How to Create a 100% Admissions Rate
A little number magic turns 12.5% admissions rate (percentage of applications accepted) into a 100% admission rate (percentage of students accepted).
A top student applies to all eight Ivy League schools. He gets into one early and withdraws his other applications.
What percentage of his total applications were accepted: 100 percent or 12.5 percent?
The difference between the two ways of calculating acceptance rates should give prospective clients of college counseling firms pause. Before falling for a pitch about a firm’s outsize results, almost all of which are due to factors outside any college counselor’s control, families should look carefully at how college admissions advisors have calculated such amazing results.
In this article, I will present three case studies of a group of students applying to Ivy League colleges. All of these students are clients of a private college counseling firm that wants to advertise its admissions successes, so it wants to choose the most favorable method for calculating the firm’s admissions rate. I will assume that all the students withdraw their applications after being accepted early decision or exclusive early action. In all of the cases, all of the students submit one early application.
Five Students ,Three Schools, Three ED Acceptances
Let’s start with a simple case of five students applying to three colleges. Three of the five students are accepted to their ED school. None of the remaining students get in during regular decision.
Notice when the accepted students withdraw their regular decision applications, the number of total applications remaining goes down, shrinking the denominator, thus raising the percentage of applications accepted from 20 percent to 33 percent. Three students now have a 100 percent admissions rate because only one school issued an admissions decision on their applications.
Which admission rate are you going to use in advertising?
60 percent of students who applied got into an Ivy League school
20 percent of applications were accepted
33 percent of applications were accepted
Withdrawing the applications also raises the firm’s admissions rate at two of the schools. At Brown, which accepted two students in early decision, the admissions rate rises from 40 percent to 50 percent. At Penn, which accepted one student, the admissions rate climbs from 20 percent to 33 percent.
Again, the question becomes which figure is this firm going to use in advertising?
Our admissions rate to Brown is 40 percent (or 50 percent).
Our admissions rate to Penn is 20 percent (or 33 percent).
Five Students, Eight Schools, Three ED Acceptances
Now, let’s look at what happens when the same five students apply to eight schools each. Three get in early.
Sixty percent (3 out of 5) of the students are still accepted to the Ivy League.
Once again, withdrawing the applications raises the percentage of applications accepted, this time from 7.5 percent to 15.8 percent.
With no one getting in during the regular decision round, the admissions rates remain the same as in the previous example.
8 schools, 5 acceptances
In the next case, all five students are accepted by one school, three in early decision, two in regular decision.
Once again, withdrawing applications after an early decision acceptance creates the impression that a higher percentage of students’ applications are accepted. Before withdrawals, the 12.5 percent of the applications were accepted. After withdrawals, 26.3 percent (more than double) were accepted.
The admissions rate at Harvard and Columbia, each of which accepted one student during regular decision, now goes up from 20 to 50 percent because after three people withdrew their applications, only two were left. Half of the two students got into two of the remaining schools.
What data should this college counseling firm use on its website?
100 percent of our students are admitted to the Ivy League.
12.5 (or 26.3) percent of the applications our students submit to the Ivy League are accepted.
Our admissions rate to Harvard is 20 (or 50) percent.
And so on.
Again, the point is that we should be skeptical of the admissions data reported by college counseling firms. Even if the data is audited, it can be highly misleading.