Strategies & Probabilities?

Applying to College
41

You can’t use game theory because you can’t ever know your chances of admission at any given institution on any given day in any given year, particularly at highly selective colleges.

That being said, even holistic admissions do not throw the laws of mathematics out the window, so if you did know, yes it would work. But you can’t know, so it will not.

Also, college admissions are 100% independent events, despite claims to the contrary.

https://www.wyzant.com/resources/lessons/math/statistics_and_probability/probability/further_concepts_in_probability
https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/probability-events-independent.html
https://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/vol6/independent_events

Meaning the outcome of one event has no effect on the outcome of another.

Oddly, the tried and true strategy of balanced Reach-Match-Safety is in essence a game theory approach to guarantee you acceptance while still giving you a chance at the more desired outcome.

42

I am from England. I doubt language was a hook. Even allowing for 20% first gen that still leaves 80% by my calculations.
She didn’t apply to Princeton it was Brown, wait listed at Cornell and rejected by Swarthmore.
Things will be very different with my younger kids. I’m not sure we really had a true safety school. The learning curve has been steep and many mistakes made.
I wouldn’t suggest I suddenly have any real insight or wisdom to impart on how to get into great schools. It remains as much a mystery to me as it was before her acceptances came in. I was merely trying to show why I believe that schools do use a holistic approach rather than looking purely at stats.

43

Independent, but not random.

For example, let’s say that there the student has LOR’s that are exceptionally detailed and laudatory. The teachers & guidance counselor are singing the student’s praises in ways that stand out from all of the others, with specific examples of things that Superkid has done.

The kid and his parents have no clue what the LOR’s say. So that can’t be factored in – but those LOR’s are likely to sway he opinions of ad coms in the same way at multiple colleges.

It’s a pretty good bet that when we read about students getting admitted to multiple Ivies that they all have stellar LOR’s – in addition to other strong qualities that are appealing across-the-board to their target colleges.

On the other side of the spectrum there could be a student with a LOR – also unseen by the student – which damns with faint praise and perhaps conveyes an overall negative impression. Maybe the teacher sees the kid as self-centered or a grade grubber or untrustworthy – and uses language that conveys an overall distaste for the student. That letter is enough to sink that kid’s chances at all the elite colleges… so again, we are seeing a hidden factor that impacts probability across the board.

(So one thing that kids could do to increase their ability to improve and accurately assess odds would be to not waive their rights to see those letters before submission — it really helps to win if you know what cards you are holding in your hand).

I’m not saying that it all comes down to LOR’s – just that happens to be one piece of the package that elite colleges take very seriously, and yet is often purposefully hidden from view of the applicants.

44

“On the other side of the spectrum there could be a student with a LOR – also unseen by the student – which damns with faint praise and perhaps conveyes an overall negative impression. Maybe the teacher sees the kid as self-centered or a grade grubber or untrustworthy – and uses language that conveys an overall distaste for the student. That letter is enough to sink that kid’s chances at all the elite colleges… so again, we are seeing a hidden factor that impacts probability across the board.”

This is one of the culprits I suspect when we get posters who list their (or their kid’s) high stats but rejections from all the colleges they applied to. Also it’s hard to self-evaluate the subjective factors like essays and how one’s overall ECs look compared to the other applicants. It’s very, very hard to assess chances if all you see is the student completed portion of one or a few applications.

45

@jon234

Thank you. Congrats on the fabulous results for your daughter.

Jolly good!

46

That’s an excellent point. But why would an adult do that to a 17 year old. If i was asked for lor for anyone and had concerns i would say no. If someone insisted and they were cruel, elitist or really a bad apple I would be frank. I wouldnt sabotage as grinder or a really focused kid. Labels like grade grubber and the like - subtle ways of undermining the kid. Why not work with them as a teacher around these perceptions and character flaws.

47

Who do you think writes those personalized notes with the acceptance letter?

OP, here’s your issue: “I’m not totally buying the “holistic admissions” thing.”
If your kid is applying to tippy tops, you’d better get with the holistic thing. It’s a lot more than stats or simply submitting an app/supp and expecting probabilit to take over.

There’s a lot of the usual on this thread. Bottom line: any college that has fierce competition is going to look for the ultra preferred candidates. What’s that mean, in real terms, to your app and supp? That you’d better understand what it is they look for, besides stats or status as, eg, frst gen or whatever. Besides a check-box attitude that, “Well, I got an award” or “I have a leader title in my hs.”

Top schools with mega competiton: first, they go through a “first cut,” eliminating the terribly long shots. (Usually the area rep, sometimes, another AO.) Then the remainder gets re-read by a set of people. Who they are depends on the college policy. Harvard has said they have more faculty involved. An app can certainly be read by mre than two folks, because they want opinions and because they really are culling.

And there really are no “definite admits” until the end, final table. In essence, every kid gets a fair shot, as an individual, first. No first come, first served. Very few sure admits until the end, when the wholepool of finalists is seen.

I’m not a fan of the Gatekeepers. Go ahead and read it, but realize it’s old, things change, and no one book or two will give you the info you need, to give you a good shot at success. Your app and supp are your presentation. Be savvy.

48

They don’t say “grade grubber” or the like. But not all teachers know how to write a great letter. They may admit a host of things Calmom calls damning with faint praise (often, unintentionally.) They may list all the school ECs and never get to the academic might. They may write a paragraph and not cover much.

Or the kid chooses teachers who are not optimal. Eg, kid wants stem and skips any stem recs.

49

I’ve heard…might be fictional stories…that sometimes the best LORs are from those individuals who know the student from outside of school - a co-worker, a tutor, a troopmaster, etc. These LORs can provide a more personal, s/he is like this when he’s not in school.

50

I’m not saying the LOR writers use words or phrases like “grade grubber” – they use different words or adjectives that mgiht convey an overall negative impression. And it could be something that the LOR writer is not consciously aware of-- so not a deliberate attempt to sabatoge, just a choice of words that conveys an impression that not helpful.

51

Most top colleges ask for letters from those who know you best in the classroom. Certainly not a troopmate, yet to learn his/her own results.

You don’t get into a very top because you’re nice, a good son or daughter, show up at your pt job on time, etc. The admissions reviews are very geared toward a picture of how this kid will operate in this college environment. As well they should be.

Try looking at what the colleges say they look for,

52

Considering that about 64% of K-12 students are “first generation” (defined by neither parent having a bachelor’s degree) and probably around half come from “low income” (proxy by Pell grant eligibility, which is approximately the lower half of the income distribution) families, it is not like having 20-25% of students be from 1G or LI at the most selective colleges indicates as strong an advantage for them as for the around 50% of students from the top 3% or so of the income/wealth range (those with high enough income/wealth not to get financial aid).

53

“why would an adult do that to a 17 year old. If i was asked for lor for anyone and had concerns i would say no.”

It’s possible the LOR writer doesn’t realize their content is the opposite of helpful. A great example was in a thread from a couple of weeks ago when a student was lamenting how s/he wasn’t admitted to some highly selective programs in a very competitive, high tech major. As the story unraveled, turns out that one of the LORs the student requested was from a teacher in a non-AP calc class where the student pulled up a bad grade to an OK grade by getting teacher help every single day during lunch and grinding through hours of additional work. A LOR describing that would surely show that the student was dedicated and hard working, but at the same time advanced STEM programs are also surely going to be concerned that if a student had to work that hard to get an OK grade in non-AP calc, how the heck would s/he handle the advanced programming or math courses at college. This LOR wasn’t negative, but contained a description that would give competitive, advanced STEM programs pause.

LORs don’t have to contain negative language or descriptions to torpedo a candidate. It can be just that the student and LOR author didn’t do a good job thinking of what a particular college would be looking for. It’s not enough to have good LORs, those LORs also have to show that the student is a fit for what the college is looking for.

54

Not when different colleges consider some (or all) of the same criteria.

For example, CSU Bakersfield, CSU Channel Islands, and CSU Stanislaus each run admissions independently of each other. However, for all majors except (pre-)nursing, they have the same admission criteria (GPA and test score) and thresholds. So all non-(pre-)nursing applicants to these three schools will have the same results for all three. A non-(pre-)nursing applicant to all three who receives the decision from one of them knows what the decision from the other two will be. So their admission decisions would not be independent in a mathematical or statistical sense.

55

Undoubtedly the chance of admission to at least one college does not decrease if a student files one additional application. The question is if the probability of success increases as if the admissions are uncorrelated random events. This seems unlikely.

It’s more likely that a confounding factor is a ‘hook’ like demographic status, sports or a special unusual achievement. This would show up in the data as students with an higher than expected number of admissions to multiple colleges or as students that are broadly rejected.

It would be really interesting to see a statistical analysis of application and admission data that spans multiple colleges and lists application and admission statuses on the individual student level, but I don’t know who would have this kind of broad data set. Are there any research studies published on this topic?

56

These decisions aren’t based on data. And to understand a special achievement, in the first place, you’d have to know what that is, right? We see lots of kids on CC, eg, thinking the apps they create and make some money from will be special tips to Wharton or Stanford. Or a kid thinks a role is special because, in her one hs, no one else does it. It may not be thst great. Or any challenge. Or relevant to what that college looks for. It unbeknownst to her, thousands do it.

So, apply to a dozen reaches and you may not make the mark at any.

57

With today being Karl Marx’s bicentennial its a fitting theme in college admissions. “Its always a class struggle”, and AO’s seem to be on a mission to help pick winners and losers…

58

It is clear that the super-selective private schools AOs pick most of the winners from families who have already won, often with explicit unearned-by-the-applicant preferences on top of existing advantage (e.g. legacy preference).

Regarding Marx… the fall of the USSR showed everyone what a sham communism was. But, a generation or few from now, most or all of those who remember the USSR will be dead; if inequality continues to increase and opportunity and mobility continue to decrease, will people naively look to Marx again (or other noxious ideologies like racism) when they feel that they have no hope within the existing economic system?

59

Memories are short and history does repeat itself (perhaps in a somewhat different form).

60

First gen definitely has nothing to do with race. It can be a tip, and can be combined with race, athletic recruit, geographic diversity,perhaps being full pay or low income, etc.