@shelleee if your D is applying to a school that does not have guaranteed autoadmit, and if the school does not have rolling admissions so that she’d know super early, then there is always a risk. If your D’s stats fall in the upper portions of the school’s accepted students’ stats, you know her chances of acceptance are good. You could have her apply early decision/early action and she’d typically receive her decision by Dec 15, which gives her only a couple of weeks to apply to most other schools which often have a Jan 1 deadline. Personally, I’d be a bit worried about this because this doesn’t leave much time at all, and might be difficult for your D to buckle down and do if she’s depressed from being rejected from her favorite school. Also, some schools have other deadlines, for instance the U California schools have a November Application deadline, and some other schools have a Nov 1 deadline if your D wants to apply for a college’s honors program or be considered for merit aid.
@HeliMom74 last year I happened to be on the same plane as the Colorado School of Mines football team. Somehow, though, that’s not what I think you’re looking for. 
FWIW, being the mom of a HS kid, I chatted them up. All the kids were super nice and respectful. As you’d expect from this group, they all loved their school.
@melvin123 Re: D’s HS limiting the number of apps, that’s a very astute observation, and I’ll bet you’re spot on. Given some other things I know about the school that I haven’t mentioned here, that theory really makes a lot of sense.
For the record, D says the GCs do NOT use the same rec letter for each school, even within the Common App. They customize each one: “This student is a match for your school because ____” So it really does seem to be a quality over quantity thing. The GCs do everything possible to get the students into their top choices.
@HeliMom74 This may not be the kind of info you’re seeking about Co School of Mines, either, but I do know from kids who’ve visited that the gender ratio is very skewed, and that the girls there say “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” 
@ShrimpBurrito HAHA! Son got the Golden Admission thingie. He is intrigued because there is no essay. I was intrigued until I looked at the Mines forum on CC and saw OOS tuition for ONE YEAR is over $30k. Great googly-moogly.
Also, the Patriots lost last night. My heart is light.
@ShrimpBurrito that’s REALLY interesting that your GC does NOT use the same rec letter for each school. I’m sure that the GC’s note as to why the student is such a good match for the individual school is VERY helpful for that college. Now you have me curious as to what my D’s GC does! I can just see all the poor GC’s today as 20k parents (or however many parents are on this thread) call them today to ask.
I wish she would just apply already. I don’t know why I’m worried. It is a state school she wants to go to I didn’t check if it is auto admit yet but I’ll look into that now. She is NMSF, 35 ACT, lots of volunteer service, and she is either #1 or #2 in her class depending on the way the ranking ends up, its been going back and forth, it’s really close.
@ShrimpBurrito This is our first time applying to colleges, so I am probably missing something, but we homeschool and so I serve as the GC for my son. He has been applying to some Common App schools. I only got one invitation from the Common App for the counselor’s letter from the Common App site and my son submits that letter to all of the schools. Maybe there is fancier way around that I am unaware of?
@DavidPuddy I agree with @Booajo. I am planning to send both scores (35,1560) for our S18. His GPA is little low for the school that he wants to go. Hopefully they’ll think neither of his scores are a fluke and it might make up for the low GPA. Only worry I have is that are the scores going to portray him as a good test taker but not at the same level in curriculum?
@ColoSky This is my first time, too, and I don’t have an answer there. Perhaps the GC sends a supplemental note? I really don’t know.
Edit: or I suppose it’s possible that D misunderstood. But, I know that D’s good friend who had planned to apply to 12 colleges is now stressing out, as GC told him he needs to cut the list to 8. Many of them are Common App schools.
So progress on the Common App! S18 sat down with us on the couch last night and filled it out. Right now he has 12 schools listed, and another 2 that do not take Common App. Too many, but several were add ons at my insistence because I want him to check them out or they are safeties. I suspect when he submits there will be more like 7-8. Essay is in good shape but he has a college app essay workshop next week, that he will use to improve it. Now he will turn to scholarship essays for some of the fall deadlines. His school theatre group is staging Twelfth Night and auditions are in 2 weeks, so he needs to get some more college app work done before that grabs the majority of his attention.
@ShrimpBurrito that makes sense!
I think a lot, for our family, of the determination of how many to apply to lies in how many are reaches. Currently, there are 11 on D18’s list. Two are total safeties, but in-state and she would probably rather die than go there. She has one that I would call an “I would actually go there” safety. The rest are going to be a total crap shoot on whether she gets in. According to Naviance, she is in good shape for admit to all of them, but we know those charts can be a little “optimistic”, to say the least. I would like to see a couple more safeties on there, but that is a battle I am not sure I want to wage since she hasn’t made a ton of progress on the ones that ARE on the list. Ugh.
Need opinions on AP Scores:
The question @DavidPuddy posed about reporting or not reporting his son’s SAT score got me thinking about AP scores.
Report the 4 & 5 scores and omit the 3 scores? Include them all?
@LMHS73 some schools require that you report them all. You need to check. I’m not sure if you can report on each individual college supplement or if you do it on the common app. If it’s on the common app, it’s my understanding that it’s “common”, meaning that we can’t change it for the particular school.
@LMHS73, we are pondering the same question. She will for sure report 4&5s, not sure about the one 3 got. I think she may omit it.
Did anyone else get a postcard from the Univ of Miami (FL) yesterday? This after getting one from Univ of Houston a couple weeks ago.
@GertrudeMcFuzz we got Miami U (and U Miami Ohio) both on Wednesday. Lots of mail right now.
Best of luck to all our 2018s sitting for the ACT tomorrow!
For the AP scores, my opinion about a “3” is two fold:
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if it’s just one in the midst of 6-8 AP scores of 4’s and 5’s, then I don’t think an AO is going to throw your app in the pile of rejects.
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if you D or S is a future STEM major, and the 3 is in AP Lit, or vice versa, a 3 in BC, when your major is a language, then I also don’t think an AO is going to throw your app in the pile of rejects.
No one is perfect. And like I’ve said before, Stanford rejects 70% of the kids with perfect test scores. One or two 3’s in the midst of a slew of 4’s and 5’s is not a big deal. These AP tests are hard. And kids take 3-4-5 of them in two weeks.
They are going to see the class on the transcript. Isn’t it better to report the 3 than have them think it’s even worse? I’d go all or nothing.