Reply to How many applications are too many (or too few)?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "How many applications are too many (or too few)?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If your student is willing to complete 15 apps, then 15 apps is fine.

Most do about 9 with 3 reaches, 3 matches, and 3 safeties. To be blunt, once one has identified and applied to at least 2 safeties, then the rest doesn't matter as much. [/quote]

I agree with both of these comments.

DC sounds very similar to your DC.

Deferred ED, so they ended up applying to 15 additional schools. A few were EA and already in. They finished a few targets in October/November and felt there was a benefit to getting them in early, so those were done. But the rest required a ton of extra work.

Regarding PP's comment about your kid being willing to do the work, know it might be substantial and time consuming.

Unfortunately, DC's RD schools all had 3+ "optional" (but not really) essays, including the targets and safeties. Some essay questions overlapped for sure, but even when the questions were similar (tell us about your academic interests etc.), the specifics were each a bit different, as were the word counts.

Up to your DC how they want to handle that. Some kids pretty much cut-and-paste from other applications and chop out a paragraph or two where needed to fit the word count (which can range from 100-600 words on the same topic.)

DC tends to be all-in and chose to answer the questions exactly as asked, which meant different focal points. And they were advised not to repeat information in the essays for a single school. So that ended up requiring reworking, too.

I share all this ridiculous detail because a year ago we genuinely did not understand what it meant for DC to "do the work" of 15 applications. We thought it would be a relatively easy cut-and-paste situation. DC would write a few reusable supplements and then swap in different details for the "Why Our College" essays.

That's not what they wound up doing, and they're genuinely exhausted as a result. :(  Never been so grateful for winter break.

Finally, I have massive empathy for every kid and parent going through this process. We know tons of kids who are much more targeted in how they apply. They love their safety and plan to go there, and then add a couple of targets and reaches to see what happens. Or they get lucky with schools that don't have additional supplements. We're hoping DC2 is one of those kids!!!

But if your DD is shooting for T25 schools, the outcomes truly are unpredictable. Yes, their stats are excellent (congrats!) and make them a contender for pretty much any school. But from there, it's near impossible to predict what will happen, even using Naviance as a guide.

So that can mean more applications with a lot more work involved. Good luck, and have your DC start writing essays early.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics