Just want to add my admiration of your maturity, OP. There is no doubt in my mind that you will bloom where you are planted.
Depending on your academic path forward, check in with the office of fellowships once you get to campus. Something like the Rhodes or the Marshall could be a wonderful experience for you and you may be an outstanding candidate.
Best of luck and please come back and let us know how it’s going!
Some people don’t agree with my statement of
“Wow, given OP’s stats, the odds of being rejected by all these super selective schools are quite small.”.
But it has been estimated that a person with a perfect score on SAT has a 30% chance of getting into HYPSM and similar schools. Note that this is conditioal probability. So the probability of being rejected by all ten schools OP applied to is just 3%. And I have to say that OP is just extremely unlucky that such a small probability event just happened to him.
^That is not right at all.
OP: good for you looking at it dispassionately in the end, doing what is best for you, and warning others not to believe the myth that something like this is very unlikely…
" So the probability of being rejected by all ten schools OP applied to is just 3%. "
oh plueeeeeeze…
your mathematical analysis is so full of false premises I dont know where to start!
=))
NO ONE with a 2400 SAT score has a 97% chance of ACCEPTANCE at ONE of the most elite colleges in country!
NO one!
Go back to school and take a basic statistics class…
That is assuming that each admission decision is an independent event. Admission decisions are not generally independent events, since most of the same characteristics are considered by the various super selective schools (although they could be differently weighted). For example, if an applicant’s recommenders do not write the most impressive recommendations (see http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs ), that can adversely affect the applicant’s chance of admission at all schools that use recommendations.
@hzhao2004, they’re not independent events.
"Some people don’t agree with my statement of
“Wow, given OP’s stats, the odds of being rejected by all these super selective schools are quite small.”.
But it has been estimated that a person with a perfect score on SAT has a 30% chance of getting into HYPSM and similar schools. Note that this is conditioal probability. So the probability of being rejected by all ten schools OP applied to is just 3%. And I have to say that OP is just extremely unlucky that such a small probability event just happened to him."
That is utter nonsense.
Having a “30 percent chance” based on SAT scores and grades to get in to an elite school does not correlate to a 97 percent chance to get in if you apply to ten of them. This is not a randomized coin-flipping process.
What really happens is that some applicants (think about an Intel science winner or a published novelist or something) gets accepted to multiple elite schools, maybe all of them, and others who have no unique accomplishments or hooks (but the same SAT scores) don’t get into any. You are the same applicant every time you apply, and if you are not of special interest to Princeton, chances are likely that you also are not of special interest to Harvard and Yale, because they all are looking for the same things.
This is not to say that you can’t get in. Plenty of unhooked applicants get in. But they don’t increase their chances to 97 percent just by applying to more places.
No one has a 97 percent chance of getting in to an elite school except perhaps Malala (the girl who won the Nobel Peace Prize).
To add on to what @ucbalumnus said, this may be even more true in the Common App era. If the Common App essay is really offputting to adcoms (for whatever reason), that’s going to tank all apps.
I think that there are better options even now than UArkansas for this student.
http://www.nacacnet.org/research/research-data/College-Openings/Pages/College-Openings-Results.aspx
Lawrence University
Arizona State University (Might still be able to get into Barret’s)
Indiana University
Penn State University
Truman State
University of Arizona
UMinnesota-Morris (automatic transfer to Twin City eventually if desired)
University of Waterloo (great math/cs school)
And OP said it wasn’t “really” Arkansas but another midwest school, so hard to compare (though agree several of teh schools in post 48 are good options).
Penn State may technically have seats, but not at main campus or in more competitive colleges. And certainly not at affordable prices.
@ThankYouforHelp, and Malia, the girl whose father won the peace prize.
@ClassicRockerDad, disagree that some of those you listed would be better options for the OP.
The OP seems ready to take grad courses in some fields, for instance, and is seen as a superstar at “UArk”. Would UM-Morris or Truman St. really be better at offering grad level courses than a state flagship?
Uwaterloo may be a good choice, considering the great strength in math and science… but I agree with PurpleTitan all in all 'uark ’ is probably going to welcome him in a way other, comparable schools, wouldn’t. In addition, LAC s are out of the picture due to needing graduate level math basically freshman year.
With a gap year and a strategic list, OP would have different results, but I don’t think the nacac list would work for his specific needs. If OP is ‘short’ at uark (either socially, which is a reasonable worry, or academically, after taking all grad offerings+going away/abroad) he could transfer.
Op: ask uark what study away they have (whether it’s possible to spend a semester on another us campus such as with nsep) and what study abroad for stem they have (Budapest program? Gtech 's programs? Others?)
Relative had similar stats to yours. Rejected/Waitlisted to all ivies. Goes to Duke now though.
I think Duke is stronger than some of the Ivies so that’s not really a penalty.
And with the new Coalition set to release in July (90 institutions have signed on so far) who knows what this will do to the college app process…
@hebegebe yea I know, it is a blessing but it still shows how strange ivy admissions are
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1876770-what-did-i-do-wrong.html#latest
This is your first, now closed, thread. Very good info in it. You might want to re read it.
I am not an expert in game theory – often wish I was – but I don’t think you can re-write the rules of game theory to fit the situation.
Please, math majors, i’d be very interested in seeing this discussed with facts and knowlege rather than from my armchair, but:
If it is true that the OP had a 30% chance of admission at each university, then to apply to ten would mean he did in fact experience a 3% event, in fact even lower.
(7/10)^10 = 0.0282475249 = 2.82% chance of failure.
But I agree that this is probably not true, so it is likely that the first data point – the 30% chance – is incorrect. It was probably much lower.
Where it seems applicants get into trouble is they assume that the overall acceptance rate of a college applies to them independently. It doesn’t, which is why all 20 horses in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby did not go off at 5-1. (well, that was because of pari-mutuel betting I know, but you get the point…)
Some horses are faster than others. And you can’t know for sure until right after post time. 
And now you all know why I was such a poor math student. I would appreciate being corrected!