<p>“The data shows acceptances at HYP ARE largely independent”. </p>
<p>I don’t think this is correct, and you’re looking at statistics conditioned on people who get accepted to at least one school and ignoring people who get accepted to none, which is most people. Let’s say that your probability of getting accepted by any one is 0.1. Under independence, the probability of getting rejected by all 3 is 0.9<em>0.9</em>0.9 = 0.729, the probability of getting into at least one school is 0.271. The probability of getting into all 3 is 0.001. The probability of getting into 2 is 3(0.1)(0.1)=0.03. Under this scenario (p=0.1 and independence), only 3 out of 100 cross applicants get to even make a choice. </p>
<p>I would argue that since they at least use a similar Academic index and each look for a similar type of leadership in ECs, that your actual probability of getting rejected by all three is actually substantially higher than 0.729, which is what independent draws would indicate. If you don’t “make the cut at one”, your likely to make the cut at none. Also, I think it’s higher than independent that if you get accepted by one, you’ll get accepted by another, though the actual probability may still be small. </p>
<p>What you show is only for people who make the cut for at least one. Your conclusion that you need more schools to maximize your chances is not necessarily wrong. I’m merely saying that in these scenarios, the probability that you would ACTUALLY ATTEND your third choice from among HYP type schools is so small (<5%) that it may not be worth the effort to apply. In other words, it’s worth carefully making your choices.</p>
<p>The reasoning mistake here is assuming that all applicants to Harvard also applied to Yale and to Princeton, and so on for the other two colleges. But that’s just what we’re arguing about here; how many colleges “most” applicants apply to. The fact that there are cross-admitted students who enter into yield statistics shows that some students are admitted to more than one of HYP, but we only know about degree of correlation of admission decisions if we know EXACTLY how many students applied all three, and what characteristics those students have, and we know neither of those facts.</p>
<p>A very good point. That’s why it’s safe to conclude that admission decisions at highly selective colleges are quite strongly correlated (which is another way of saying they are not “independent” in the statistical sense of that term). </p>
<p>There ARE enough sources of variance in the basis for admission decision among various colleges that one may just as well apply to all colleges of interest. On occasion a student who is rejected at one college will be accepted at a “better” (or at least more desirable) college, and wait-listed at a third. I agree with the point above that the lack of complete certainty about which college will decide how is why it is prudent to apply to more rather than fewer colleges.</p>
<p>While there are such financial aid calculators (upon which I wouldn’t rely either), these calculators cannot tell you the composition of any financial aid package. Getting financial aid that’s $10,000 in grants and $5,000 in loans/work study is very different than getting aid that’s $5,000 in grants and $10,000 in loans/work study. No financial aid calculator will give you that information, nor will any FA office (no matter who you talk to) until after you’ve applied.</p>
<p>Additionally, only the most highly selective schools meet 100% of need. You may get into your safety school, and you may know exactly what your need calculates to be. The school may calculate your need to be exactly that number. Then your financial aid package meets only 75% of it. That’s not a financial safety. Knowing the average percentage of need met by the school doesn’t help much either, because it’s an average. Some people get more, some get less, and there’s no way for an individual applicant to know which “pool” he or she will be in.</p>
<p>Finally, there’s merit aid. There are very few schools (if any) that give merit aid according to a strict formula. All an applicant can do is say, “I qualify for this aid, so I’ll apply.” However, probably more so than with admissions because dollars are scarcer than seats, there’s no way to know if the applicant will actually be awarded the aid. And there are quite a few families who don’t qualify for need-based aid who rely on merit aid to put college within financial reach.</p>
<p>Those of you who think you “know” what you’ll get in aid haven’t been paying close enough attention. You may be right, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.</p>
<p>cellardweller:
your math about cross-admits is useless becase you tart with awrong assumption that all Harvard applicalntsapply to Yale. And this is absolutely unrealistic. In the past years most qualifying applicants applied to only two or three schools out of HYPMS. And were usually admitted to more than one school.
You also forget about EA - H and P had it untill very recently, and it greatly reduced the number of cross-applications: in EA in a top choice school and no more apps was a very common trend.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t mind seeing a cap at 12 or 15 as I think those are definitely on the high side but fair – for instance, a student in California could conceivably apply to all 9 of the UC’s w/ one application and that would count as 9. </p>
<p>Realistically, anyone who has to apply to 12+ schools really has no idea about which schools he/she wants to attend – I see no way to justify “really really really wanting to go to” 12+ schools. </p>
<p>Furthermore, there are the concepts of yield and large numbers – yes, 2,000 overqualified applicants applying to the same 20 schools, getting into all 6 of their safeties, could conceivably take away a lot of admitted spaces from students for whom aforementioned safeties are matches.</p>
<p>Jut read a couple of the pages and you’ll see it is mathmatically impossible for such students to “take away” spaces…</p>
<p>cedar: sorry, but your logic is flawed. Up until this year, H&P accepted half of their class by early admission. P was ED, so yield is 99.9%, and, more importantly, those applicants were one and done – they could not also apply to H nor Y (nor S, for that matter), although they would have been extremely competitive in those applicant pools. H has the highest RD yield in the land, and I would assume that their former SCEA policy also had a extremely high yield, possibly ~90%; most of their earlies were also one and done.</p>
<p>Au contraire. A student who applies to many colleges, especially one applying to many colleges during the regular round (for the reasons mentioned by Chedva in a thoughtful post not too long before this post), applies to that many simply because the student doesn’t know which colleges will offer admission. The student may have a complete knowledge of which college dominates which as to that student’s preference about where to enroll, but all the applications have to be submitted to see which colleges will offer admission–and possibly to see what financial aid will be on offer.</p>
<p>With the exception of the handful of well endowed schools that meet 100% of need (THEIR calculators are pretty good), it can be extremely tough. Take popular schools like NYU or GW for example; both give a lot of grant aid, but only to students that they want, i.e., in the top of their app pools. For those in the middle or bottom of the app pool, the aid is nearly all loans.</p>
<p>I applied to 15, which isn’t too far from 20. I had equally strong apps to all my schools and got into all but one. 5 of those 15 were Ivies, among MIT and Stanford too (Rejected at Princeton, which was upsetting because it was my first choice due to its amazing finaid). All such schools have great aid packages. Neither of my parents were professors or admissions officers or even went to college. Just because you don’t have inside connections doesn’t mean you can’t do well in the admissions game.</p>
<p>I had very good luck with admissions because I had good stats, EC’s, rank, and I knew how to write my essays and how to present my applications correctly. Everything has a strategy to it, and applying to many schools is part of the strategy. When all is said and done, you wind up with a wide array of schools with multiple aid offers, and then you’re able to narrow your choices down to a select few and attempt to negotiate aid packages by using OTHER colleges’ aid offers. </p>
<p>Even after reading this thread I still see no reason why one wouldn’t apply to many schools if they had the patience to do so. It’s simply in your favor!</p>
<p>5 is way too small of a list to really include schools that you are passionate about, also one of the basic principles of the United States is freedom, including the freedom of choice, competition is always a factor in life, imagine if you could only apply for a certain number of jobs, that would be rediculous, its darwinism, the strongest survive, study hard so that you don’t have to worry about your spot being bumped for a more qualified applicant, that is how I feel.</p>
<p>I totally agree that students these days need to do more research when looking for schools to apply to. Too many kids dont look past one or two aspects of a college and therefore find way too many schools that they think they’d want to go to. They either look only at academics, or sports, or reputation, or location, or social scene, or price. All aspects of ones life must be taken into account, as they will be living at their college for 4+ years. Throught high school I’ve done a lot of research, especially during the summer before senior year, and was able to fing 6 schools that satisfy nearly all of my needs. I haven’t had the opportunity to travel to any of them, so doing research was key. And extensive research at that, seeing as not everything online is 100% accurate.
Anyways, the OP’s idea isn’t that great because 5 schools can be very limiting to some. However, I do believe that students need to research much more when looking for a school, not so that they don’t hinder other people’s chances, but so that they dont make a mistake. No one needs to apply to 20+ schools IF they do their research.</p>
<p>I disagree with this plan simply because it’s too restrictive. Maybe 10, or 15. But applying to 20 colleges is ridiculous, because at the end, the student can only attend one. A student cannot possibly want to go to 20 different colleges and the ask of a student to tinker with 20 different essays is inhumane.</p>
I seriousely doubt 20 different essays will have the quality in them. Unless most of them use common, with school specific ones as ‘option’ or a very generic one in suplement. In that case file one more just need to add the name in common app and click button. I’ve heard students file more than 15 applicaitons like spontanousely file extra ones in the middle of home work, just because they feel like it. one couldn’t possible have visited them all, unless 10 of them in the same your local area.</p>
<p>It’s entirely possible to want to go to 20 different schools. Each college offers its own experience academically and socially.</p>
<p>For many students writing can be difficult. For others, it’s not a problem- they know what to say about themselves and how to say it. Because the topic of the essay is not so important as the writing style and presentation of the content, a lot of colleges use the same hackneyed topics because they allow for a lot of room to write within them. An applicant probably can reuse the same few essays a few times, and if he starts his applications early enough, should have time to write all the essays he needs to.</p>
<p>Yes, admissions inflation is a problem. Limiting students to five choices is clearly not the answer. If a student chooses to apply to a lot of different schools, that is his prerogative. It gives him a potentially larger choice of schools that he’s accepted to to choose from in the spring and a better chance he’ll be happy with at least one of his schools. With five schools, there’s a good chance, especially for those applying to top schools, that he may not get in anywhere but a safety school, some place he’s likely not happy with. This is how you play the admission game now- work harder than any other generation before you, do more in and out of school, send out your twenty applications and hope to high heaven you’ve done enough.</p>
<p>I agree. one of my friends jokingly claims I stole his spot at umich and i didn’t even want to go there. which isn’t true.. maybe i do want to go there.. i just don’t know..</p>
<p>That’s like saying it’s impossible to like 20 different candy bars, or 20 different video games, or 20 different cars, etc. No matter how different those items can be, it is possible that you love every one of them. I’d say college is comparable. Some have different environments, some have different aid packages, others have different student bodies or curriculums or weather, etc, the list goes on.</p>
<p>legendofmax, I don’t agree. Can you commit four years to the same candy bar or soda or juice, not eat anything else? Can you only play one video game for four years?</p>
<p>It works better for a car though – ultimately, most people only drive the same car for four years at least. (I don’t know about Wharton kids – they can get pretty rich :P) The point is, anyone picking a car isn’t going to test-drive 20 and see which ones they feel like buying. I can hardly think of 20 different minivans, or 20 different budget compacts, or 20 XL pickup trucks. A car buyer is going to do his research first and then only test drive up to four or five cars.</p>