<p>All the Ivy League universities and colleges are very different from each other; a person who will be happy at one won’t necessarily be happy at all the others. </p>
<p>In addition, tokenadult’s post rings true – assuming that bombarding all 8 of them for admission raises your chances of getting into one is a fallacious assumption, and the admissions offices to undergraduate colleges have better things to do than sit around talking about who applies to who. These are universities that get applications from 20,000+ people each per year. Do you really think they are sharing with one another who applies to more than one (which is probably a large percentage of those applications, considering the fallacious statistical assumption high schoolers seem to have)?</p>
<p>Yes, sometimes they share absolute wall bangers, like students who have made up part of or all of their entire educational record or who are caught for committing a crime or have hidden something egregious that they should’ve shared with other admissions offices – but that’s not just across the Ivy League because of some sort of Justice League affiliation; admissions officers who have colleagues at other top schools’ offices will share that information with them.</p>
<p>Momwaitingfornew, I think the point of “the Ivy League is just a conference” is not denying the prestige of those schools, but acknowledging that membership in the League doesn’t necessarily confer prestige and/or that there are other shools that are just as great.</p>
<p>In reference to the last post, I also think people overestimate the importance of ‘diversity’ that they bring to the student body. A student who is unqualified for Brown or Harvard (by the admissions committee standards) is not going to get in just because he’s from Idaho or because he’s Latino or because she’s poor or plays the bassoon. Similarly, a student who is very qualified and who the school wants is not going to be rejected from Columbia solely on the basis of the fact that they lived in New York all their life (there’s a reason schools have a large percentage of their students come from their home city and surrounding states).</p>
<p>Technically totally correct … college applications are not perfect probability events.</p>
<p>Pragmatically partially true and partially incorrect in my opinion.</p>
<p>For applicants that are automatic admits … perfect scores, cured cancer, swam in the olympics, and there is a dorm named after them … they will get in everywhere</p>
<p>For other applicants that look strong … great scores, grades, and ECs … but who have a fatal flaw in their application (their essay is horrible and says they prefer State U) … their odds are essentially 0% everywhere</p>
<p>However for the kids who are solid IVY league candidates … solid scores, grades, ECs, essays, recommendations … the kids among the thousands who apply who are qualfied reasonable candidates the punchline holds … the more IVYies (top tier) schools you apply to the more likely it is you get into at least one. It absolutely does not follow the probability rules exactly … someone who has a 10% chance at Harvard may be 20% at Cornell and 15% at Columbia and 0% at Yale. The bottom line is applying to only 1 top tier school with low odds of entry means you have very low odds of getting into a top tier school … if you apply to more than one your odds at any one school are not so good but more chances yo take the better odds you hit a school for which your application resonates with the school and you get an acceptance.</p>
<p>"However for the kids who are solid IVY league candidates … solid scores, grades, ECs, essays, recommendations … the kids among the thousands who apply who are qualfied reasonable candidates the punchline holds … the more IVYies (top tier) schools you apply to the more likely it is you get into at least one. "</p>
<p>I don’t know if that’s true because the more schools students apply to, the less time they have to craft applications that reflect the needs and interests of each college. Chances go up, too, of making errors such as saying, “This is why Harvard is my first choice” on Columbia’s application or during Princeton’s interview.</p>
<p>One also can get tired of doing interviews and having to answer basically the same questions. A prime example of this, I think, was an outstanding student whom I interviewed for Harvard one March. The student answered questions in a rote, terse, way, and before I had ended the interview, the student assumed I was finished, and stood up and said their good-byes.</p>
<p>I was puzzled at her behavior until much later hearing from someone else who knew the student that the student had applied to a dozen schools. My guess is that the student’s behavior with me was due to being burned out on interviews.</p>
<p>Anyway, due to the lack of information I got from the student, I couldn’t say much in the interview report except to report the student’s brief answers and the way the student ended the interview before it was over. The student wasn’t accepted.</p>
<p>While I think Northstarmom raises a proper cautionary note, I think that there really is a danger of applying to too few reach schools. While 10 might be too many for some students to do justice to in the apps and interviews, I really don’t like the standard advice to apply to only two reaches. If you apply to just Harvard and Yale, and the other two oboe-playing hockey players from Idaho happen to be legacies at those schools, you might not get into either, but you might have gotten into Princeton, or Brown. The bottom line is that you need to have a well-thought-out strategy.</p>