Asian rejected from everywhere POSTMORTEM

Applying to College
81

Not gonna read all 6 pages but did want to comment on this:

First off, note he’s on a graduate school AdCom, not an undergrad. For the record, that may be his opinion but it is far from the consensus. There is actually a lot of discussion among graduate programs as to whether a first author publication should even be a requirement for earning a PhD - so think about what that means for getting into a PhD program, and think about what that means for getting into college. The three main arguments against requiring publications are 1. What if a student is working on something very competitive and gets scooped? The student may no longer be able to publish but that doesn’t make the work they did any less meaningful when it comes to earning a PhD. 2. The professor may be very strict about where he/she will submit. I have an MD/PhD classmate who has taken 5 years instead of the traditional 4 for the PhD because the professor will only submit to Nature. If it gets rejected from Nature, it goes to Science. If it gets rejected from Science, it goes to Cell, and so on down the line. This student has easily demonstrated they deserve a PhD and could probably easily have published multiple papers in tier 1 specialty journals but because the prof only submits there after failing to get into higher impact factor journals the student lost well over a year of time doing revisions and extra experiments that weren’t really necessary for the story. There’s always another experiment that could be done, but eventually you have to recognize when you have a logical conclusion and a full story. 3. Is publishing a paper in a BS journal really any better than not publishing at all? To avoid this you could put an impact factor limit or something but that becomes very murky, especially since different subfields have different standards for what’s a good impact factor depending on the volume of people in the field.

82

@thumper1 and @PurpleTitan , not only are your “take a stats class” replies rude, and without supporting evidence, I believe them to be incorrect.

I posted a definition from mathgoodies.com: “Definition: Two events, A and B, are independent if the fact that A occurs does not affect the probability of B occurring.”

So tell me how admission to Yale changes your probability, one way or the other, of admission to Harvard?

It doesn’t. Therefore they are independent. The error in the OPs formula, as posted by myself and @cmfl11 , is the assumption that overall admissions rates = an individual applicants’ chance of admission.

And BTW, nobody said the word random, so that does not apply.

@ucbalumnus I will answer you separately since your response was civil. Just because they use the same critera does not make them dependent events, as per the definition above. A dependent event example is: Odds of pulling an Ace out of a full deck: 4 in 52. Odds of same after pulling a 2 of hearts: 4 in 51. Odds after pulling an Ace of diamonds: 3 in 51. Those are dependent events.

http://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/vol6/dependent_events.html

Check that out and then please tell me how college admissions are dependent events.

@rejectedlion2016 , you are clearly a smart guy, but

…does not fit any definition of independent events I can find. Please direct me to one if you have it.

83

^I had the same thought on that. I don’t think working on research as a HS grad or even undergrad that is not publishe is a huge stigma. So much depends on the PI and whether they are getting their act together to publish, after all. The student does not control that.

84

Can we all agree that chances at selective schools are woefully low and get past the squabbling over semantics?

85

There may be some covariables, but how each independent school evaluates its applicants, who may have overlapping but not identical candidates is unique to each school. What is now being minimized as an ersatz Abe Lincoln scrawl on the back of an envelope was apparently, per the OPs earlier posts, part of their prediction of the likelihood of admission to a golden ring school. This is a lesson in stats and probabilities. Go Sooners.

86

@Postmodern, this is a bit painful.

The OP actually gave a nice definition of statistical independence and explained why the layman understanding isn’t quite correct in post #75, but for some reason, you decide to go with that website of your’s rather than someone who knows math really freakin’ well.

87

I lied, I basically did read everything. A few other random comments:

Someone thought that a poster referring to Malala Yousafzai was mistakenly referring to Malia Obama (“her father won the peace prize”). Malala did win the Nobel prize herself.

Yes, if we’re talking in pure statistical terms, the events are not dependent on each other because getting into one does not automatically affect the odds of the other, but they are also not truly random, independent events as they are correlated. The schools do not randomly pick students and there is overlap in terms of what makes a candidate desirable such that if we look at a student’s stats and clearly see they have better than average odds of getting into Yale, we now also know they have better than average odds of getting into Harvard.

88

@PurpleTitan , I completely understand how this is painful for you.

I posted a definition of dependent events from a well known math site, not “some website of mine”. If you don’t like that one here are some more:

https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/dependent-event.html “An event that is affected by previous events.”

http://www.statisticshowto.com/dependent-event/ “In probability, a dependent event is an event that relies on another event to happen first”

http://www.icoachmath.com/math_dictionary/dependent_events.html “Definition Of Dependent Events
If the outcome of one event affects the outcome of another, then the events are said to be Dependent Events.”

Please note I am not cherry picking these, but going down the list of google results.

Now if someone would explain to me how college admissions are dependent events according to these definitions, I will accept it. The OP’s post did not do so, it simply made the claim that they were dependent because they use similar criteria. That is not the definition of dependent events anywhere I have seen, and no one has provided one.

Cite sources to win arguments!

89

@rejectedlion2016 , I admire your candor and your practical approach. Moreover, I agree with your point about taking a year off now. Although many do it, if you’re not inclined then don’t. Agree - not worth it.

But I disagree with your assessment here: “I’m not convinced; Vanderbilt for instance has an admit rate of just 11%, and all of those schools get extraordinary applicants, most of whom I’m sure are as qualified or more qualified than I am to attend and do well.”

You simply cannot be less well-informed if you think your stats of 4.0+ with rigor, a 24 hundy on the SATs and a 35 on the ACTs, would not get you into several schools that are signficantly above the academic pecking order from Arky. Sorry my friend. That was just a list I pulled out of my rear end. But there’s little doubt in my mind that one or more would grab you with those numbers.

I can add to the list: Georgetown, Vassar, Wesleyan, Amherst, Pomona, Carleton, Grinnell, CMC, Haverford, Lafayette, Lehigh.

Pal, you 24’d the SAT. Not an easy thing to do.

If it doesn’t matter to you, then more power to you. I mean that sincerely. But for a guy who was only applying to the very, very tippy tippy top of the mountain schools, you’ve done an amazing, if not curious, 180.

I know you’re not buying a car, and there’s more to this than involved in that. The analogy was just to make the point that there is an entire group of “really solid” between your old list and where you’re headed.

The top two kids in my high school (not me) did the same thing - Stanford or bust. Neither got in (I did), and one chose Santa Clara (which was not in the mid 80s as respected as it is today) and the other WSU. I used to kid the Santa Clara guy, still a good buddy of mine, that he must have really needed to go somewhere with Spanish tile roofs!

Good luck to you brother. I wish you well. As smart and as thoughtful as you are, you will be successful even if you’re dropped on the moon. :slight_smile:

90

Your posts, and the accomplishment and attitude they reveal, are quite impressive. I do think it’s surprising and unfortunate you didn’t get into any of those top schools, but you sound like you’re handling the situation very well. You have some great opportunities becoming available to you, and it sounds like you’re going to take great advantage of them.

That said, I have two reactions to your posts. The first is, you have all these amazing accomplishments and qualifications, and you’re still thinking of ways you could’ve done more/better! I mean, I suppose you can think about this, analyze what happened, and leave suggestions for others. But at some point you just have to say, enough is enough, I did what I could, whatever happens, happens.

The other thing is, looking at the list of schools you’d applied to, other than your state school, it’s basically all the Ivies plus SMC! Others have commented about this, but that’s, sorry to say, crazy! Yes, I still would’ve expected you to get in to some of those schools, but a more balanced list, with choices between your state school and those others, would’ve served you well. (And that is a good suggestion for others.)

Finally, I think some people need to learn what independence means (in the context of probability/statistics) :-).

91

Thanks for the polite reply. No one said they were random, and even if they were that would not affect the ability to assign game theory forumlas to them.

If you are claiming now they are correlated, wikipedia says this about correllation:

“Correlation refers to any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence, though in common usage it most often refers to the extent to which two variables have a linear relationship with each other. Familiar examples of dependent phenomena include the correlation between the physical statures of parents and their offspring, and the correlation between the demand for a product and its price.”

Those can still be statistically predicted if you know the likelyhood of each event, as in genetics.

I find it funny that we all agree the OPs original assumption was wrong; my position is he simply had misjudged his chances of admittance and therefore the calculation was wrong. Others seem to be saying game theory doesn’t apply.

92

You incorrectly apply statistics here.

If you take a population of applicants to HYPSM, all of whom got a perfect SAT, and if you then randomly choose a member of that population – 30% of the time that random applicant will have been admitted. The statistic applies to the population, not the individual.

If you pick a member of the group, let’s say Fred, the statistic says nothing about the chances Fred in particular got accepted. Maybe Fred is a smart cookie but also has a criminal history and failed a bunch of classes because he thought they were a waste of time. Still think the chances Fred gets accepted is 30%?

What you are making is called the “ecological fallacy”. Look it up.

93

Now THIS is a useful fact, and supports my original point that others have made as well – the the OP, despite his Herculean accomplishments and highly admirable statistics, simply misjudged his probability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy

And for the record, I do not understand why any college would reject those impressive accomplishments!

94

This is not for OP, but for other readers in OP’s shoes.
Even with highly selective universities, there are differences in “fit” and criteria they especially appreciate.
Vanderbilt and WashU are all over anyone who is a perfect scorer. Those applicants’ odds are very, very high. USC is another one that likes high stats but it’s not as clear cut as those two.
Williams, HarveyMudd, or Northwestern really like USAMO qualifiers.
UChicago, Carleton, Reed, W&M, Swarthmore, would have likely highly appreciated OP’s intellectual vitality and versatility.
Add a few LACs’ ranked 20 to 45 that have some gender imbalance and want boys, or where you can become a geographical diversity prospect by applying more than 400miles from home.
It’s very useful to invest in three books: Fiske Guide, Public Honors Colleges, and Colleges that Change Lives, which you or your parents can “snack on” during the summer before junior year and keep (re)reading until Fall senior year; Princeton Review’s Best Colleges is more concise and can be started even as a Sophomore. The student just puts a post-it on every college they like.
When time comes to create the college list, there should be 2 safeties, to be found first. To find a safety, look for the key criteria of your dream schools (the top 3 things that make them really, really appealing - and the answer cannot be “prestige”), and look for other colleges that have some of these criteria too but admit 40-50% students (for students Op’s caliber); run the NPC on them, make sure your parents can afford them. Once you’re done with that, add 3-5(+) matches (universities with 30%+ acceptance for stellar candidates such as OP) and run the NPC on them too. Finally, once you’re done, add as many reaches as you wish/can afford once.
Part of OP’s mistake was to assume all colleges basically use the same criteria and thus his odds would be similar at all highly selective schools… Some do, but some have very specific angles and wishes (like Vandy and WashU with high scores).
This is water under the bridge for OP, who’s going to be feted at “Uark” (or UTK, UNebraska, USC Columbia, UOklahoma, Iowa State, UKansas…<- this for people who are fixated on the fact it’s UArkansas. These have very different curricular strengths but that will give a broader range of level. USC Columbia, UOklahoma, and UKansas have excellent Honors Colleges.) Hopefully OP will ask about “study away” program exchanges in the US and about stem- specific study abroad programs.
I don’t think a gap year is a waste. Students who choose to do one tend to really appreciate it once they’re done. In particular, because OP is involved in research, he could continue that and see his work come to fruition or at least participate in the next step. HOWEVER, gap years can’t be forced. If the student doesn’t want it, then gap years are pointless. So, some of us may feel he could benefit from a gap year and a new application strategy, but that’s not Rejectedlion’s wish, because OP feels he’d be delaying his life by a year, when he can jump into college and research at a flagship campus, with no gap year .

@postmodern: you’re basically hijacking the thread. The question is interesting, and relevant, but you should ask it in your own thread, since your question is distracting from OP’s.

95

I’m going to echo what @MiddleburyDad2 said. If you are sure about the PhD route, being a superstar undergrad at “UArk” is a perfectly good option (assuming that you’re cool with the social scene there).
But don’t skip the gap year because you think you may end up just where you are. Rice, JHU, WashU, Vandy, USC, NYU, and Emory and others aren’t exactly easy to get in to, but they are easier than the Ivies (in part because they don’t get as many crazy-accomplished Asian kids like you applying to those places or the schools are bigger). And big merit money to a place like Tulane is pretty likely (if they believe you are definitely interested). Also possible to those places I listed.

If you can’t stand the social scene there, of course, transferring is still an option. The big state schools (like Cal, UMich, UCLA, UT-Austin, UNC, UVa) are more open to transfers. Also USC.

96

Also want to add to @MYOS1634 that Northwestern has a special program for science&math studs called ISP (which you could technically finish in 3 years) which they’d like to fill with kids who will go on to top PhD programs.

97

^ yes, that’s what I was referring to PurpleTitan :slight_smile: and why I checked OP 's list several times because I couldn’t believe he hadn’t included it, but I’m guessing either he didn’t know it or he was discouraged from applying there. And of course, it could have been suggested but OP refused to consider it.
Ultimately, OP didn’t really “make mistakes”. Playing the piano just for fun is okay. No college expects a publication. The one big mistake made, which I hope readers reading this won’t do, was to create a bad list, with one safety and only reaches. A good list should start from the bottom up, with safeties you like and can afford, then matches, and only at the end do you add the reaches/dream schools/lottery schools. I hope everyone who reads this thread takes that point away from the narrative.
I personally would pick a gap year - in part because the year won’t be filled with dinners with professors and hanging out with grad students, and I don’t know whether that school is SEC or B10, but that may also color the undergraduate experience - but ultimately OP has made peace with the process and would rather attend his flagship than try again, perhaps for fear of not getting into other schools.

98

Why chastise @postmodern for the very useful and helpful information on the statistical fallacies relied on in part by the op (and likely many others), when you additionally addressed the statistical misstep, stating:

Anyone else beginning to wonder if we are being punked? ACT (35) as a freshman, SAT (2400) as a sophomore?

99

Because the latter third of the thread has been concerned with the statistical definition of “independent,” which will certainly turn off any young reader who could learn anything from the thread’s original topic. Hardly useful or helpful to debate whether 3% or 30% represents OP’s situation. It HAPPENED, it’s POSSIBLE, and it is PREVENTABLE – the last point being the important piece of information in this mess of mathematical quibbling.

100

BTW, MYOS1634, Rice, which has been growing in size but still has an undergrad enrollment of only around 3800 undergrads, is 26% asian. Other than Cal Tech, the schools the OP applied to are bigger (undergrad enrollment) than Rice.

http://oir.rice.edu/Factbook/Students/Admission/Undergraduate/Race___Ethnicity/