What Does a Balanced List of Colleges Look Like?

If you're a student who has strategically navigated high school since 9th grade—meaning you elected to take all of your core English, Math, Science, and Social Studies classes at the highest level your school offers (AP, Honors, IB), filled in gaps in course rigor at your high school by taking community college classes, accelerated your math curriculum (e.g., reaching at least multivariable calculus by senior year), consistently maintained straight A's, published research papers in your field, placed in state or national competitions, and significantly impacted your local community, got your foot in the door by strategically contacting admissions officers and faculty over your 4 years of high school, visited many colleges and thoroughly vetted their campuses, only selecting to apply to the ones you most truly feel at home at—you should consider applying to 4 reach colleges, 3 target colleges, and 2 safety colleges.

An ideal college list for a truly top-tier candidate, someone who meticulously planned their high school career, likely with guidance from a qualified admissions consultant, might include:

Reach Colleges:

• Harvard

• Princeton

• Caltech

• MIT

Target Colleges:

• Washington University in St. Louis

• University of Southern California

• Rice University

Safety Colleges:

• University of Washington/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 

• UCLA/UC Berkeley/UC San Diego/UC Irvine/UC Santa Barbara (These UCs are being counted as one college because they share a common application.)
  A strong alternative safety school if you'd prefer a single school would be Purdue University.

Even if you're not aiming for Ivy League or other Tier 1 schools, you can still apply to just 9 colleges without having a world-class profile. The key is accurately gauging what constitutes a competitive GPA at your desired schools, understanding the exclusivity of summer programs commonly attended by admitted students, acquiring a good idea of the type of placements admitted students achieve in recognized academic competitions, understanding the quantifiable impact admitted students have on their local community, having long-term meaningful engagement with faculty and admissions officers at those selected colleges, going on admission officer-led tours, and then further exploring the campuses yourself to ensure that each university is a personal match for you.

If you didn't specifically strategize from early high school, but you're confident in your accomplishments and recognize you're a strong candidate, a suitable college list might include 12 colleges:

• 4 reach colleges

• 6 target colleges

• 2 safety colleges

Lastly, if you didn't fully optimize your high school career yet remain determined to attend a prestigious college, you may consider applying to 15 colleges. Typically, such a list would follow one of these structures:

• 7 reach colleges, 6 target colleges, 2 safeties

• 6 reach colleges, 7 target colleges, 2 safeties

• 6 reach colleges, 6 target colleges, 3 safeties

If you know you are a weaker applicant with a low GPA and limited extracurricular activities, having just gone through the motions in high school, instead of applying to 20+ schools for which you lack the academic stats and extracurricular accomplishments to be competitive for, focus on applying to 9-15 schools that you know you are competitive for, even if they are all state colleges with 80%+ acceptance rates. Applying to 20+ schools out of fear and desperation to get into a four-year college is a recipe for disaster. If your applicant profile is so misaligned that you believe your only chance to get into a four-year college is to apply to as many schools as possible, you might be better off starting at a community college and transferring later. Making drastic decisions where you knowingly compromise quality for volume based on fear and desperation sets a harmful precedent for your life.

Applying to more than 15 colleges is always unnecessary unless you meet very specific criteria. These criteria are:

• You are an international student whose dream is to live and attend college in the U.S., but this dream can only become a reality by being admitted to an elite U.S. institution.

• You are applying to a major that you are so overly represented in, that in order to be even competitive for it, you already need to be qualified for the dream job you hope to land after completing college. In other words, the bar to enter the major is so high, if you are a competitive applicant for that major, it means that you also have a reasonable chance of being hired for your post-college dream job if you just apply for it now while in high school. Right now the only demographic and major that fits this criteria are South Asians applying to T20 computer science programs. Though that might change.

If you want to learn why applying to more than 15 colleges is for most students an utterly ruinous decision (unless you fit into one of the two aforementioned specific groups), check out our past blog post: How Many Colleges to Apply For.

If you need help creating a balanced list of colleges to apply to, contact an admissions expert today.