Hi - I am going to apply for private school for my son who will be entering high school in the NYC area. Does anyone know of any maximum allowed applications to college at specific schools? For example, I have heard that Horace Mann in Riverdale only allows their students to apply to up to 7 college (can anyone verify?). This sounds really limiting to me, but I’m not sure why high schools do this in the first place so I’m wondering if anyone has any insights as well.
Don’t have first hand experience here but there can be several reasons why elite private schools limit applications:
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One reason why private schools are in demand is the attention and resources that can be devoted to each student. The more applications means the more counselor reports and LoR’s that have to be generated. The tradeoff is do you want more generic LoR’s and counselor reports or fewer but very tailored ones? One of my close friend’s daughters went to elite prep schools in the NY Metro area. The amount of attention they got from their counselors, including feedback from AO’s the counselors contacted, was insane compared to my kids’ public school counselors who were responsible for 400 kids at any one time. Hard to see that much attention given if every kid could apply to 20 schools.
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Counseling is very front loaded at many of these schools, meaning they try to develop a thoughtful list of reaches, targets and safeties versus taking a shotgun approach.
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They are also likely trying to manage school success rates. For example, they may try to dissuade a kid from applying to HYP because the internal as well as external competition is so tough and perhaps encourage them to ED Univ Chicago.
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But wouldn’t shared applications (like The Common Application) reduce the number of unique LoRs and reports needed?
Seems like if a high school were limiting applications for this reason, then it should limit the number of unique LoRs and reports rather than applications.
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This is what I would have thought. Teachers do not write individual LORs for each college. They write one and it goes to all the schools. It is individualized for the student but not for each of the schools they apply to. My assumption was that schools limit the number of college apps because they want to have tighter control over exmission stats. For example, 30% get into their first choice vs 5%. I can not think of one reason why limiting the number of apps would benefit the student.
I cannot answer OP’S qiestion about NYC schools.
I am an alum of a private school (outside the US) that allowed its students only 10 applications. Their rationale was that all were “serious” and that it minimized the likelihood that students would be denied for yield protection reasons. I also think, though, that this school really has to work on relationships with colleges given its location, and this makes it more manageable. Many of its students also matriculate to colleges outside the US, and supporting applications in dozens of countries is hard for the CCs. It doesn’t seem that the latter issues would apply to NYC schools.
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I have heard (totally anecdotal) that the main reason is to prevent “bunching”- which happens to make sense to me.
Our local public HS’s could have 30 kids applying to Columbia, 20 to Penn, 15 to Dartmouth… etc. One year Stanford is “the school” so 30 kids apply (anyone who can spell “Entrepreneur”) and the next year it’s JHU (all those premed hopefuls). The guidance counselors try to persuade kids not to have a dozen “Hail Mary” colleges but they don’t cap applications, they just don’t have time and they are spread very, very thin.
I’ve heard that the prep schools approach it very differently. They will tell the kid candidly “You are terrific. You are also not getting into Dartmouth. We are going to explore the following 10 schools which have some of the things you love about Dartmouth and I promise you, you will find a terrific fit for your goals”.
So a kid facing a cap isn’t going to “waste” an application on the “no way, no how” colleges, especially with a college counselor who has time to work through the nuances of what the kid is good at, what the kid wants and needs, etc. The kid (and the family) has to face early on that with a B+ average. Harvard isn’t happening, even with Mom and Dad both legacies. At best it’s a soft rejection with a waitlist, but that’s a very small chance. So- Mom and Dad and Kid pivot quickly- why waste one of your precious slots on a sure fire rejection?
Having seen some RIDICULOUS application strategies (30 schools? with half of them “never going to happen” schools?) I see the beauty of the prep school system! The kids don’t burn out writing “Why us” essays on a bunch of schools where demonstrated interest is irrelevant because they aren’t getting in, the family deals with reality sooner rather than later (and starts to get excited about Skidmore and Muhlenberg and Hamilton once they’ve been told- by someone who knows their stuff “Dartmouth isn’t happening”, and the kid gets the ego boost of getting into his/her first choice college once the pivot happens.
Gotta love this. Our local public school kids face so much rejection, dejection, burnout, “I hate my safety school” syndrome. But the resources aren’t there for the handholding.
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That’s a good point that I did not think of - allowing for more meaningful conversations with AOs. I suppose a cap might also allow the lower 50% of the class a greater chance of recognition/acceptance.
But would students looking for merit money* need to apply to more schools, since it is more difficult to estimate chances for enough merit money than admission (other than automatic for stats merit)?
*Versus able and willing to pay list price or the net prices from NPCs.
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Our school has a cap of 12 applications per student, but it permits more applications in certain circumstances. The reasoning is to avoid a haphazard application process and to submit thoughtful applications to schools that are likely to be a good fit. But, there is some flexibility built in if circumstances warrant it.
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That sounds like a very reasonable policy. What kind of school is it?0
Boarding school in PA. Well-regarded but not GLADCHEMMS level.
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It’s also common for schools to work with you to develop a not terribly extensive list without explicitly restricting you.
If your CC can work with you to create a list of 8 schools that are affordable and include an excellent chance of admission to a few of them, and can then explain the benefit of not writing a million supplemental essays and paying lots of application fees, you may not feel compelled to apply to 20. My sense is that good CCs guide often you to reasonable rather than mandate it.
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