My big college crush was from Hawaii--he didn't want to go to a CA school, like all of his classmates did, so he picked pretty much at random and ended up at Marquette.

(Oh, he was beautiful. Polynesian/Chinese parentage, with a gorgeous face. I pined for him for three years, and even went on an arranged date with him that was just buddies, but I had dreams...)

I moved 1500 miles away for undergrad, and then 2500 miles away for Grad School.

Vortex, I'd actually be interested in hearing how many colleges you think kids today need to fill out applications for in light of all the accusations of colleges trying to manipulate the US News survey numbers by boosting the # of applications they get so they can turn more people down. Like K-bug, my niece is applying this year, and seems to think she has to put her parents in the poor house just because she's being flooded with brochures.

Cash, may your family work it all out and may you have the most fabulous vacation!

JZ, I hope you feel better soon.

When I applied to colleges (graduated high school in 1999), I applied to 11, which, for my school (suburban NJ school where something like 95% of students went on to 4-year college), was a high number, but not ridiculously so. My sister, four years ahead of me, applied to 14, which was considered a bit excessive. I'm pretty sure that, in that town, somewhere between 10 and 15 is now pretty standard.

I went to the state-next-door college that both my parents and one sister graduated from. Then I dropped out and went to the junior college two blocks from home for four years.

At high school in the UK we could only apply to 5. Fill out one form which gets sent to all 5 universities and included a prioritised list of the schools you were interested to. I understood that you had to take the highest ranked one that wanted you, but I'm not sure how that was enforced.

Of course, if you were Oxbridge (Oxford or Cambridge) you got to have an elaborate system plonked on top of that, and I'm guessing no one ranked them lower than 1st, ever.

I applied to...5 or 6. But my parents wouldn't let me go out-of-state, anyway.

I applied to three. All state schools, as my parents didn't contribute anything to my college expenses so I figured I couldn't afford a private school. But who knows - maybe I would have gotten enough financial aid....

Wow, I only applied to two (Marquette and my back-up, Univ of IL Champaign-Urbana). I did fill out about half of the application for Yale, and considered applying to Lehigh as well, but ended up not even getting the application from them.

When I applied to colleges (graduated high school in 1999), I applied to 11, which, for my school (suburban NJ school where something like 95% of students went on to 4-year college), was a high number, but not ridiculously so. My sister, four years ahead of me, applied to 14, which was considered a bit excessive. I'm pretty sure that, in that town, somewhere between 10 and 15 is now pretty standard

Good lord.

I applied to six and a half (I only half count applying to IU, because it was very half-ass and I had no intention of going there--if I'd actually ended upt here, I'd have been pissed I wasn't in any of the fancy honors stuff I didn't apply to!). Six was the most you could fill out on the FAFSA without having to request additional stuff, so...

I just got the job offer! I am less thrilled than expected, because they offered on the low end of the salary range. Sigh.