All students applying to college need to take either AP Stats, or some other statistics course. Not because it will look good on your application, but because it’s a course you need for life in general.
It is wildly ironic how the same people who choose to pass up on an “AP- lite” course like statistics seem to lack a fundamental understanding of basic statistics.
If a school has a sub-50% acceptance rate, statistics show that you will most likely be rejected because most students are!
This is amplified when you get into top tier schools with sub 20% acceptance rates.
** Do not be surprised if you get rejected. ** Most people do!
Even the “lower ivies” are reaches because you have a .8 or more chance of rejection. Please, be wise. Before even applying to any super selective school, accept the fact that you will be rejected. Odds are, you will be. If you get accepted, great! But don’t set yourself up for heartbreak and don’t put yourself in a position where you were rejected by all of your desired schools and are left with few options.
Curate a list with match schools and safety schools. ACTUAL match and safety schools. If a school accepts less than 40% of applications, it is not a match. It doesn’t matter what your test scores were. Your list school include several schools with a 40%+ acceptance rate. If a school accepts 40%-50% of applications, it is not a safety. This flawed CC logic needs to be broken.
Please be wise. Prevent yourself from the devastation that so many students are facing right now.
College admission is not a random variable in the sense that, not everyone has probability p of acceptance where p is the acceptance rate. People with very impressive achievements will more likely be sought after colleges, while people who have very low test scores and don’t show much interest in the college or have low grades are more likely to be rejected.
However it is true that statistics is indeed important and I’ve seen videos and read articles about the common population’s lack of knowledge about probability or statistics, or even basic arithmetic. For example:
*Student X who doesn’t know probability applies to 10 colleges, each with a 10% chance of acceptance (independently of other colleges), and concludes he must be accepted to one of them. In reality, the probability he is accepted to at least one is only ~65%.
*Poker players who go all-in on a hand that is really unlikely to win
*People who think one eighth is bigger than one fourth, because 8 > 4.
@MITer94 Personally, I think that once you reach a certain threshold, it is random. In rejection letters, they even admit that it is hard to justify their decisions. I think the random variable model applies for elite colleges.
@MITer94 I don’t even understand the anti- statistics sentiment. Statistics have so many real world applications. It;s actually one of my favorite classes! I also feel as though statistics is why i got over my USC rejection as soon as I saw it.
Admission rate does not tell the whole story, as it does not account for either strength of applicants or whether the college is divided into different buckets for admission purposes (by major/division, in-state/out-of-state, etc.).
For example, UT Austin has an overall admission rate of 40%, but applicants with top 7% rank in Texas high schools and meeting course work requirements (and taking SAT or ACT, although no score level is needed) can call it a 100% sure thing safety (for the school; some majors may have additional requirements). But other applicants should probably put it in the reach category.