How many colleges are kids applying to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my. Parent of a junior. I'm assuming those who are applying to 15+ schools are applying to many that have a common application. Cannot imagine writing supplemental essays for 15 schools?

This!

It is not as hard as you think. There are common themes. After 5 schools it becomes repetitive.

My DD is applying to 15 schools and each school has at least 1 supplemental essay. Some have 3 extra essays. So far there is no common theme. But it’s very school dependent. Some of her friends applying to big state schools have the repetitive essays. But so far, my DD has not had any essays that are similar.

[Anonymous]

My high stat magnet kid applied to 4 (1 ED, 3 EA) for CS. He will probably apply to 10 more by RD. Though I don't see him doing any work for it. He ran out of steam. Or he is hoping that he gets in on the strength of his ea/ed applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter was complaining about using the common app to apply for 8 schools. My husband and I each applied to 6 schools in the early 90s using a typewriter! These kids have it easy!!!!!

Disagree. I applied to college in those days, and I find the new process harder. The Common App helps with some degree in not having to retype basic info, but the additional questions asked by every college (some that basically recreate the app, not to mention supplemental essays) and requests for additional documentation, all presented in slightly different formats, make it more complicated and easier to mess up. We just realized that DC missed EA at one school because his transcript wasn’t presented in exactly the right way for that school (even though it’s been fine for every other). Add in the Coalition App, and things like the SRAR, it’s very time consuming.

Totally agree. The phrase "Common App" is deceptive for all of the reasons you list. On the surface, it sounds great - you supposedly enter all your information once and then only have to worry about supplemental essays. This is not true at all. Each school has some version of the same questions that you have to enter from scratch, each time. Residency was just one subject that was asked in different ways by all of the schools DC applied to. Very tedious and time-consuming.
DP

[Anonymous]

Nine colleges on the list. Seven them are universities in the T50-T100 range and two are LACS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter was complaining about using the common app to apply for 8 schools. My husband and I each applied to 6 schools in the early 90s using a typewriter! These kids have it easy!!!!!

Disagree. I applied to college in those days, and I find the new process harder. The Common App helps with some degree in not having to retype basic info, but the additional questions asked by every college (some that basically recreate the app, not to mention supplemental essays) and requests for additional documentation, all presented in slightly different formats, make it more complicated and easier to mess up. We just realized that DC missed EA at one school because his transcript wasn’t presented in exactly the right way for that school (even though it’s been fine for every other). Add in the Coalition App, and things like the SRAR, it’s very time consuming.

Totally agree. The phrase "Common App" is deceptive for all of the reasons you list. On the surface, it sounds great - you supposedly enter all your information once and then only have to worry about supplemental essays. This is not true at all. Each school has some version of the same questions that you have to enter from scratch, each time. Residency was just one subject that was asked in different ways by all of the schools DC applied to. Very tedious and time-consuming.
DP

Agree about common app NOT being common. Dd is applying to 5 or 6 schools, each has extra questions on the common app and of course at least one extra essay.

[Anonymous]

Based on threads here and on College Confidential on EA responses from some of the more popular "safety" rolling application schools on here (e.g., Pitt, Auburn), it seems that those schools got a significant increase in applications and are considerably tougher to get into this year EA (RD remains to be seen). Sounds like quite a few kids who got deferred from those schools are upping the number of apps they will put in RD. It will be interesting, come December, whether we see the same effect for non-rolling EA applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. My DS has applied to 8 so far -- 1 ED, 6 EA, 1 RD w/an 11/15 deadline. He'll add 5 UC campuses by 11/30. Depending on the outcome of this early round, he's ready to ​max out his Common App with another 13 schools to make for a total of 26. (One of the ones already submitted had to be done via the Coalition App.) His list is entirely composed of what should be targets and safeties - no reaches.

Strange strategy if you are not making it up. If you bother to apply to 26 why not include a few reaches?

DP: They are probably looking for merit aid offers.

PP here - not looking for merit. Full pay family. Just very wary about the admissions process, especially given all the craziness in numbers since covid. We've heard too many horror stories from kids who got shut out of schools that seemed like easy matches. His ED school is a high target - his stats are well within the green checks on the scattergrams - but who really knows nowadays?

I hope in the end the list will be much shorter. At least 5 of the schools will fall off the RD list if he gets into one of the EA schools he liked. And he really only wanted to apply to one UC school, where his cousin went and where we have family, but since it's no additional work to send the application to multiple campuses, we figured why not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my. Parent of a junior. I'm assuming those who are applying to 15+ schools are applying to many that have a common application. Cannot imagine writing supplemental essays for 15 schools?

This!

Running out of steam for sure. So many supplemental essays. Try to get your junior to do as much work next summer on the essays. it’s really difficult to balance all the demands and fun of senior year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my. Parent of a junior. I'm assuming those who are applying to 15+ schools are applying to many that have a common application. Cannot imagine writing supplemental essays for 15 schools?

This!

Running out of steam for sure. So many supplemental essays. Try to get your junior to do as much work next summer on the essays. it’s really difficult to balance all the demands and fun of senior year.

The problem is that you don't have access to any of the supplemental essays/questions until the schools open their individual applications within the common app in early September. You can write the common app essays, but that's about it.

[Anonymous]

So far two. If it needs to go to RD then will apply to 3-5 more, depending if I can make a convincing argument for the higher number.

[Anonymous]

10 school capped number of applications, thiughbI think if DC gets a lot of rejections, they will allow more late Dec.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my. Parent of a junior. I'm assuming those who are applying to 15+ schools are applying to many that have a common application. Cannot imagine writing supplemental essays for 15 schools?

This!

Running out of steam for sure. So many supplemental essays. Try to get your junior to do as much work next summer on the essays. it’s really difficult to balance all the demands and fun of senior year.

The problem is that you don't have access to any of the supplemental essays/questions until the schools open their individual applications within the common app in early September. You can write the common app essays, but that's about it.

You can apply via common app and still have supplemental essays. They are not mutually exclusive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my. Parent of a junior. I'm assuming those who are applying to 15+ schools are applying to many that have a common application. Cannot imagine writing supplemental essays for 15 schools?

This!

Running out of steam for sure. So many supplemental essays. Try to get your junior to do as much work next summer on the essays. it’s really difficult to balance all the demands and fun of senior year.

The problem is that you don't have access to any of the supplemental essays/questions until the schools open their individual applications within the common app in early September. You can write the common app essays, but that's about it.

You can apply via common app and still have supplemental essays. They are not mutually exclusive.

Why do you need common app or anything else to start working on supplemental essays? Use prompts from previous years which are available on schools website and elsewhere on internet and start brainstorming/drafting something

[Anonymous]

Fourteen. This year is too crazy to not have a Plan B, Plan C, Plan D…..

[Anonymous]

3.8 weighted GPA kid applied to 5 early (one Early Decision - the binding one right?). His top choices are all in that list. If he needs to, he has another 4 on his list he'll apply Regular Decision to over Christmas break.