Profile evaluation for MFE 2025

[arohan]

Hi all, I was making a few calculations about my probabilities to get selected in a these programs. Is this a reconcilable calculation? Or is it off?

	Table describing the college and my probability to get selected in the program
	College Probability University of Chicago 25% UCB 20% NYU Courant 20% CMU 15% Columbia 15% Cornell 25% MIT 10% NYU Tandon 20% Princeton 10% Baruch College 10% UCLA 25%

Any % shock that needs to be added, either evenly or unevenly? Am I overestimating the probability of my selection in UCB/UCLA/Cornell/NYU Courant/UChicago?

I think you are over complicating things for yourself. Admits and applications are very random and you can arrive at a situation where you might be getting an admit from, say, CMU, and get a reject from somewhere like NYU Tandon. The admission process is very random. You have a strong profile, just work on your essays, SoPs, LoRs and just apply. Maybe segregate programs into buckets. Of the top of my head: Baruch/Princeton/Stanford/CMU, Berkeley/Chicago/Cornell/NYU Courant/Columbia/MIT, NYU Tandon/UCLA, and apply to 2-ish programs in each bucket for round 1 and then see if you need to apply for more in round 2. But yeah, this odds thing is overcomplicating things way too much imho.

 

[fatcatking]

I think you are over complicating things for yourself. Admits and applications are very random and you can arrive at a situation where you might be getting an admit from, say, CMU, and get a reject from somewhere like NYU Tandon. The admission process is very random. You have a strong profile, just work on your essays, SoPs, LoRs and just apply. Maybe segregate programs into buckets. Of the top of my head: Baruch/Princeton/Stanford/CMU, Berkeley/Chicago/Cornell/NYU Courant/Columbia/MIT, NYU Tandon/UCLA, and apply to 2-ish programs in each bucket for round 1 and then see if you need to apply for more in round 2. But yeah, this odds thing is overcomplicating things way too much imho.

You’re right. Maybe I was a bit pretentious and jumpy when I calculated the probabilities. I wanted to quantify my chances so that I get the my family (and myself a bit) in confidence. Since the admission process is random, wouldn’t you suggest me to apply to all of the top 10 schools, just in case?