The Odds Post

Applying to College
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I’m surprised to see people come back after multiple posts and still be surprised that they didn’t get into some top schools, so I thought I’d post the math.

of HS seniors in 2018-19 in the United States:

3.6 million, give or take

of HS seniors in the top 1% of any given measure, or in terms of the agglomerated measures (SATGPAACTECshardship weighting):

360,000 give or take

of HS seniors in the top .1% :

36,000

of Ivy League spots in 2019:

22,800

of regular-decision Ivy League spots:

16,000

Approximate % of spots for international students:

10% or 1,600

# of “regular decision” spots in the Ivy League for domestic students:

14,400 or so spots.

In other words, if you’re in the top .1% and regular decision for the Ivy League including their subjective hardship weighting, you have about a 40% chance of getting in.

This is further assuming that none of the regular decision spots went to legacies and sports. If you’re early decision, your chances go up, but we know that some of those went to athletes and legacies.

Finally, I do realize that not everyone goes to college. But class percentages are based on all grads. For SATs and ACTs, not everyone takes them, so you may wish to assume that you only need to be in the top .2% of test takers, to be in the top .1% of all graduates. The total number of people in the top .1% remains the same, though.

Oh, and this is the whole Ivy League, not HYP.

Regular decision spots at HYP are around 3,500 this year, closer to 3,200 without international students. So about a 9% chance if you are a top .1% student.

Edit: realized I probably am not allowed to post these links. :slight_smile: The references are easy to find with a bit of Googling.

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Odds of admissions when you calculate 1% of 3.6m to be 360k and .1% to be 36k = slim. :wink:

The odds are slim, but making them 10x worse doesn’t help.

There are actually 14,400 spots for 3,600 students in the top 0.1%, using these numerical assumptions.

Top .1% don’t actually have it much worse than years ago. IMO, there were always 6-8k students fighting for 2k Harvard spots. The very low acceptance rates are largely driven by many more top 5-10% students applying just because it’s easy. It used to be 2k of 10k, now it’s 2k of 40k. Thousands of students applying to top schools with sub-650 SATs just didn’t used to happen. (Last year MIT accepted 1 of nearly 2,000).

I would find it very interesting to see how many T20 schools a stereotypical 1520 SAT student was admitted to over time. Not acceptance rate, actual number of schools. The number in the top x% and the number of slots in the top y schools, and the ratio between the two, really hasn’t changed much over time.

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Ergo, it is possible to get into Harvard if you work hard. :wink: Sorry, it wouldn’t let me submit, so I went back and edited… apparently for the worse.

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When you say “spots”, are you counting the number that enter each fall as frosh, or how many they admit? Since the admission number is higher.

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@RichInPitt wrote: “I would find it very interesting to see how many T20 schools a stereotypical 1520 SAT student was admitted to over time.” Would need to correct for SAT inflation over time. A 1520 in 1977 was much rarer than a 1600 in 2017.

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@intparent Admits–because people apply to many schools.

@RichInPitt I’m not trying to make a comparison over time. The point is not about boo-hooing, but about being realistic when you go in to the process.

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1% of 3.6 million is 36,000

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@mikemac I switched from odds to percentages in an edit and was unable to edit further. Might ask mods to remove it if this makes the entire post unusable. :frowning:

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I don’t think your post is so odd at all.

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@tdy123 In 2017. 3700 students out of 2.2mm sat test takers globally scored a 1600 on the SAT. People may tell to you this but it’s a fallacy. It’s 10 carat diamond rare.

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Well folks, I can no longer edit or remove the post, so… all I can say is, don’t post while you’re waiting for something else to load, or you too may end up with a bad decimal conversion and be doomed to a lifelong eternity of people explaining tens values to you, lol! @RichInPitt @mikemac feel free to plagiarize the entire thing and re-post so that people can do the math.

I think when people hear about “oh it’s rare” they think about everyday rare. It’s just not possible to go from seven billion to several million down to the number of spots in the Ivies and really assess your own chances. Especially if you don’t live in a highly competitive area or move around a lot.

And to redeem myself… that’s .2%, @privatebanker . I couldn’t find diamond rarity on the Internet but I did learn that people are selling $37,000 diamonds on the web which amazes me.

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@MmeZeeZee I love your post. Even easier for me is the high school framework and actual Harvard numbers from the lawsuit. I don’t feel like looking up but can add some directional guidence.

37000 USA High schools.

3.6mm students
2.2mm college aspirants.
111,000 ranked in the top three of each school.

Harvard
1922 admitted students
Legacy, donor development, staff/prof, athletes, z list, political and influencers, international. Excluding urm prefernce hook.
60 percent of class is spoken for before regular review.

768 spots vs 111000 in top three.
.0069 percent

384 spots per gender. Vs the world.

This hasn’t even addressed the urm and first gen pool outside of the top three in each hs and not already counted in the other preferences. They may all be equally strong to applicant broader pool but receive a very modest preference. Then layer on institutional needs.

Folks it’s a long shot. And with 50k seats for schools with less than 27 percent acceptance rates. And 110k kids as mentioned above and about 50k students with act of 34 or higher. It’s just hard and extremely competitive for a spot. .

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I too have been thinking about the math, but I don’t have any objective numbers to back it up. This is helpful. For instance, I thought there were around 3.2M HS seniors, not 3.6M.

Going with 3.6M:

OP wrote: # of HS seniors in the top 1% of any given measure, or in terms of the agglomerated measures (SATGPAACTECshardship weighting): 36,000* give or take (*-edited for clarity)

Me: I prefer to think about this as two separate measurements, especially since most of the kids of the parents here are in the top 1% of BOTH GPA and test scores, and there isn’t a 100% concurrence between these populations.

So:

of HS seniors in the top 1% of their class in GPA: 36,000

QUESTION: How many of these students go to online schools or are home schooled? While many are undoubtedly bright, my impression is that the top schools consider their records with skepticism, so I think they should be removed from the calculation–but I don’t know how many there are.

of students in the top 1% of test scores:

I believe only around 2/3 of the HS seniors, or 2.2M, plan to go to college, so there are around that many individual test takers (note: I believe very few of the kids deciding not to go to college will have finished in the top 1% of their class, so I haven’t adjusted the above number). Upper 1% would thus be 22,000, which is around a 1500 SAT or higher. However, some students hit that 1% threshold on either the SAT OR the ACT but not both, and some are able to hit that level through superscoring even if not on an individual test. So, to be conservative, let’s add 50% and say that 33,000 students can claim to have test scores in the upper 1%.

of students with both GPA and test scores in the upper 1%, who have not been home schooled or gone to an online school: This to me is the holy grail number. Is 20,000 rational? 25,000? My guess is that it is somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000, but other than that I have no idea. Anyone?

Some number of those 15,000-30,000 will chose to go to either their state flagship or a lower ranked private with scholarship money–see, for example, the thread on the student choosing between Stanford and the Stamps scholarship at Wake. So, the number of these top kids “competing” for slots at the Ivies or top non-Ivies (Duke, Stanford, MIT, Vandy, Amherst, etc.) is somewhat lower than that–no idea how much lower. Do we lose 20% of the population in this step? 30%? Any insight? Anyway, I think at this point we are down to somewhere between 10,000 and 24,000 kids.

Anyway: with 14,000 “regular” spots in the Ivy League, it isn’t as bad for these kids as it first appears–of course, since the Ivies are all need blind, perhaps we don’t lose as many kids to finances as we might at the next-tier privates.

Any and all additional insight on this way to do to the math is welcome.

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I think you lose far more than 20-30%, particularly among public HS students who are not high income. The study at http://eaop.ucsd.edu/198/achievement-gap/The%20Hidden%20Supply%20of%20High-Achieving,%20Low-Income%20Students.pdf concludes " the vast majority–of very high-achieving students {as defined by combination of test score and GPA stats} from low-income families do not apply to a selective college or university". By “selective”, they mean does not have near open admissions. ~40% of low income high achiever’s most selective college application was one that had open admissions, such as a community college. A near negligible portion of low income high achievers applied to colleges with similar or higher median test scores to their own. The strongest analyzed predictor of college selection among low income high achievers was being located <10 miles from home. Some of my family grew up in an area like this. One of my relatives was the first student in the history of her high school to apply to a highly selective private college. She was accepted and attended.

There are also a large portion of typical middle income high achieving students who apply to in state colleges, rather than Ivy +SM. This is typically an in state public, but can also include in state private colleges. For example, at the basic public HS in upstate NY that I attended, the most applied to colleges among high stat students were SUNYs and Cornell, rather than non-Cornell Ivies + SM. Very few applied to Stanford or other highly selective colleges that were not within driving distance.

I also wouldn’t assume you need top 1% SAT + top 1% GPA to have a shot at an Ivy. The Harvard lawsuit docs suggest there is a certain stat level that almost certainly disqualifies if unhooked, but it’s far less restrictive than top 1%, and there are a lot of Ivies that are fare less selective than Harvard. I mentioned that many from my HS applied to Cornell. Among those who were accepted, the vast majority had scores well outside of top 1%. Almost all had higher GPAs, but many GPAs were also well outside of top 1% rank.

In short, I think this type odds analysis in this thread has little meaning for a specific applicant’s chance of admission, nor does it mean everyone has little chance of admission. Instead I expect, the vast majority of decisions would be consistent and predictable with access to the full student file. Some of those consistently admitted students would have top 1% stats, and some would not. Some of those consistently rejected students would have top 1% stats, and some would not.

I do agree that such colleges are highly selective, and having top 1% stats is by no means a guarantee of admission. During the Harvard lawsuit period, the majority of applicants with perfect SAT, perfect SAT II, and better than perfect 4.0 UW (for example 99+% on 100% scale) were rejected.

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Hey @Data10 --Thanks for the insight on the numbers. I agree with your last three paragraphs; I was just staying in the silo created by the OP. As others have pointed out, once you are above a certain threshold of GPa, school rigor, and test scores, they vanish and your application is considered based on the other, more subjective stuff. Clearly, you don’t have to be at the 1% level at both the GPA and test scores to hit the threshold–a better line might be top 10% or 15% in GPA, for instance, and maybe 2% in test scores, I don’t know.

What I got from the OP was how ridiculously hard it is for these top students to get into a top school. I think it is somewhat easier than that–at least, it is easier to get past the doorway and then things hinge on your recs and essays–and so the ball’s in your court.

But I’m not saying it’s an end-all. My kid is planning to apply to an Ivy, but would be just as happy at one of the many non-Ivies she will apply to.

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We shouldn’t look at the total number of kids graduating HS, since only a small proportion actually apply for Ivy league schools. So, about 40,000 applied to Harvard this year, which is about 1.1% of the graduating seniors. So, assuming some overlap, the number applying to an Ivy is about 5% of all graduating seniors.

About 180,000 students are applying for 22,800 spots, which would be a 12.7% chance. HOWEVER. There are about 20% that will go to kids from the top 1%, so that would be about 178,200 kids to 18,240 spots, or 10.2%. If we say that 20% of the seat are going to non-Asian URMs, that would be 13,680 seats for about 112,000 kids, bringing it back up to 12% (because non-Asian URMs are about 37% of the population…).

That actually sounds about right.

The point is that, for every 25 “unhooked” applicants out there, there are three seats at an Ivy League college.

Applicants to Ivies are playing a game of musical chairs, with 25 participants and 3 chairs, and then they wonder why they’re still standing when the music stops.

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To me–and this is just me–that 40,000 number (# of applicants) isn’t as important. Obviously it is important, because that’s the population you’re competing against, but I suspect it includes applicants for which the Ivies are a real reach–maybe they are legacy, or they did something cool like were an Olympic athlete or have a patent and are hoping it will compensate for lower GPA/test scores. Maybe it will, I don’t know–but I think of such people as being in a different bucket.

I start with the 33,000 students that can lay claim to having an upper 1% test score (i.e., 1.5% of test-takers, see above post).

Some portion of those students will have a GPA not in range, however you define it (heck, I was one of those kids, so I empathize). Because of all the grade inflation, it may not be as many as it may have been 20 years ago, but let’s say it’s 15%. That brings us to around 28,000 potential applicants.

Some of those 28,000 may also be home schooled or have graduated from an online school. The county online program is pretty popular where I live, and I can tell you from experience that it isn’t as rigorous and schools would be right to be suspicious and discount their academic records. I don’t know how many of such kids there are–let’s pull out 1,000, so we’re down to 27,000.

Of those 27,000, some will not apply to any Ivies/Ivy equivalents. No idea how many are in this category. How about a fifth, to be conservative. So, we’re down to around 22,000.

Let’s now pull out the hooked applicants–legacies, URMs, first gen, etc. Not all the hooked applicants will come from that 22,000 population, but there will obviously be some overlap. Maybe we are down to 18,000 now.

So, 18,000 applicants are realistically vying for the non-hooked, non-athlete spots at the Ivies. I think we’re discussing just regular decision slots, and many of those 18,000 will be accepted through ED. Maybe we’re down to 15,000, but I think that’s pretty conservative. It may be closer to 12,000.

15,000 kids, not 112,000.

The chance a kid from this group is going to get into a specific Ivy, like say Harvard, is still low–maybe 1 out of 12 at Harvard, for example. The chance that a kid from this group will get into ONE of the Ivies or near-Ivies is pretty good, I think.

If you are fortunate to be in that group, you’re going to get into an Ivy or a near-Ivy, unless you totally mess up the rest of your application. The number of non-hooked slots available at the T-20 privates is > 15,000 (I’ve already pulled out the superstar kids who will decide to go instate, so I’ll pull the public universities out here). Maybe you won’t get into Harvard/Yale/Princeton, but you should still get into one of Duke/Vandy/WashU/Columbia/Hopkins/Chicago/Cornell etc. if they’re your cup of tea.

Just don’t screw up the essay.

Incidentally, of those 15,000 kids, roughly 14,350 or their parents post at CC :slight_smile:

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@RayManta @mwolf @Data10

I didn’t pull this number out of a hat. Lol.

3.6 million students

“About 3.6 million students are expected to graduate from high school in 2018–19, including 3.3 million students from public high schools and 0.4 million students from private high schools (source).
Fast Facts: Back to school statistics (372) - NCES - U.S. Department of …
ED.gov › nces › fastfacts › display”

This does not include international us grads applying to us schools.

Also I prefer the simple number of high schools analogy. USA colleges uniformly state gpa and course load as the most important figure in the process.

They determine rigor based on the school options not cross referenced. Underperforming schools still have Val’s and sals with the highest gpa for rigor found in that particular school.

And it excludes home schooled.

The simple fact that there are 74000 Val’s and sals alone vs the opportunity gives you a simple visceral measure. It helps parents and students have a sense of the General odds of the kid ranked number 40 out of 400 with a strong ec profile and the wonderful 1400 sat and 32 act superscore.

Without sports or other preferences. Unless your dad is named Barack, or he is a Chief Justice of the USSJC or your last name isn’t Hogg. The Ivy League isn’t happening.

And either is Villanova etc probably.

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in 1988 0.10% scored 750-800 on Verbal SAT 1.11% scored 750-800 on Math
in 2018 1% scored 750-800 on english SAT and 4% scored 750-800 on Math.

To translate that into numbers of students:

in 1988, with ~ one million test takers, only 1,000 scored 750 or over on Verbal and only 11,000 on math
by 2018 with ~ two million test takers, 20,000 scored 750 or over on Eng and 80,000 on math.

Sources: National Center for Education Statistics, for 1988
College Board, for 2018

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@tdy123 Also in 1988. UCLA had 60 percent acceptances rates and Ivy’s in the 20s and 30s. No one I know prepped because you didn’t have to and have a chance wherever. Competition changes everything.

Look at stats and combines of nfl players in 1988 vs today. The harder it gets the more people work to get it.