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Comment by ModernMech | Hacker News Reader

When looking at acceptance rates of Ivies, it's good to remember that the concept of a "reach school" that counselors push on students means that almost every kid is applying to some school they are not really qualified to get into. These disproportionately end up being top schools like Princeton and Harvard. If you're going to reach, why not really reach? Is the chance of getting into Princeton 4%? No, if you're well qualified to get in, the chance is much higher. If you're not qualified to get in, the chance is 0%. Average it out and you get the 4%-8%.

I think PG said something similar with respect to the chance of getting accepted to YC. Or maybe it wasn't PG and I'm thinking of this: https://medium.com/@robhunter/your-chances-of-getting-into-y...

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School counselors (at least those that are good, and care) are in kind of a tough spot. If they are realistic with kids about what they are qualified to do after high school, they catch shit from parents about "crushing dreams" and if they are not they create false hope by encouraging average students to do things like apply to Harvard or Princeton with some kind of message like "you can't get in if you don't apply."

More broadly most applicants apply to several schools. If there are as many spots as applicants and each applicants apply to k schools, you could go as low as 1/k average admittance percentage (rates will be higher when colleges accept applicants that do not come: you could have 100% rate after all). With k = 12, you're at about a 8% lower bound for the average college.

For elite colleges that will attract more applications and will have fewer admitted-but-does-not-come applicants, 4% is not that low.

If the marginal cost of an extra application is lowering (say, because we went from typewriting & mailing everything to copy-pasting & online applications), the number of applications per applicant will go up and thus the admission rate will go down.

There seems to be a trend toward students submitting ever more college applications. It's not uncommon for seniors to apply to a dozen schools or more, of which perhaps 1/3 are unlikely to accept.

So my question is, what is the larger context of applicants this year? Has a year of COVID sequestration altered the numbers? Are elite schools admitting fewer students? Has the total number of applications gone up? Is each student sending out more applications? Are kids applying to more elite schools than in years past?

One bare statistic really doesn't tell a useful story.

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