Reply to NY Times article on strategies for applying to elite colleges

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it is true that it is not as difficult to get into a good college as is generally assumed these days. And it is true that your odds of getting accepted somewhere increase with the number of applications you send out.

But it is definitely NOT true that applying to college is like flipping a coin.

When you flip a coin, each event is an independent one. What outcome (heads or tails) you get this time has absolutely nothing to do with what outcome you got last time.

When you apply to an elite college, your outcome at one school is not independent of your outcome at another school. If you have the qualities that are likely to entice Harvard to accept you, you have the qualities that are likely to entice Yale and Princeton and MIT and Stanford, etc. to accept you. In fact, if I knew you were accepted at Harvard, I could improve my chances of correctly predicting what will happen at Yale and Princeton, etc. And if you have qualities that will never in a million years get you into Harvard, you aren't getting into Yale or Princeton or MIT either.

The other thing to remember is that colleges are not equally selective. One of the reasons why your chances of getting accepted into good college increases if you apply to more schools is that you are increasing the range of selectivity of the schools you are applying to as your number of applications goes up. There are a limited number of schools that have super low acceptance rates. So if you only apply to 5 schools with <10% acceptance rates, your chances of getting into any one of them might be low, but if you apply to 20 schools, several of those schools are going to have acceptance rates much higher than 10%. You are increasing your odds not (only) because you are flipping your coin so much but because you are applying to some schools that take many more of their applicants.[/quote]

While I agree with your theme that a very competitive candidate - or one with the stuff to get into Harvard, for example - is more likely to get into MIT of Stanford than the average candidate, it is not true that they are dependent events.  It is still like flipping a coin, but a coin that is weighted and in any single flip is more likely to come up heads.  This speaks more to being realistic about where your credentials might have currency and setting your sights appropriately.  Within a set of schools where you might be "qualified" your odds of acceptance within the set WILL generally go up the more schools that you apply to.  This is very different than saying that an average student (a stretch in terms of qualification) is more likely to be accepted at HYPSM if he/she applies to all five.

It is also important to recognize that selectivity is not necessarily correlated with quality of education or fit with a candidate's goals.[/quote]

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