I have no idea how many D26 will ultimately apply to. All the schools she’s trying to get recruited at are reaches, a few target and safety schools are on her list, but only if she gives up on the student athlete thing.
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This is so fascinating to me. When we were touring colleges with D22, one of her strongest preferences - as in, close to a dealbreaker - was that the school needed to have a defined perimeter established by a fence/hedge/wall/barricade/whatever. You never know what strikes them as important.
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C26 wants to be “in a nice place”. Nice is totally undefined. It includes Boulder, New York, San Diego and SLO, but not Eugene. Not that the kid has been to either Boulder or Eugene yet ….
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My son will probably apply to 4-6 schools. He says he has his plans down and his choice is a safety. But I think he should give himself more choices in the long run. Probably 2-3 in-state and 2-3 out-of-state.
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1 of D26’s criteria is ‘nowhere cold.’
What does ‘nowhere cold’ mean? ‘Anywhere I need a winter jacket.’
Ok, what about the awesome cybersecurity program that Univ of Tulsa has? “Well, maybe Tulsa is ok. I’d have to wear a jacket, but as long as it’s not Minnesota cold. I could handle a few days of snow.”
So at the moment, all of the schools on ‘The List’ are in AZ, TX, and OK.
What about other states in the southern half of the US? Like Alabama? UAH has some good cybersecurity programs. At first, it was ‘yeah, maybe.’ Now it’s ‘Alabama is too far.’
Ok, kiddo, so what’s “too far?”
“Anywhere east of Texas.”
What about Colorado?
“No. Too cold.” 
What about Utah?
“No way. I’m not living in Utah. Don’t ever ask about Utah again.”
What about New Mexico?
“I didn’t like UNM or NMSU when we toured there with D24. Besides, I’m not a huge fan of Mexican food.”
Me, hearing my daughter say she doesn’t like Mexican food…
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My S24 applied to 10- probably could have taken half of them off the list but he really was not sure how admissions would go, so I do feel like 10 was a good number for him.
D26 wants nursing so it is a whole different situation. She currently has a list of about 14 schools. Of those, 5 are direct admit so are all reach schools because of her wanting nursing. She has several likelier so while we are fairly certain she will be admitted, none are direct admit to their BSN program so that is a gamble. She is touring 5 schools between now and end of April so her list may change/get shorter after these visits. Her high school gets huffy if they apply to more than 12, so we shall see what the final list looks like.
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S23 was really excited about Boulder until he visited it (we had to take a special trip to fly out there). Turned out that he didn’t like Boulder at all. Crossed that school right off the list! I am still not sure why! He likes Eugene (and Corvallis) and Davis and SLO and really most places he visited…
I thought D26 wanted a college town similar to Davis, she thinks Berkeley where we live is a little too urban… but then she just told me the other day that NYC “could be nice.” They visited NYC on a school trip a couple of years ago and apparently she had a good time… So who knows! 
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I could write a whole essay about how boys brain development lack certain fundamental things but don’t want to start trouble. Meanwhile D30 has a planner in middle school and does things that just leave me flabbergasted.
For example there was a school activity she was interested in but the date to apply had passed and she needed two teacher recommendations.
She talked to her friend who had already signed up, that friend asked the teacher to re-open the application form, she then reached out to two teachers who agreed to recommend her. She was giving me updates as she was doing this on her phone, oh they closed the form, oh my friend messaged the teacher, oh she opened it, oh the teacher agreed to recommend me yay.
All in the space of 2-3 hours. She took the initiative and made it happen.
If this had been S26, it would have been me asking him to just try asking the teacher and him telling me that the deadline had passed and he couldn’t do anything about it.
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Yeah - we’ll visit Boulder in spring break and see how it goes. It’s their number 1 on paper but I keep telling them they need to visit too. I think they will like it though. We’ve got a general college + a department tour lined up, and will spend a couple days in the towns/state & national parks nearby.
Btw we live not very far from you !!
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I think five is reasonable, especially if some have rolling admissions or EA, where she would have an opportunity to add more if the early round did not go as expected.
My D applied to 9 schools, two of which were late additions after she was rejected from her ED school. She had only one EA acceptance and we had never visited, so I pushed her to add a couple more apps just in case (no additional essays required for those). She had 4 reach-for-all schools, 2 targets, and 3 likely/safeties; she ended up with 2 rejections, 2 waitlists (one of which later turned to an acceptance), and 5 acceptances. She was extremely particular in her criteria, which had nothing to do with her majors (don’t even get me started on the “too much red brick” rule out), so it was tough finding schools she liked enough to want to apply.
My son’s working list is currently at around 10 schools, but I’ll probably encourage him to apply to a few more than that, while trying to keep the total number of essays manageable for him (neither kid was interested in Ivies or schools with lots of supplements). Like my D, he likes liberal arts colleges, and the whole holistic admissions process, combined with the current political climate and the precarious financial state of many small colleges, makes me nervous. I just want him to have some choices in the end, so I may encourage him to apply to some schools he hasn’t seen, or to reconsider some of the schools we saw early on in the process.
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My D22 applied to 19 schools (16 if you count the UCs as a single application). Many were reaches (UPenn, Yale, Columbia, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Tufts, BU). Looking back, she feels she could have skipped a few of those but the fear that you will get in nowhere is real and it can be very tempting to throw stuff at the wall to see if anything sticks.
My S26 has way less interest in the work it will take to apply to that many schools. He also has a slightly lower GPA and fewer ECs, so his profile all but takes the mega reaches off the table. He might chose a couple to take a shot at but I’m hoping to get him to spend more time cultivating a mix of targets and likelies.
Counting the UCs as 1 application, I think he’ll tap out around 10 schools.
And @Mike_Ba, that conversation with your S26 is classic. I’ve had the “gotta lock in” conversation more times than I can count… Mine loves to toe the line between B+/A- for most of the semester, then “lock in” for the A. It makes me bonkers!
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I should add that my S22 applied to 16. Too many in a lot of ways. But we couldn’t tour senior year. And we were hoping for some of the higher scholarships at places. D24 applied to 9. All safeties but they sorted themselves out as we toured.
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It’s amazing sometimes to witness their thought process. My son has been adamant for a year that he did not want to get on a plane for college. A couple of weeks ago he started asking about University of Chicago after getting some snazzy direct mail. “Umm, buddy, you realize that would involve a flight?” He’s since lost interest (possibly related to the link I sent him for the U of C essays), but props to Chicago for some really effective marketing!
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Berkeley is too urban, but NYC could be nice? HAHA! (Disclaimer, I’ve never been to Berkeley, but I did live in NYC for six years.) Kids are so funny!
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My D26 also said absolutely nowhere cold – and then she fell in love with RIT after touring it when it was 19 degrees out, wind chill of 4, and tons of snow on the ground. (I can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen snow.)
Unsure what that’s about, LOL!
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@NEMom26 OMGosh, my D22 slogged through supplemental essays for Rice, WashU, Northwestern, Emory, Davidson, Brown (which also included a 2-minute video essay) – and several others. Then she looked at U Chicago’s essay topics and said, “Are they freaking kidding me with this? I don’t have the brain capacity to answer these.”
She all but threw her laptop across the room, LOL.
We actually now love to just look at U Chicago’s essay topics and use them for dinner conversation – so much interesting stuff, but waaay too stressful to actually write them for real!
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Ok, now I have to go look at U. Chicago’s essay topics!
Out of the 8 currently on C26’s list, only 3 require supplemental essays. That’s very manageable, which is a relief as I want them to apply early wherever they can. (The Arizonas don’t as they auto admit, and CSUs and UMN don’t use essays.)
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Look at all the old ones, too!
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Actually those look really fun. Maybe less so with the stress of a college admission hanging on it!
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Where did your D22 land? Egad, that is a lot of supplemental essays for those schools.