<p>The few cases that I have personal knowledge of are much more rational than one is led to believe by the lottery ticket metaphor.</p>
<p>Kids in the top 3% of their good HS with excellent test scores, tough course loads, good ECs, recommendations and essays seem to get into the schools that they apply to - i.e., top 20 schools. Replace good ECs above with a regional flute award, and one is in at Harvard.</p>
<p>No?</p>
<p>The metaphor may not be wholly correct. But I believe its essential truth lies in the concept that schools with single digit (or close to it) acceptance rates should not be relied upon by <em>anyone</em>! Even if they apply to a passel of them. There are too many cases where students followed that plan and ended up with zero acceptances to the "lottery" schools.</p>
<p>Remember that at Stanford (to take one example) 50% of the students with 1600 (old) SATs are rejected. That is actually a good acceptance rate, but not one to count on no matter how stellar your stats.</p>
<p>I do believe that there is more rationality ( a lot more) in colleges' admissions decisions than we sometimes see from this side. But imo ALL applicants should treat their applications to "lottery" schools as a very very long shot. When and if they are proven wrong, much to celebrate. If they are proven right, having treated these schools as lottery tickets will mean that they also have applications out there to well-matched slightly less selective schools.</p>
<p>Logically, though, if we do as you say, then the logical approach is to apply to a great many schools. If we treat every lottery school application as a randomly decided long shot, then it is sensible to apply to all 20 top 20 schools.</p>
<p>My D's friend was 6 for 6 at top 20 LACs. A great, smart, hard working kid, but no patents, cancer cures, best sellers. It was not a lottery or she used up a lot of luck.</p>
<p>Yes, 50% of 1600's may be rejected at some schools, but how many 1600's with 4 points, a hard schedule, decent everything else are rejected. And, even then, it is generally predictable. </p>
<p>There is a lottery aspect, but it is around the margins.</p>
<p>Do the math, beprepn. .1 chance at 20 schools does not become a good chance. I've forgotten half the statistics I ever learned (or more!), but they are not wholly independent events. You can't just add the probabilities (if you could, applying to 20 "lottery" schools would give you 200% odds of acceptance - pretty good). It seems rational to you because of your D's outcome. It doesn't seem so rational to the others.</p>
<p>Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with your premise that there is rationality. I am advocating thinking of applications to low-acceptance rates schools as "lottery" or "low" chances. Realizing that you have a 90% chance of rejection at each such school gives a jolt of reality in the planning process and provides insurance against an anguished April 1st with either no acceptances or a passel of rejections/waitlists and an acceptance to only the local U you never thought you'd ever have to consider but carelessly threw in as your "safety."</p>
<p>As an engineer, I can't be politely non-responsive.</p>
<p>chance = 1.0 - [0.9 raised to the 20th power] = 1 - .18 = 82%.</p>
<p>There aren't 20 schools with admit rates below 10%, or perhaps even below 20%.
[quote]
If we treat every lottery school application as a randomly decided long shot, then it is sensible to apply to all 20 top 20 schools.
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</p>
<p>This is how lotteries make their money, not lottery ticket buyers; of course there's always the jackpot winner. But as a strategy for getting rich quick, it is not very reliable. Ditto for getting admitted into top colleges.
I suggest you (re)read the story of Andison.</p>
<p>"As an engineer, I can't be politely non-responsive.</p>
<p>chance = 1.0 - [0.9 raised to the 20th power] = 1 - .18 = 82%."</p>
<p>bprepn, I can't be a medical scientist and be politely non-responsive. And neither can my daughter who got a 5 in AP Statistics last year.</p>
<p>The assumption that acceptance to each of these "lottery schools" is an independent random event is faulty. Therefore, your simple probability calculation is incorrect. First, no acceptance is random. Schools have many variables they consider for each student who applies. Some are common to each application, some are not. E.g, an un-hooked kid (not an athlete, URM or development case) with no national recognition in any field, a GPA of 2.0, a combined new SAT (M + CR + W) of 1200 actually has closer to a 0% chance of being accepted to ANY of these schools, even if he applies to 50 of them. This is an extreme example, of course. But even kids "in the ballpark" with their profile do not fall into your construct.</p>
<p>After a year and half of this, I have observed that this is NOT just a lottery. Each lottery ticket carries a different weight that may or may not be appealing to each school depending on how they wish to fashion an entire class. Now, there may be a certain number of these students who fall into "the lottery"; kids who have pretty high scores, excellent GPA, great but not nationally recognized ECs, etc. But this is a much smaller lottery pool than the entire application pool (many of whom actually are closer to the 0% chance of admission) so their probability of acceptance is higher than the hypothetical 10%.</p>
<p>Correct. Once a student has passed a "they are in the ballpark / could handle the work here" threshhold, other factors come into play and it becomes a matter of shaping a class for the next year. For a student with very high / impressive everythings, they may get into a lot of these final pools but may or may not be filtered through the final sieve into the "admitted" pile. I think as jmmom was saying, it is the lack of assurance of anything, rather than some statistical probability, that likens admissions at these schools to a lottery. Low odds so don't count on it, rather than, "do the math".</p>
<p>I got the arithmetic wrong too - it's 88%.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>First, no acceptance is random.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Correct. Which is why the lottery metaphor is such a poor one -- because a lottery IS random.</p>
<p>"bprepn, I can't be a medical scientist and be politely non-responsive. And neither can my daughter who got a 5 in AP Statistics last year."</p>
<p>Actually, you are both right. The actual stats for this year in the Ivies (by themselves) would indicate that, putting aside internationals and the total hail-mary's, the Ivy acceptance rate for individuals who applied is between 40-50%. There are 150,00+ applications, but only 50,000-60,000 discrete applicants.</p>
<p>What has become more unpredictable, from the applicant's point of view, is WHICH Ivy s/he will get into, and from the school's point of view (other than Harvard) which students will actually take them up on the offer.</p>
<p>Acceptances are not random, but rejections may well be.<br>
As adcoms have said before, the admitted class could be set aside in favor of an equal number of applicants who did not quite make the cut, and there would be little to choose between the two groups, save perhaps the hooks.</p>
<p>If we look at the math, it seems if you are doing this</p>
<p>10% acceptanace at schools A, B & C..that adds up to 30% chance of getting in</p>
<p>no it doesn't, it is still 10% at each school, as the admits are seperate and have no relationship to each other</p>
<p>I agree with marite - acceptances are not random at all. There is a good reason for each acceptance to one of the top schools. Rejections, however, often ARE random, as there are MANY more qualified applicants then places offered.</p>
<p>(As a disclaimer - my kids were lucky to get accepted at all the schools they applied to, including the top ones, so no sour grapes here... But I know of many others no less deserving who were not that lucky.)</p>
<p>When you add merit aid awards into the equation, it does start to seem more & more like a lottery, particularly when one student with very good but NOT ivy stats gets nice merit aid & other similarly situated kids get nothing. I really feel for the kids & families--it can be pretty mind-boggling, especially if their counselors aren't particularly helpful in guiding them thru the options & realities.</p>
<p>It can be tough figuring out one's likelihood of getting good merit aid at many schools, which is what many kids need to be able to attend a school other than in-state U.</p>
<p>it is easy to look at the kids who get in and think you can see why. it is a lot harder to look at kids who didn't get in and try to explain to them why they didn't.
if anything the analogy of a lottery is wrong because it makes it seem as if everyone has an equal chance and the decision is impersonal. its worse than a lottery because any individual student can't predict whether they will be what the school is looking for when their folder gets to the top of the pile.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Replace good ECs above with a regional flute award, and one is in at Harvard.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Maybe a regional bassoon award...</p>
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<blockquote> <p>it is easy to look at the kids who get in and think you can see why. it is a lot harder to look at kids who didn't get in and try to explain to them why they didn't.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>unbelievablem--this is so true!</p>
<p>I think the idea of a 'lottery' is that it <em>is</em> a lottery from the viewpoint of the applicants but not the college. The applicants don't know what particular talents a particular college has an urgent need for, but the colleges does and selects accordingly.</p>
<p>Yes, indeed, Don'tPanic1. However, there are clues parents and students should look for, especially at at non-Ivy, very selective schools. (LISTEN UP PARENTS OF RISING SENIORS!!!!!) If your child IS that first chair bassoonist in your state's honors orchestra, call the music department at the colleges of interest and find out if any of the bassoonists are graduating the summer before your chld would matriculate or in that upcoming year. Spend a few hours on the web to search the strategic plans AND any recent speeches given by the college's president and dean of admissions. Look through the highlighted or headline stories on the website or on-line campus newspaper for evidence of recent large donations to departments or stories about "building up" departments in which your child would major. Here are some examples, you find out that XXX college just received $100 million dollars specifically to pay the tuition of students entering the graduate school in music (i.e., Yale). My D, who demonstrated early interest in the combined BA/MM program at Yale in vocal performance probably had better chances of being accepted there than at other Ivies (she applied to Yale and one other, and was fortunately accepted to both). On the flip side, she applied to Brandeis, a school she adored, incorrectly thinking she might get some merit aid. If we had read the school's strategic plan and two speeches quoted on-line from the president and the dean of admissions in the previous year, we would have learned that Brandeis' enrollment strategy had changed in order to increase the percentage of Asians and URMs to increase diversity. When reviewing the merit awards from the Brandeis thread on this site for this year, it was clear that many named large awards that had, in earlier years, been given "by the numbers" were, this year, give to lower stat Asian and URM kids. If we had done our research properly, my daughter STILL would have applied to Brandeis (she loved the school), but there would have been no expectation of merit aid (and no disappointment that there wasn't).</p>
<p>Exploring these types of clues are ESPECIALLY important for LACs that offer merit aid and for places like U Chicago, WUSTL, etc. For schools that offer no merit aid, searching for institutional financial or ideologic priorities might mean a lot about your child's chances of admissions, all stats being equal. If Middlebury, for example, had reported a low application rate for kids from New Mexico in the previous year, then they could be looking for a kid like yours from Los Alamos this year!</p>