<p>Why have less then 10 on the list? The short answer is that it makes it easier to pick once the acceptances are in. If your child has decided to go with mostly matches and safeties they may very likely have 6 or 7 good choices come April and only a couple of dates open to go make accepted student visits. When I look back on the schools my older son applied to, I realize that he really could have just had 6. </p>
<p>In our family, financial aid is important. We won’t qualify for need-based aid so what the schools offer us is going to be important. Son is casting his net wide and I think he Will have 10 applications.</p>
<p>Not sure what was said earlier on this thread, but I’d never recommend a flat number of schools to apply to for everybody because situations can vary so much. It depends on the selectivity of schools being targeted, the FA situation, how complex the various applications are, and many other factors. </p>
<p>We too will cast a wide net since we are on the bubble as far as FA is concerned and D2 is interested in going out of state if she has a financially viable option. That likely means 10 and perhaps a couple more if she can submit quality applications.</p>
<p>^^^ Agree with above that the number of schools to apply to varies depending on the situation.</p>
<p>I can see the advantage of having a smaller number to deal with. However, I suspect my S will have more than 10, unless he decides to apply somewhere ED and gets in. He’s going to have a number of super reaches on his list (he’s another kid on this thread who would love to go to MIT) and may not get into any of them, so he still needs targets and safeties. Luckily, he will be ELC (top 4%) for the UCs, so he will have some nice choices as safeties.</p>
<p>We will have a hard time getting S’s list under 10. 10 actually is the max number of free transcripts my S’s school will send out. After 10, we have to pay $5 each. Not sure where the $5 came from, but $5 is not a deterent, imo, to applying to more than 10 schools. Right now S’s list has 25 schools on it, with 10 reaches. We will probably eliminate half of those bringing the list to 20. We only have 4 safeties, all staying. His GPA/SAT scores are so mismatched that I am fearfull of eliminating safeties. Hopefully, we can cull out some of the matches. </p>
<p>I think that S’s list is so large, in part, because of stuff I learned on CC and because we started the search so early. It gave us the time, on paper anyway, to look at more schools than if we had just started the search now. We take one last trip this summer to look at some more schools on the east coast then we are done until he gets some acceptances. </p>
<p>He may do a couple EA and rolling, not sure about ED yet.</p>
<p>KLucky - You are SO not alone in the sap section!! Just looking at group photos of graduates who I don’t even know is enough to bring me to tears…just looking at my daughter is enough to reduce me to tears at this point! To say that I will be a wreck this time next year is the biggest understatement!! She will graduate from the same school that I did, so all of the graduation traditions that we will share together will push me right over the edge…Oh well, at least I know my tear ducts are in good working order - !</p>
<p>God willing, testing is done in our house for our new senior…we will see. Regarding Literature SAT II, she said that she and her friends had no clue how they did - it was not what she expected (of course, maybe if she had studied for it, she would have had a better idea…I exercised great control to not comment on that…!).</p>
<p>Her summer consists of some college re-visits, then being on the Junior National Team for her sport, which takes her through most of July (very exciting for her - her passion) - and then the focus of August will be getting her essays/applications done.</p>
<p>Regarding the amount of colleges she will apply to, she is being athletically recruited, and in a way that makes it easier because the pool of colleges she is considering/is being considered by, helps define the number. We shall see how it all plays out…</p>
<p>Everybody’s situation is different. Songbird is applying to 5 schools. That list could increase by one (we’re visiting over the summer).</p>
<p>She’s a very strong applicant who doesn’t want the Ivies, so we’ve honed in on schools that meet her wants/needs and where she is at/near the tippy top of the applicant pool and a strong candidate for their highest merit scholarships.</p>
<p>We’re looking for significant merit $, so applying EA to all but ED to none.</p>
<p>More than admission, the big question-mark for us will be the financial packages. If they come in reasonably close, she already knows where she will attend. But she has pretty strong 2nd and 3rd choices in the mix, so the finaid could definitely tip the scale.</p>
<p>Everybody’s situation is different. Songbird is applying to 5 schools. That list could increase by one (we’re visiting over the summer).</p>
<p>She’s a very strong applicant who doesn’t want the Ivies, so we’ve honed in on schools that meet her wants/needs and where she is at/near the tippy top of the applicant pool and a strong candidate for their highest merit scholarships.</p>
<p>We’re looking for significant merit $, so applying EA to all but ED to none.</p>
<p>More than admission, the big question-mark for us will be the financial packages. If they come in reasonably close, she already knows where she will attend. But she has pretty strong 2nd and 3rd choices in the mix, so the finaid could definitely tip the scale.</p>
<p>Btw…our (private) hs charges $5 per transcript after the first one. Not a reason in and of itself to keep the list small, but another incentive to be very deliberate and focused imo.</p>
<p>^“What I’ve understood in this thread is that it is desirable to have definitely less than 10 on the list”</p>
<p>I said this because nobody on the thread was talking about applying to more than that and some posts mention 3-6-8 or so. It was surprising to me because I agree with Entomom about it depending on the situation with reaches/financial concerns. If you’re happy with some of your matches and can afford them, then the list can be small. DD’s reaches include a few Ivies and top schools for which she has a very good shot, but those schools are never matches; they are always reaches. By going to the chance threads, it is clear that it is unpredictable whether one will get in, and for the schools that have it, how much merit aid will be offered. Applicants get in to some schools, not others. Having just 2 reaches is maybe doing yourself a disservice, just 2 rolls of the dice. The more unpredictable the outcome, the more schools have a place on the list. But there is an amount after which it is a big fishing expedition. The teachers writing the recs may be disconcerted and see the student as aimless, which may somehow come out in the rec.</p>
<p>So what is the proper number of reaches, if your child really wants to pursue them?- If the stats are in the range?</p>
<p>I have absolutely no idea how many schools LuckyBoy will apply to! The Big List is currently ~40 schools long :eek: He has to start narrowing it down (no kidding, huh?!) but probably won’t until next week. All his energy this week will go into reading the ACT prep book I found at the library. I’m so thankful that the mono didn’t hit until after the schoolwork was finished. Can you imagine :eek:</p>
<p>We have a few weeks this summer with nothing scheduled, so any visits to far away schools would have to be scheduled then. There are a bunch of schools on The Big List within a 3 hour radius for easy day trip(s). DH has a very flexible work schedule and usually works from home 3 days a week during the summer. We’ll probably split the day trips between us. It would be good for DH to get involved in the process However, I think it is important that we both go visit the far flung schools. We’re good at long distance driving-----we do the midAtlantic to Orlando drive straight through :D</p>
<p>LuckyYoungest asked once again last night if there were schools in Georgia that he’d like to visit. She would really like to see her friends who moved away 15 months ago.</p>
<p>I think D has around 10 schools on the list right now. Of course, the list is by no means final. She doesn’t have any true safeties - so that’s one thing we need to fix this summer. The final number of schools she applies to is very likely to depend on EA results. She plans on applying EA to either 2 or 3 schools - if the results are positive, several of the other safety/match schools on her list will be dropped. She will then only apply to her reaches or matches she likes more than her EA schools. Here’s hoping things will go according to this plan :-)</p>
<p>D is very relaxed right now. Apparently, she has finals only in 2 subjects and seems fairly confident that she can pull off good grades in them. Such a change from the last few weeks!</p>
<p>D currently has 6 schools on her list: 2 reaches, 2 matches, 2 safeties. This list has changed over the months, but she usually keeps it right around 6 schools. To me, that seems a reasonable amount, but of course it depends on the applicant.</p>
<p>One school has SCEA, and another school has EA with notification AFTER January 1. She needs to call the SCEA school and find out if it’s okay to apply to both early. The rules weren’t quite clear on that. I know for sure, there will be no ED applications. She needs to get some merit aid or (possibly) financial aid in order to afford these schools, and applying ED would be too risky.</p>
<p>Her sights have been set higher with her new ACT score. I’m glad she’s reaching a little bit!</p>
<p>KLucky and momofsongbird, my wife (ShawWife) can join your club. We sent ShawSon, who just completed his freshman year in college, off with a friend to travel in Europe for three weeks. He walked into kindergarten the first day with this boy and ShawWife cried then. Well, ShawSon and his friend are both 6’4", broad-shouldered young men now and ShawWife cried as well. We sent our rising senior, ShawD (short for ShawDaughter which is just too long), off on a school service trip to Appalachia (which necessitated a spat between mom and daughter that had nothing to do with anything real) and ShawWife was in tears again. ShawD is her baby, but she is 5’8" (though she looks/dresses a lot older than her 16 years as she has the figure of a model – where are burqhas when we need them) but she’s going off on a supervised program with the Dean (?) of Students of her high school to help repair houses.</p>
<p>arisamp, ShawD’s school has a limit of 10 as well. That is probably OK for ShawD, although I wonder if they make exceptions in special cases.</p>
<p>ShawSon applied to 16 schools last year – special case as he is unusually smart, perhaps brilliant (for real, not just proud pa) but has serious learning disabilities and we weren’t sure which schools would embrace him and which would reject him out-of-hand because it might look like he would have trouble doing the work. He only visited two schools and said, “Why should I visit and fall in love with schools that have a 10% probability of admission? I’ll apply to more schools and do a really good job on the application and save time and money.” </p>
<p>Anyway, ShawD’s GC (they are called college counselors at her school) asked her to come up with a list of 15 and rate them as likely, possible, and reach and then we’re supposed to narrow to 10. She liked ShawD’s 15, told us some were harder to get into than we thought and some easier. Frankly, we put some on the list just to get to 15. But for ShawD, we will visit many schools. She’s a different kid. We’ve got a week in August and her school gives a very long Thanksgiving break. Not clear if we should visit the Canadian schools during that August week (before she begins a science program at one of them) or during Thanksgiving (they celebrate Thanksgiving in a different week) but it will be colder then – or do some US schools in August that would be harder to get to (Colorado College, College of Wooster) during the school year.</p>
<p>As always, depends. Kids who want super tippy-top schools and who have the stats to make them viable candidates are often advised to apply to as many of these schools as possible. That’s because these are lottery ticket applications, and they can’t predict which school will punch their ticket. Maybe MIT will smile on their ability to recite John Donne while riding a unicycle, and Yale will shrug. Can’t tell in advance.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a student who is looking for a specific type of school/experience/major might have some super-reaches on the list because they fit the student’s criteria, but the rest of the list might be less reachy. In that case, there’s no sense in adding more reaches because the other schools won’t be a good fit for the student.</p>
<p>My gut feeling is that putting together a quality application is the big limiting factor. Writing essays that really shine is hard work; you can recycle some essays for use on all apps, but there has to be some customizing as well. I can’t imagine doing that for 30 applications, or even 20.</p>
<p>D1’s list is currently at 8 applications. That might expand by one or two more reaches.</p>
<p>Does anyone know whether schools will round off a students’ core gpa when considering for automatic scholarships? I think S1 just blew his Purdue merit scholarship chances with a B in Latin this semester (UGH!). He’s sitting at an unweighted core GPA of 3.760. Thinking about having him take a required course this summer and aiming for an A to boost it to 3.7689 but can’t decide whether it’s worth it or not. To make it more complicated, Purdue just changed their website from last year’s specific criteria to a more wishy washy “exceptional academic achievement”. Any thoughts? Is at 3.76 and an ACT composite of 31 good for significant merit aid anywhere that offers computer science/computer game design? He’ll take the ACT again next Saturday - with Writing this time - but I doubt he’ll get much higher.</p>
<p>I’ll chime in on the certain-circumstances-affect-numbers question. My D is looking for a BFA in theater. These auditioned programs have acceptance rates similar to Ivies - and no quantitative criteria for you to guess where you might fit among their applicants. Some accept as many as 15%(!!!) and are considered “less selective.” Basically, they’re all reaches.</p>
<p>So she has 2 lists right now - a super reach/reach list of auditioned schools, and a reach/match/safety list of BA programs she also likes (but would very unlikely choose over any of the BFAs). There are also some auditioned BAs that shake up the whole process, but they basically go on the first list for convenience.</p>
<p>The total list is at 10 at this point - 6 on the auditioned list, and 4 so far on the other. Among those 4 are 2 matches and 2 safeties (absolute safeties, as long as she applies early, which she will, and inexpensive state schools to boot). I’d love for her to have another match or even reach school on this list, but I’m happy with it at this point. She’s done many visits and is a good judge of what she likes and dislikes.</p>
<p>Another thing that may come up with the auditions is that many are held in big “convention” style settings where you can do walk-ins and get an answer from the artistic staff right away. You quickly send in the academic application and settle the question within a couple of weeks. This could all happen in Feb-March. I’m pretty sure she’ll do a couple of these walk-ins, for fun, or to warm up, or for practice, or even because she learns there that the program is just what she wants.</p>
<p>This is kind of the opposite of the student whose list is smaller because of athletic recruitment - kind of as if the auditions have been going on all through HS and it’s just a question of settling the details, I imagine.</p>
<p>Right now we have 2 reaches at MIT & P’ton. For us, these are the only 2 we are willing to fully fund. S2’s stats are competitive, but their admissions process is a crap shoot, so I might as well call them super reaches. We have one match/reach at WashU, but it depends on merit scholarship. Then we have a safety/match scenario at the U of MN. Safety would be regular program and match would be the honor’s program. We are thinking of adding Wisconsin Madison as another safety. </p>
<p>I guess this puts us at 5 for now, but I would feel better if he had 6 or 7.</p>
<p>Kajon - I would say your list is “match-light.” It might be rough for a kid who’s dreaming of MIT to be left only with a choice between UW and UMinn. Not that I have anything against those schools - they’re terrific, and great safeties (which they have been for my kids, too). But it’s a big jump in mentality. Is engineering your S’s goal? What about the slightly lower-tiered great schools? RPI, WPI, etc.? If he’s someone who had a chance at MIT, schools like that could offer some major money.</p>
<p>Although a young woman we know around here who got into Johns Hopkins and Madison for engineering was told by JH that she’d be foolish to pay their tuition when Madison was at least as good …</p>
<p>My D might not be so thrilled with one of her safeties after seeing who of this year’s senior class is going there. Not her favorite peer group; not that they’d see each other, but just the association. No one this year appears to be going to UMinn-Twin Cities, so there would at least be a “fresh” feeling there. Some of this seems childish, but I do understand.</p>
<p>EmmyBet - thanks for your comments and to some extent I do agree with you. This issue is 2 fold. 1) U of MN is son’s first choice. 2)we will not qualify for any financial aid, but are willing to fund MIT/P’ton. Somewhere in my antiquated mind I have convinced myself that the 2 Ivies would be worth the cost, but cannot justify the out of pocket $$ for any of the many, many other fabulous LAC’s/top 20 's. WashU would be in the mix if he could get 1/2 tuition. He is torn between quantitative economics and engineering.</p>
However, I think it is important that we both go visit the far flung schools. We’re good at long distance driving-----we do the midAtlantic to Orlando drive straight through :D</p>
Kids who want super tippy-top schools and who have the stats to make them viable candidates are often advised to apply to as many of these schools as possible. That’s because these are lottery ticket applications, and they can’t predict which school will punch their ticket. Maybe MIT will smile on their ability to recite John Donne while riding a unicycle, and Yale will shrug.