@NYYFanNowMTdad & @rickle1 - thanks for the perspective. I’m new to this MT thing and only started researching the college issue very recently.
I suppose we all would like to think our respective kid will be the “sparkly unicorn,” but I believe that I am enough of a realist and pragmatist to not hang my hat on that aspirational thinking.
D’s older brother had his eye on one school only. He applied to this highly-ranked school and no others, and got early decision. Fast and easy. So perhaps the ease of his college admission process has lulled us into a false sense of security about D and MT programs.
I thought those kids on YouTube who were talking about applying to 25 schools were doing so out of sheer anxiety rather than actual necessity. Ten MT applications seemed like plenty to me, but it appears that I was missing some context.