We didn’t discuss where he applied, just where accepted
I don’t understand what there is to brag about when it comes to applications.
Acceptances, sure. But applications? Nope, I don’t get it.
As for my son, there’s no pressure from either side of the family to attend any particular school. So, yeah, when he speaks to family he tells them of the schools we’ve seen and his impressions of them.
But it’s his news to share, not mine.
The other issue that can come up comparison-wise is cost and ability to pay. I suppose this is inevitable once the acceptances are in and a choice is made, but the disparity among the ability to pay (which thus gives strong hints regarding income levels and assets) can become painfully obvious as well, where it may not have been so obvious before. And, even with the grandparents/in-laws.
I don’t think we ever shared the exact list, but it was no secret which colleges we had visited. My oldest and my brother’s oldest were applying at the same time, but sil is a big fan of Colleges that Changes Lives and my son was a computer nerd looking at tech schools so their lists were completely different. At one point she shared with me very proudly he’d gotten an 800 on the writing and a 12 on the essay. Since it was the first year that section was on the SAT no one cared, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her. (Or that my son had gotten 800 in CR and three subject tests!) They both ended up at colleges they liked very much and are gainfully employed now.
My Dad (who had lost his long term memory) asked reguarly where they were applying, where they got in, and why they chose what they did, and I never felt the need not to tell him the truth or to prevaricate.
@Hoggirl - that is a very good point. Our extended family knows us well enough to know that we would never have our son apply anywhere that we could not afford.
@GMTplus7 - it was the chicken chunks story. 
Will have to check out the others! 
I am close to my sibs and there are a lot of cousins around the same age. We are pretty open about these things–we might share scores, colleges that our kids are applying to, scholarship offers, etc. We also share struggles, problems, ask for advice/sympathy with parenting issues. Still, we are sensitive about bragging/exposing too much about our kids. I might brag about kids’ scholarships to family members whose kids are also top students. But I’m not going to bring up those subjects with another branch of the family whose kids have learning disabilities, don’t go to college.
We share selectively, as appropriate. With S, we shared where he was admitted and where he got scholarships and where he was going. With D, we shared after she had received her acceptance as a transfer. It was her one and only college app. We are sensitive and supportive of nieces and nephews and celebrate acceptances and the colleges and grad/pro schools they choose to attend. So far, our D was one only one who didn’t go straight from HS to 4-yr college, but she was pleased with her unorthodox journey (and we are happy it has worked as well as it has).
My take is I wouldn’t share, for a lot of reasons.First of all, it can backfire if you are doing this to ‘brag’, for one reason others are going to see it as such and then find ways to retaliate, like “oh, how nice your kid is applying to X, my kids had that as their safety school” or it will come back in other ways. Secondly, you don’t need to justify homeschooling, you don’t need to make up for the kid who didn’t go to college, and if you do you are kind of playing everyone else’s game. It reminded me when I was a teenager, and having idiot relatives ask me what my GPA was, when it was none of their business, I wasn’t going to feed into their stupid games (two of my cousins were big sports stars in high school and the parents used to brag about them, one of them ended up doing decently as a lawyer after a pretty rough high school and college career, the other one ended up a loss to drugs). I would simply say that you are proud of the kid, he is applying to a number of good schools, and when he figures out where he wants to go, you’ll let them know. By doing that you cut off the “oh, wasn’t good enough to get into X, and ended up settling for Y”, all you are telling them is “S is going to go to school X, he choose that among the many he applied to”.
I shared with my siblings. My kids are in a totally different ballpark than their cousins so there’s never been a competition of any sort. For every child, it was all about finding the right school whether it was Yale or University of Delaware or Hendrix College. I think my daughter answered fully and honestly questions about her applications just as her cousins were open about their applications. The main difference was her three older cousins applied ED so they were all one and done while she applied to several schools. Did anyone ‘brag’ about their choices? I wouldn’t call it bragging even though one cousin had a lottery school and another cousin had a top 20 school. It just was.
Hoggirl, I hear you about the economics. Our EFC (even with FA for two kids) was more than what any of my siblings earn in a year. We played it very, very low key. My other nieces and nephews (among those who went to college) had to make decisions strictly on finances. Most kids in our neighborhood go to state schools (including OOS), but not many to privates, so we kept low key on that front, too.
We didn’t share much info until one of my nieces started asking me questions about college apps. One of my sibs and a SIL asked about how FA worked and I ran some sample numbers for them. Sobering did not begin to describe it. We shared some general info about scores and approaches to test taking, but to this day noone in my family knows what S1 made on the SAT. I think S2 shared his scores a year after the fact when one of my nieces had an excellent score and was competitive for top schools. We ran in December of her senior year FA and she realized that her best option was merit $$ at the flagship.
As far as school lists – most of the schools my kids applied to were not on anyone’s radar amongst my family. S1 told folks he was applying to a small science/math program in CA and that usually distracted the conversation sufficiently so that he didn’t get the more intrusive questions.
Because my kids had a good range of reach/match/likely, we were able to tell folks who asked about acceptances that they got into some schools, waitlisted at others, and rejected at some.
This is all so very interesting to me. My H and I come from super poor families with a combined total of seven college graduates, all from my generation. We are career military, so the college game is very new to us. Our D is a rising senior with very specific choices in mind. I doubt anyone will ask about her GPA or SAT scores, let alone what schools she will be applying too. We plan to share it all with a small group of friends, and share the first acceptance and final choice with both families.
My kids are older than their cousins. We shared nothing and no one asked until they were off to college already.