How many colleges to apply to this year?

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10/27/2021 08:50

Subject: How many colleges to apply to this year?

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Anonymous

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Anonymous wrote:Mine is applying to 14. He is in the top range of scores for all of them and maybe I spend too much time on college confidential with noble peace prize winners being rejected at all their schools, but I am hoping he gets in *somewhere*. At least 10 of them have a qualified applicant admit rate of under 5%. So if I multiply that out, it's 50% and the other 4 are a little better but still I feeling like nothing is a true safety on his list. But hoping with 14 that he will hit something.

That's not how the stats work.

Generally that is how probability works, but feel free to elaborate.

Nope, it's not even close. For independent events (i.e., events not correlated with each other), the likelihood of the event happening at least once = 1-p^N, where p = the probability of the event NOT happening for each event and N equals the number of events.

If you have a 50/50 chance (or 50%) chance of making a basket in basketball, do you have 100% chance of making at least one shot if you make 2 shots? No. Assuming each basket is an independent event (not correlated with each other), your likelihood of making at least one shot are 1 minus the chance that you will miss both shots or 1-(0.5*0.5) = 75%

In the context of these 5% acceptance rates, if you apply to 10 schools and each has an acceptance rate of 0.05, your chance of NOT being accepted by each one of them is 0.95. Again, assuming each college's decision is independent (not correlated with the decisions of other colleges), your changes of getting in to at least one (i.e., not getting rejected by all of them) = 1-(0.95)^10 = 0.4

But, of course, these events are likely not totally independent (i.e., if you get rejected from one there is probably something that makes you more likely to get rejected from others). Which complicates the statistics....but doesn't get you closer to 0.5 in your scenario.

DP. Thanks for explaining the theory behind this so clearly, but just reading about last year’s acceptance cycle certainly cemented this principle for me. Every kid needs to have a safety they would be happy to attend.

But the really tricky thing is the bolded. The events are not independent, but the relevant factors are completely opaque. It happens every year. Some kid gets in everywhere they apply. Sometimes it’s easy to see why, but sometimes it’s just some normal high stats unconnected UMC white kid. Why did all the ADs love him or her and not some kid that looks pretty identical that got in nowhere? Who the h*ll knows. You won’t know which one your kid is until it’s all over.

My kid is applying to 7 schools EA, and one more either ED II or RD (doesn’t do EA). I’m comfortable with this #, because at least 3 are safeties, two are targets (leaning toward safety), one is a true target and two are reaches. The list is heavy in safeties, because these are the schools my kid likes and I think he’d be happy at any of them. Two have rolling admissions, and if he doesn’t get in, we’ll reconsider a list for RD.

Things that you know about kids admitted to top schools like high stats don’t explain much. It is things that you can’t know like essays or interviews or even things that the kid can’t know like teachers recs must be making the difference

100 percent agree with this. And, to the prior poster who explained statistics, they are completely right. Though it's likely that the real issue is not that the "events" are correlated (colleges aren't communicating about who they are accepting to one another) but that the "true likelihood" for all students getting in isn't 5%, but rather for each student, their own likelihood ranges dramatically (some have virtually zero chance, while others may have 20-25% for a given school). And, to the PP, the things you mention--essays, ECs, interviews, LORs--all go into each individual's true likelihood, but we can only observe the total acceptance rate so we use it as a proxy for our own kids' likelihood).

The message for our kids should be: 1) don't look at college rejections as failures--like life, you can only control so much (one thing you can control is applying to a wide range of schools); 2) the hard work that they put in over high school will pay off in the long run (in terms of their work ethic); and 3) there they are smart, interesting kids at tons and tons of schools--not just the "top 10"-and their college experience/quality of the education will not depend on how prestigious the name on their parents' bumper sticker is.

I chose a SLAC 30 years ago over some Ivies--while people around here would have known the college, I'm from a place where nobody had heard of it or could believe I chose it. Best decision I ever made (and I had the exact same first job with the same employer after graduation as a high school classmate of mine who went to HYP).