Shotgunning—I'm very confused

Oak_Cliff
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:37:06 +0000

“Each application is a statistically independent event, so applying to more won’t improve your chances at any individual school.”

Perhaps at any “individual school,” but it does increase one’s chances of being selected by at least one of a larger group than one of a smaller group given that the colleges are, relatively speaking, looking for the same thing.

That is, applying to A, B, and C versus applying to A, B, C, D, E, and F does not increase my chances (by itself) of getting into B, but it does increase my chances of getting into at least one of the schools I apply to (assuming I am in the ballpark for all the schools; assuming that I am not an automatic reject at all of them).

[I said “by itself” above because some have said that applying to fewer schools will increase the quality of the essays as more time may be spent on each essay.]