Anonymous wrote:My kid is starting with a handful of schools with rolling or EA. His top two choices are on that list. If one of those choices comes back with an affordable option, he'll stop there. If not, he has other schools identified for RD.

Mine is doing 1 ED private. One EA public.

If he gets into the ED. Done.

My 2024 did 17 and it was waaaaayy too many. Was accepted to most of them RD.

19

My DC's classmate at a highly ranked public, applied early action to HYPSM and was deferred so applied to 20 or so schools in RD. Was later accepted to the HYPSM after deferral AND sweeped the rest of the HYPSM plus more - other ivies, Duke, CMU, Vandy, Rice etc. with merit scholarships at the T20 that offer merit. If they got in early action, they wouldn't have applied to so many T20 in RD and perhaps other top students from their school may have been accepted.

I think DD has 16 on her list right now, but hopefully she’ll get in ED to her favorite and won’t have to apply to all of them. CollegeVine calls 2 of them safeties and the other 14 targets (for some reason, since at least 4 of them have sub-10% acceptance rates).

17. We added 2 safeties just because and it was not a lot of extra work

For most people 5 is good enough.

*unnecessarily

Anonymous wrote:Is more than 15 too much?

Imo 12-15 is the perfect amount. I feel like applicants applying to more than 20 are just not getting proper counseling and making this process uny difficult and stressful for themselves and others.

If aiming for T20, the more the better in RD.

Anonymous wrote:Is more than 15 too much?

List to look at? To apply to? To tour? Not sure what you’re asking.

My oldest toured at maybe 10, applied to I think 8

Younger toured at about 5, applied to 9-10. Other contact was through college fairs etc

9 at the moment but may drop a few.

DC1 had 16, all of the with multiples supplemental essays and interviews. Too much work. Got into 13. DC2 also 16 but some have no supplementals and less interviews.

NYC surburban public high, it's standard for high stats kids to have 18-22. And the numbers game works, often only accepted by 1 or 2 top20 schools.

For kids not aiming for top schools, 5-10 is enough, SUNY and CUNY are typical choices.

Seven, already admitted to one.

my kids school limits to 9, which was a ton of work two years ago and I couldn't imagine doing more.

this kid has several with no supplemental essays. that's a total game changer