<p>With less than 12 hours to go, I think we all need a collective ego booster. So:</p>
<p>Say you're a below average applicant with only a 10% chance of getting in to a single ivy. If you apply to all 8, your chances of getting rejected from all of them are .9^8 = .43. This means that you have a 57% chance of getting accepted by at least one ivy! The odds work out much better for you if you're even just an average applicant.</p>
<p>Fear not, EDers! Chance is on our side!</p>
<p>It's a nice thought, but the admissions decisions aren't independent events. So if you are rejected from one, it suggests you will likely be rejected from others.</p>
<p>...And this kind of thinking is why some people end up applying to all the Ivies. Not only is it wrong from a statistical standpoint, someone is unlikely to be happy at all the Ivies.</p>
<p>gsd:</p>
<p>PLEASE take a stats class.</p>
<p>lol bluebayou, someone's going to 'Cor-NOT' university...</p>
<p>In defense of gsiddarth (and my master's <em>is</em> in statistics) - he did the problem right, and he was being amusing anyway.</p>
<p>Cayuga is right that the events aren't independent, but we don't know the degree of correlation, and so I disagree with his conclusion. The schools pride themselves on being different. The correlation could be quite low given that the quality of most applications is high. Anecdotal evidence is that the correlation isn't perfect: for example, some months ago there was a lawsuit against one Ivy (Princeton?) by a student with a 2400 who got into other Ivies, and asserted that it was racial discrimination that kept him out of Princeton. My point here is only that getting into one does not mean that you get into others.</p>
<p>Any student of probability knows that if the chance of success in a single event is low, then increasing the number of events increases the chances of an overall success, regardless of correlation. You're limited only by the cost of playing and the number of colleges.</p>
<p>But gsiddarth said it in a more amusing way.</p>
<p>There is an important fundamental point: If you've got good credentials, I think that you should over-weight your applications to "reaches" and under-weight your applications to "safeties".</p>
<p>what's wrong with wanting to be optimistic?</p>
<p>
[quote]
My point here is only that getting into one does not mean that you get into others.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And on the flip side, being rejected from one does not mean a student will be rejected from others. But, in the event of being rejected from one school, we suddenly have more information on the applicant, and the implied probability that she will be rejected from another school increases.</p>
<p>That said, I disagree that a student should over-weigh their applications to "reach schools". As NorCalGuy asserts, it drives a mentality that any top school would be good for the applicant and plays down the need for a student to find an environment with the right fit and feel for their studies. </p>
<p>In my opinion, the Oxbridge system does it best, limiting applicants to choosing between one or the other in their application. In their (rightful) view, any student who could get into one could get into the other, and the institutions have much better things to be doing with their time than worrying about out-recruiting cross-admits. I doubt the Ivy League would institute such a rule, but I would love to see a cap whereby you could only apply to three or four of the most selective schools in the country.</p>
<p>
[quote]
what's wrong with wanting to be optimistic?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Nothing, but the major assumption is wrong. A ten percent chance of getting into any one Ivy does not mean you have a ten percent chance at all of the Ivies.</p>
<p>This is also considering ALL variables that occur in college admissions. It could range anywhere from an applicant not being the right "fit" for a Cornell school, to not having stong essays at Dartmouth, to the adcom spilling coffee on him/herself and being in a bad mood at Yale.</p>
<p>This thread is much more detailed than I originally planned it to be. Not that I was advocating applying to all the ivies, because of fit and environment and yadda-yadda, but I just wanted to ease the ED nerves on this board.</p>
<p>emag:</p>
<p>The OP did the math for someone with "below average" credentials, which is just the opposite of your (correct) conclusion.</p>