Shotgun approach. Similar to how people apply for a bunch of software engineer positions at a plethora of companies, when they only would really want to work f

Shotgun approach. Similar to how people apply for a bunch of software engineer positions at a plethora of companies, when they only would really want to work for maybe 1/5 of them. Back when I was a senior in high school there was a newer (at the time, I suppose) idea that college admission was a "crapshoot", so the common suggestion was to apply to a bunch of universities, even the ones you weren't very interested in as "backups" or whatever.