Writing Section - Apply for First Choice of School Only vs Apply for Several Schools

Apply for the first choice of school or apply for several schools? From my personal experience, I can say that I prefer the second strategy to apply for several schools. In the first strategy, apply for the first-choice school only, I would say that it is a pretty risky strategy. There is a tendency that the first-choice school is a favorite school. There will be a lot of brilliant students applying for admission to that school. So you will get a fierce competition from those brilliant students. The harder the competition is, the smaller chance of acceptance you will get.

To boost your chance for securing your position in  your favorite major, I suggest to apply for several schools. You can have the most competitive school as your first choice and 2 other less competitive schools for your other option. If you can't get into the first choice school there are two more schools for your options. Another advantage of applying for several school is you already have all requirements for school admission. At the time you are ready to apply for a school, I assume you already have all requirement for the admission. Some requirements such as TOEFL and GRE scores, are valid only for two years, if you failed to get into a school this year, there is one more year for you to use those test scores. In the case for the first strategy, you only apply to 2 schools in two years. In the case for the second strategy, you can apply for six schools in two years!