How Many Colleges Should I Apply To?

How many colleges should I apply to?

I get this one all the time:  How many colleges should I apply to?  The answer to this question is simple:  at least one.

But before you dismiss the simple answer as a weak attempt at wit, consider this: you can attend only one college.

Or for those who transfer from one college to another, you can attend only one college at a time.

The team at Great College Advice has worked with lots of students who have applied to only one college—and been blissfully happy. These students are able to clarify their priorities with crystalline clarity. They then have the good sense to recognize when a school matches those priorities. When the find this perfect match, such students feel they need to look no further—and they don’t.

But there are other sorts of students who apply to only one college. All students who (successfully) apply Early Decision to their first choice college apply to only one college. Again, they make the decision to put all their eggs in one basket. But before they can concentrate their eggs in this way, they have to do their homework. They have to really consider what it is they want in a college. And then select the one college that seems to fit those criteria the best.

Reasons for applying to more than one college

There are several reasons for applying to more than one college–and some are better than others. 

• Some of the schools on the short list are more difficult to get into than others. So the student casts the net broadly to see where the acceptances come from.
• The student has narrowed down his list, but cannot identify a clear favorite by the time the applications are due.
• The student (and her parents!) seek financial aid. Whether need based or merit based, or both, and wants to wait to see what sort of aid package is offered.
• The student really has no idea what sort of college would be the best, and therefore sends out bunches of applications hoping for inspiration by the time the decisions are rendered by the colleges. 

So the reasons boil down to either factors related to the selectivity of the college (in which case, apply to lots to cast the net widely in the hopes of landing something desirable and/or prestigious) or factors related to the indecision of the student. 

For our part, the goal is to help the student make those decisions before the applications are sent out.  This not only helps to limit the list, but it eliminates some uncertainty.  If the student can narrow the list to certain types of colleges that resemble one another, then this eliminates the possibility that they will end up attending the “wrong” university.  Narrowing the field by making clear choices early in the process also avoids the possibility that an applicant’s fate will be decided by some nameless, faceless person in an admissions office.

Why are applicants applying to so many colleges now?

There really has become a sort of “arms race” in college admissions, especially among the most selective colleges.  More and more applications.  Lower and lower acceptance rates. Crazier and crazier admissions requirements and policies and deadlines and application rounds. There is a lot of change, especially at the top. 

Why?  Why is it so competitive?  Why are kids submitting more and more applications?  Why are more and more families seeking the aid of independent college consultants, like us? 

A report called the”State of College Admissions” from the National Council for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC, or “nack-ack”) provides some statistical reference points.

Get this:

• The share of students applying to seven or more colleges rose from 10 percent in 1995 to 36% in 2017.
• Acceptance rates at the most prestigious universities (e.g., Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford) are now in the low single digits–and are likely to continue declining.
• Yield rates (the percentage of students who accept an offer of admission) have declined to 33.7% in 2017 from 48% in 2017.
• The most selective four-year colleges—defined as those accepting less than half of all applicants— received 37 percent of all Fall 2016 applications but enrolled only 21 percent of first-time undergraduate students.

Note that the Common Application–which was established in 2007–has made it much easier to apply to numerous colleges at the push of a button and the swipe of a credit card.  

The race to the top just continues.  

The fact is that the most selective colleges like this phenomenon, whereby kids are sending out more and more applications to more and more schools. A friend and college admissions director and I were talking about this just yesterday over lunch. Colleges have every incentive to make it look like they are desirable. Thus they use every means possible to widen the sales funnel and to increase the number of applicants…just so that they can reject more of them.

Because if they can reject more students, then their admission rates go down, and their ranking with US News can rise. 

And for schools that have lower yield rates, they need more and more applicants just to fill their classes.  And those same schools then change admissions policies in order to encourage a higher yield rate–such as encouraging more applicants in the Early Decision round, and–more recently–by creating a second Early Decision round . This sort of strategy has worked for a number of selective liberal arts colleges:  the Early Decision acceptance rate might be 35%, but the acceptance rate in the regular round plummets to 4% or less–making the average acceptance rate around 12-15%.  

Thus kids, feeling the pressure of rejection, apply to more colleges. For game theorists, this is a game of “chicken” in which escalation is inevitable until someone swerves, someone breaks the cycle. An Applications Arms Race.

Who’s going to break the cycle? The kids? Not on your life: they feel that their futures are at stake.

The colleges? Not when they live and die by their budgets and by their rankings with US News (which depend, in part, on application and yield rates).

NACAC? Nope, they represent the colleges.

The government? Hah…now, that’s funny!

I don’t see an end in sight, unless parents and kids get smart and really start looking at raw statistics, including yield rates, and figure out that it doesn’t make sense to apply to so many.
Choose more wisely, be realistic about your chances (neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic). Spend the time developing a very solid application to the colleges you really, really want to attend. And have the confidence that you will get a great education no matter where you land.

So, really, how many colleges should I apply to? 

Well, it depends on which reason we focus upon. If the student is trying to ensure admission to at least one school, then two or three is the minimum number, with the list growing to no more than ten depending on the circumstances.

When a student is particularly indecisive, their inclination is to apply to more, not fewer colleges. Usually, I try to force the student to narrow the list to no more than ten, and usually about six or eight. One of the reasons for this is that more applications can mean a lot more time (and money) spent on their preparation. Especially when a student is applying to highly selective schools that require multiple essays. The student is better off applying to fewer colleges and making sure that each application is a gem. To do otherwise risks spreading oneself too thinly—and each individual application may suffer from the collective weight of the burden.

When it comes to financial aid, the number can be more fluid. Again, if the student and the family are careful in selecting the colleges according to each college’s history in awarding merit and need-based financial aid, then they can keep the list relatively short. However, with some students (especially those for whom a full-tuition scholarship may be essential), we have expanded the number of applications in order to give the student more possible options—and a better financial aid package in the end.

We also highly encourage the use of the Early Decision rounds and Early Action rounds, when available. Submitting early applications can end up decreasing the number of applications a student ultimately submits.  Obviously, if the student gets into the first choice school in the Early Decision round, then the game is over.  And if the student is accepted to a school or two under Early Action, they the student may feel less panic about applying to zillions of other schools.

College admission is not a science. It’s more art. So it’s difficult to develop a hard and fast rule on the number of applications each student should complete. Generally, I do not think it is necessary to sprinkle applications all over the place. It’s better to engage in the hard thinking and decision-making before the applications need to be completed.

In the end, the number of applications each student fills out depends on who they are, what they want, and what they need.

Need help in answering the question of how many colleges should I apply to?

The team at Great College Advice is comprised of experienced counselors who can help students narrow their college lists based on criteria that matter.  We walk students through a discovery process of expressing their desires, enumerating their priorities, and considering their family budget. Our hope is that our students can optimize their ultimate results and improve their chances of getting what they want from their college experience.  

If you feel that you need help narrowing your list, increasing your efficiency, and improving your outcomes, give us a call or connect via our website.  We would be delighted to speak with you.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant