You could yet be surprised! 17 schools is a lot of chances. My daughter would be horrified if she knew my spouse and I have secretly confided in each other that there are 2 we are sort of hoping to hear “no” from. 
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S24 will also be at 16 applications come Monday. If you had asked me at the beginning of the process, I would have said that 16 is a crazy number, too hard on the kid, too large to do a good job on each application, and unlikely to yield a substantially better outcome than applying to a smaller number of well-chosen schools. But my thinking about what constitutes an excessive number of applications (for this particular kid anyway) has evolved over time.
On the benefit side, it looks to me as if applying to selective schools has become sufficiently unpredictable that applying to a larger number of schools is an effective hedging strategy. Our school counselors agree with this as well, and now advocate a substantially larger number of applications than they did five years ago. (The game changes, of course, if selective schools are not your cup of tea.) I know many people make the argument that application outcomes are correlated, and that your chance of acceptance at a marginal additional school is close to zero if you have been turned down by several similarly selective schools. I agree that application outcomes are obviously correlated - it’s the same application after all. And a kid who doesn’t clear the bar that makes an application viable at a selective school is unlikely to benefit from submitting more and more applications. But many kids who target selective schools do clear that bar, and after that, the holistic review process makes the outcome anyone’s guess.
I do think your chances go up if you apply to schools that are a good fit for your particular interests, so I wouldn’t advocate applying to a random set of selective schools (e.g., all Ivy League schools). But unless a student has fairly esoteric interests or very particular location preferences, they can usually identify quite a few schools that are a good match, especially if they have multiple academic interests. The outcome then depends on largely unobservable priorities and perceptions on the part of the school. So on the benefit side, adding more applications seems like a reasonable strategy.
On the cost side, setting aside the obvious financial cost of application fees, there is the question whether the student can manage the time and stress required to complete the applications, and whether the quality of applications will deteriorate as more are added to the pile. I used to be quite concerned about that, especially because S24 is a somewhat reluctant writer. But after spending a couple of weeks watching S24 work on applications over the vacation, I have grown much less concerned. Many of the supplemental essays are quite short, and once he got to 8 to 10 or so applications, S24 found that he had enough material to apply to almost any school he looked at with only minor modifications. Cranking out an application took a couple of days or more early in the process and at most a couple of hours towards the end. So I became a lot less concerned about the cost. (One caveat: S24 is not interested in Ivy Plus schools, with one exception, so maybe I’m underestimating how onerous those particular applications would be.)
In my mind, the key to submitting a larger number of applications is to do your homework about schools up front. It really helps to know the schools on your interest list, their key characteristics, and why they are a good match. That information makes it a lot easier to choose and tailor the right supplements, not to mention get through any interviews. I think that is where a parent or counselor can be very helpful. My most important contribution, I think, was to act as a research assistant to my kid: I helped curate a list of potential schools of interest and provided well articulated reasons why a particular school might be worth a look. I was then able to remind S24 of this information as he turned to each application.
We’ll see how it will all turn out at the end…
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Ha we have one of those too. Too competitive /high stress and too expensive for my taste. Of course it’s her top choice 
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I took a similar approach, I did the deep dives and gave her the high points of about 25 schools that seemed to fit… Then she watched the tours, videos, YouTube’s etc and culled it down. We visited about ten. She decided late in the game she might want rah rah so we added four large flagships, so we may still need to visit 1-2 of those. I’m hoping to have enough info in hand to decide on March 29 (RD day) and ideally just do one admitted students weekend. (we will be on a plane to Belize on vacation when all those RD answers come in so that will be … interesting.)Time will tell!
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This sounds like my son’s application process too. Applied to 15 (maybe 1 or 2 ranked between 20 & 50? not sure because we didn’t pay attention), admitted to 7, deferred at 1, waiting on another 7. Has mostly narrowed the 7 admits down to his top 2, but doesn’t want to say for sure yet. Waiting to hear from 4 more in the next month, then 4 in March.
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delete, worry about D25 later. 
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Question for everyone, sounds like a lot of us have kids that have lots of acceptances. When are you declining? We have declined two that she absolutely wont go to (one of them is a very small school, I wanted to get that merit money back in their pool). But I’m wary of pulling all the others, not knowing RD etc. plus we may want to try to negotiate merit. What’s the protocol? This is all new to me
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There is no need to decline until May 1 (unless you have an ED 1/2 acceptance).
Don’t close out options prematurely.
Plenty of kids don’t decline at all. If the school doesn’t hear from you by May 1 they’ll assume you are not coming.
Declining early doesn’t help someone else get merit. Like admission offers, merit offers are also made taking yield into account.
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My kids declined schools once they knew they absolutely wouldn’t attend. I think that’s the only timeline (other than May 1st).
Edited to Add: We didn’t negotiate merit as they received the absolute top merit at every school.
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I think it is a good practice to withdraw as soon as you really know. Although not a formal obligation I think it is polite to allow the colleges to move on to others more quickly. This won’t happen for my S24 until probably late March, but people who apply more places early can often withdraw more earlier.
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We have a little different situation as we are trying for tuition exchange. If we get a great merit and tuition exchange we will try and refuse the other acceptances. I know some schools have limited tuition exchange and wouldn’t want to hold on to one if we aren’t going to use it.
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Is negotiating merit even a thing? She has received top amounts at a few. I’m wondering if you can ask for more if a peer institution has offered more. (Private to private, flagship to flagship, similar ranking etc).
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So far my daughter has only heard from her safety schools, all admitted with merit. We have her schools ranked and will start declining her lower ranked acceptances as she receives acceptances she would choose over those.
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Yeah that’s kinda my approach, especially for the smaller LACs. Wouldn’t want another kid to sit on waitlist while we dither. But there are some ea schools where we are waiting on honors (UNH, Elon, Denver etc) so we can’t withdraw yet
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I’ve convinced her to decline her first school when she receives the next response from another school (within the next 3 days?). She knows that there is no possibility there, so even though it is a rather large school, it seems right to open up money to some other student. After that, we’ll see how she feels about gradually winnowing.
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Yes, obviously if honors, merit, or so on is pending and might make a difference (just might, not necessarily will), then you can reasonably just wait. I am confident in those circumstances they want you to!
We are in the minority here at 5 applications. Kiddo has a very clear idea of what they want and the favorite schools have reasonable acceptance rates so no need to shotgun.
I totally understand the need for so many applications for other kids, but not needed for our situation.
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It is not a competition, but if it was a competition, you would be doing well!
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S24 did three applications EA, accepted to all three and is now just figuring out which school to ultimately accept. Applying to a ton of schools is a distinct choice.
While we may seem like minorities on CC - the average number of applications to college haven’t risen among most applicants. The surge in applications is to a very few schools (relatively speaking) and from a small number of applicants.
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It’s great to have options! Congrats!
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