Surprised by school list of DD's friend

Parents Forum
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<p>Are you sure that the girl is considering UPenn a safety and not Penn State? I just want to make sure. She could have just said "Penn" and people assumed University of Pennsylvania. </p>

<p>Anyway, the list looks crazy, but maybe it's not. If she's truly a very top student, she'll probably get into one or more of them. Michigan is very much worth consideration, even at this time of year.</p>

<p>Some people told me when I was applying to colleges that I didn't have any safeties. When I started worrying about not having safeties winter of senior year, my college counselor said that I was fine. I considered Michigan a safety (applied around January 1st, did not write a new essay besides short answers) as well as Notre Dame (I'm a legacy). I also felt pretty confident that I was going to get into the University of Chicago. I did get into those schools, so it all worked out.</p>

<p>Michigan has a residential college program which may offer smaller classes than the rest of the school. Any student can apply; it's different than the honors program. </p>

<p>I think there are schools with a Jan 15th deadline that she could look into as well as great state schools with rolling deadlines.</p>

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<p>What indicates safety?
Is it when the student stats are in the above 75th percentile of the school?
Also if the kid is amazing then she will get in during EA and if not she may add more safeties.</p>

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<p>Safety is 70-90% chance of being admitted, match is 30-60% chance, and reach is below- I think.</p>

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<p>I don't understand how people assume that applying to MANY reach schools gives a relative assurance of a positive result.</p>

<p>The thread from April, 2005 by andi referenced on the first page tells of a 2350 Boston student, National Merit Scholar, with a very strong piano performance record, and top 5% grades from a school with 12 National Merit Scholars, great personality like by almost everyone, was rejected at Yale after being deferred from ED, also rejected RD at other Ivys, and wait listed at Oberlin, WashU and Swarthmore.<br>
Apparent Matches:
HYP +
UPenn
Columbia</p>

<p>Plus apparent strong matches:
Swarthmore:
Oberlin
Wash U </p>

<p>It was a 20 page thread with hundreds of posts, but one of the posts seemed odd to me, about the chance of being rejected by ALL schools:</p>

<p>"If you just look at the numbers .... the probability of not being accepted outright at any of his schools looks like this:</p>

<p>.9 x .89 x .9 x .8 x .89 x .64 x .75 x .8 = .199 or about 20%</p>

<p>Looked at this way, he should have been accepted, and if the butterfly had flapped his wings at a different time, he would have been."</p>

<p>Something about this particular use of an Expected Value probability formula struck me intuitively as being off.</p>

<p>Do we have any statisticians in the house that can comment on the reasoning behind that post? Is it useful to take the expected rejection rate from each school, multiplied against all the other schools, to get an expected rejection rate from all schools?</p>

<p>If this sort of formula is generally useful, I think it might be good to run it by everyone's application list. My main difficulty with this application of probability theory is that it assumes the applicant is right in the middle of the applicant pool of each school.</p>

<p>P.S. I tried to find the thread on what happened to this student. I think I found a post by Andi in late 2006 referenceing Parent Night at MIT, so I assume he is at MIT now after a gap year.</p>

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<p>AnotherNJmom,</p>

<p>Your statement: "UMich dose offer 'merit-based' scholarship to out of state students but still it is 'need-based'." is incorrect. </p>

<p>My D is OOS and is attending UM on a full scholarship that is based on merit only, we did not send them FAFSA or Profile. FAFSA & Profile are only necessary if one wants to be considered for need based scholarships as well.</p>

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<p>DunninLA: That probability calculation looks spot on to me. There is only one outcome in which the applicant is rejected from all schools. The probability of that outcome is the multiplication of each of the rejection probabilities. It's just a simple intersection. It would be a far more complicated calculation if the question were what the probability of him getting into, for example, a single school is. For none or all schools, it's very easy.</p>

<p>That particular calculation's accuracy is, of course, predicated upon those rejection probabilities being accurate. In that case, the calculation probably overstated the probability of him being rejected; assuming his essay and supporting application was commensurate with the statistics presented, he would be a significantly better candidate than the average candidate for whom the accept-reject rates of the general population would be an accurate projection.</p>

<p>If we assume students of his statistics are generally admitted at twice the rate of the general applicant pool, the probability of him being rejected everywhere is:</p>

<p>.8<em>.78</em>.8<em>.78</em>.28*.6 = 0.0654 = 6.54%</p>

<p>That is, of course, an arbitrary napkin calculation, but you get my point.</p>

<p>Dad II: My college list was almost as top-heavy; I knew I would get into at least one, would have been happy with any. As it turned out, I got into 4 of 6 highly selective schools, but saw no reason to overload my college list with other safeties simply for safety's sake.</p>

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<p>The fact is that as long as the probability is great than zero it's still possible for you to be unlucky. For kids of HYP caliber there often isn't much choice between certain and crapshoot.</p>

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<p>Thank you, entomom. I'm talking about this one

[quote]

Award of Excellence(Rogel/Colton) Scholarship.. This scholarship is designed to meet th edemonstrated financial need of exceptional non-resident students....

[/quote]

As stated in a letter from UMich back in Oct. CSS and FAFSA are needed for this one....odd was we got this letter two weeks before know the actual acceptance. </p>

<p>Do you have to be in their honor program to recieve the merit only scholarship? I'm very impressed by their honor program stats (the students have the same stats as HYP, UofC, etc.). Though you need 2nd essay to get into the honor.....If you have not applied to honor will you be nominated?</p>

<p>
[quote]

Do we have any statisticians in the house that can comment on the reasoning behind that post? Is it useful to take the expected rejection rate from each school, multiplied against all the other schools, to get an expected rejection rate from all schools?

[/quote]

Yes. It totally make sense.....however, keep in mind that the adcom in all those top schools are basically looking for the same thing(I even read report that some adcom from a top A school transfer to top B school). My guess is there must be something missing in this kid's application, if stats all there.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
My guess is there must be something missing in this kid's application, if stats all there.

[/quote]

After he got rejected everywhere, several CC "guru parents" read his essays, and he and his parents saw his recommendations -- and everything looked stellar to everyone. The consensus was that he somehow just got very unlucky.</p>

<p>When he applied the following year, if I remember correctly, he got in everywhere except Swarthmore (which was the only "overlap" on his college lists, and sounded like a "perfect fit"). His second list included several "true safeties", but also several super-selective schools. He chose to matriculate at MIT.</p>

50

<p>DunninLA:
I would say this formula makes sense for kids aiming at top schools. Mathematically it's correct as long as all the events are INDEPENDENT, but it stops working if there is some "red flag" in the application or is a very so-so essay is submitted to all schools.
We more or less were using this formula discussing DD's list. We assumed that kids who have proper stats have closer to 20% chance at HYP and alikes and 25-40% chance at places like WashU. Places like UMich could be estimated at about 60% with before New Year application. With 10-12 schools you can get to above 90% chance without true safeties.</p>

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<p>DunninLA</p>

<p>Those probability calculations assume each decision is independent and random, like a biased coin flip. However, since many of the schools use similar evaluation criteria, there is strong correlation and they are not independent. In other words, each decision depends on the same factors, so the probability of getting rejected is equivalent to really having a lot fewer biased coin flips. </p>

<p>Hence even if you apply to 10 schools with a small chance of getting in, your chances of not getting in anywhere may still be much higher than the product of the rejection probabilities.</p>

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<p>Parent of Ivy Hope, The only school on Dad II's D's friends' list that is EA is Stanford -- which is SCEA. Since we haven't heard that she was rejectted anywhere or accepted to Stanford, I would asume the young lady applied RD to everywhere except OSU, which had rolling admissions.</p>

<p>I also wouldn't assume that a student with stats > 75% percentile for a school is a sure bet for admission. There are plenty of kids out there whose numbers are 75%tile+ at very fine schools, and they get rejected.</p>

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<p>ClassicRockerDad,</p>

<p>Thank you for articulationg my gut feel. In order to check my thinking, I often think of extremes and see if my thinking holds out there.</p>

<p>If one applies to ten schools, each with 90% rejection rate, then the probability of being rejected <em>using random, independent</em> selection criteria, would indeed be .9 to the tenth power = 35%. The odds in favor of admittance to at least one would be 65%.</p>

<p>However, assuming the ten schools have identical rejection criteria, then it would be 90% probability of rejection for all ten combined.</p>

<p>Then there is the possibility that half the schools use identical rejection criteria, and the other half do not at all. Then it would be 90% for those five combined, multiplied by 90% for each of the remaining 5 schools, giving .9 to the 6th power, or 53% probability of rejection by all ten.</p>

<p>So I think the answer lies somewhere in between 35% and 90% probability of rejection by all ten. I'll bet closer to 90% though. I'll bet the majority of the schools use very similar evaluation criteria.</p>

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<p>Well put DunninLA, I think you nailed it!</p>

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<p>I agree that the top schools use similar evaluation criteria, but we're assuming a student who, on paper, appears to meet the standards for a strong applicant at all of these schools. We can tell by looking at results threads here on CC that such students have patterns of admissions that are difficult to predict (or explain). There are either criteria that we don't know about or there is an element of randomness, or both. As a result, I think the probability is at some unknown point between 35% and 90%, but not all that close to 90%, or we would hear about more students admitted into all the top schools to which they applied, and more seemingly qualified students rejected from all of them. Rather, we hear about a kid who gets into Dartmouth but not Cornell, and vice versa.</p>

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<p>Dad II,
I glad she put OSU on her list because of your DD. One of the advantages of OSU is that it has an ginormous alumni base ... not a bad thing when job hunting. </p>

<p>High stats students do have problems - if she is Princeton caliber, Princeton may or may not take her because of sheer numbers, while WUSTL may decide its being used as a safety. I just wish she had another likely / strong match on her list.</p>

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<p>AnotherNJmom,
My D has the Shipman, and though she's in the honor's college, she didn't need to be for the scholarship. She never wrote the honors essay, as she put it off and in the meantime got a message saying that she was accepted. I would think that most kids receiving a merit scholarship would qualify for honors without writing the extra essay, but that's just my gut feeling, no data. </p>

<p>That's interesting that you got a scholarship offer before the acceptance, must have been a nice surprise! Another merit scholarship they have is the Michigan Tradition award for 10k/yr. It is for students from underrepresented states and low SES.</p>

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<p>On the INDEPENDENT events thought...</p>

<p>If these schools know where else this kid is applying, that removes the independent from the chances. The schools may act differently depending on whether they are considered front runners or dare I say SAFETY schools.</p>

<p>I don't think you can look at admissions as random chance without knowing the policies governing the behavior of the institutions. And even if the schools go on purely a numeric (non-qualitative) scoring system, I don't think the "average" acceptance rates apply to any one applicant in particular. Lots of things enter in including demographic profiles, major selection, etc.</p>

<p>If friend ends up with OSU as her only choice, he has nobody to blame but himself for what I perceive as a bit of arrogance with regards to his daughter's achievement. At least he could have asked where else OP's friend was applying that may have been more palatable to him than OSU (not that it would have mattered, I'm betting).</p>

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<p>what disgusts me the most is that there are so many schools out there that this kid could go to and do exceptionally well at (like michigan, uchicago, georgetown [schools in the top 50]) but she allows herself to apply to 5 or 6 top schools and a safety (OSU) which is probably below her standards. this country perpetuates this praise of the Ivies and the top10 schools but there are hundreds of colleges out there that would kill to have a student like her.</p>

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<p>I thought UChicago just as hard to get into than UPenn and WasU. It will be just playing the abovementioned statistics gme by applying to more schools. But non of them is closer to safety.
Actually it is REALLY HARD to find a good safety for a kid with Princeton stats if he is not interested in small LACs. Because none of the schools within top 20-30 can be considered a safety (above 80% chance of admission) simply because they all have a record of rejecting 10-20 % kids with 4.0 GPAs and 2400 SATs. And the next round of schools are viewed as "below standards".</p>