<p>Sam applies to 4 colleges, somehow his stats fall smack in the middle of the average acceptance rates for each college. What are Sam's chances are getting at least one positive answer?</p>
<p>OK some more info. Lets say for college A the chances are 40%, college B 50%, college C 40%, college D 20%. what are the chances that you will get at least one admission offer?</p>
<p>Do you want me to solve this for you or tell you admissions chances? What is this?</p>
<p>Edit: 85.6%
A gift from Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>Please solve it.</p>
<p>Want me to explain it too? :)</p>
<p>yes that would help others. and may be keep some students from worrying too much in this stressful times.</p>
<p>First we identify that these college decisions are all INDEPENDENT. Thus stat concepts allow us to multiply them from AUB = A*B; where U = and.</p>
<p>Using ! for not, we say that not getting into these colleges is:</p>
<p>NOT A: 60%
NOT B: 50%
NOT C: 60%
NOT D: 80%</p>
<p>Multiplying these 4 independent probablities gives us .6 * .5 * .6 *.8 = .144
Now we want to know AT LEAST ONE. 1-.144 = .856 or 85.6%.</p>
<p>Therefore you have a 85.6% chance of getting into at least one college.</p>
<p>There you have it folks. If you have applied to the right schools (within your stats range), you will have a great chance of getting in one such school. Of course individual results vary, but you can always improve your chances with the right mix of qualifications etc. so don't worry about college admissions, you will have a lot to worry about in the future.</p>
<p>They are not independent probabilities because what one school wants is at least slightly linked to what another school wants. If he is 'smack in the middle of their acceptance rates' then yeah, he has a great chance, but what does that even mean? You can only tell that with SATs and class rank, which don't tell much anyway. </p>
<p>Your 85.6 might be right, but since it assumes all colleges look for different things which isn't really true, the true answer is undoubtedly lower. And anyway, it is impossible to tell if you are right in the middle of the acceptance rate for more than one or two variables (and even class rank, GPA vary by school so you can only really do SATs), and that variable will probably change from year to year so basically this is a pointless question...</p>
<p>I don't want to call you an idiot but I'm very tempted to.</p>
<p>They are independent variables based on the percentages the op gave me. If he says there is 40% chance of this, 50% of this, etc. Each one is independent. </p>
<p>The fact that all colleges look for high GPA/SAT is no "link". Your chance for each one given to me by the op is still 40%,50%,40%,20%. </p>
<p>Dependent would mean that if I got into A, B would somehow be affected. This is not the case.</p>
<p>An AFFECT is very different from something intrinsic that all schools what. If I got into/rejected from A and that somehow AFFECTED B/C/D, then they are not independent. </p>
<p>You can argue that nobody can EVER know the exact % of each school but you can't argue with my problem solving. Seriously please take a stat class before you say post something like that.</p>
<p>AcceptedAlready is correct.</p>
<p>acceptedalready is correct, because your chances at a particular school are factored in your probability of admissions at that school. The method used by acceptedalready is classic statisitical solution. You chances of getting anything increases when you take more chances. But it is not additive arithmetically.</p>
<p>About the independency of the variables, yes you are right if the OPs prompt was exactly correct. But this could never be the case realistically and I worked under that assumption. </p>
<p>You see, my main argument is that this is a pointless exercise because you can never know your chance for getting into a school (and you can never even really have an accurate idea for the top schools)... so by all means solve your little puzzles (and yes, if the OPs prompt were exactly true you would get the right answer - but that could never realistically be the case) but don't read anything into them. </p>
<p>And as for your basic argument, all about numbers, yes - your chances of getting anything may increase when you take more chances, but in this case that can be misleading because applying to more colleges may weaken your individual application to each school. For example, if you put all of your effort into applying to one college then your chances would be greater at it than if you had to split your efforts between 5 schools leading to a poorer individual application. So there is something to be said for trying your hardest to get into a certain school.</p>
<p>uhh I was just thinking.....
college acceptances aren't necessarily based on "chance" right?
it's more like passing a brightline?
the statistical "chance" for being accepted is really just the number of applicants that applied and the number of applicants accepted
but if you have an imaginary student with perfect SATs....1st place INTEL....val of class of 1000 students...president of 10 clubs in his school, internationally renowned violinist, etc. there is no way that this student has only 11% acceptance rate at Princeton. likewise, someone with 1700 combined SATS and no EC at all, does not have an 11% chance at Princeton. if that student applied to Princeton (assuming he could do that....) 100 times, s/he would be rejected 100 times. I have not taken stat, so I don't know any of the statistical stuff</p>
<p>but to me, college acceptances are not based on statistical chance, but rather crossing a specific brightline</p>
<p>There is always a probability (albeit not well known) for an applicant to be selected. The chance depends on the applicant's credentials. For example, if you did an analysis of the 'admitted' pool of all students, and classify them based on a certain set of school's selection criteria, and you met all such criteria qualitative and qualitative, there is a certain probability associated with such student's chances of being selected by that school. The greater the stack of such credential a student has, the greater are his/her chances. If you did a computer simluation, using say a montecarlo, you can come up with a number with confidence interval. The actual probability of that student's chances are also dependent on how many applicant of similar criteria has applied ofcourse. This is still very theorietcal, but insurance companies does this all the time, they look at a person's age, health and determine the insurance premium. Of course they have ahuge amount of data to play with. There is always a certain amount of probability associated with it. This is all very hypothetical of course, but what the original thread was meant to do is to reduce some anxiety among applicants. Meaning, if you have applied to all the right colleges in your league, there is a very good chance that you will get an admission offer from at least one such school. The higher the number of schools that met your league and the higher your application number, the higher your chances, though not additive.</p>