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Yes, that’s what I was aiming for with my less-than-perfect formula. My D is a very strong academic student who, I think, would be happiest at the most selective schools because she would be among intellectual peers. But how many schools to apply to? 6? 8? 12? With a rough calculation, I can get an idea of how many schools are enough, then throw in a couple more safeties or a sure bet like our state U.</p>
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Yes, I agree that you should choose safety schools that you would like to attend. In my D’s case, I chose Grinnell and St. Olaf as sample safety schools because both have excellent math and science departments, and both get high marks for quality of teaching.</p>
<p>Keemun, I don’t think the original formula has any practical validity. It is true to the extent that very top students (perfect SATs, Several leadership postions, national honors, etc) still have a low probability in getting into HYPS. Other than that I see no relevence. You should compute your probablity for each school taking many factors into account and acceptance rate is just one of them. A person who has only 46% chance to get into Kenyan has 10% chance to get into Harvard is laughable. Also don’t forget the Tufts syndrome; my D was waitlisted by a college she considerd a safety whereas many IVYS and top LACs admitted her.</p>
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My D likes to ask questions in class so she would prefer a college or small university.</p>
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Again, the formula was meant to give a rough estimate for people like me who are wondering how many schools to apply to. I would use it to estimate an overall rejection rate, then double or triple it to account for randomness, esp. if the slate is top-heavy. The mistake most HYPS applicants make is assuming they are as strong as or stronger than the typical applicant.</p>
<p>northeastdad,
the thing is, once you start messing with the probabilities - except to make them worse for a class of students (say, those needing finaid) - you lose the objectivity that the numbers yield for a particular student. Leaving Kenyon at 46% makes up for Tufts syndrome to a certain extent.</p>
<p>I would say that you should also be careful with your statistics and make sure that you have the most up-to-date information to give yourself peace of mind. I was suprised that you had Grinnell listed as a safety school with 63% acceptance rate, so I checked their website. Here - <a href=“http://www.grinnell.edu/admission/classprofile/[/url]”>http://www.grinnell.edu/admission/classprofile/</a> - for the class of 2008, the acceptance rate is 42%. And if rumors are correct, they are even more selective this year.</p>
<p>The good news is that if you mean it about Haverford, Colby, and Kenyon, then there are at least a couple dozen other small LAC’s that cover a range of selectivity, and some combination of these could provide protection against a shut out. If your D would prefer an LAC, then she should be able to find comfort in this range.</p>
<p>Finding a comparable list for your universities is tougher, because you have picked some of the most selective in the world for this group. Going down a little from these still leaves you with a group of places that are reaches for almost everyone. The same principle would apply- find similar schools that are not so crazy hard to get in, but you would have to delve lower on the prestige list to get there.</p>
<p>Of course has a highly selected group of applicants. Its high acceptance rate is more a reflection of this than that it is easy to get in. With a median SAT of 1380, there are plenty of students for whom it would be out of reach. It is just that it has a low yield (perhaps due to its location and the type of students it is after), and a large portion of those who apply are qualified.</p>
<p>Here’s a wierd story. My son was waitlisted by his safety! To be specific - SUNY Purchase who normally accepts kids with C averages and low Sats. My son is an AP scholar with 1470 SAT and 3.43 unweighted GPA and amazing ECs.<br>
(He did get into his 1st and 2nd choices - USC and NYU) but I shudder to think what if he didn’t. He didn’t apply to many schools - only to 5 that he wanted to go to.
And the waitlist at the safety came AFTER he mailed in his deposit to USC - so you wonder if …
Anyway, my point is maybe safties aren’t safe. My best friends daughter was rejected all her schools even her top choice which was SUNY Cortland. Her SATs weren’t the best and she has a B- average with no APs , but she was awarded a prestigious scholarship award given to one boy and one girl athlete who are top at their sport and have more than 4 years of community service. The poor kid was even invited up to Cortland by the soccer coach and courted so she thought she was a shoo-in. The coach must have found someone better,
Just goes to show there are no sure bets.</p>
<p>That is curious, Ebay. I understand Purchase is still taking apps. Did your son have a special program that he wanted, perhaps in the performing arts? </p>
<p>The SUNYs, like many state schools, can be tough. I notice that the state schools tend to heavily weight gpas and if you don’t have a 3.0 average, you can get into trouble with them.</p>
<p>I know the point of this thread isn’t to provide school-specific information, but Kenyon was used as an example so I thought I would post its most recent data. According to an article in the Kenyon Collegian newspaper on May 5, the overall acceptance rate for the class of 2009 was 36%, for ED it was 57%, and the average SATs of the accepted students was 1360.</p>
<p>The calculation, unfortunately, is almost meaningless. Its only justification might be if your stats are “average” for a set of schools (say ivies) and you believe that the acceptance is governed by factors that are essentially random (for applicants with some minimum stats). Then, applying to enough ivy schools would do it. Or choosing safety schools.</p>
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My figure came from the 2005 U.S. News rankings so it must be an old stat. Sorry.</p>
<p>I welcome information about my D’s list of possible colleges but I should stress that she’s only a sophomore so it’s a very preliminary list. She’s a double legacy for one school, which should boost her chances greatly. Also, females applying to MIT and HM are accepted at much higher rates than males. We’ll probably add more safety schools to the list once we’ve had a chance to research which ones would suit her.</p>
<p>A little background – I attended a LAC while my spouse attended a large state U. We met at a HYPS grad department. Between us, we have a good idea of what the pros and cons are for small colleges vs. large univs.</p>
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<p>There’s a kind of enormous assumption imbedded in that comment.</p>
<p>I see merit in keemun’s formula. I agree with many that the formula cannot accurately predict the chance of rejection/acceptance.</p>
<p>However, I see real merit in the formula as a Wake Up Call; therefore, I’m suggesting it be called something along those lines. While it can’t actually predict chances, it can certainly sound an alarm that the slate of schools is scary.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the “recommended” thresshold would be, and of course everyone has his own risk profile, but I agree with keemun that 1/6 is too chancy and 1/20 might feel more comfortable.</p>
<p>So, I thank keemun for a valuable contribution to the process of looking at your slate of schools. But I firmly believe that some true Safeties (higher acceptance rate than keemun’s example) should be on everyone’s slate, regardless of how comfortable a figure the formula yields.</p>
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I think we have seen more than enough examples on this board and IRL to know that we MUST take this to heart. I think the concept of <em>one</em> safety is a poor one. </p>
<p>IF the safety is rolling/non-binding EA and
IF you apply early enough to have the acceptance in hand before application deadline to your other possibles and
IF you so like that school that you will not feel despondent if it is your only acceptance,
THEN one safety is ok. </p>
<p>I also think more emphasis should be put on the category just up from there: the “match/safety”. These are more likely to be schools the kid can get excited about (a whole other thread on the psychology at work here). It is my hypothesis that every kid should have a number of these on the list and they should be schools where the kid’s stats are COMFORTABLY in the accept range and ideally where there other favorable factors at work (geography, great history with your hs,…).</p>
<p>I agree, blossom. My son did not apply to ANY in-state schools. Part of his desire for college is to experience a different part of the country. However, he did apply to some schools where acceptance was pretty much automatic (at one it WAS automatic, given his scores), but where the department he was interested in (music) was still quite excellent. He figured if he didn’t get accepted by any music schools, he could attend one of those schools and work his way into the music dept/school. He did not apply to any schools that he would not have been willing, or even happy, to attend.</p>
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Thank you. I agree that the formula is not perfect but it’s meant to be a starting point, nothing more. It’s meant to show that even if you apply to eight schools, your chances of being rejected by all of them can be greater than 1 in 10.</p>
<p>We can, of course, tweak the formula to make it more accurate. I wanted to keep it simple. The tweaking should go only in the direction of lowering acceptance chances, not increasing them. (If you are a strong candidate for a particular school, thus increasing your chances, I would still leave the acceptance rate alone to add an extra cushion of safety.) So I recommend using the formula to arrive at a rough (OK, very rough) estimate, then throwing in another two safety schools. It depends on your tolerance for risk. A conservative approach would drop the acceptance rates for the most selective HYPS schools to less than half the published rates, or even 0.</p>
<p>I think you all are being way too tough on keemun. She wasn’t proposing an alternative proof to Fermat’s last theorem…she was giving a nice, simple method to have candidates think logically about their lists. It doesn’t need to be mathematically pure to achieve the desired effect.</p>
<p>I’m personally adding this to curmudgeon’s 75% rule.</p>