if it meets those more fundamental criteria, then sure, making it a little easier to follow the paths you might want to follow could be a potentially decisive consideration at that point.
Let’s move on from the topics of ghosting, the job market for new grads, and other topics unrelated to the premise of the thread. Feel free to start a new thread to continue tangential topics.
To be honest, I don’t know. My kid is interested in being a research scientist and will probably go direct to grad school. However, given that we are hoping for some merit and the kid prefers smaller LACs, we may add a couple more matches to the list.
If you would like additional assistance in brainstorming possible schools, I’d recommend starting a Match Me thread. Folks will be happy to offer suggestions of schools that meet your desired criteria.
Just don’t forget that colleges don’t know that they are your kids safety, match or reach.
Every application has to be completed with the same focus, proof-read for accuracy, etc. What many people consider “yield protection” is likely “this kid writes about how much he loves Boston’s Colonial history except we’re located in Cleveland, do we think he’s serious about enrolling here?”
I also only applied to two (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth). We just got back from a college visit where the Director of Admissions said that if you’re applying to more than 10, you’re trophy hunting. I think my kid is going to be right at 10-12.
Someone is likely to respond to you that if they are chasing merit money, they feel the need to apply to 20+ schools. I don’t ascribe to that thinking. If one does a deep dive when they research schools, they can usually narrow down their list.
My kids each only did one (in 2014) but that was because both had a school (their first choice) with almost immediate acceptance so were accepted in October. I warned them that if ‘something went wrong’ (most likely a finance thing) they’d probably have to take a gap year and both were okay with that option. I was going to require them to apply to at least one in state option as a safety (admission and financial) but when they were accepted to their first choice schools, I didn’t make them apply to the safety.
In the end they both went to their ‘one and done’ schools (after a small financial panic in February).
From their group of friends, almost all only applied to state schools (often 2 or 3 as UF and FSU are not sure things even for top in-state students) and most had acceptances by Jan. One daughter was an athlete so many of her friends were also recruited and thus One-and-done too.
But the number of apps has to be customized to the student, the type of schools being applied to, and somewhat to what others at the hs are doing. I’d highly recommend one school that has rolling admissions or an immediate response. Getting that one acceptance takes a lot of pressure off, as the student knows they are ‘going to college!’ and can (we can only hope) make the rejections hurt less.
As mentioned by others, the right number of college applications can vary for different situations. Whether merit money or need money.
Back in 2020, as I helped guide my son through the college application process, the final number of submitted applications was well above 70. I think. I can’t remember exactly without going back to the spreadsheet.
My son’s situation was different. He had good (not great) grades and a decent SAT, but he was not a 4.5gpa/1500 applicant. Also, we were looking for significant financial aid because I was/am a single father of 3 with a “regular” income well under 6 figures. Lastly, I wanted my son to have the option to go out of state if he chose, and to go to a private university if he chose.
The only way to make that possible was to receive substantial financial aid. And without top-shelf grades+scores, there was no guarantee any specific school would meet our financial aid requirements.
In the end, our process succeeded. He received several affordable out-of-state public and private university offers. From NY to Florida to New Mexico to California. His waitlist and/or 2nd-yr transfer options that promised to be affordable if he accepted ranged from SMU to Reed College to others.
The school my son ended up attending was not one of the first 10 to which he applied. Nor the next 10. Nor the next 10. Had he limited himself to some artificial number of applications announced “proper” by someone not in his situation, he would have limited his options. The school he ended up attending became affordable via a combination of funds it labeled as Need and Merit.
Not all advice fits all student situations. Not every family is the same as yours.