How many colleges to apply to?

[Anonymous]

We're starting the process this year with a HS junior. How many did your kids apply to and how many safeties, targets, and reaches would you say is ideal?

[Anonymous]

After this year’s cycle, we are starting to get a little nervous. My junior is currently planning 2-3 safety, 3-4 target and 5-6 reaches. Still finalizing.

[Anonymous]

Here’s a long discussion about numbers: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1260351.page#29554565

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:After this year’s cycle, we are starting to get a little nervous. My junior is currently planning 2-3 safety, 3-4 target and 5-6 reaches. Still finalizing.

That’s a lot of reaches.

[Anonymous]

My son did 4 safeties, 5 targets, 2 reaches.
Plus
5 through UCAS
And
1 in the EU.

[Anonymous]

11

4 reaches
4 targets
3 safeties

It worked out well and seemed reasonable enough.

[Anonymous]

2024 kid - 20
2025 kid - 3

2024 had too many safeties and targets in hindsight. Their top flagship was a guarantee so really didn’t need anything below it. I know some people will jump on that, but it is for top of class.

[Anonymous]

21 schools.
4 safeties; 6 targets and 11 reaches.

[Anonymous]

Our HS senior applied to 3 safeties, 5 targets, and 5 reaches. This distribution worked well for her. It especially helped that a safety (Pitt) had rolling admissions, so she had one acceptance by early October.

[Anonymous]

There is no magic number. DS did 3 safeties, 4 targets, and 3 reaches. But he really liked all his targets and safeties.

We also had DS apply to one rolling school (he got admitted in October) and apply EA whenever available. So by Christmas, he already had about 5 acceptances. He didn’t need to apply to more schools with January deadlines because he liked his EA acceptances, but he would have had time to submit more applications if EA hadn’t gone well.

[Anonymous]

Have 3 safeties that your child would be happy to attend. Having these be different "types" of schools could be helpful as sometimes they realize through the process things they like and don't like.
It is fine to revisit the list and ask - knowing what you know now - how do you feel about these schools? If you got in - would you attend? I know kids who applied to schools they would NEVER attend so the parents thought there were choices - but the kids did not say until the end that they were really not interested.

[Anonymous]

My youngest is a current college freshman (so high school class of 24)

He applied to five total. We felt his top choice was kind of in between a reach and a target (I think they call it a "hard target?)
He got in to all 5, with merit at all except his top choice.

[Anonymous]

A lot depends on what your student is looking for and your budget.

We knew all reaches other than UVA/W&M would be out of budget so each kid only applied to one reach - DS to UVA, DD to W&M (both not interested in the other school).

Safeties/targets:
DS had 3 (VT, JMU, UDel). Hard to know where the line was between safety and target This was a few years ago when JMU was more predictable. And, he was applying to a high-admit rate major at VT.

DD had 5, pretty much all safeties. Only UMW in state + OOS LACs that give merit. Multiples because she wasn't 100% sure which she preferred and we wanted to compare merit offers.

So DS's total was 4 and DD's was 6. Both got in everywhere except the reach.

[Anonymous]

HS 23
2 reaches, 8 targets, 2 safeties. Accepted 0, 6, 2

[Anonymous]

20.

Most kids from our school apply to 12-20. Usually add the extra 8 for RD deadlines after an early rejection or deferral.