I am someone who struggles with decision making. The most helpful thing I’ve read is that “decide” means “to cut”. When you decide on something, you cut that option off, which can be really traumatic.
Added to that, I’ve been told by the wise folks here that I am a “maximizer”, meaning that I like to explore every single option, vs. a “sufficer” who is happy having only a few options.
I will, but she still has 10 on her list (yes, the number went up!) + 5 more decisions to come so I’m storing it all up for one long post. 
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I love this! It’s a pretty funny way to think about it.
I think I’m in the sufficer column because I can’t wait for schools to get cut from the list. Keeping so many schools adds to the anxiety of the whole process. I like the idea of narrowing down, cleaning up the list. It helps focus on what’s important.
Several of us had a whole discussion about it a few months ago when I was super stressed and anxious and wondering if “maybe we should hurry up and apply to more schools?” following the EA deadlines but before the RD deadlines.
I had never heard of sufficers vs. maximizers before, but found it really explained a lot of differences in my family’s dynamics and in our personalities.
My daughter (who is a sufficer) is quite happy that she applied to “only” 6 schools and cannot imagine having to figure out more than that. Once we had most of her acceptances / financial packages and gone on a few visits, the choices very naturally sorted themselves out. You explained the sufficer part very well!
For maximizers (which I am), I can see how a dozen or more choices would be ideal (although interestingly I only applied to 2 schools back in the day.)
This is a fascinating subject to me. I would have been ok if my son had applied to more schools. I wanted him to have lots of options. But once those options became reality I wanted to quickly sort them and edit. My son is so deliberate and slow in his decision making though. His approach is quite mature and thoughtful, not impulsive, probably wiser than mine. He will take until the bitter end to make a decision and it won’t be obvious.
I think I’ve posted this before, but S25 had a significant but still fairly reasonable amount of schools on his list until he did a Chance Me on CC, and someone said he had zero chance to nearly all. In panic mode, we more than doubled his number of applications. This turned out to be a good plan because he was surprised by both rejections and acceptances and now he has various financial aid and merit packages to consider. Last night, he got into Bard with a generous aid package after an EA deferral, so now they are on the consideration list. I expect a bunch of rejections and WLs from today on, but grateful we have a couple he is happy with (finally).
Congrats! That is so exciting. 
Was the the prediction for the original colleges correct? Did he really not get into any of them?
My daughter is 5 for 6, with her waitlisted school being her reach school: We heavily focused on targets thought. And to be honest, we had a heck of a time coming up with 6 schools that the three of us all agreed on. If she had applied to more schools back in October, it would have been to more various state schools. Knowing what we know now, that wouldn’t necessarily have been worth it for her nor the best strategy. I would have liked her to apply to a couple more reach schools, but I think where she is most likely to end up is perfect for her anyway.
We are still waiting to hear on decisions from a bunch from the original list, but they were accepted to some of the original schools, waitlisted from some, rejected from his ED school and a few others.
So far he has been accepted into all of his likelies, but one (and it was a strong likely, so huh?).
His targets have been split between acceptances, WLs, and rejections.
He’s been accepted to one reach and rejected from three so far. One target and 10 (!) reaches remaining.
5 for 6 is amazing! It sounds like you came up with the perfect strategy for your daughter.
I am having a crummy morning already (at only 8:30!) and this is such wonderful news to read! Yay! Go her!
Congrats to your S25 on all the acceptances and aid packages! I hope the acceptances keep rolling in.
D25 also had a moment of panic after being deferred EA from a likely. It was kind of a shock, but then she received an acceptance letter from them two weeks later, before the RD deadline even passed. It was weird. But in that two week period was the panic. She went right up to the common app and FAFSA limit. I’m curious how you managed the financial aid apps. Did you have to send it by mail or upload it as a pdf?
For the FAFSA we waited and checked school portals until we saw a school had downloaded it. We then went back to the FAFSA, deleted that school, and added another. We usually did this in batches, waiting until a few had downloaded it. It took several FAFSA updates until everyone had it. I had a column on my school tracker for the FAFSA to make sure we didn’t miss one.
Trickier was the CSS schools and non-custodial parent waivers. Some wanted it through IDOCs. Some had their own form. Some wanted the CSS version of the form uploaded to their portal. Some wanted it emailed. We still have one school, with a decision coming this weekend, where it still says under review so I’m guessing it’s likely a no.
I think we probably only had one “unnecessary” application out of the seven S25 applied to. His list was defined largely by the fact that he had two distinct majors that he was interested in, and most schools offered either/or but not both. So he had three schools for Construction Management, where all three were reasonable admits (one more likely, and one a little less likely, but all would fall in the target/likely range). Then he had three schools for his second choice of major - Geography - one was a hard reach, and he got rejected. The other two were safeties and he really could’ve dropped one from the list. He added it because I asked him to, but he was never particularly interested (I wanted him to have a choice of two safeties in case he hated one). The seventh college had a perfect major - urban planning - and was a likely, but it was so different from everyone else, it seemed like he wouldn’t choose it.
Overall, I’m generally happy with his strategy. And, frankly, not sad that he didn’t get into his reach. I didn’t think it was a great fit for him.
Clever! Part of me wishes my D25 had applied to more, but I don’t think she had the stamina for all the supplemental essays. She wishes she had more in the target range, but she was so picky and only had eyes for the reaches. Fortunately, she’s in one of the targets that she actually likes and with a nice financial aid package. I can’t remember how many reaches she ended up applying for and I mostly just forget they exist. It’s easier for me that way. I don’t want to get my hopes up.
Thanks! IMO she has benefitted from being a female going in to engineering. While she is a strong student, that angle definitely helps.
Sounds like your son will end up in a great situation!
So sweet of you, thanks. Hope your day gets better!
I know what you mean—there are those “what ifs?” that will always be there.
And I hear you about being accepted someplace she likes with a good aid package— looking back, it feels like complete luck to get to this point.
My daughter was picky too, but had trouble really articulating what she was picky about. She ended up wanting so many things that she (I?) didn’t even know she wanted, like a medium sized school, not too urban, not too rural, in a warm weather area, with a pretty campus and a big sense of community. It had to be somewhat selective. On top of all that, it had to have a Marching Band. That was her one non-negotiable. Oh, and she was worried about costs.
Good luck to your daughter!
Well, we can cross another school of the list, my son came to me recently and told me too withdraw one of his applications as he would go to 3 other schools before that one and he honestly just doesn’t want to know if he got in or not.
I respect it, in this admissions where he has little to no control this is his way of getting a little bit back.
S25 was accepted to Lehigh last night and with merit Nearly zero financial aid though and we’re all feeling like the cost just isn’t worth it with less expensive options.
In the same boat with Skidmore. S25 was accepted last weekend but they don’t give out general merit scholarships at all - only niche ones for music or science. He has better options with good merit aid.
I have a Tom Petty song stuck in my head.
Why am I telling you this?
It’s the one that goes “The wai—ting is the hardest part.”
I’m ready to do SOMETHING. But still waiting to hear about merit aid at one school, waiting for kid to feel confident about a choice. I want to help him outline the next steps, like figuring out housing and roommate, thinking about how to plan classes and, if he chooses out of state, thinking about how he’ll get his meds (it looks like Clemson won’t prescribe ADHD meds without a recent psychologist report within five years, his is longer ago than that, so that’s going to be a PITA to get if our doc can’t prescribe into SC. And no, we can’t have his meds shipped.) etc.
But at the same time, I totally don’t want to race through these last days together and HE doesn’t seem like he’s in any hurry so I totally recognize that it’s just me being in a hurry to move along. So I’m trying to tamp this down.
Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy my mental soundtrack.
I’m there too. We have two more decisions, one for sure tomorrow and hopefully the other one too.
And guys, I did the most karma-terrible thing. I booked (refundable) tickets to an admitted students day for a school he hasn’t been accepted to! But they only have two dates and one is next week and the other is at the very end of April and I just can’t wait that long to have this process done. We’re already booked for an April 7th trip for a different school and I want that to be the end of it.
But I’ve probably cursed him.