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<p>No way you’d say that if you knew me. Just for the record. :)</p>
<p>I understand you were trying to encourage the poster, and that is admirable. But it is not as admirable to use false support to make one’s point.</p>
<p>Your math is very wrong, actually. The two variables are not nearly independent. To determine independence, ask yourself this question - Does knowing the probability of Scenario A affect my guess on the outcome of scenario B? If the answer is yes, then the two scenarios are not independent. Think about this - If I am an applicant with a 3.75 UW GPA, 2100 SAT score, no legacy, no URM, etc. and I apply to Yale, do you think I’ll get in? (90% of people on CC will say no based my stats alone). Now, if I say I am an applicant with 3.75 UW GPA, 2100 SAT score, no legacy, no URM, etc. who got into Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and MIT, and I’m waiting on Yale’s reply, do you think I’ll get in? (I guarantee you most people will switch their answer to yes). That’s a layman’s test to determine independence. As you can see, the two variables are NOT independent at all.</p>
<p>But fine, if you don’t understand my original statistical analysis. I’ll give you a more layman way to understand why your post is wrong.
No one has a 10% chance of being accepted anywhere. To say that implies that if you applied 10 times to the same college in the same year, you’d get accepted once. If you believe that that’s true, then you’re just wrong. A person submits the same application 10 times to Harvard, then he is sure to get in once, right (ideally of course - I know you can’t submit multiple applications)? WRONG. The application will be looked at the same way no matter how many times you apply. If you were going to be rejected, you’ll be rejected however many times you apply, and same if you were going to be accepted the first time.</p>
<p>sorry to incite such post arguments</p>
<p>just throwing my thoughts on the issue…</p>
<p>and i wish you all applying to ivies the best of luck…you’re gonna need it</p>
<p>rocket6louise, you’re probably wise to bow out of the discussion at this point. You won’t be missing a lot. And seriously, good luck wherever you apply and wherever you choose to attend.</p>
<p>t-san, I’ll bet you’re a blast at parties. Thanks for livening things up around here.</p>
<p>Absolutely.</p>
<p>Wow… Art Benjamin just keeps looking wiser and wiser around here!</p>
<p>After just reading the original post, I think there is no particular reason the kid was rejected. He sounds like every person who applies to those schools and thinks he/she has a legitimate shot at getting in. It is probably just cause those schools can afford to reject him because of all the other great candidates. They probably wanted to make some sort of statement too, like just because you get perfect scores doesn’t mean you get in. Those tricky bastards</p>
<p>t-san and mantori-suzuki: You are both correct…or incorrect, depending on how you want to look at it. There is a variable amount of pure randomness in all admissions. The conventional wisdom here on C.C. likes to minimize the importance of randomness in the process but it is pretty obvious to me that there is some. </p>
<p>Basically I believe that if you took all the 28000 applications that Harvard got last year and make the adcoms go through the evaluation process all over again then you would not get the same list of accepted and rejected students. There would be some overlap for sure, but some previously accepted students would get rejected and vice versa. And if you can agree with that, then you have to agree that there is an element of pure randomness. And to the extent that there is some randomness, it improves your chances to apply to more colleges (with the caveat that there is only so much time to work on the essays etc, so your application quality could get diluted if you send in too many applications).</p>
<p>Just to be clear when people throw this word “random” around: The decisions of the committees are not random; the grades, test efforts & preparation, e.c. choices, essays, & effort in the application, are not random; those are products of conscious actions.</p>
<p>What’s “random” is the unpredictability of the applicant pool, particularly outside of the student’s immediate knowledge base. (If you know for a fact that students much more accomplished than you are applying from your school to the same U as you are, then it is your choice also to appy, with sure knowledge of your local competition.)</p>
<p>I think the vast majority of CC parents understand this well, but I’m not always convinced that all CC students do. (To me, random also connotes haphazard irrationality, which is far from what happens in an admissions committee, but using the word can be either a comforting rationalization or an acknowledgement of confusion, especially on the part of the person rejected.)</p>
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<p>Which is why people hate to acknowledge the fact that randomness is all around us in many things we do- college admissions, stock market investments, the weather, death. I am not saying that adcoms are irrational. I am saying that there are many sources of randomness in the process that nobody controls- neither applicants nor adcoms. </p>
<p>Now I do not mean that if Harvard’s admit rate is 6%, there is a random 6% probability of acceptance for all applicants. Not at all, that would be silly thing to believe. But it would be equally silly to think that the process is completely logical and rational and that each of the 28000 applications would be adjudicated in an identical manner if you could repeat the process all over again.</p>
<p>I find randomness to be neither comforting nor confusing. It is just a mathematical reality of life and there are simple ways of dealing with it. Applying to more colleges (assuming you are competitive at all for those colleges) is one way. Buying life insurance is another way.</p>
<p>T-san, your analysis would only be correct if the same reader were reading all 28000 Harvard aps, in the same order, while being in the same state of mind… The reality is that even within the same admin committee, different readers react to the same application differently. Further, once reader one has evaluated the ap, reader 2 is influenced by reader’s one’s evaluation. Also, the college’s “need” list is constantly changing (we already admitted 2 oboe players, but we are short a flutist/tennis player/latin specialist/whatever).</p>
<p>So, while I wouldn’t exactly say selections are “random”, I would say that they are greatly influenced by factors which are constantly changing (reader, reader’s state of mind, colleges current need for oboe players, order that aps are read in, etc) and that we, as outsiders, can’t know the state of the variables at the time a given ap is read–thus, giving us the feeling of “randomness”.</p>
<p>The admissions unpredictablitly fleshed out in this thread is the reason I didn’t apply to any Ivies. Well, that and the fact that I finished high school with a 2.31 gpa. Thank God for community colleges.</p>
<p>T-San, I bet you’re great at tapping kegs without producing much foam, and predicting the winners of wet T-shirt contests.</p>
<p>Neither, actually Schmaltz. :)</p>
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<p>This is true -
- and so is this.</p>
<p>As such you’re right that the people admitted would probably change every time. That’s why I used that piece of statistical support second and not first, because it can’t apply as well to non-pure mathematical scenarios. I was trying to simplify the math so that mantori would get why she is wrong, but in doing so I oversimplified it. My bad. I was applying a strictly mathematical solution to a completely non-mathematical scenario, which is really bad math. Forgive me. It was late last night.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, my first piece of evidence holds true - the two scenarios are still not mathematically independent and as such, using a statistical equation that exists only when all scenarios are independent is fundamentally flawed. It’s kind of like saying this: OK, if person A has a virus, we can treat him with a vaccine. Then we find out he has a bacterial infection, not a virus. But we still try to treat him with a vaccine. You’re using an inherently incorrect treatment (statistical method) to cure (solve) an inherently removed infection (non-statistical method). Another person has actually pointed this out on another thread, and I wish I could find the link to it.</p>
<p>In essence, your math, mantori was perfectly fine. However, it was also completely irrelevant and inapplicable to the situation.</p>
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<p>I said “especially on the part of the person rejected.” (I assume you’re a parent, not a student?)</p>
<p>I will agree that the term random is appropriate to the variabilities in the application pools, plural, of the entire list an applicant applies to in a given admissions cycle, but that’s all it refers to. The admissions decisions themselves are highly deliberate and non-random.</p>
<p>“I will agree that the term random is appropriate to the variabilities in the application pools, plural, of the entire list an applicant applies to in a given admissions cycle, but that’s all it refers to. The admissions decisions themselves are highly deliberate and non-random.”</p>
<p>Epiphany, you took the words right out of my mouth.</p>
<p>Poor mantori. Everyone wants to make him a girl.
Sorry for the digression; please resume. I’ve got popcorn on the stove. ;)</p>
<p>It’s my own fault for not acting macho enough.</p>
<p>Not your fault. The CC forum doesn’t have any smilies for belching and scratching. What’s a guy to do? :D</p>
<p>The randomness of the college application process has been discussed many times on this board. The consensus is that the process is not completely independent, nor is it totally dependent and it is somewhere in between. The bottom line is that if you have the stats, applying as many as possible will increase your chance.</p>