On the surface, it seems to be a simple question: How many college applications should you submit?
The answer may be more than parents may think, and the reason is that the admissions process has become less predictable, college consultants said.
“I have one student this year who was waitlisted at the University of Chicago and accepted at Yale, Harvard and Columbia,” said Shirley Bloomquist, a college counselor in Great Falls, Virginia with 30 years of experience.
Another student with similar credentials was accepted to the University of Chicago but rejected by Yale. “It’s much more variable than it used to be,” Bloomquist said.
There’s a chicken vs. egg quality to all this uncertainty. The national college acceptance rate has steadily declined in the past 10 years, but that’s in large part due to the growth in applications each student submits, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s latest “State of College Admission” report.