Can Northwestern Be a Saftey for me??

Sam_Lee
Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:42:18 +0000

If we have historic data showing that out of, say, 1000 applicants (ideally across difference geographical regions) with stats similar to OP’s, 800/950 of them got in, that would translate to 80%/95% chance, assuming the strength of applicant pool doesn’t vary from year to year. This would be one of the ways to actually get those probabilities. And you could get 97% or 98%. The only reason “95% chance is as good as you can get” is that people are just throwing their estimates without the support of quality data.