Have you ever been to a farmers market in the middle of the summer and been so taken with the abundance of heirloom tomatoes, just-picked sweet white corn, summer squash, melons and peaches that you bought more than you could eat? I have, and then a few days later when I realize my folly, I scramble to make sauces that I can freeze in order not to waste the food. It’s actually a bit stressful because I don’t always have the time to be Ma on The Little House on the Prairie preserving things for the winter. Later I reflect on my produce choices, and I not only bought too much, I bought some items that weren’t really good fits for me and my lifestyle. I don’t love eggplant, it’s a textural thing, unless it’s breaded and covered in marinara sauce and cheese. Why did I buy that eggplant? I guess because it was a beautiful, glossy purple and others around me were snatching them up. In the end I had a full basket of beautiful produce worthy of a Gourmet Magazine photo shoot, but my choices were inappropriate and excessive.
Inevitably as the application season starts to wind down, many seniors experience the results of having applied to too many schools. Some just stop and don’t apply to the remaining schools on their list, others blindly proceed submitting inferior essays, ones that they have retrofitted for every school. I’ve heard horror stories about students who forgot to substitute the name of the current school for the name previously used. In short, they bought too much fruit that now needs to be preserved or thrown away. They cast their nets too wide.
How many is too many? The answer is different for each person. The important thing is to make sure that every school on the list is a school that the student could be excited about attending. Parents and friends will influence this list, and it will grow and grow and may quickly become unmanageable. Here are five reasons to reduce your unwieldy list:
1. Lack of Clarity
High school students often fail to realize the amount of work it takes to put together a solid application that best presents themselves to admissions. The best applications flow from a fountain of knowledge about the school and solid reasons for wanting to attend. College-bound seniors with twenty or more colleges on their lists often find that they can’t remember details about each school. From experience I will tell you, the devil is in the details. It might be that they don’t remember the unique qualities about the programs at each of their schools or simply what the requirements are. Either way, their applications will suffer if they can’t articulate what it is about XYZ University that makes them want to attend. An excessive number of schools on a list will lead to confusion between schools and thus a weaker application.