As College Applications Rise, So Does Indecision

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Applying to more schools just makes everything worse,” says Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Lessand a psychology professor at Swarthmore College. “Assuming you apply to six schools and get into three, it’s a hard decision — you beat yourself up and you’re full of regret and doubt about whether you made the right choice. If you apply to 15 schools and get into eight, well, all that does is triple the problem.” Schwartz says, as a result, most students end up feeling tortured while they are making the decision and dissatisfied no matter what they choose in the end. “When you have lots of colleges to choose from — even if you make the right choice — you’ll spend your time, anytime you have a bad day, thinking at Swarthmore, ‘Well, if I was at Yale I wouldn’t be having a day like this,’” he says. “It ends up undermining people’s enthusiasm and then it becomes self-fulfilling.”