<p>I've seen people who add the acceptance percentages of the schools someone is applying to to see the chances they have of getting into one of those schools.</p>
<p>For example,
Person A is applying to 7 schools each with an acceptance rate of 7%, so the chance Person A has of getting into one of those colleges is 49%. </p>
<p>Is this accurate? If so, why?</p>
<p>I think the acceptance rate of someone doing that kind of math at a school with a 7% acceptance rate is 0%.</p>
<p>Ok good! I saw it and I was like…this makes no sense</p>
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<p>In theory yes, because they’re technically independent events. (Don’t quote me on that, though…I only got a 3 on AP Stats. :)) But colleges consider a lot of the same things, and your chances of admission are NOT the same as the school’s acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Those statistics are correct if you assume that the 7% or 20% of accepted people are chosen at random and not by stats.</p>
<p>Do you think people assume it is “random” because most students who apply have top tier stats?</p>
<p>I think the logic is more “I have no idea how to compute the actual probability of me getting into one of these schools, so I may as well just add the acceptance rates.”
Some people find top-school admissions decisions sort of arbitrary, but I don’t think anyone believes they’re completely random, like they pick the accepted students out of a hat or something.</p>
<p>Nope. The chance someone would get into at least one of those schools is 1 - (.93)^7, assuming that admissions is random(which it isn’t, but w/e).</p>
<p>Because people don’t learn math properly.
NWIStudent has it correct.</p>
<p>But % are arbitrary. Super accomplished people probably push the boundary of 20% whereas average (lack of great ECs) probably have 1-2%.</p>