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Maximum Number of Applications LCS limits applications to a maximum of ten. If you present your counselor with more than ten, you will be asked to reduce it. This policy, which is common among college preparatory schools in the US and overseas, is designed to maximize the admission chances for all of our students. Applying to more than 10 colleges suggests you haven’t done your research well. Using the scattergrams in MaiaLearning and discussing options with your counselor should help you choose a reasonable number. Secondly, it is difficult and very timeconsuming to complete too many applications. Students can rarely do a good job both filling out college applications and keeping up with school work extracurricular activities. It’s much better to do an excellent job on a reasonable number of applications than to do a slapdash job on more. Third, it is expensive applying to colleges. Fourth, when it comes near to decision-making time, universities sometimes ask the counselor how many applications the student has completed, or how likely the student is to attend their school. If you’ve applied to more than ten colleges, your counselor will not be able to give the inquiring college the answer they want. Finally, colleges monitor their yield from each high school. Since you can attend only one college, students who apply to large numbers cause the yield from LCS to go down. Colleges notice this and may be less likely to accept future LCS applicants. In the end, it is in the best interest of both you and future LCS students that we limit the number of applications to 10. You have benefited from past students who abided by this limit and your reasonable number of applications will benefit future LCS seniors.
“Clusters” Sometimes, particular schools have many LCS students (clusters) applying or interested in applying. When those schools have a history of accepting many of our students in any one year, cluster applications do not present a problem. If, however, especially selective schools have clusters of LCS applicants, then
quite a few students can expect to be denied admission. We only mention this phenomenon as a way to urge students to look widely and deeply at excellent schools (e.g. top liberal arts and sciences colleges) that may provideoutstandingeducations andexperiences, but are off the beaten LCS track. Additionally, clusters may not be known until after you’ve applied, so please talk to your counselor about this early in the process.
