POLL: What's our magic number for acceptances?

[swtiepie711]

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This was prompted by a post below about the magic number of interviews required to get at least 1 acceptance... I know this has been discussed a million times before and I know that many have tried to calculate the probabilities, but I don't remember a poll being done.... This would probably be more useful at the end of the cycle, but let's give it a whirl and see what our magic number is thus far in this application cycle....

NOTE: I understand that this is skewed due to the variance of schools acceptance notification timeframes as well as when applicants submitted (one would guess that the earlier applicants would have lower magic numbers than later ones? maybe?) - this was just out of pure, useless curiosity, it's horribly flawed/skewed and useless, but, hey, it provided a moment's diversion from studying/working 🙂

 

[swtiepie711]

bump...

 

[lilold3chordme]

a valiant attempt...however, ultimately confounded by the fact that different schools notify at different times of the year (so, a stellar candidate who applies to a lot of non-rolling schools for instance may interview at 6-7 places before getting an acceptance in january or february, even though he/she only really needed 1). also, for really early birds who interview at many places before october 15 (or texas applicants since they start interviewing in august but don't notify until november), their numbers will be skewed.

sorry, just playing devil's advocate😳 . also, if we are a re-applicant, are interviews for this poll supposed to be cumulative (or just this cycle)?

bottom line: this process is a sucky crapshoot, through and through.

 

[swtiepie711]

a valiant attempt...however, ultimately confounded by the fact that different schools notify at different times of the year (so, a stellar candidate who applies to a lot of non-rolling schools for instance may interview at 6-7 places before getting an acceptance in january or february, even though he/she only really needed 1). also, for really early birds who interview at many places before october 15 (or texas applicants since they start interviewing in august but don't notify until november), their numbers will be skewed.

sorry, just playing devil's advocate😳 . also, if we are a re-applicant, are interviews for this poll supposed to be cumulative (or just this cycle)?

bottom line: this process is a sucky crapshoot, through and through.

This is true.... But I'm just curious.... And of course - if you get one acceptance, than I guess you only needed to go on that one interview - so the magic number is one. But then again, since this is such a crapshoot, we all try to go on as many interviews as we can until we're accepted somewhere....

 

[Darksmurf]

One problem with this poll is that the timing in offers differs among the various schools. For instance, some applicants may have had five interviews before the October deadline when schools are 'allowed' to begin offering spots, and thus had five interviews before their first offer of acceptance. Other schools don't make decisions until January, while still other school might not notify any applicants until February or March. Thus, certain applicants, because of the schools that they applied to, may have had 15 interviews but no acceptances because they are still waiting to hear their interview results.

For those reasons, this is probably a better poll for June, after there has been some waitlist movement and all schools have made (at least preliminary) decisions about the applicants they interviewed.

 

[swtiepie711]

I know this is horribly flawed, but I was just curious....

 

[lilold3chordme]

This is true.... But I'm just curious.... And of course - if you get one acceptance, than I guess you only needed to go on that one interview - so the magic number is one. But then again, since this is such a crapshoot, we all try to go on as many interviews as we can until we're accepted somewhere....

or, do you mean this? say Applicant A interviews at 3 schools (X, Y, and Z, in that order). A gets waitlisted at Y in November but gets accepted to Z in December. At this point, the number is 3 (3 interviews attended for 1 acceptance). However, X does not send out acceptances until the new year, and A is accepted in February. Now, the number changes to 1 because the first interview was ultimately all that the applicant needed (in hindsight, however)?

this could work, but it would either have to wait till the end of the process or be asked of last year's acceptees.

is this what you mean, or am i just making things more difficult and confusing? sorry, i'm just procrastinating through finals.

 

[MadHopsMD]

This was prompted by a post below about the magic number of interviews required to get at least 1 acceptance... I know this has been discussed a million times before and I know that many have tried to calculate the probabilities, but I don't remember a poll being done.... This would probably be more useful at the end of the cycle, but let's give it a whirl and see what our magic number is thus far in this application cycle....

this can be deceiving for the early applicants. because we applied early, interviewed early, i schools could not notify us till sept 15th.

 

[swtiepie711]

or, do you mean this? say Applicant A interviews at 3 schools (X, Y, and Z, in that order). A gets waitlisted at Y in November but gets accepted to Z in December. At this point, the number is 3 (3 interviews attended for 1 acceptance). However, X does not send out acceptances until the new year, and A is accepted in February. Now, the number changes to 1 because the first interview was ultimately all that the applicant needed (in hindsight, however)?

this could work, but it would either have to wait till the end of the process or be asked of last year's acceptees.

is this what you mean, or am i just making things more difficult and confusing? sorry, i'm just procrastinating through finals.

I just meant, in an elusive-foo-foo kind of way that the answer would really be one - the magic number - you only need to go on the one interview where you'll be accepted - but OF COURSE no one knows where this is so that's why we go on as many as we can....

But, yes, I also thought about that - something like "What number was the interview at the school where you received your first acceptance?"
If an applicant interviewed at NYU, UCLA & BU (picked at random b/c they have short abbreviations) in that order, and (at the end of the cycle) were accepted at UCLA and BU, not NYU - then you'd say that their magic number was 2 (the 2nd interview they went on led to an acceptance).... interesting....

Again, this type of poll would have to be conducted at the end of the cycle (which, by the way, does the "end of the cycle" mean the day classes start? or could this poll be useful if done in the spring/post May15th? hm.... interesting....)

 

[lilnoelle]

another way to handle this would be to correlate the number of interviews with the number of acceptances an individual recieved (of course this would require waiting till June) so, for a person who had 6 interviews and 3 acceptances, he averaged one acceptance every 2 interviews. Then, if one wanted to make it even more complicated, one could match this up with GPA and MCAT, so that an individual with these stats can get into 1 school every two interviews and so forth.....
but what all of this is overlooking is that generally those who interview well will get more acceptances than those who don't. So two individuals who otherwise have an equal application can have very different numbers of acceptances, i.e. one individual gets accepted to 6 out of 7 interviews where one gets into 1 out of 7.

 

[dopaminesurge]

I'll be at 11, but I think I'm close to the case the first responder described...