The Flawed Approach of Applying to Many Prestigious Colleges to Increase Your Chance of Acceptance (And What to do Instead)
At Lantern College Counseling, we support students to apply to college comprehensively through our Deep-Fit™ college counseling services. We don’t limit the number of schools, the number of essays, or the number of application platforms we will help a student with, as many other independent education consultants do. Why? Because doing so artificially constrains the process. Each student is unique. And not all college applications and essays are equal.
Additionally, imposing such limits is fundamentally at odds with our philosophy. Our Deep-Fit approach empowers students by centering their perspective and supporting them to have agency, the “desire, ability, and power to determine their own course of action.” At each stage of their search, we ask our students questions about what THEY think, and they are the ones to make the important decisions. So, telling them how many schools they can apply to would be antithetical to our beliefs and principles.
At Lantern, we challenge our students to dream big, envision their future, see what they can create for themselves, and then, most importantly, equip them with the tools to do so.
Would you like personalized advice about where to apply to college?
However, just because we support our students in applying to as many schools as they’d like doesn’t mean that we recommend applying to as many schools as possible since they believe that will increase their chances of acceptance. Let’s unpack this strategy!
Does applying to more highly-selective schools increase your chances of getting into one of them?
As anyone paying attention to college admissions knows, the chances of getting accepted to many of the most highly sought-after colleges and universities drop year after year. Indeed, a 2024 Inside Higher Ed article details that in the 2023-2024 application cycle, the number of applications increased, and acceptance rates decreased, with acceptance rates at some highly selective institutions below 5%. Many public flagships and mid-sized private universities have also become more selective. Families often respond to this landscape by thinking that students should apply to as many schools as possible since they believe that will increase their chances of acceptance.
Students and their parents often think that “more is more,” meaning the student should apply to as many highly selective schools as possible to achieve their best admissions outcomes. And we often hear arguments based on probability to support this approach. For instance, a parent recently claimed their child would have a “near zero” chance of not getting into a highly selective school if they applied to 20. In practice, we see the opposite. Why would this be? Why does a probabilistic analysis of the highly selective college admissions process fail? Let’s consider an example.
If a student applies to college at 20 schools with a 5% acceptance rate, what are the chances they'll be accepted to at least one?
Approaching this question with a probabilistic analysis, the chances of being accepted to at least one of 20 colleges with a 5% acceptance rate depend on the independence of the admissions decisions for those colleges. Assumptions:
Each college evaluates the application independently.
The applicant’s chances of admission at each college are exactly 5%.
The admissions chances are the same across all 20 colleges.
The student meets the basic admission criteria and has made a strong application.
Step 1: Probability of rejection from one school
P(rejected) = 1 − P(accepted) = 1 − 0.05 = 0.95
Step 2: Probability of rejection from all 20 schools, if the decisions are independent
P(rejected from all) = 0.95 20 ≈ 0.3585 ≈ 36%
Step 3: Probability of being accepted to at least one school
P(accepted to at least one) = 1 − P(rejected from all) = 1 − 0.95 20 ≈ 1 − 0.3585 ≈ 64%
That is, if the above assumed conditions are met—keep reading!—then the probability of being accepted to at least one college is approximately 64%. However, let’s now examine each assumption.
Assumption 1: Does each college evaluate the application independently?
What would make these decisions independent? For admissions decisions to be truly independent, the outcomes for one college would have no influence on the outcomes for others. In real-world college admissions, this rarely happens due to overlapping factors. Independence could be achieved only under certain conditions:
Conditions for Independent Admissions Decisions
No Shared Application Factors:
Colleges do not rely on common data points like shared recommendation letters, essays, or standardized test scores.
Unique applications are submitted to each college with no overlap in content.
No Overlapping Applicant Pool Dynamics:
The applicant pool for each college is sufficiently distinct, so the competition or profiles of other applicants don’t influence decisions at multiple colleges.
Different students applying to the same schools. When the same students apply to the same schools, one student may be picked by all the schools.
No Coordination or Collusion Among Colleges:
Colleges make decisions based solely on their individual criteria without communication or knowledge of the applicant’s other applications.
Unique Institutional Preferences:
Each college values completely different traits, experiences, or backgrounds in students, leading to uncorrelated evaluation processes.
Admissions officers at these schools are independent and not all like-minded.
No External Rankings or Strategies:
Colleges are not influenced by external rankings, trends, or pressures that might create similar selection patterns across institutions.
How admissions decisions really happen (spoiler: they are NOT independent)
In reality, admissions decisions are often correlated due to:
Similar Evaluation Criteria: “Like” schools often look for students with similar attributes. For instance, highly selective schools typically seek students with high GPAs in a rigorous academic program, strong test scores, and rich extracurricular engagement and leadership. Likewise, MIT, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd College are technical institutions who value applicants with strong math and science skills and evidence of authentic interest in engineering.
Shared Application Materials: Most schools use the common application for students to apply. As its name makes clear, the common application's materials are COMMON to all the schools, meaning the schools all evaluate the same information. Even schools on other application platforms, such as MIT and Georgetown, require and consider much of the same information that is submitted on the common application, such as grades, academic profile, standardized test scores, references, and more. Additionally, many students recycle their essays, submitting them to multiple schools. Indeed, submitting one essay to multiple colleges is often necessary when applying to many highly selective schools because it is just too much work to write new essays for every school. Highly selective schools can require up to as many as six or more essays. For example, Stanford University required eight essays this past admissions cycle, and Columbia University required six.
Overlap of Applicant Pool: Highly competitive colleges often attract the same high-achieving applicants.
Common Institutional Priorities: Institutional priorities are the goals and needs a college or university aims to achieve through its admissions process. These priorities are shaped by the institution's mission, values, strategic plans, and current needs. Colleges often have common institutional priorities, so they select certain types of students. For instance, many schools share an institutional priority of access: providing an opportunity for first-generation low-income students to attend the institution. Likewise, many schools work to build a diverse community with representation of students with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.
Admissions decisions are not independent! True independence is not possible without fundamentally altering the current admissions system.
Assumption 2: Is any given student’s chances of acceptance the published admission rate (in this case, 5%)?
No. Admit rate is not the same thing as acceptance probability.
A school’s published admissions rate is calculated by dividing the number of accepted students by the total number of applicants and multiplying by 100, which does not indicate any given student’s chances of acceptance. Of course, some students have better chances than others due to their specific profile (GPA, courses, test scores, etc.).
Additionally, the admit rate masks institutional priorities. If a school has an institutional priority of access, a talented first-generation low-income student may have a better chance of admission than a similarly qualified privileged student. Also, the school’s desire to have a student population with a balance of academic interests will lead to variable chances of admission for different majors.
For instance, consider the University of Washington (UW), home to a top-ranked CS program in its Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Currently, the UW’s 3-year average admit rate for non-Washington resident direct-to-major CS/computer engineering is 2%, while the overall admit rate is 46%.
Additional recent data comes from the April 2024 University of California’s Counselor Bulletin, which shared that the fall 2024 overall first-year admit rate for Berkeley applicants was 11.4%, while the admit rate for applicants with a first-choice major of CS was 1.9%. So, if you are applying to study CS, your chances of admission are not the published admit rate - they are much less! Many factors come into play and influence any one student’s chances of admission.
Assumption 3: Are the admissions chances the same across all 20 colleges?
For illustrative purposes, I contrived this example. In reality, as of this writing, only about eight institutions admit 5% or less of their students. The analysis could be repeated for different admissions chances and scenarios.
Assumption 4: Does the student meet the admission criteria, and have they made a strong application?
It is also essential to consider the quality of the application: what the student brings to the table in terms of GPA, academic rigor, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities, etc. Admission rate aside, a student with weak math preparation, poor math grades, and low standardized math scores will not be admitted to MIT.
Once a student meets the basic bar for GPA, academic rigor, and standardized test scores, then other factors are considered.
What are the student's extracurricular activities?
Have they demonstrated deep engagement, leadership, and impact?
What are their references?
Do they show authentic insights about themselves and their academic directions?
Do they know about the institution?
Do they demonstrate a match between themselves and the institution?
No matter how talented the student is, they won't be admitted if they make a weak application to a highly selective institution. Highly selective colleges and universities are overwhelmed with gifted applicants, so they have the liberty to pick and choose among them. I tell my students with outstanding academic and extracurricular credentials they are wasting time applying to MIT if they don't make an A+ application.
Remember, each application is a lot of work, and highly selective institutions tend to have more intensive applications, with some requiring as many as six or more essays. In our experience, it just isn’t possible for a student to make A+ applications to more than a handful of highly selective colleges. And remember, too, that it is the student who must make the applications, all while keeping their grades up and continuing their engagement in extracurricular activities and other important parts of their lives. Too often, it is the parent pushing 20+ college applications, yet they are not the ones who must actually do the work!
The parent of one of our most talented class of 2025 students recently wrote to me after the student was denied early action admission to a school with a 3% admission rate, “Looking back, I believe we may have been underprepared for the sheer volume of work involved. Balancing the demands of school with the rigorous application process proved to be challenging.” He goes on to express that, in hindsight, he regrets not following our advice and process.
“Looking back, I believe we may have been underprepared for the sheer volume of work involved. Balancing the demands of school with the rigorous application process proved to be challenging.”
Why Probability Can’t Accurately Predict Admissions Outcomes
These flawed assumptions explain why a probabilistic analysis of the highly selective process fails and that if a student applies to 20 colleges with a 5% acceptance rate, the chances that they'll be accepted to one of them is NOT 64%.
This exercise also helps us understand why we find in practice that students achieve their best application outcomes by limiting the length of their college list and applying to only a few Deep-Fit aspirational schools, making A+ applications. In other words, contrary to the popular belief that “more is more,” we see that “less is more.”
What are a student’s chances of admission if they apply to 20 schools with a 5% acceptance rate? We cannot know for sure. Perhaps less than 5% (even 0%.) Possibly more than 5%. It is hard to say much more than this.
Why can’t we say more? There are so many variables that are unknown and changing. To do the data analysis correctly, you would need to calculate the admissions chances numerically using large amounts of accurate data for many students who apply to the 20 schools and see what happens over many years. However, schools do not make this data available! Additionally, admissions is not a static system. The underlying factors change each year. So, past data may not be meaningful. Thus, it is not possible to do a credible data analysis.
So, what strategy should you use to apply to highly selective colleges?
Lucky for you, we’ve written an article on this topic! To summarize, we recommend that students apply to fewer highly selective schools rather than more and make Deep-Fit applications so that they stand out in the highly selective application pool, shining above other talented students with similar grades, courses, test scores, and activities who have not shown that they are a Deep-Fit.
If you’re applying to highly selective colleges and need hands-on support and guidance to develop a standout application and achieve your best results, explore our services, learn about their value, and schedule a free consultation at the link below.
