How many scholarships should you actually apply to?

Volume matters up to a point, and then quality dominates. Twenty carefully targeted applications reliably outperform sixty rushed ones, because the marginal application is always weaker than the last.

A workable target for a senior year is fifteen to twenty-five applications, weighted toward local and niche awards where the pools are small.

Track them in one sheet with deadline, status, and materials required. Students who abandon their tracker usually stop applying within a month of doing so.