Admissions strategy... 91% chance acceptance to harvard, yale, princeton, etc.

Applying to College
1

<p>A friend of mine told me that he is going to apply to HYPSMC, arguably the six most selective universities. When I asked why, here was his logic:</p>

<p>A great student, with near-perfect SATs, lots of 5s on APs, good ECs, blah blah, he estimated his chances at each school to be 33%</p>

<p>If he applied to one school, the odds of his acceptance would be 33%.
But if he applied to 6 schools, the odds of him getting into at least one of his reaches would be
1- (2/3)^6
= 91%
much better than the original 33%</p>

<p>A solution to overcome the randomness of the college admissions process?</p>

<p>What do you think?</p>

2

<p>I think this guy hasn't studied probability and statistics.</p>

3

<p>LOL, though I gave myself the same mentality, if I applied to eight reaches I was bound to get into one :D</p>

4

<p>why do you say this, wackymother?</p>

<p>if you take the college admissions process to be random (and it does seem random from the applicant's perspective), and assume that college acceptances are independent from one another,</p>

<p>the odds of getting into at least one school
= 1 - the odds of not getting into any school
= 1 - (2/3)(2/3)(2/3)(2/3)(2/3)(2/3)</p>

5

<p>how can he estimate his odds of getting into super reaches, like the ivies, as 33%. that seems a bit high for anyone to estimate their odds at. i mean, if he was like a double legacy, olympic athlete, all star student who cured cancer, then i could understand such an estimate...</p>

6

<p>If life were like that, then you wouldn't need the VISA Win What You Buy contest.</p>

7

<p>Hmmm, however I think his 33% mentality is way off though, if anything strong applicants chances shouldn't be much higher than the school's acceptance rate itself, so if anything I think 15% per school would be more accurate [20% if I'm being nice], so either 62% or 74%.</p>

8

<p>College admissions aren't mathematical.</p>

9

<p>dang, at 15% chance for each school, you'd have to apply to 15 schools to get the 91%</p>

10

<p>What does the C in HYPSMC stand for?</p>

11

<p>but i think, using statistics, 33% would be a safe estimate for a really good student</p>

<p>for example, harvard accepts 60% of 1600 SAT scorers, and i believe princeton accepts something like 95%</p>

<p>so a random perfect-scorer on the SAT has a 60% chance of acceptance to harvard, much higher than the 9% overall acceptance rate</p>

12

<p>I'm going with Caltech, though the C always has such competition:
Cornell, Columbia, Cooper Union and maybe even Colgate or CMU</p>

13

<p>harvard yale princeton stanford mit caltech</p>

14

<p>I think 33 is really jumping it considering the high amounts of randomness in the college admissions process.</p>

15

<p>Columbia</p>

<p>And that formula assumes that the chance of getting into two different schools are independent, when in fact they both depend on the same applicants characteristics.</p>

16

<p>you can't actually give it a percentage, but his odds overall would be better if he applies to 8 reaches and gives the same dedication to each app. Considering that those schools all mold their class to their liking, hopefully he'll be the kind of person one of them is looking for.</p>

17

<p>tripNip, but does this apply to you're friend? You said he had near perfect scores. not perfect scores. Harvard does not accept 60% of near perfect scorers... i mean, a ton of kids with 2300s apply to harvard and get rejected. so yeah, i'm still not sure about your friend's logic.</p>

18

<p>the C should definitely be for Columbia :) just my opinion</p>

<p>is your friend the valedictorian?</p>

19

<p>Ignoring the fallacious statistics, the whole idea is just idiotic. This is one of the worst cases of prestige whoring I've seen--essentially, he's saying that he NEEDS to get into one of the most prestigious universities, and that's all he cares about?
Kinda pathetic.</p>

20

<p>The problem with doing it statistically is you cannot assume that college acceptances are independent.</p>

<p>If a person is rejected from Northwestern it is highly likely that they will be rejected from HYPSMCaltech (this argument is stupid b/c MIT and CIT should be said in the same breath), but if they are accepted at Northwestern, it is not highly likely they will be accpeted at HYPSM because those elite have higher standards. </p>

<p>Plus colleges in the US select students based on subjective materials. Essays and recomendations hold more weight at certain schools than others. And you cannot assume independece that everyone's scores are the same. </p>

<p>Some colleges may view a 2000 w/ 10 AP 5s and 750+ on 3 SATIIs at a different level than 2400 and 4 AP 4 and 3 650-700 SATIIs, which is better? Different schools would not choose the same applicant.</p>

<p>Some schools want a specialty, to see if you are focused on a certain area. Maybe this is atheltics, as these schools want to fill certain teams. Maybe the school puts a high premium on leadership, or high school research. That's why a school like Cornell will take people with lower scores because they exhibit some tendency for a certain school. </p>

<p>Plus There is that diversity question. Do we really want the top 50 people from Exeter and Andover or do we want a bunch of vals and sals from random public schools? What about minorites? Certain schools cap the number of Whites, and moreso Asains they expect to attend. </p>

<p>To top it all off, do you overaccept and expect a small yeild, or underaccpet and play the weightlist game. All in all, every college is different and places different values on different things.</p>