For undergraduate school, I applied to three (no safeties): Duke (rejected), Johns Hopkins (rejected), and Vanderbilt (attended, no regrets). I had good grades in HS but middling standardized test scores and was too cynical to do volunteer work, etc. for the sole purpose of padding my chances at getting into the best college possible.
For graduate school, I aimed somewhat lower and got into 5 of 6 places.
I applied to 3 colleges last year – U. of Chicago, a Tennessee state university, and the honors college at a state university in Pennsylvania.
I was rejected by U. of Chicago, but I got into the other two. I got a scholarship from the PA school and the honors college is nice, so I opted to go there. Time will tell how I like it, seeing as how I just got here today.
2, and I did a half assed job on 1 of them.
I wanted to go to UC Santa Cruz and that’s where I got in and went.
Two, both in-state universities. I couldn’t afford application fees for out-of-state schools and was rather clueless about applying for application fee waivers. Accepted at both, attended one.
Once, for every eventual degree.
Accepted every time.
I plan to apply to at least nine schools (Georgetown, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC Davis). I might also apply to Amherst, Dartmouth, Claremont McKenna, and maybe a few others if I let my masochism get the better of me.
In fact, I should probably be working on those applications right now.
I applied to one and got in. Only applied to one because it was a given that I would be accepted, plus I didn’t have access to transportation to any other schools.
None, I got married almost right out of high school (I know, WHAT A LOSER!!!).
I went to a a local university (no, not a community college, and actual accredited university), but other than the normal signing up for classes and payment I didn’t “apply”.
I was going to apply to three. Ended up only applied to two because the third one required an essay, and I was about 99.9% sure I would get into my first choice anyway.
I got into both.
For undergrad, I applied to two: McGill (accepted and attended) and the University of British Columbia (also accepted). Didn’t bother applying anywhere else because I knew I could get into at least one and probably both of those schools, so why waste my time and money applying elsewhere?
For grad school, I applied to three and got accepted at one: UBC.
The english system is slightly different, in that we send out one application form for six different universities (or one, if we’re feeling lucky and want to save a pathetic amount of cash). So… I submitted one, which went to six universities. If I recall correctly these were Cambridge, Warwick, Durham, Nottingham, Manchester and Birmingham.
I was accepted to the first four, and withdrew my application from the last two because they wanted me to come over there fore interviews and I’d already recieved offers from Warwick and Nottingham, and Manchester and Birmingham were my “Fallback in the case of hell freezing over” universities, and Warwick was my second choice. I’m now at Cambridge.
5 applications sent, like JRD I applied to the UPR (2 campuses) plus 4 US schools. Got accepted in 4 (first campus choice in PR), and got deferred admission for Cornell, as a transfer student. Decided to go to University of Florida (scholarship), and even when I was finally accepted to Cornell, I decided to stay at Florida. I’m still there…
It was many, many years ago, but I recall applying to 10: Duke, Vanderbilt, NYU, Penn, Washington, Swarthmore, William & Mary, UVa, Columbia and Wellesley. This was not a problem with regard to recommendations because I was #2 in my graduating class and I went to the same church as my guidance counselor, and I was flush with cash at the time, because my grandmother won a 6-figure jackpot in Vegas and was generous. 
I was accepted at 8, with Wellesley waitlisting and Swarthmore rejecting. 6 of 8 accepting offered scholarship monies, UVa and Vanderbilt had no cash for me. I ended up in New York and only had to come up with $4,000 plus living expenses for the four years. It was the second-best decision I’ve made in my life, and led to the first, marrying my husband. I’m pretty happy about it.
I didn’t want to go to college at all, so I sent in one application, under duress.
U. of Notre Dame. Went one semester, broke my kneecap, hated the school with a passion, left for two years, returned to get my degree (but off campus this time!) and I guess that’s all.
Julie
I had planned to attend USAFA and had an appointment promised (my father was in David Boren’s cabinet when he was governor of Oklahoma and he was a US Senator when I was in high school) but a football knee injury sidelined those plans and forced me to do the application thing.
Applied to MIT, Stanford, UC Berkely, Texas A&M, and Hawaii :D. Accepted by all but MIT. Got bored with high school during Christmas break and dropped out and enrolled at Oklahoma for the spring semester (ACT>30 or SAT>1250 gets you accepted sans diploma there). I told my dad about this and his response when I told him what my room, board, and tuition would cost was “That’s a bargain if it gets you out of the house.” Dad always has been a touchy-feely kind of guy.
I applied to three - Queen’s, Ottawa and Waterloo. I got accepted to all of them, and I start at the U of W in about two weeks.
Applied to five: U of Chicago, Georgetown, Stanford, NYU, and U. of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana). Accepted by all but Stanford (which was my dream school at the time, dammit!). U. of I. was the backup school; I knew I wanted to study foreign languages, and well, Champaign-Urbana isn’t a place where one hears native speech in most languages on a regular basis. I was pretty sure I wanted to be in a major metro area, and at a big school with a lot of choices.
Due to the joys of acrimoniously divorced parents and financial aid, I was offered basically no cash either by Georgetown or by U. of C. My dad refused to divulge his financial information to Georgetown, because he and Mom were suing each other (loads of fun, let me tell you) and he didn’t want us to have access to it. That was OK, because I visited Georgetown after I was accepted and didn’t like it at all. Felt very WASPy old-money to me; lots of lacrosse rackets and posters for Young Republican stuff.
U. of C., however, pissed me off. (Not the school, the way it turned out.) They let Dad submit financials directly to them, and then basically offered me no aid. I knew there was no way in Hell Dad would ever shell out that kind of money.
NYU decided just to take Dad’s child support into consideration, since he wasn’t my custodial parent, and gave me a full-tuition grant. Between that, a work-study job, some loans, a little bit from Dad, and an even littler bit from Mom, NYU it was. Yay NYU! I had a great experience there, but I’m still pissed off that I really didn’t have a choice in the end. Especially since Dad’s parents put him through Princeton on much more modest resources, even after he ended up on academic probation his first year. But that’s all a topic for a Pit thread.
Applied to one. Accepted by one.
I applied to 3. MIT was my reach, and I was not accepted. Georgia Tech was my realistic choice, and I was accepted and attended school there. My safety was Trenton State College in Trenton, NJ. A good school, and I was accepted. Now, they’re “The College Of New Jersey.”
hrh
It’s been a while, but I think I applied to 9:
Not accepted: MIT, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Cal
Accepted: Caltech, Penn, Purdue (early acceptance), Hawaii (safety)
I had very good grades & SAT scores but only so-so extra-curriculars, so I figured I had to apply to a lot of first-rate schools to have a decent chance of getting into at least one.
I chose Caltech over Penn partly because of its academic reputation and partly because they offered better financial aid (grants instead of loans).
No regrets (I made it through Caltech but it was tough), but I do wonder how I might have turned out if I had gone to Penn or Purdue.