<p>Suppose you would be glad going to any of lets say 12 reach schools, and that your chance of admittance to each school is 10%. That is there is a 90% chance you will be rejected from each one.</p>
<p>If you apply to all 12 schools, and assuming your chance of admission into each school isn't effected by applying to those other schools, then the probability you will be admitted into at least one is, 1-(1-1/10)^12)=.71757..</p>
<p>That is you have a slightly over 70% chance of getting into at least one school on your list, which are pretty good odds, so then why not apply to all reaches?</p>
<p>This assumes the criteria (initial conditions) are the exact same for each school, and that admissions works by the officer throwing random darts at applications. There’s an underlying reason why you got rejected, and this reason will likely carry over to all other schools, making a probability approach like this useless.</p>
<p>The math looks good. But it results is an application arms race, forcing students to apply to more and more schools which drive down the acceptance rate, forcing the need to apply to even more schools and on and on until applying to a dozen schools seems normal. My opinion is that there should be a cap of no more than six schools to which candidates can apply. However since this would affect colleges in a lot of different ways, money, acceptance rates, etc. I don’t expect anything to change. Apply away and GL.</p>
<p>Suppose you would be glad going to- But they don’t pick you based on whether you’d be glad to go there. The reason you shouldn’t just apply to reaches is because your formula doesn’t apply to the group. You are still subject to the percentage chances at each.</p>
<p>But, here’s hoping you have dug deep and have some good idea what those schools look for, beyond stats and rigor. That’s what gets you a bit further in the process.</p>
<p>Your math is faulty.
That’s why the people who used it find themselves on CC in the Spring, crying their eyes out because they have to take a gap year/work/go to community college when they could have attended excellent match schools.
Or read what happened to Andison, who applied to his matches as an afterthought because he was such a stellar applicant (really was), and ended up waitlisted or rejected everywhere.</p>
