How many schools are too many?

ClassicRockerDad
Sun, 31 Aug 2014 14:37:31 +0000

There is a way to estimate the probability of attending each college (not getting in, attending). Think about it though, you will only attend one college.

If you can estimate your chances of getting into each using Naviance, you can get a good approximation of the probability of attending by treating the decisions as independent. If you do that, and you have a ranking in preference, then the probability of you attending a school is equal to the admission probability of that school times the rejection probabilities of more preferable schools.

If you have 14 schools, you are very likely spending a lot of time on applications for colleges that you have a very small chance of attending. If all of your schools were equally likely to get you, than the lowest probability would be 7%. Since some are clearly more likely to get you to attend, then some have probabilities that are much smaller.

Identify the schools that you are unlikely to attend and eliminate them.