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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, we feel your pain. Our high-stats FCPS DC (4.41w/3.89uw, mid 1500s SAT, full IB diploma, most rigorous classes) was rejected or waitlisted at every single reach/hard target this week (Rice, WashU, NU, Mich, UCLA, Berkley etc.).  Looks like the figurative University of Illinois for us.[/quote]

These are all reaches. What were her matches/safeties? UVA or WM are at least as good as those schools, and a whole lot cheaper.

Message to parents of future applicants - help your kids have more realistic expectations [/quote]

Our matches/safeties were Wisconsin, W&M, Pitt and a few others. DC is insisting on OOS--does not want to go to W&M and refused to apply to UVA (we insisted DC apply to one VA school and they grudgingly picked W&M). You make an excellent point about managing expectations.  [b]I was thinking that since DC was well within statistical range for every reach one would pan out since we applied to several[/b]--DC was rejected at an Ivy ED and UChi ED2. To DCs credit, they are accepting the news better than I am. DC worked really hard and we wanted them to be rewarded for it.[/quote]

The was a big error in your assumptions that many, many, many parents make. But statistically, applying to 10 schools with very low acceptance rates doesn't give your kid better odds of admission than applying to 1 school with very low acceptance rates.

Also "we" didn't apply; your kid did.[/quote]

Actually, applying to 10 schools with very low acceptance rates does give a kid a better chance of admissions than applying to one, but not as much as people think.

If a kid applies to a school with a 5 percent acceptance rate, if we know nothing else about that kid (hooks, RD/ED, etc, stats, ECs), our best guess is that they have a 5% chance of getting in.

If a kid applies to 10 schools, each with a 5 percent acceptance rate, their chance of getting in to at least one school is NOT 10 x 5%--that is the error that many people make.

Again, without knowing anything else and assuming college decisions are "independent events"--that is, acceptance to one is not correlated with acceptance to another--their chance of getting in to at least one school is 1-the odds of not getting into any of the ten school = 1-95%^10 = 40 percent.

But here's the thing...and again, this is where people get in trouble--that 5% acceptance rate is the rate we all have to rely on but doesn't really tell us the odds for my kid based on their profile, nor does it tell you the odds for yours.  In reality, the odds for my kid getting in during the ED round might be closer to 2%.[/quote]

Even bright people do not grasp this.[/quote]

Relatedly, college decisions are really not independent events. As noted, the 5% admission rate is an average-- some applications have closer to 10 or 20% likelihood of admission, while others have closer to 0%. The kid with the 0.1% chance of admission to a top rated school probably has close to zero chance at any top school. The kid with 20% chance probably has a higher likelihood of admission at all the top schools. The "standout" application at Harvard will stand out everywhere. [/quote]

I think two things are getting conflated here:

1) The overall acceptance rate (5 percent in the PP's example) is NOT necessarily the likelihood of any one kid getting in.  That has to do with a lot of different factors.  For some kids it might be 2% for others 20% but none of us know the "true" likelihood for our kid.

2) The independence of events is a bit different- that has to do with whether admissions to one school is independent from/i.e., not conditional on, admissions to another school. Regardless of your kids "true" likelihood of getting in (whether it is 2% or 20%), it is hopefully the case that schools make their decisions independently from one another.[/quote]

That's not what I mean by "independent." The schools absolutely make their own decisions independently of one another. But they are looking for similar things, so being accepted at one top school gives you pretty good information about your attractiveness to other top schools.

A completely independent event, statistically, is like having a winning lottery ticket. Having one winning ticket doesn't increase your chances of buying another winning ticket. But getting admitted to Yale? Statistically, your chances of being admitted to Harvard just went up.[/quote]

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