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.