Reply to Applying to 20 schools, crazy or not?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP again. There is some serious logical fallacy going on in responses above. I have a 3.98 UW with 15 AP/IB classes before I graduate. All As except for 1 A- last year. 1530 SAT.

The only reason not to increase number of applications is the time and fees it costs.

People who think that the quality of applications goes down after 10 apps have it exactly wrong. My 11th essay is much sharper and wittier than my first, when I was finding my voice.

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The biggest logical fallacy above is that applying to more of the same types of colleges greatly improves your chances of admission.  Although the odds are so low at some of these schools that people refer to them as a "lottery," it's not really.  They don't dump in all the similarly situated kids in a container and pull them blindly. They look at other factors -- honors, activities, letters of recommendation. Are a legacy, first gen, URM, geographically diverse, development case?  One kid with exactly your stats may have won the International Science and Engineering Fair, be a nationally ranked debater, or done something else unique and interesting that catches the AD's eye.  They are all looking for the same thing. What is appealing to one elite college is likely to also appeal to another.

I'm not saying that students necessarily need to limit themselves, but they need to be realistic about their chances. To the degree that there is some element of luck in catching the application reader on a good day, or finding the person with whom your application resonates, applying to more colleges doesn't [u]lower[/u] your chances.  But applying to 20 schools with 5% acceptance rates does not give you a 100% chance of acceptance, or anything close to it.  You need to apply to a wide range of [u]types[/u] of schools, just not more of the same. [/quote]

Strawmen. Of course your 20 at 5% example doesn’t yield 100%. Of course there are other factors. The relevant issue is, to the extent there is randomness and controlling for factors that are not random, then more applications improves odds. Thats pretty realistic. I’d argue more realistic than deciding to limit yourself to some random number of 8 or 10 because “fit”—that seems like fantasy and not seeing the numbers. [/quote]

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