Buying a lottery ticket: A lesson from CC

Parent Cafe
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<p>I bought tickets for several lotteries the other day. Each one had between a one in ten and one in twenty chance of paying me something. I was well qualified as a purchaser, but sadly, so were most of the people who bought tickets to the same lottery games. I figured that with several tickets, I had a much better chance of one of them hitting.</p>

<p>But I was wrong. Every single ticket was a loser. What did I do wrong? How could I such a loser?</p>

<p>=====</p>

<p>Probably one of the most valuable lessions I learned in my two years on CC is that no matter how highly qualified a person is, applying to the Ivys and a few other top schools is just like buying a lottery ticket in many ways. And a failure to win has, in many cases, NOTHING TO DO WITH A STUDENT'S POTENTIAL TO SUCCEED AT THAT SCHOOL. And yet each year people - super people - are disappointed with the decisions. We've done the math on this before to prove that it's nothing personal, yet it's hard to remember that come April 1st. With so many top students each applying to so many schools, the math can't lie. Even lower-tier schools are experiencing this. I just saw tonight on the local news that Colorado College here in town could only send out acceptances to 30-something percent of its applicants.</p>

<p>Now you do have to put up with the relatives, friends, and parents who just cannot understand why you're not going to Yale. How many times can you try to explain the math? I can now see why so many students are mum on where they're applying and where the acceptance are.</p>

<p>When I first joined CC back then, I was thinking that one of the top-25 schools would be perfect for my son. What I learned was that finding the right fit was so much more important.</p>

<p>If you are new to CC as a parent or a student, understand this lesson for future college searches and selections. It might be a hard one to learn next April 1st.</p>

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<p>digmedia:</p>

<p>You took my thoughts right out. I was thinking of collecting stuff from all these threads and start a thread next August-Sep - before the application season.</p>

<p>One another thing I would add is I see many kids now complaing about the FA or their parents reluctances etc etc. I think it is equally important to understand the economics and a frank family conversation. If the kid is smart he may get merit $ but not at top tier schools. One has to be realist and if money is an issue one has to go down to second or third tier schools. If kid/family is expecting need based aid - understand that yearly income is not the only criteria. </p>

<p>And most important (as editrix's thread says) - Love thy Safety.</p>

<p>The bottom line is to define the parameters before the application process that every one could accept and be happy with the outcome.</p>

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<p>digmedia,</p>

<p>Nicely stated, my friend! Thanks. ~berurah</p>

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<p>Dig, I'm bumping this up to the top of the thread, hoping it will catch the eyes of some junior and their parents. Very, very well put. Simba, I too am collecting admissions stories for next fall. I think it is important to get this info. out there - DO take a chance, but also make sure you have your A*s covered with at least one "good bet for admissions" school you would love to attend.</p>

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<p>Yes dear, you truly are "one in a million," but that means there are 1,400 people exactly like you in China!</p>

<p>or should I say... 6000 people like you in the world?</p>

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<p>Thanks, Carolyn, for bumping Dig's OP. I'm not a junior parent, but am living the disappointment of a Yale and Harvard waitlist for S this year. I KNEW what a lottery it was, spent 18 months on this site TELLING myself what a lottery it was, and it's still hard to accept -- for me, more than for S, luckily. </p>

<p>I guess I just have to add that it's really not a lottery for high-test-score, incredible ECs, glowingly recommended BRWKs... it's really more like throwing your money away. A lottery implies that everyone who plays has an equal chance. Not so with HYP. And it's only going to get worse over the next three years. Unless your kid has an AI of 9 and a solid hook, or an AI of 7 and above plus minority/recruited athlete status, I would recommend moving on to schools other than HYP.</p>

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<p>Momof2, {{{hugs to you}}}</p>

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<p>I am blown away by the number of school some of this years crop of kids admitted applying to - one applied to 31 colleges and got in over half of them if not more...) Is this commonplace? Or is this a trend? And how does this type of applicant and their success rate affect the other hundreds of applicants who also wanted to attend one of the twenty or so schools he got into but really probably had no real interest in attending... does it knock other deserving students out? I just think this kind of thing is unfair to the schools and to other applicants? Or am I wrong here...a little insight please.</p>

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<p>I don't think they are displacing any students by applying to more colleges, but the colleges will have to admit more students to fill their slots. i think the students whose parents post here are probably applying to about eight on average. With this years results this number will climb a little.
This is really an opportunity for the LACs who offer an excellent education and personal attention but who may not draw the AI 7, 8 and 9 students. Now the colleges will get the attention of those students, and the colleges will have a cadre of super achievers so that even more students of that calibre will want to apply and make it clear on their app.s that these are not safeties.</p>

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<p>What is AI? Can we figure it ourselves? DD had a great acceptance rate, and from reading here I thought her schools may have been a tad longshots. That was ok because she had an EA admit. Now it seems she could pretty much get in everywhere. We gave little attention to the uber reaches, although all schools were reachy (not across the board HYP, but a mix of selective in the reach and reach/match) Perhaps it makes no difference now, but I remain interested in the post-mortem.</p>

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<p>Crash, I don't know how common it is, but my daughter has a friend who applied to something like 22 colleges... and quite frankly it doesn't make sense to me. I also do think it is unfair, because it does skew the process of admission when colleges are deluged with applications from students who cannot seriously be interested in attending. If nothing else, it drives down acceptance numbers, turning match schools into reaches for many students ... which in turn forces those students to either set their sights lower or else apply to more colleges. It also causes colleges a little farther down the ladder to commit financial aid merit offers to students who are unlikely to attend -- and for those colleges which are not need-blind, it can make things particularly difficult for an applicant who needs financial aid to be compared against all the stellar applicants. (Need-aware colleges tend to accept only the strongest of the financially-needy students)</p>

<p>It is really unfortunate. While I appreciate and understand the excitement of the parents of Ivy-bound students, I also find it someone frustrating when I consider that the vast majority of smart, college-bound students are NOT the ones with the steller stats -- of course that is statistically impossible. I mean, there are a lot more kids who are in the 90th-98th percentile than kids in the 99th - and pity the poor kid who stands around 85th percentile. So we end up with this super competitive process that also trickles down to make things much more difficult for the kids whose reaches are the Ivy-bound's safeties. </p>

<p>It is also one additional issue for those with financial limitations. Applications to 20 schools at an average of $50 each for an app fee is $1000 -- more when you factor in the cost of forwarding SAT scores to each and incidental expenses. That is way out of range for most students. </p>

<p>I think the whole process has gone mad. It used to be -- and it ought to be -- a process where a student focuses on her own interests and goals, and then applies to a handful of colleges that will help meet those goals. It shouldn't be a competition to accumulate the most impressive set of admissions, nor the highest number. In a sane system (which we are far beyond), I can see a student applying to 5 colleges -- there shouldn't be a need for more, because a sane system would be far more predictable. </p>

<p>I honestly don't look forward to going through this process with my daughter next year.</p>

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<p>Calmom, you are right that the process has gone mad. If you haven't already discovered it, please visit the website of The Education Conservancy (<a href="http://www.educationconservancy.org%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.educationconservancy.org&lt;/a&gt;) and read their book College Unranked, to gain an understanding of how and why admissions has been commercialized and made unreasonable on both the college and applicant sides of the process. I discovered the EC after I realized, as a parent living with a college applicant, the extent to which the process is losing integrity. There are people both in- and outside colleges who are concerned about this. The situation does not serve students, violates the public trust that institutions of higher education hold, and results in distorted educational values. The lack of high profile leadership at the college level in addressing this issue is appalling.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Crash, I don't know how common it is, but my daughter has a friend who applied to something like 22 colleges... and quite frankly it doesn't make sense to me.

[/quote]
hmm ... it can make sense to me ... but only for kids who really want to attend very selective schools. </p>

<p>My oldest is an excellent student, attending an excellent suburban HS, white, with no major hook. When she applies to Swarthmore, Brown, Wellesley or whereever she will be a 1/15 or 1/20 type candidate. Strictly talking probability if she really wants to attend a school that provides the most challenging academic environment than all the schools are longshots. If we use the 1/20 odds then if she applied to 20 schools she probably getting close to having the odds in her favor of getting into <em>one</em> school. Is 20 a lot? Sure. Can a list of 20 be genereated that share any common themes (other than selectivity) ... I think so between research schools, LACs, and state schools ... you could get that many reasonable fit schools all which are reaches</p>

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<p>One of D's classmates applied to all the Ivies. Why? Because she liked the "concept" of attending an Ivy. Didn't strike me as sound thinking, but then she's a teenager. As digmedia said, fit plays a more important role in your child's college experience. Way back when, H and I looked at the top 25 with our S and identified only a couple where he would feel comfortable. Fortunately, he ended up going to one of them, but any of his other schools probably would have worked out well because he was happy with them all. For our D, again only two of the top 25 seemed to resonate with her but it was an LAC that won her heart.</p>

<p>Much of the college application process comes down to common sense and the fragile balance between heart and mind. When parents, such as those on CC, feel empowered to do their research and serve as their children's advocates and consciences, perhaps the pendulum on the anxiety and commercialism of the application process will swing back to normalcy.</p>

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<p>Revoltedmom, thanks for the reference to the education conservancy dot org. It reflects many of the thoughts I have been having and had not seen expressed so clearly.</p>

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<p>calmom - thanks for all the insights re: the "over-application" process...I can't help but think that over the last decade, the internet, the on-line application process, and chat rooms and forums like CC only make matters worse because the same schools are repeatedly touted (often shamelessly so by alumni and closet stafff) -- and hence the frenzy of needing to matriculate at an "it" school begins.
Frankly, in the best interests of all involved (expect perhaps for the over-zealous applicants) I think it's a trend that needs to be stopped in it tracks. In the spirit of halting thios trend, perhaps One all the colleges/uni'scould band together and develop a public registry (could even be done on-line) -- listing names and addresses of applicants for that year. Certainly if I were an admissions officer and received an application from a student who'd also applied to 15 or 20 other schools, it would be a clear indication to me that this student was not at all heavily invested in attending my school; that my institution was not all that high on the feeding chain. Students who apply to all six Ivy's for instance are clearly looking less at a good fit (what that school's academic and social culture offers them vis a vis their particular interests and talents) than they are simply attending an Ivy league school. I am not saying my suggestion is a panacea - for instance, in the short run, I can see how smaller schools might bulk at an open registry because it would serve to indicate that they get fewer applicants in comparison, (though we alreadyknow this - at least a year later when schools list applicants/yields/percentages accepted...) - but in a few years, it might serve to cut down a bit on thios ridicuolous feeding frenzy.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
One all the colleges/uni'scould band together and develop a public registry (could even be done on-line) -- listing names and addresses of applicants for that year. Certainly if I were an admissions officer and received an application from a student who'd also applied to 15 or 20 other schools, it would be a clear indication to me that this student was not at all heavily invested in attending my school; that my institution was not all that high on the feeding chain.

[/quote]

Personally, while I do not like aspects of the current system I do not know a better way to run admissions. I have two big issues with the suggestion above. First, I want my kids to get to decide the hierarchy of schools even if it does not match the USN rankings (i.e., lower ranking USN schools bumping applicants because the school believes the student applied as a safety might be in the school's interest but is absolutely against the interests of the students applying (and I'm all on the students side)). Second, I am sure it would be deemed restraint of trade and ruled illegal. Businesses can not collude and decide for the consumer who should get which opportunity (for example, the IVYs and some other schools used to discuss tuition levels and financial aid packages for students together ... they no longer are allowed to).</p>

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<p>" If we use the 1/20 odds then if she applied to 20 schools she probably getting close to having the odds in her favor of getting into <em>one</em> school. "</p>

<p>I think that the major flaw is that the odds really aren't one in 20. Just because, for instance, Harvard took 1 in 11 students this year doesn't mean that the odds for any individual student really were 1 in 11.</p>

<p>If a student was a tuba playing, first generation, low income Mexican American from a migrant labor camp, and had a 1480 SAT, that person's odds might be 1 in 2.</p>

<p>If a student was a typical BWRK from NYC, that person's odds might be 1 in 70. </p>

<p>I also have read some research by, I think, a GC who said that he found that once students applied to more than a certain number of colleges (I think the number was 8), their odds of getting admtited anywhere went down. </p>

<p>He hypothesized that occurred because the students had less time to individualize each application. They weren't able to visit, to shine in their interviews, to write essays that sparkled and met the interests of the individual colleges. They also were not as likely to have selected their colleges with care.</p>

<p>I know that as an alum interviewer for an Ivy, I can tell during interviews if students are burned out with interviews. When they are, they interrupt me to answer questions with answers that seem pat and overly rehearsed. They talk about themselves with an air of boredom. I can tell that they've been through the process too many times and are sick of it.</p>

<p>Anyway, if I had a BWRK, instead of encouraging that kid to apply to 22 colleges, I'd be helping that kid figure out things to do now and on their application to differentiate them from the crowd. I'd also be looking for some less popular colleges where my kid would stand out in the application pool and could go to and flourish. This could be colleges outside of my region where fewer students from my area were applying to and my kid would stand out for geographic diversity reasons.</p>

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<p>Digmedia: I would tweak your anology just a little bit in that to truly have a 1 in 10 chance you have to at least have the minimum requirements for admission. Thus, even though everyone can buy a lottery ticket (or pay an application fee), the pay-out only goes to those meeting the minimum qualifications -- kind of like if the lottery only paid out to residents of certain states only.</p>

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<p>"Anyway, if I had a BWRK, instead of encouraging that kid to apply to 22 colleges, I'd be helping that kid figure out things to do now and on their application to differentiate them from the crowd. I'd also be looking for some less popular colleges where my kid would stand out in the application pool and could go to and flourish. This could be colleges outside of my region where fewer students from my area were applying to and my kid would stand out for geographic diversity reasons."</p>

<p>The problem is that many kids are seduced by the glamour and prestige of HYPSM & Company. They don't approach it realistically.
They don't understand the college admissions process.</p>

<p>Thirty years ago I was accepted by a top journalism school with NO AP courses. I wasn't the school newspaper editor, just a copy editor. I didn't write a column for a local rag, and I hadn't published essays in a national magazine, and I hadn't won any awards for my writing. My HS didn't weight grades for honors classes and I think I ranked about 67 in a class of 900. Today with that resume, I'd make it into a Cal State.</p>

<p>I have a psychiatrist friend who's affiliated with Stanford med school. She says she could never get accepted to Stanford today with her HS stats.</p>

<p>NSM makes sense. We tried to figure out what made S different, and how he could market those qualities to make him stand out to an adcom. It helped that he did want to attend college in another geographic region. We identified a few quirky things about him and he focused his essay on those. </p>

<p>If he hadn't applied ED, he would have applied to 5 or 6 schools. I don't know how others feel, but I think $1000 is too much to throw away on college application fees.</p>