Did anybody apply to 8+ reaches and not get into a single one?

Applying to College
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<p>Your chances at each school are the same but the chances of getting into one of the schools is larger when there are more schools in the pot. That is, if you had a chance at all. The chances at select schools are aggregate numbers that may be nothing when it comes to you. You don't really have a 9% chance of getting into a school like Harvard. Once the quick admits are accepted (unless you are one of them, of course), there is everyone else. You have URMs, legacy, sports, first generation, celebrity, categories along with whatever the flavor of the season is (what the school needs more of). You may not have a chance at all if you are in a pool that the school has too many of your type. </p>

<p>But if you have somewhat of a chance, if you apply to more schools, your chances can go up, all other things equal. If you apply to so many schools that it affects the quality of your apps, your senior year, your enthusiasm, your interviews and mistakes are made, the numbers are not going to be reflected by those derived purely through probability.</p>

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<p>Applying to more colleges somewhat alleviates the uncertainty/crap_shoot factor. College A might already have someone like you in their class but college B might not. This is assuming the student can easily replace anyone in their class (good stats, good GPA, good EC)
If a student has no chance otherwise, it doesn't matter how many schools he applies to.<br>
No one is saying applying to an ivy out of 8 gives you 1/8 chance.
Those that did not get into a single one even with good stats, there must be a hole in their applications that they do not see. Maybe their essays rivaled Esther Mobley's Kentucky debacle and turned off admissions committee.</p>

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<p>As long as one has a couple guarenteed safeties, it's OK to go reach heavy, right?</p>

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<p>As long as you're fine with going to the safeties.</p>

<p>For example, I plan on applying to a couple rolling admissions universities that I have fallen in love with early in the school year. If on the off chance I am not accepted at either, then I will apply to more safer schools. However, assuming I am accepted somewhere, I will be more than happy to throw my applications at all my dream schools as there are not many matches that I would attend over the two rolling schools.</p>

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<p>ok the lottery works more like this. they call your numbers, and you win 50 million dollars.</p>

26

<p>It looks like it is time for my FAQ again: </p>

<p>APPLYING TO ALL EIGHT IVIES </p>

<p>Wrong extreme idea 1: </p>

<p>Some students "reason" that if an applicant applies to all eight Ivy League colleges, his chance of admission at any one of them is the same as the average base admission rate for all of them (which is wrong assumption a). Then the students "reason" that because the eight admission committees don't all meet in the same room, that they select students "independently" in the STATISTICAL sense (which is wrong assumption b). The students then misapply a formula learned in high school that only applies to differing situations, to calculate that the chance of getting into some Ivy League college is almost a sure thing. </p>

<p>What's wrong with wrong assumption a is that a weak applicant for admission at the least selective Ivy League college is a weak applicant at all the other colleges in the league, and that means that applicant's chance of admission anywhere is well below the base rate of admission for any Ivy League college. </p>

<p>What's wrong with assumption b is that usually colleges don't have to actively collude to end up choosing similar kinds of applicants. ALL colleges prefer stronger applicants to weaker applicants. A teacher of statistics explained to me what "independence" means in the sense used by statisticians: "What is independence? It means that when you learn about the outcome of one event, it has no influence on your guess about the probability of success in another event. However, in this case, if a student gets rejected from 8 schools, that DOES influence my guess about how likely he is to get rejected from the 9th school. I'd say someone who gets rejected from 8 schools is more likely to get rejected from the 9th than someone who didn't get rejected from 8 schools." In other words, even if colleges act independently in the layman's sense of the term, you can't use the multiplicative rule of probability to figure out the joint probability of being admitted to one out of the eight Ivy League colleges. Plenty of students get rejected by all eight. </p>

<p>Other threads from time to time bring up </p>

<p>Wrong extreme idea 2: </p>

<p>Ivy League admission officers are thin-skinned and personally offended if you apply to their "competitors," and will reject you if you apply to all eight Ivy League colleges. </p>

<p>Well, that's just ridiculous. There are plenty of students each year who are admitted to more than one Ivy League college (of course, those are rather extraordinary students) and there are at least a few each year who apply to all eight and are admitted to all eight. Ivy League colleges do NOT collude in this manner when making admission decisions. They admit the students who they think will fit well into the next entering class and contribute to the campus community. The bottom-tier Ivy League colleges admit a lot of students who don't enroll (that is, those colleges have rather low "yield,") because they admit some students who prefer to enroll at one of the OTHER Ivy college colleges that admitted them. Each college has its own tricks, in five cases including binding early decision programs, to identify students who genuinely prefer that college, but in the regular action round, every college admits some students who are also admitted by some of the other Ivy League colleges, perhaps all of the Ivy League colleges. </p>

<p>Bottom line: don't worry about either wrong, extreme idea. Apply well to all of the colleges that interest you. There is little point in applying to a college you wouldn't possibly attend if admitted, but there is every reason to apply to a college you like, because you can't get in if you don't apply.</p>

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<p>And there is warrant for posting another FAQ here: </p>

<p>SAFETY COLLEGE </p>

<p>A safety college is one that </p>

<p>1) is pretty much certain to admit the applicant, based on its known behavior in acting on recent admission applications,</p>

<p>2) has a strong program in an area the applicant is interested in,</p>

<p>3) is affordable based on its known behavior in acting on financial aid applications,</p>

<p>and</p>

<p>4) is likeable to the applicant. </p>

<p>Look for your safety first of all. If it is truly safe, you only need one safety college, but make sure you really like it. Then you can apply to as many "reach" colleges as you like.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
So, two lottery tickets gets you a 2 in 16 million chance? Then all you'd need to do is buy 16 million tickets to definitely win, by your estimate. Even if all the 16 million tickets you bought have numbers 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 but the winner is 1 2 3 4 5 7?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>you get to pick your numbers for the lottery generally and no idiot would buy the same number twice for the same drawing. If the chance of winning is 1 out of 16 million, then that would mean there are 16 million possible number combinations, so if you bought 16 million different tickets you would have all of them and would with 100% certainly win</p>

<p>ok I'm done with this analogy</p>

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<p>Token, you explained it right!!!</p>

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<p>By the way, most lotteries pay out on a parimutuel </p>

<p>Parimutuel</a> betting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia </p>

<p>basis and thus if anyone else buys a ticket your expectation can go way down. Mathematician Ian Stewart, who writes delightfully interesting books, reports one instance of a British lottery in which SEVENTY-FIVE different individuals shared the prize, because all of those winners picked the same lucky number that was drawn that day--which wasn't so lucky for them.</p>

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<p>how about a new analogy?</p>

<p>you really want to win an olympic medal and are a pretty physically fit person. does entering more events improve your chances? well it depends -- if you are truly a top swimmer and enter all the swimming competitions, maybe -- you are already in the running to be the best in that specific athletic field and the more events, maybe the greater the chance that in one of them you'll be able to squeak past your competition. though then again, a top swimmer may want to focus his/her efforts on the events he truly excels in (eg breast stroke rather than butterfly) so that he/she is at his/her best for those competitions.
but now lets say you are just a really overall athletic person so you enter a dozen completely different events, because after all, it doesn't matter what you win a medal in as long as you win a medal -- it probably doesn't matter how many events you try out for -- unless its a sport you are really in the running for, you're unlikely to come away with a medal.</p>

<p>similarly -- some applicants are likely to get serious consideration at many top schools -- at some they may fulfill the admission committee's needs for the entering class and squeak past their competition -- if the applicant takes the time to make his/her best presentation (something than can become difficult if you are having to write too many "why this school" essays). applicants may be a better fit for some schools than for others -- applying to selective schools simply because they are selective regardless of any sense of fit -- probably won't increase their chances whereas applying to schools where they can demonstrate their fit may improve their chances. yet others, are just your general all around good student, but just simply may not have enough to reach the level required for super selective admissions -- in which case no matter how many schools they apply to, their chances are simply going to remain incredibly small. </p>

<p>unlike the athlete, it may not be as easy to tell if you are in the first or last of these categories -- but you should be able to tell how you "fit" with a school. the ivies are incredibly diverse -- what do Dartmouth and Columbia really have in common other than the designation of ivy? wouldn't students be better off trying to sell themselves to schools where they think they fit rather than just racking up admission fees to the most selective schools?</p>