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<p>Help me understand this. I get that the process is not “random,” but how is it not independent? The application outcome at one school does not influence the outcome of the next. I agree with your conclusion but don’t get how the principles of probability got you there.</p>
<p>P.S. I liked the secret answer effect in your post above. </p>
<p>They are not independent events because the set of admissions criteria includes a large number of common applicant attributes like HS courses, HS grades, test scores, awards, extracurriculars, and essay writing. This means that an applicant who falls short of the desired criteria at one school is more likely to fall short at other similarly selective schools.</p>
<p>For example, for simplicity, suppose a set of colleges admit only by HS GPA. Let’s say that they all admit 10% of their applicants, but their HS GPA thresholds may differ slightly due to differences in their applicant pools, so that their thresholds vary between 3.8 and 3.9. However, a >3.9 applicant will be admitted to all of them, while a <3.8 applicant will be admitted to none of them; only the small subset of applicants between 3.8 and 3.9 may get into some but not others. A 3.7 applicant would be falsely overconfident if s/he believes that s/he has a good chance of admission to at least one of the schools.</p>
<p>Note that the hidden answer a few posts ago assumes that the admission chances are independent events, which means that the chance of admission to at least on school is likely optimistic compared to real chances in the real world where admission chances are not independent events.</p>
<p>Add WashU. Great chemical engineering and biomed engineering(favorite of the pre-meds). Great med school as well. Lots of research opps, size you are looking for, lots of merit money and easy commute from airport. Lots of east coast and west coast kids in addition to the large Chicago contingent. </p>
<p>So is your opinion that my list lacks safeties and has too many reaches? What do you think is a good balance in terms of number of each?</p>
<p>Just make sure that your list has at least one 100% sure thing safety (which can be starting at community college if that is acceptable to you). Everything else is optional, although you don’t want to waste a lot of time and application fees on schools that do not have your intended majors or are otherwise obviously unsuitable.</p>
<p>Right now, it looks like you are just aiming for prestige and super-selective schools with little regard for coming up with a realistic list of schools that are good fits for you.</p>
<p>It seems like my best option would be applying through Questbridge College Match</p>
<p>Since Questbridge College Match contains colleges which would not be considered safeties for anyone, you still need to find a safety, unless you consider starting at a community college to be your safety.</p>
<p>^ yes. But you should still have one acceptable safety :)</p>
<p>can UCSD be considered an acceptable safety? I’m instate and my school regularly gets ~50 acceptances there each year. School also has ~50 acceptances at Berkeley. Are these not good indicators of my chances at a school? School doesn’t rank but I’m most likely in top 5%</p>
<p>UCSD may be a low match for some students, but may be risky to depend on as a safety.</p>
<p>Are past school trends not good indicators of acceptance probability? If my school regularly has 50+ acceptances to UC Berkeley for example, is that not a reliable prediction? How likely is it that 50~ get accepted and someone in the top 3~ rankings gets rejected? I just feel like you’re overestimating how difficult these schools are. The opinions I’m hearing on here are very different from ones I’ve heard all my high school career from other sources</p>
<p>I don’t think you should put too much weight on your intended major for choosing a college. Most college students change majors at least once, and even then very few end up in jobs relevant to their major after graduation. Fortunately, most of your picks offer much more than just chemistry, so now concentrate on figuring out your ideal learning environment. Once you do that, you should be able to cut your college list down to a more reasonable number and make room for more matches and safeties. </p>
<p>BTW, New York University only meets 55% of financial need on average. It’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to afford NYU, so you can safely cross this one off the list. </p>
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<p>However, it would not be a good idea to go to a college that does not even offer the majors of potential interest, which would force a change of major immediately. An undecided student may also want to look for colleges which have decent offerings in all of the possible majors that s/he is interested in.</p>
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<p>That may be true for those majors which do not have much in the way of major-specific employment prospects, leading students in such majors to seek any job that nominally wants bachelor’s degree graduates, but those in majors with more major-specific employment prospects are probably more likely to seek and find employment relating to their majors.</p>
<p>I think you all are being too hard on Kei and, I believe, worrying him needlessly.
This is a low-income kid with a UC GPA, capped, at 4.33 (basically the maximum allowed), with 36/800/800 and national prizes. Half the schools on his list specifically look for kids like him and will throw acceptances at him.
Andison’s story does not apply to Kei because Andison 1) didn’t apply to his state schools and 2) was high income so a dime a dozen at the colleges he applied to.
Kei’s profile is pretty unique and I’m quite sure next year he’ll post here to say he doesn’t know how to choose between Williams, Harvard, and MIT.
He might get denied at Berkeley but UCSD is a near safety and UCSB is a safety.
If Kei were by misfortune turned down by every university on his list, he would have to take a gap year.
Talking about this possibility with his parents may be a better use of his time than needlessly worrying about why he’d be turned down by UCSB when there’s no reason he should be.</p>
<p>Kei- apply to Questbridge for the Junior College Prep program, which will help you with some semi-professional advice at the very least. They can give you experienced guidance about what your safeties should be.</p>
<p>If you want my <em>amateur</em> advice, you don’t really need safeties. With your credentials, you are a lock pretty much everywhere except for maybe HYPS/MIT. And I don’t see why those schools wouldn’t take you, unless you have a horrible personality and can’t get decent recommendations. A low-income student with perfect scores is like hitting the jackpot for them. These days it’s all about averages for them, and you bring the average up.</p>
<p>If you get into any top private school, you will have $0 cost of attendance (if your family’s income is really $35k/yr) so I’m not sure why you’d apply to UC schools unless you really, really want to go to them. I agree with myos, the biggest problem you will have will be choosing between amazing schools.</p>
<p>The Questbridge application deadline is fast approaching, you should start filling it out soon:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.questbridge.org/for-students/cps-college-prep-scholarship”>http://www.questbridge.org/for-students/cps-college-prep-scholarship</a></p>
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<p>Everyone needs a safety plan (even if it may be starting at community college or doing some non-college activity like working).</p>
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<p>Even the private schools with the most generous financial aid have an expected student contribution, usually around $4,000 to $5,000, in addition to any family contribution, so the net price under normal circumstances will be greater than $0 (though it is possible that Questbridge NCM may be better than normal). Check net price calculators at all schools before assuming.</p>
<p>Here is a UC safety that the OP can get without the risks of holistic review:
<a href=“New Students | Apply | Undergraduate Admissions | UC Riverside”>http://admissions.ucr.edu/whyucr/ourguarantee</a>
Basically, with a 3.9 (UC-weighted) GPA and 1600 SAT or 23 ACT, apply to UCR’s GAP (guaranteed admission program) between June 16 and July 31, 2014. Then submit a regular UC application including UCR later. UCR GAP is non-binding, so the OP is free to choose another school after all decisions have been made. UCR has chemical engineering and chemistry, the majors that the OP indicated interest in.</p>
<p>UCR is just such a lower tier school than I’ve been looking at that I don’t think I would wanna go even if I have to.</p>
<p>Anyway I have a question about QB. The acceptance rate to becoming a finalist is around 50% from the posted stats. However only about 10% of those finalists get matched with any school. Is this because of the selectivity of the schools, overall stats of QB finalists, or because QB offers no inherent advantages in admissions?</p>
<p>All of those schools are highly selective. You need safeties.</p>
<p>Does QB actually increase or decrease the chances of admission into a school? Wouldn’t schools be reluctant to offer full rides more than just normal FA?</p>
<p>Safeties are often not a black and white issue. It’s often more of a question of whether the consequences of a x% chance of being shut out are worth the risk. Some would be fine with a 10% chance, while others would find a 1% chance unacceptably high. One can roughly estimate chance of acceptance via history of acceptances at your HS, Naviance, and other tools. However, such tools don’t account for other factors on your application that can make a large portion of applications have unexpected results, such as if you get a really bad LOR for some reason or write an essay about idolizing Hitler (the latter really happened to a poster on CC, who was shut out).</p>
<p>As a compromise, the original poster might apply non-binding early action to at least one college where he expects to be accepted. If he is accepted (and there is not a cost issue), then no need to worry about safeties during the regular decision applications. And if he is rejected, then he’d get a chance to reevaluate the college list during RD. I used a similar strategy back when I applied to colleges. I was accepted to EA to a selective college that wasn’t my first choice, so I didn’t need to apply to any safeties or less selective colleges during RD. I only needed to apply to colleges I’d pick over the EA college. The colleges I applied during RD were all at least as selective as ivies, yet I did not have significant risk of being shut out.</p>