@odannyboySF Safe travels! I can’t wait for your reports!
I just love this Board! I feel like I’m in school myself, gaining so much knowledge about this process and sometimes about life in general re: products, cars, etc. Cheers to all of you fine folks! 
Okay, soooo as colleges come and go from our kids’ lists, it begs the question: How many schools is too many schools (or not enough)?
With a few safeties on there, a few matches and a few reaches, does it become really sad if too many rejections come in? Conversely, does one regret not casting a wider net when he/she is truly uncertain and isn’t in love with one specific school and, maybe more importantly, uncertain how the financial aid picture will pan out?
I think I was being protective and cautious urging D away from reach schools. But I hear of so many of her classmates aiming high and their stats are less than stellar. In the end it feels like a lottery. Some of those kids (and good for them) will get accepted at some of those schools. And now I’m worried D will look back and regret not at least seeing what would happen if she applied (versus assuming rejection). She has no spike but has 4.0 UW and 35 ACT (one try), NMSF, etc. What am I so afraid of? 
Wow @odannyboySF have a fantastic college visit trip!!! Safe travels!
@DiotimaDM great recommendation, thank you!
@Kayak24 That’s a really good question and honestly, I think it’s so personal. My oldest was a one and done, applied early action and had her package in November. My youngest has appllied to 3 … and honestly they are all matches/safeties so she’s waiting on her merit packages but she has a very clear front runner. We had several other schools on the back burner that she may apply to if the merit falls below expectations.
I think some kids need to cast a wide net, especially those going for the Ivy league schools and some of the other big reaches. And others are still figuring out what they want to study, what type of environment they want to be in etc. I think it really varies. I get what you’re saying about the disappointment of a lot of rejections though, IIRC there was a young man who was incredibly high stats but was rejected from all the schools that he applied to last year. His post was heartbreaking :(. A healthy mix of reach, match and safety makes a whole lot of sense :).
Dang, @Kayak24, it would be tempting with those stats to aim high.
But there’s also something good about applying to places where you are top of the heap, and can earn merit aid.
I guess that’s your non-answer of the day.
8-}
@Kayak24 Wayne Gretzky once said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Be bold. Be proud. Celebrate the 4.0 and 35 ACT and “buy a lottery ticket or two.” Rejection is part of life. My D has had a good cry from time to time and I believe it’s just made her stronger.
@Kayak24 I have a very high stat kid and told him flat out that he could apply anywhere but we would not qualify for “need based” aid and we have little money for college that needs to be shared between 3 kids. He’s very likely getinto some of those lottery schools but what’s the point if they don’t give merit aid and we can’t afford them? We discussed the effort and expense involved applying to schools we could not afford and he decided to be “one and done” to an affordable school and then focus on additional merit based scholarship.
On party schools D is pretty clear she prefers to avoid a party atmosphere where possible. She prefers small schools so a party reputation can really mean that “finding her people” is much harder. For better or worse she looks at things like Niche “party scene” grades. Schools with As in that category are generally given a much harder look, schools with Bs seem pretty ok to her and schools with Cs are right where she wants them to be. :)) That’s not her only metric for looking at it of course, but in general if she reads reviews of students complaining about “no parties, so boring” etc, she is happy. One thing about intensity that you mentioned @odannyboySF is I think a lot of intense schools take a “work hard, play hard” approach and often have a dual nature of academic intensity and intense partying. D wants nothing to do with either scene. She’s all about work/life balance and keeping things nice and mellow. Academic rigor is good, academic carnage, not so much. Hanging out with friends watching movies or playing games = good, getting drunk 3 nights a week = not her scene at all. 
I think most of the schools on her list fit her pretty well, fortunately. Partying of course happens, and she understands that, she just would prefer to have a decent cohort of people who aren’t that into it to hang out with. @Astro77 I feel like our Ds would be fast friends irl! :x
As far as whether a school’s academic rep trumps it’s party rep, I think you make a fair point @labegg. A lot of the “work hard play hard” schools do get off without the “party school” label, it’s up to students and families to do the research to know what they’re getting into with each school.
@labegg no, we don’t care about party reputation. I firmly believe kids party everywhere. I went to an Ivy, and we drank every Th-F-Sat pretty much. Spouse went to NESCAC, same story. I think finding your people is important, but I do not believe the party reputations are very accurate.
That said, my S18 did not really enjoy Charlottesville and I think one reason was the atmosphere was a little too party like (I thought it was great!)
I sympathize with you @Kayak24. So my kid is adamant about trying for top schools. We are allowing her to try but we insisted on having a good mix of schools. Our list is at 12 right now. Last year in our community, there were some kids that did overreach on the top schools and were shut out. I feel like there’s no major harm in letting her try but at the same time I keep telling her that the brand of those schools does not confer some special status or something, you still have to work and make the most of it. Another thing we did was have her apply to a rolling admissions school - so she already has one acceptance, so that makes it a little easier to take some other chances. Hoping to get the list down to 10.
@Kayak24 my S has similar stats. I’m not sure how to classify his list because there are a lot of merit-reaches. He has 3 safety/matches and the rest I would all call reaches because of merit. Plus 2-3 are just plain old reaches for everyone. I limited him to one “super-reach” and now I wonder if he should add another?
I agree with @zomaya99 . Last year our school experienced a number of apparent sure things (including some with “hooks”) that didn’t pan out and the kids without Plans B or C were really left in the lurch. Good to have options you like (and can afford) up and down the selectivity range.
@Kayak24 DS has identical stats, but we have had kind of the opposite journey. Early on I was trying to encourage him to apply to highly selective schools as well as some full ride scholarships that would have been ultra competitive. Ultimately after a lot of discussion and a few visits he made it clear the selective college thing and being far from home isn’t for him at this stage of life. He wants to stay instate where he is getting guaranteed merit. After some initial disappointment, for me it is now “what in the world was I thinking?” We are going to save a whole lot of money that I will eventually use to help him in some way, med or grad school most likely. Plus he is going to be close to home and we are going to see him a lot more than we would have if he was hours away. Plus this whole process and his senior year of HS are so much less stressful. Life is good.
But that is my ride. I think the big question is your D and what she wants to do. Will she look back on this and have regrets? Is she doing what she thinks you want her to do or what she wants to do? I know for me I just want my kid to make the choices and own the process, and he has.
@kayak24 I think this whole process is not for the faint of heart, and as someone else said, these decisions are very personal, to the family, where budget matters and to the student, who is the one who has to do the work to submit the app.
For us, D has no true “reaches” on her list. Her stats are good, but not as high as your Ds. The issues in our family were twofold: 1) budget: the only reaches truly within budget are UCLA/Berkeley, and she hates them both so won’t apply. The schools she likes rely on merit aid to bring them in budget, her “reach” schools have less certain merit, than her match schools 2)personality: I’ve been pretty open about her struggle with essays, and she honestly has a lot of anxiety about the whole admissions process, we structured her list full of stat-safety schools in part for merit and in part so I could tell her - you will be accepted - don’t worry about that. She still worries of course because money matters. Adding true reach schools into this scenario? :-q no thanks. I agree with @sushiritto about going for it. But it has to be something the kid also wants to do. My kid has never shown even a speck of interest in any “prestigious” school. She cares if the school is right for her, and beyond that, not at all.
So I say, if your D wants to submit a reachy app, and you find it budget friendly… no reason not to go for it! :-bd
Edited to add: Huge congrats @RoonilWazlib99 on completion!! <:-P I am so excited for you and your S! I truly can’t tell you how much I wish I was in your shoes right now!!!
@Kayak24, there is still plenty of time for your D to send out a few reaches. My D will, knowing that the odds are very low.
@Kayak24 I worry about this. Just last night at the school talk about financial aid woman next to me tells me about her friends kid who had great stats, applied to 10 top schools and didn’t get in to any. He is now doing gap year. Just the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
My D has high stats. Problem is I feel like most of her schools are a crap shoot. The other day I went on Naviance and from her list I wrote down admission percentage of each school she is interested in. 6 of her schools, out of 14, admit less than 20%. 2 admit more than 60%. The rest are in between. People say don’t apply to too many but this is why she will cast a wide net.
Anyone notice that most parents posting fondly recall their own partying college days but swear their kid is not into that and does not want a party school? I know I am guilty of those thoughts. I wonder how many of us were not quite the hell raisers we think we were, and how many of our kids either party more than we know or are going to enjoy that scene in college more than they suspect?
@swtaffy904 in our house any school with 20% or less admit rate is a reach; anything with less than 10% is lottery. We really stuck with these categories no matter what naviance showed. My DD’s list is 50% reach-lottery schools. I think if a kid wants to try for top schools and financial aid is important, the list ends up being longer.
I do worry often about missing an opportunity for D to apply to a reach, especially since she is in the top percentiles of all the colleges she will probably apply to, all because of chasing merit.
Ironically, I just re-ran an NPC of a school that would have been a reach but I thought it would be worth trying because the NPC result was so good when I ran it before. Recently, it had been offline for updating for the new application season, and I was waiting to run it again before D applied. I was disappointed to see something changed because the result was a lot higher, about $10K. And I know it wasn’t me because I only had to click through the numbers I input last time and were saved. So I’m thinking, it might be better to take it off the list unless D really wants to try.
You guys are the best. It’s so nice knowing there are other people out there who understand. I guess I should have added that the reach schools that meet full need could be less expensive for us than some of the matches, and that it will all come down to whether or not the specific Financial Aid departments take pity on us for a rare one-time issue in her base year which mistakenly inflated our taxes by a large amount.
As far as D goes, she kind of keeps changing her mind about what she wants and whether being far away would be okay. Like some of your kids, she wants no parts of a “party school” and just wants to go somewhere where she feels she can relate to the students academically and socially. Sometimes she thinks some of the selective schools would provide that, but other times she feels hesitant about any kind of pressure-cooker atmosphere (no thank you). She doesn’t care about prestige; she just wants a good fit.
I’d love for her to stay local but the schools near us aren’t checking all of the boxes for her, especially since she feels undecided about what she wants.
This is going to come down to cost, as we aren’t in a position to pay a lot for college. Of course as parents you want the right fit, though, so I think casting the net with some schools in various categories is probably the best bet for now.
This will be an exciting few months for all of us!