“The question is, where’s the sweet spot at the top of the inverted U?”
Totally agree with the theory of the inverted U. The sweet spot will vary by kid, though. I think the important variables that would determine where the sweet spot is for any particular kid include:
- How quickly and well the student researches. Doing the research to figure out what a certain school culture and fit plus what that school values in admissions takes time. The better and faster researchers would have more ability to do this well for a number of schools, where less experienced or slower researchers might do best if they stick to a few schools so they can do their best work.
- How quickly and well the student writes essays. Great essays incorporate some of the key points that the college is looking for and since that varies by college, so will the essays (at least slightly, there are obviously some things that would be valued universally.) Especially important is doing a good, targeted job on the "Why this college" essays.
- Commonality of the target colleges. Using the top 10 colleges in the USNWR as an example, those are all outstanding colleges but some value different things. So if a kid applied to all the top 10, to maximize chances, some customizing of essays and ordering of the app would be helpful since those colleges value different things. To the extent that a student is applying to colleges that are looking for similar things, less work will be needed in customizing.
My kid is a good researcher and very practical, but takes a long time to write good essays. It was helpful for him to group the colleges into ones that were looking for similar things and knock off a those apps at the same time then do the outliers later. He was not a kid who would have done well with 20 apps since the quality of his writing went down as he got “over” the process. Think he ended up with 7 or 8 really good, targeted applications which was great for him, so using the inverted U theory - his sweet spot was 8. YMMV