It is very expensive to apply to business school, with applications costing about $200 each for the good schools. I did not want to spend more than $1000 on my applications, so I made sure that I picked my schools wisely. I made sure that I really wanted to go to any of the schools that I got in to, so basically I didn't have a safety. I felt that a safety school wasn't really worth the cost, since I probably wouldn't get a great return on my investment.
I ended up choosing four schools - Stanford, Michigan, UCLA, and USC. I figured Stanford was my reach, Michigan and UCLA were slight reaches, and USC was a match. I would have been cool going to any of those schools. I could have applied to a school like UCSD or UCI where I'm fairly certain I would have gotten in, but I wouldn't have been happy there so I didn't think it was worth applying.