“Top 20” is an odd way to look at it if both LACs and Us are on the list. The most famous ranking lists them separately, (so there are 40) but others combine them (and some LACs are higher than Us).
I applied to 20 schools. I fell into the fallacy that more applications=more chances of admissions. If you do wish to pursue this course of applying, my advice is to pick schools from the top to the bottom. Don’t waste 10 apps on the top 10. I choose schools at the top, in the middle, near the bottom. I was a high stat applicant so my middle was top 15-30 and my bottom was 30-50. I noticed a trend in my acceptances, that I was rejected out of every top school and only admitted to several of my match schools and safeties. I had high expectations just like you, but like most of high school seniors, we get let down. Lots of applications more likely means more rejections, not acceptances if you’re shooting high. Just my two cents.
I’m not too concerned with the whole deal, but it’s sort of ridiculous that you comment on how flawed the OP’s logic is (in your first comment) and then you continue to say that
“means you have a 96% chance of being rejected from Stanford and an 87% chance of being rejected by Duke.”
Sorry but that’s not how it works at all. Do you think 50% acceptance rate schools ignore people’s applications and flip a coin to see if they get in? Sure, you probably know this, but it’s dumb to nitpick at someone else’s comment and make a mistake that’s even worse. Furthermore, people need to stop looking at acceptance rates as probabilities. They’re indications of admits out of a pool of applicants.
I don’t agree with the OP’s strategy, but I get where he/she is coming from. Everyone is taking his/her words directly and stating things like “increasing number of schools doesn’t in any way affect the outcome of another school’s decision.” Yes - this is absolutely true. But it’s reasonable to consider the fact that if you submit the same essay to (for simplicity’s sake) every single Ivy school you may get accepted to one over the other NOT because of some sort of drawn luck, but because Harvard might see that you are a good fit with your essay whereas all other Ivy’s think that you would not fit at all.
You guys may recall a post that i put up a few months ago…the kid who applied to 22 schools…got into 16…chose Stanford. (I still don’t understand why he put himself through it).
@pbk1111 , wasn’t it obvious that I am just using the acceptance rate as stated by schools? Of course I don’t know any individual person’s chances, and if I did, I would become quite rich, no doubt. I am only generalizing because it’s pretty obvious the odds are against the overwhelming majority of people, and that includes highly qualified applicants. After spending a couple of years on this forum I have seen too many posts from upset kids who can’t believe they only got accpeted to one or two colleges, or none, or no top 20s, or whatever if may be.
The OP came here looking for strategies and I gave him one: apply to a range of colleges to avoid disappointment. In good conscience I can’t say nothing when I see a post like this. And it may well turn out that OP gets into Harvard, but as the stats are not in his favor, I am going to enlighten him/her. Far better to err on the side of caution than throw caution to the wind. Sorry if you don’t like it.
@tryingforharvard Even if I get into my EA reach, I’m still applying to matches to see if I’ll get any merit aid. I saw your username; I’m actually applying to Harvard EA! I have legacy and some other connections. I have decent test scores for Harvard and a good GPA. I believe that I’m a good writer (as it’s what I want to major in) so I’ll be able to write very interesting essays that’ll hopefully give me a leg up. My main EC is very unique too. What about you?
@MurphyBrown , yes, there are a very few students who will get in to several top 20 schools. Very few, and they will be winners of major national awards such as Intel or Siemens. Or the daughter of a president, let’s face it. Every school wants those students, but they are few and far between. And you are right, it is pretty obvious by senior yesr which students are truly gifted and/or exceptional. The bulk of the rest of them will fight it out for a place at the HYPSMs. I would venture to say our HS is typical, and of our graduating class of 300, I can genuinely think of only three kids I would say are exceptional, at least academically.
If OP can be brutally honest, can he/she say that he is truly exceptional? That’s for him to decide, but even Harvard still has to fill its class with a lot of really amazing students who nevertheless are not winning major national awards. I saw a video with the Harvard Dean of Admissions and he basically said just that. “The well-rounded student is the bread and butter of Harvard” and other colleges like it. This is what keeps kids applying in the hope that they might be the lucky piece of bread and butter. In fact, a boy from our HS got into Harvard this year and will attend. Is he exceptional? Well, he might be socially, but certainly not academically. Yes, a very good student, who took, I believe, five APs, and I think he did well, but not outstandingly, on his SAT. However, he was totally committed to,student government, and spent his free time at the state Capitol, sitting in on any sessions open to the public, and I think he also secured an internship with a legislator. He was really passionate about it, and that can be the only reason we are aware of which got him in, apart from being a very likable kid, etc… So, it happens, and it might for OP too. If he wants to apply he should, but he should fully understand what he is up against.
Murphy Brown, applying to match reach and safety schools make sense for every student, regardless of stats, unless they are hooked or are exceptional in some way. And even then there are no guarantees. Having been on this site a lot for two years now, there are far fewer threads that are posted by kids having a dilemma about which top 20 school to go to, than there are posts about not getting into any top choices.
How many of these reach, safety, and match schools have you visited. Shouldn’t match=safety and reach be the school where the Campus environment grabbed you and wouldn’t let you go.
I have 1 reach school Notre Dame, 5 matches, and a in State school only for the purpose of any summer classes I may take. Purdue, Alabama, Texas, Arizona State, and Oklahoma State.
I can tell you rankings and other people opinions should not be part of your process. Rankings is the standard process of getting in parents pockets. No two people are the same. People can give particulars for scholarships, programs, admission process, etc. but in no way can they can feel your eyes and ears.
Example of this was Oklahoma State was not on my radar and Auburn was in top 5, now OSU is up there and Auburn is a bad dream
*fill your eyes
@Lindagaf, " there are a very few students who will get in to several top 20 schools. Very few, and they will be winners of major national awards such as Intel or Siemens. Or the daughter of a president, let’s face it. " I don’t believe your assessment is accurate and I think you are doing a disservice by continuing to spread this misinformation. My kid is neither the daughter of a president nor winner of a major national award such as Intel or Siemens. I am looking at the list of top 20 schools…OK she only got into 3 of them but neither did she apply to most of them. Most of the other kids we know who got into multiple of those schools also lacked national titles. But yes, all of the kids who got multiple admittances to such schools were known for being exceptional. If your class of only 300 has 3 such standout students, it’s a pretty unusual school, because there aren’t that many at our relatively high performing public school.
“Having been on this site a lot for two years now, there are far fewer threads that are posted by kids having a dilemma about which top 20 school to go to, than there are posts about not getting into any top choices.” That’s not a coincidence either. The kids who get into those schools are too busy to hang around on this site. My kids aren’t on this site.
@mathyone it would be far more of a disservice to let the OP blithely assume that he can get into a Top 20 college if he just applies to all of them. I would love to hear from a senior poster and see whose opinion they concur with. Now if OP has stellar stats, of course his odds are better. We don’t know that though.
I agree, and I told him the same thing. But you go way overboard and say that only kids who walk on water can get accepted. That’s simply not true. There are plenty of kids in between the kids with top national or international awards and the “average excellent students”–to use your phrase–who are straddling 98/99 percentile who are well-liked with solid school-based EC’s, maybe a varsity sport and editor of the school paper. And many of the kids in between, and I am talking about kids with scores not at 98/99 but closer to 99.9, about kids who didn’t get super prestigious national awards but got state level recognition, yes these kids are getting into multiple top 20 schools and should not be told that they have no chance.
OP, read post #165 on the thread I linked and you will see an account of a student with a 2400 SAT and a perfect GPA who didn’t get in anywhere. And mathy one, you can reread my posts on this thread, because at no point do I tell the OP it isn’t possible to get in. I related a story of a regular student in our school who got into Harvard. I told the OP he should apply by all means. My consistent advice has been to apply to a range of colleges because it is extremely difficult to get into the most selective ones. And fwiw, plenty of those exceptional and non-exceptional students seem to make time to post on Cc, and I am sure even more kids don’t.
Yes, of course it can happen. I don’t know any exceptional students to whom it’s happened, and I think it’s the exception. Yes, some of them didn’t get into their preferred elite school, but they all had strong choices.
Perhaps he didn’t write good essays because he thought he was a shoe-in since " Never once did they think that he would not be accepted at every school he applied to. ".
Perhaps his teachers or interviewers thought he was arrogant or hyper-competitive. I’ve seen a few high stats posters on this site with awful attitudes that came through in just a paragraph or two of posting.
Perhaps he didn’t have any recognition like I’ve been talking about–that account doesn’t say a word about achievements, just his test scores.
Perhaps he was just one of the small minority of standout students who get unlucky. We’ll never know.
Here’s another similar story, but not the one I am looking for. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1877295-accepted-to-only-2-out-of-17-schools-and-what-i-learned-p1.html
Still not the one I am looking for, but in a similar vein: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1877368-i-only-got-into-my-safety-school-and-i-am-miserable-about-it-p1.html
Ok, re post 37:
The poster says “I was not passionate enough in my essays. I had a private, paid college counselor who looked over all of my essays. However, she had way too many clients, yet I simply took every word she said as if it were the truth. In the end, I ended up writing essays that looked good to her, but that I did not truly accept in my heart.” So evidently this was an applicant more concerned about the “right” packaging than authenticity. My kid wrote about what she cared about and her primary readers were friends and family, who called her out if she didn’t succeed in expressing herself authentically.
In the same vein, the poster says " I did not build enough connections. I mean being best friends with teachers" I think the kind of person who thinks that you need to strategize to brown nose teachers for the purpose of getting into college likely did not do too well on their letters either from teachers or from GC. And the poster thinks letters were not uniformly good. I suspect this is the downfall of many of the high stats kids who are not successful. Some lack of enthusiasm in their letters or off the mark paid-help essay raises a red flag.
Re first post 38: " I didn’t sleep or have fun or watch TV or anything for four years just so I could get into a good college." I think that’s self-explanatory.
Second: “4.61 GPA, 34 ACT. No acceptance yet. President/treasurer positions. Did great in school. I am so confused.” Those are school positions. If you actually read what I’ve written on several occasions I agree it’s extremely tough to get into top schools with just 4.0 very high test scores and no ECs beyond school “leadership” positions.
Not really sure what your point is here, other than to try to discredit my experience and derail the OP’s thread. My opinions are my own. They are formed on the basis of now entering my 9th year of involvement with my local hs, all but one of those years with a kid enrolled in senior level AP classes seeing what was happening to those kids. They are formed on the basis of my first kid’s overall successful college application process, which we did without outside guidance, and which resulted in quite a few admissions to top schools, despite her lacking many cc “essentials” for top college admission–national awards, leadership titles, and hours upon hours of volunteerism, to name a few. That process included visiting maybe 10 top schools, and the admitted student visits at her top 2 choices.
I think what the OP needs is not bickering but recommendations of which highly ranked schools are best for their interests so they can focus applications rather than wasting time with a shotgun strategy. The OP’s area of interest is unfortunately not something I know much about but perhaps others can provide some guidance.
100% correct and the core misunderstanding of this issue.
At highly selective schools with holistic admissions you can’t possibly know your actual individual odds. You can guess, you can compare, you can estimate, just like Parchment and the other sites ALL DO. But you can’t know.
This doesn’t mean the laws of game theory don’t apply – they do – (and yes college admissions ARE ALL INDEPENDENT EVENTS! so let’s not start that argument again) but if can’t know your actual chances, you can’t predict. (re: recommendations, essays, mood/lunchtime of adcom, etc)
So yes, your odds DO go up if you apply to more schools, but if your probability of being accepted once is 0.001%, trying 8 times still gives you a negligible chance, and is probably not a good approach. The smart folks here will tell you it is better to focus on good schools that fit you and putting your effort into being the best applicant for those. I agree with them of course!
http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Odds
(please note in #1 the definition of independent events)
Good luck to you regardless!
Hi, I agree with what everyone has said so far, so I’m not going to reiterate what they already said. That being said, I am a rising senior, so I’ll talk briefly about my plans regarding the admissions process.
I’m not necessarily limiting myself to a certain number of safeties, matches, and reaches, but I AM limiting myself regarding where I would apply. At maximum, I’m going to apply to 10 schools; however, I don’t think I will apply to that many. If you apply to more than that, you clearly haven’t determined what you really want in a school and are just throwing money away. Make sure that you determine what you really want in a school (location, residential life, size, etc.) before putting it on your list; don’t just look at the prestige, but look at the school’s programs, too. I will have toured almost all of the schools to which I am applying, and I found this EXTREMELY helpful in determining things that I am and am not looking for in a school. I get that most people cannot tour a lot of their schools, but try to get to a few that are close, if possible. Touring is way more helpful than just scouring the website.
As of now, I am planning on applying to William and Mary (state school), UVA (state school), University of Richmond, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Vassar (legacy bc a lot of my family taught there), and Georgetown. As you can see, I don’t have any super clear “safeties”, but there are schools here with which I am confident in my ability to be accepted. I’m crossing my fingers for these schools! Most, if not all, of these schools had all that I was looking for; they were not too big, had large amounts of people living on campus for all 4 years (except UVA), offered limited or nonexistent Greek life, had extensive study abroad, and were located close to shops and restaurants. I’ve toured every school on my list so far except Georgetown and UVA (ironic because they’re close to where I live lol).
Hopefully this helped you in some way. Let me know if you have any questions.
It really did! Thanks so much 
@nmocha567