Number of School to Apply to

[Octopus28]

Hi everyone! I'm curious how many school people are going to apply to. I originally had a list of 5 schools. From there, it expanded to 11. Now that I submitted 3 so far, I'm starting to think to go back to around 5-7 schools. Any advice?

[ERR_Alpha]

I was told to apply to as many that you could afford, had time to dedicate to, and saw a good research fit. Most people seem to apply to 5-15, depending on how specialized their research interests are.

[dstock]

I applied to 7.  I got 5 interviews-since schools generally have interviews around the same time I think it ended up being 5 weekends in a row.  I definitely would not have wanted to do more than that.

[Appsitude]

5-12 seems like a good number to apply to. 5 interviews was about the max I could do without over-stretching myself last year.

[Octopus28]

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I've applied to 5 schools thus far, all in-reach schools. Nervous for applying for my two (huge) reach schools! But I think I'm going to do it... Being denied is probably better than not knowing at all.

[Appsitude]

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I've applied to 5 schools thus far, all in-reach schools. Nervous for applying for my two (huge) reach schools! But I think I'm going to do it... Being denied is probably better than not knowing at all.

 

Go for it! Bizarre things happen during application season. I have had friends be rejected from their safeties and get in at all of their reaches. Might as well go for it!

[Shamrock_Frog]

I applied to 10 schools. I have interviews at 2 so far, and a few more haven't sent out invites yet.  The 10 took me a lot of time and work and I don't know how people apply to more than 10 and really tailor their application to the program.

[kewz]

I planned to apply to 16 and had all my recommenders submit letters to 16 schools (oops, sorry!) 1-2 months in advance. But I ended up being the one procrastinating and started seriously working on my parts of the apps on Thanksgiving (all due Dec 1-ish). Needless to say I didn't have the time, or energy, to finish all of them. So I downsized my plan to 12, but decided to throw out UCLA, Chicago, UMich, and PSU as I was going through their faculty research in detail one last time due to poor research fit.

 

TL;DR: Applied to 8. In retrospect, 16 was insane and I'm glad I didn't apply to that many. (I did have my GRE sent to ~20 schools tho. ETS I'm staring at you in anger :/)

[CactusWoman]

More than 2

[ilovelab]

However many you can afford/your LoR writers are willing to submit to.