Distinctive

By Adrian Cho, Ph.D.

Happy New Year, dear readers! As we begin 2026, the time comes to begin seriously considering the list of colleges you will build (if you are a junior). It’s not just about finding schools that might accept you. It’s about identifying places where you can genuinely thrive.

Building your college list feels like a weighty endeavor. You’re choosing where you’ll spend four formative years of your life and making a significant financial investment in a decision that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The number of options can feel overwhelming, with over 2,400 four-year colleges in the U.S. alone. Add in pressure from family and friends who might have strong opinions about where you should apply, and it’s no wonder the process feels daunting. In this post, I want to discuss some common pitfalls to avoid as you build your list, so you can take some of the weight off your shoulders.

Applying to too many schools

Admissions can feel like a lottery. Families can’t see how decisions are made behind closed doors, and colleges don’t have to justify why they accept or reject specific applicants. You might hear about someone with lower GPA or test scores than average getting into a reach school, while another classmate with perfect grades gets rejected – but you do not know the full story. Maybe he was a recruited athlete, a legacy admit, or filled a specific institutional need. The process isn’t purely meritocratic – a common and understandable, but ultimately misleading assumption. It’s driven by institutional priorities, like building a diverse class, filling specific programs, and meeting enrollment targets. This opacity can make the whole process feel chaotic and random.

In an effort to increase their chances, students are frequently tempted to apply to many more schools than is advisable. However, just because the admissions process can feel random doesn’t mean it really is. In particular, you can’t treat each application as an independent coin toss; they are statistically correlated. If you are a strong STEM student applying to selective engineering programs, they’ll evaluate you on many similar criteria, such as your math and science grades, research experience, technical projects, internships, as well as “soft” qualities that make you unique as a person. This means that adding more schools doesn’t diversify your odds the way flipping more uncorrelated coins would. Instead, you need something distinctive to stand out, not just more applications.

There’s also the practical, time cost of each additional application to consider. The college application process almost becomes a job during the fall semester of senior year. Diluting your efforts across 15 or 20 schools will result in weaker, less focused applications. Quality matters more than quantity, which is why we work with our students to identify up to 10 thoughtfully chosen schools and craft strong applications for each.

Prestige and name recognition over fit

Despite the 2,400+ four-year colleges in the United States, only a few dozen schools dominate the dinner table conversations. Regional and familial biases shape which schools you consider “good,” especially if your parents or peers attended them. If you are from the D.C. area, you’ll certainly have heard of Georgetown, George Washington, UVA, and UMD. But what about Denison, Reed, Harvey Mudd, or the University of Wisconsin? These are top-tier institutions that simply don’t have the same name recognition in this particular region.

The familiarity bias can also work both ways. You might be overlooking excellent schools, because you or your family haven’t heard of them, OR overvaluing schools, just because they’re well-known in your area or social circle.

Related to name recognition is the trap of focusing on prestige over fit, also discussed in my colleague Adam’s great blog post. To be fair, prestige CAN matter. It can help open doors, especially early in your career. To really evaluate whether a school is good for you, however, you will have to ask yourself some critical questions. Can you name specific programs, professors, or opportunities that genuinely excite you beyond the ranking? How about the feel of the student body and the focus of the institution? If you struggle to articulate this, you either haven’t done enough deliberate research on the school, or it doesn’t actually align with what you’re looking for. This becomes painfully obvious when you sit down to write one of the most common supplemental essay questions: “Why do you want to come to our school?” If you can’t enthusiastically explain why you want to attend beyond its familiarity or prestige, your essay will be generic and unconvincing.

Building an unbalanced list

Even if you’re applying to a reasonable number of schools, the composition of your list matters. Too often, students are tempted to build lists that are heavy on reach schools, where admission is uncertain, even for the strongest applicants. The thinking goes, “If I apply to 8 reach schools, at least one will say yes, right?” But as discussed earlier, admissions decisions are correlated. If you’re getting rejected from one highly selective school, the odds are likely that you’ll face similar challenges at others with comparable selectivity.

A balanced list includes schools across three broad categories: reaches (admission is uncertain), targets (you’re a competitive applicant), and safeties (admission is likely, but not guaranteed). A good rule of thumb would be to have 3-4 reaches, 3-4 targets, and 2-3 safeties, though the exact numbers will vary depending on your individual profile and goals. Importantly, your safety and target schools shouldn’t be afterthoughts or “backup plans.” They should be schools you are genuinely excited to attend.

When good advice feels hard to implement

Building a college list is deeply personal and emotional. The pressure to aim for well-known or prestigious schools comes from everywhere – parents, peers, counselors, cultural messages about success. After years of these messages, the choice takes on gargantuan proportions, like your entire future hinges on it. That’s when anxiety and fear of the unknown creep in and start driving your decisions, often without you realizing it. Rational, deliberate thinking goes out the window. You tell yourself, “What if I don’t apply and I would have gotten in?” or “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Familiar school names feel safe and predictable, becoming a crutch that lets you avoid the harder work of soul searching, and researching less familiar but potentially better-fitting options.

You can try to check yourself and see if emotions are driving your decisions. Try asking yourself these questions for each school on your list:

• If this school had zero name recognition, would I still want to go? (tests prestige obsession)
• Can I name three specific things that excite me beyond the ranking? (tests if you’ve actually researched)
• Would I be genuinely happy attending this school, or am I just adding it to feel like I’m doing something? (tests anxiety-driven list padding)

If you’re struggling to answer these honestly, that’s a sign to step back and reassess.

Conclusion

Building a thoughtful list takes research and self-awareness. Take the time to create a balanced list that includes reaches, targets, and safeties that you’d actually be excited to attend. Yes, you need to know the facts about programs and opportunities. You also need to recognize when anxiety or social pressure is driving your decisions rather than genuine fit. The schools on your list should reflect what you want for your college experience, not what sounds the most impressive. As Frank Bruni argues in his book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, what ultimately matters is what you actually do in college – your efforts and engagements – not the name on your diploma.