<p>I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree: when an article is titled as this one was, I expect insight, not a statistical tautology. Students want to know how to get into “that” school and this article won’t go very far to slake that thirst.
So, yes, your point is taken, that there is less here than meets the eye, but my take was that the author could have avoided what I note: “The article also uses an equally weighted binomial assumption which doesn’t apply to this context…qualifications don’t create binomial sortings and colleges don’t use binomial decision points.” In other words, using point #5, some kids may come away with a variant of the ecological fallacy that if they simply multiply the number of submissions they will correspondingly multiply the probability of admission, which is patently false. So the article really addresses the need of “top” students, but doesn’t waste much time on defining “top”, addressing the concerns of the 20% of the “top” students who don’t get in or addressing the needs of non-“top” students. So, other than those features, it is a great article.</p>