Schopenhauerfanboy

Got accepted into the University of Tennessee, Knoxville -  full funding for 5 years!

Haven't heard anything from the 11 other programs to which I applied..

Got accepted into the University of Tennessee, Knoxville -  full funding for 5 years!

Haven't heard anything from the 11 other programs to which I applied..

Got accepted into the University of Tennessee, Knoxville -  full funding for 5 years!

Haven't heard anything from the 11 other programs to which I applied..

Got accepted into the University of Tennessee, Knoxville -  full funding for 5 years!

Haven't heard anything from the 11 other programs to which I applied..

Got accepted into the University of Tennessee, Knoxville -  full funding for 5 years!

Haven't heard anything from the 11 other programs to which I applied..

Got accepted into the University of Tennessee, Knoxville -  full funding for 5 years!

Haven't heard anything from the 11 other programs to which I applied..

Got accepted into the University of Tennessee, Knoxville -  full funding for 5 years!

Haven't heard anything from the 11 other programs to which I applied..

Got accepted into the University of Tennessee, Knoxville -  full funding for 5 years!

Haven't heard anything from the 11 other programs to which I applied..

Notice it's the other USC - South Carolina, not Southern California. 

I'm wondering if the inauguration and its corollary protests will slow admissions decisions. For whatever reason, I'm not counting on this week's predictions to be accurate. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to hear from Ohio State and Northwestern ASAP. But, I wouldn't be surprised if these are delayed a week.

Acceptance to U of Georgia's PhD program !
helloo to the people I already told on Facebook ;-)

I don't need to know what criteria condition the probability of admission, however labyrinthine. I merely need to know that these criteria are in play, whatever they are. This is enough to see that admissions is not like a lottery.

Sure, but this is all relative to the epistemic situation of the applicant. If I'm an applicant and I want to perform a calculation of my odds of being admitted, then it might be reasonable to make some simplifying assumptions about the process given my limited knowledge of what precisely is being considered. That said, we all certainly know enough about the admissions process in general to be reasonably certain that ceteris peribus clauses like these don't accurately capture what's happening. 

Wondering what everyone else is up to now that the waiting game has begun?
 
For myself, I'm reading (currently The Help by Kathryn Stockett), knitting, binge-watching Pretty Little Liars (I'm late to the game), and hanging out with my cat mostly. Once my brain's recovered a bit, I'll continue translating some Plato  

The probability I was considering was the event being accepted anywhere. Imagine you've got 10 different lotteries or raffles, each with a probability of winning 10%, you've got a probability increasing for each ticket purchased, because you may win multiple times, for one of them, or not at all. But the probability of winning at least once is increased with every ticket.
If they are statistically independent, this is exactly right: we're interested in the denial of the probability "I will get in nowhere". This also intuitively means that the more applications you put in, the resultant likelihood of being rejected everywhere approaches zero (asymptotic curve).

The intersection is at 10 applications when the average is 6.5% acceptance, when applicants are chosen at random.
Right. There are a lot of conditional probabilities we may figure that make the "acceptance rate" figure less than helpful/meaningful.

Yeah, I've been thinking of this as well! I applied to 17 programs, in which I figured that the "average" acceptance rate was 6.5% (Michigan is 2%, but Michigan State is 15%), if chosen randomly. 17 x 6.5% = 110.5%. There's something wrong with the probability, but I haven't worked it out. Because 100% means certainty, and you can't have it go above that; moreover, it is a priori uncertain, so it can't be the upper bound, 100%, either.
I haven't done all the conditional probabilities, either. Because, as you've highlighted, if you're above 50 percentile at one school, that is a very different statistic. If you're above 70 percentile at one school, it is likely you're above 70 percentile at many schools. The corollary is that if you're below 50 percentile, your odds diminishes quickly, because they almost always admit only 70 percentile. Whatever strength in your application that justifies your acceptance at one school is likely to justify at another school; whatever is weak is likely to be considered weak elsewhere.

I don't have any anecdotes, but here's something I found consoling. 

Suppose you're around the middle of the pack and have a slightly better than average chance of getting in (say, 15%). And you applied to 15 schools.
Then:
1 - (8.5/10)^15 
So, you have a 91% chance of getting into at least one program. 

Pretty good odds, I'd say!

Interesting thoughts! I don't know if I have enough information to assume that I am in the 50th percentile. I also don't know enough about the applicant pool to be this optimistic yet!

I don't have any anecdotes, but here's something I found consoling. 

Suppose you're around the middle of the pack and have a slightly better than average chance of getting in (say, 15%). And you applied to 15 schools.
Then:
1 - (8.5/10)^15 
So, you have a 91% chance of getting into at least one program. 

Pretty good odds, I'd say!

For a lot of programs, the odds are considerably worse only if you assume that your odds are as good as every other applicant's.  From what I've read, it's usually around 5% acceptance rate. But if you assume that you're above the 50th percentile of applicants, then your odds are considerably better. Suppose there's 200 applications and 10 offers. That's 5% chance. But if you assume you're around the 50th percentile (which presumably you are higher than if you have a good record), then you'd be better than 100 of the applicants. So your odds are obviously better say, 10%. Then across 15 applications, you'd get:
1 - (0.9/10)^15 
So, just shy of 80% of getting into at least one. These numbers are, of course, somewhat arbitrary, but you can do a reasonable estimation if you have good grounds for thinking you are at least around 50th percentile. It's not like the 200 applicants all have 3.9+ GPAs, 90th percentile + verbal GRE scores, or whatever other propitious attributes your application possesses.  


It's the same thing with law school, I would imagine. There are often 1500 applications for say 100 spots, but a considerable number of those aren't plausible to begin with. And if you already know beforehand that your GPA and LSAT are in the range of the preceding class profile, it would be foolish to think you have the same odds of getting in as every other applicant. Of course my story would unravel if it turned out that ALL or almost all of the applicants to PhD programs were of equivalent quality. 

But from what I've read, most of the people in this forum have records that are a lot better than the average person applying to graduate school. 

I am just trying to argue that if you adopt a couple seemingly safe assumptions, then your applications are likely to succeed at least once! Hope this is comforting to someone haha

Congrats on the early acceptance! 

I have to resist the urge to check my phone and email for responses. I'm sure many of you can relate. 

Every time you see an email notification though... :'(

Congrats on the early acceptance! 

I have to resist the urge to check my phone and email for responses. I'm sure many of you can relate. 

Congrats on the early acceptance! 

I have to resist the urge to check my phone and email for responses. I'm sure many of you can relate.