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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1[b]. don't apply to more than 10 schools. good apps take a lot of time. copy and pasting big portions of essays from school to school isn't great when the questions are really different. [/b]

2. apply to colleges that know and like your HS. look at where kids have gone in recent years. that's your universe.

3. but zig where others zag. if everyone is applying to x school, apply to y school. schools get very hot, very quickly.

so find the 5 year emissions list from your HS and apply to 10 schools from that list, making sure that you pick a few that are not getting all the best applicants from your HS

[/quote]

1. this would have been horrible advice for my kid. got into 5 reach schools, a few of which prob would have been dropped by your rules. I'd say start essays REALLY early. Like June/July. The finished product for the supplementals look very different from early drafts (e.g., much better/stronger).

2. agree with 2. If your HS hasn't send someone to that college in last 3-4 years, might be really uphill battle.

3. Yes, find schools where 25% of the class isn't applying.

My kid applied to 20 schools. Got into 15. Probably applied to too many safeties and targets, but agree with your last point in theory. However, 3 of kids reaches were the colleges where a LOT of people in class applied. Kid just had a very tailored application and likely stronger understanding of the school showed in the school-specific essays.[/quote]

Applying to 20 schools is insane. Getting into 5 reach schools isn't as great as it sounds. Decision making can be very stressful and even paralyzing when there are too many similar choices. Your kid probably could have taken 2-3 reaches off their list and still had a choice between 2 or 3 reaches which would have been more than enough to make a great decision. It's a huge commitment to applying to 20 schools, and there is no prize for getting into 15 schools when you can only attend 1. If the list is 20, I'm sure with some thought and even if you only prioritized location, they could have easily identified 5 schools at least not to apply to and still had a great result. There's just no upside to getting into that many schools. Think of all the time your student wasted researching and writing apps and tailoring essays for 20 schools! That's time (days/weeks/months) in their life they will never get back! Just to get the same result.

Our kid's time and our money (application fee) matters too. People don't need to apply to 20 schools to get into a target or reach. Just think more carefully about the reaches/targets to include. Your school's naviance is very helpful to weed out that super unlikely reach.[/quote]

i think the issue is sometimes you just don't know what the outcome will be. DD with high stats and strong EC got into 3/3 safeties (50-65% accept rate, rank 50-70), 3/3 targets (30% accept rate, rank 40-50), 5/7 low reach (10-15% accept rate, rank 20-40), and 0/9 high reach (<10% accept rate, rank top 20). of the high reach schools, she was rejected from 5 and wl at 4. of the low reach schools she didn't get into, 1 was reject, 1 was wl. she has great options but even the low reach schools could have been wl or rejections. she is asian at strong public school, STEM major, so demographics also probably played a role. agree that if kid is happy with target/safeties, that's great. DD would be happy at targets but definitely prefers the low reaches she got into but the results were pretty unpredictable. [/quote]

our college counselor insists that more applications does not = better outcomes. I'm in agreement. 9 high reaches is too many high reaches.  Maybe more time on reflecting best fit and on applications themselves would have resulted in a better than 0/9 run. Maybe not but applying to half the T20s doesnt sound like thoughtful process. [/quote]

Agree, the key is tailoring and the quality of the output. 
Each school needs to be thoroughly researched with a strategy or plan in place. It rarely just comes together.[/quote]

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