The College Board apparently just opened four more testing sites within 100 miles of me for the June date, so in my daily checking to find a site closer to home, I scored a win! Sixteen miles to the test site! Yippee! (Enough exclamation points!) Here’s hoping this is an auspicious start to this week, since we fly on the red-eye on Wednesday and weather reports look a little wet where we’re headed. Grateful for a true positive this Sunday. Hope your week is starting off well, too!
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Actually, the number of kids who applied to more than one school is only 5.6 times the number of kids who applied to only 1 school. So, nearly 20% of kids used the common app for only 1 college. Which I find very interesting. I assumed everyone was hitting 10 or more, not that so many were hitting less than 5 schools (about 1/2).
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I was dead serious.
I mean, the idea that there is one and exactly one best possible fit between each applicant and all the colleges out there? Think it through, carefully. Even if that were the case at the moment of application—and I’m not granting that, but even if we allow that—is that going to be the case for the entirety of the college-going experience? Is it even going to be the case once the applicant gets to the first of May? Not to mention that matching any given applicant with any given college is a multivariate problem, and even the weights of the the variables in the calculation aren’t constant, so how can there be a claim that there is one best match?
No, the idea of a “dream school” is a way for colleges’ marketers to try to get potential matriculants to ignore (well, more precisely: devalue) certain variables that might be more important to the student, in the hope that commitment bias (more or less, the sunk cost fallacy) will set in—and it often, unfortunately, does.
And I don’t think that that’s condescension, but rather that it’s an honest assessment of the cutthroat stew of marketing and money that college applicants (and their families) find themselves thrown into each year.
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I think that this perception comes from people self-sorting into groups based on demographic and behavioral similarities—and so if you’re in the kind of family (as a student, parent, or sibling) where aside from ED situations ≥5 applications is likely, then other people you are around are more likely to be submitting ≥5 applications.
(Which is just a more generalized expression of the dictum that should be bannered across every page on this site: College Confidential’s norms are not reflective of most people’s college application experiences.)
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I think this, plus @dfbdfb comment re: people self-sorting, has been somewhat in play in our house lately. Both because I assumed the “people apply to lots” and because I’ve sorted, both here and in our local neighborhood/HS, into groups where you are more likely to have more applications out there.
After our spring break trip, my son was happy to cut his list to six schools. But of those six, one is a real reach, two he wasn’t particularly excited about but was keeping them on because they are in-state and have strong programs, and a fourth is there as a fall back but he really doesn’t want it.
In my mind, that basically leaves two other schools - both of which are good matches - that he’d likely get into and be happy and excited about. And with how much things can change and interests can change, that just doesn’t feel like enough to me. So we’ve added two, maybe three more, all of which I’d guess he’d get into (as either a safety or a target). He hasn’t visited them yet, but I’m hoping that once he does, they stay on the list as places where he could be happy and excited.
Right now he’s got nine on his list. He’ll apply to all of them EA. If Pitt comes in quickly (since they are rolling admissions) he’ll probably want to drop several of the others if he hasn’t already finished the applications. I might encourage him - again IF that one acceptance comes in early - to keep most of them on there. Just because what seems right in October/November may be different by the time April rolls around. Just in this year, what he’s interested in has changed so much that it feels like having some options would be good.
Now, the flip side of that coin - I had a friend whose daughter was so worried about not getting into anywhere, that she cast a huge net. Over 20 applications, I think the final tally was something like 24. And she ended up getting in to something like 13 of them. But rather than making her feel good, she felt stressed out by then having to choose - it’s like there were then too many options and she got some decision paralysis. (Sort of like me when I go out to eat and I’m already hungry and everything on the menu looks good. Half the time I just pick the first thing I see, because to actually think about and debate options seems to overwhelming to me. So I pick one and done. And while that may work fine at a restaurant, one night’s dinner is not the same as four years of living and learning.)
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Hi, I’ve been lurking on this thread enjoying the conversation but this looked like an interesting place to jump in. My daughter “finalized” her list last night and we’re at seven schools - two reach, three match, two safety. Seven seems like kind of a lot. When Common App opens up I could see her dropping one each of the reaches and safeties - and I’d be fine with that. We feel like we’ve got a great list of schools for her, she’d thrive at any of them.
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S23 applied to 17. D25 current list around 20. Hoping to make a couple visits this summer to see if we can reduce that. But with an average gpa kid trying for Tuition Exchange benefit we likely have to cast a super wide net!
I am pretty certain my D will apply to 3. Makes me a little nervous since it’s a music audition. All the schools are academic liklies with 80% admissions and low yield, the 2 private are financial reaches. None of the music programs are among the most competitive but their scholarships are. Her back up plan is a different major and play in an ensemble or band. Each school has opportunities for playing for any student who wants to. We might visit one or two more schools this summer but one would be a more difficult admission musically and the other is another in state public that she probably won’t like.
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My S23 applied to 5 total. 2 safety, 3 reaches.
My C25 currently has a list of 10, but we’re hoping to slim the list down a bit when we revisit it in mid-June. (We did some visits over Spring Break, and are hoping to leave it alone while C25 focuses on AP exams, SAT, etc. Then we’ll pick it back up again in June, and start working on essay stuff over summer.)
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S23 applied to 7. S25 is not ready to make a list, but he has picked a likely major, type of school (LAC), and identified a couple of interest. I’ll take it.
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C20 applied to ~20 because they were either gunning for a top CS program (which means could’ve easily been rejected by all of these schools) and if that didn’t work out we were merit hunting. Basically their list were all reaches & safeties.
C25 I have no idea where we stand tbh. We might just plan on the state flagship & call it a day.
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My D22 applied to only 3 - but she had a rarer major not offered as many places (Food science), and 2 of the 3 she applied to had very high admit rates and could both have been classified as a safeties.
S25 has visited 4 campuses so far and will apply to all four of these for sure. He still has 4 more on his list of serious contenders we haven’t visited yet. I guess it is possible he will add more. But he/we are very budget conscious since he will have overlap with a sibling 3 out of 4 of his years (1 year with D22 and 2 years with younger brother S27), so that is definitely a limiting factor in making his list.
His intended major is Math, so we don’t have a location limitation for the major like we did with D22…pretty much every place has math.
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D25 is already in at 1 safety and will apply to 2 or 3 more school, 2 safety and 1 low reach.
She’s SO over this school year. She just needs to hold on until AP exam week and then things should slow down significantly.
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S22 only applied to around 3 or 4 schools by that is only because he got in to his ED1 school. We have 18 on D25’s list but she won’t end up applying to all of them.
My 2023 applied to 7, only one reach. My 2025 is set on just one, but I definitely want her to add a couple others in just in case. She’s an athlete so that does make the whole process a little different. I’d be thrilled with her top choice, and it should be a safety academically, but we need to make sure it’s financially a good choice. And that the coach does officially offer her a spot 
D25 doesn’t have a list yet. 
She does know she doesn’t want to study math or engineering related and she definitely doesn’t want to go to her older brother’s school!
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D23 applied to 11. 4 safeties, 2 matches, 6 reaches. Got into all except 1 match and 4 reaches. WL at 2 reaches and 1 match.
She chose a reach, didn’t like it- left after first semester and has applied to 4 transfers. Technically all reaches but for her stats the one at 36% acceptance would be more of a safety and she just got in there with almost max merit. Waiting on 2 rejected from 1.
S25 is only applying to a lot because he is applying to 3 service academies (reaches) and a minimum of 5 ROTC scholarship schools. We need to find a balance with ones that have the best aid and program/major. He also has to apply for nominations.
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Who has class of 2025 apps open already?
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I’m going to repeat a College Confidential aphorism. The most important school on your list is your safety school.
That means:
- A school that the student is highly likely to get into. Be realistic on this.
- Is affordable. Use the Net Price Calculator and make sure you can afford this without putting your family in massive debt
- The student would be happy to go to
I hear all the time about students who apply to a bunch of schools and only get into schools they aren’t happy about. They shouldn’t apply to schools they can’t see themselves going to.
Some of that is expectation setting… as @dfbdfb pointed out. There’s a trap that this demographic falls into of a “dream school”, where it gets built up to an unrealistic degree. And the flip side, other schools get dismissed. I’m not saying, students shouldn’t strive to get into Stanford, or MIT or any other school. Nor am I saying that it’s “wrong” to be a bit disappointed if you don’t get in. But the reaction shouldn’t be “I can’t believe I wasted all that hard work to only get into XYZ state university.”
I’m probably not explaining it great, but I think we as parents should help them manage expectations - to yes, shoot for the best they can do, but if they fall short of one particular goal or another, to be able to find joy and satisfaction in what they did accomplish and to become excited for all the possibilities that their hard work has opened up.
The safety school is an important part of that. There are tons of schools out there and a lot of them have high quality academics, with door opening opportunities at them. And they aren’t all what commonly make the “dream school” list. Get excited about some of those as well.
For reference, my S23 applied to 8 schools, 3 were safeties (only because he wasn’t sure which one he liked more.. he liked all 3), 2 reaches and 3 matches… he did ED and EA to all of them and got in to his ED which was a match and his favorite school. We were done with apps by Nov. 1, and was already into two safeties at that point that he liked, so the whole process was super low stress.
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Olivet Nazarene university. They opened applications in Feb. Probably the easiest app to fill out.
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