Do odds increase when applying to more reaches?

fiftyfifty1
Mon, 04 Dec 2023 02:38:48 +0000

Because acceptance rates at certain schools are so low, some people say admission is like “a roll of the dice.” But in reality, rolling dice is not a good analogy when thinking about the statistics of admissions.

With dice, the rolls really are independent events. Therefore the math is straightforward-- exactly what is taught in high school stats where you keep multiplying the fraction by itself as many times as you roll the dice. So if we call rolling a 6 to be a “win” then each time you roll a single die, you have a 1/6 chance of winning (or expressed otherwise, a 5/6 chance of NOT winning.) So if you really want to roll a 6, you should roll a lot. After the 1st roll, 5/6 have not won (83% have not won). But 2 rolls gives you 5/6 x 5/6 which is 25/36 or only 69% have not won. 3 rolls is 5/6 x 5/6 x 5/6 which is only 57% that have not won. After 20 rolls (which is 5/6 raised to the 20th power) less than 3% of people have not rolled a “win.”

But college admissions are NOT independent events like rolling dice. This does NOT mean that the colleges are colluding with each other or anything like that. It just means that they tend to all look at the same things (grades, class rigor, test scores etc.) So a few students with awesome grades, rigor and scores may get into multiple elite colleges, while other students will get into none.

Now, each college will look at your application slightly differently. So apply to a few reaches. But do not “shotgun” applications if it stresses you out to the point you start turning in crummy applications, or to the point where it stresses you out in general.