I recently created Mulberry, a web app students can use to compute their optimal college application strategy. It is a free, open-source, user-friendly interface to Algorithm 1 from my MS thesis.

The Mulberry logo: a magenta berry and a green leaf

Why Mulberry? There are boatloads of “chance me!” websites (some more trustworthy than others) that help students gather information about colleges and estimate their chances of admission. But when it comes to the question of where to apply (given that you can’t apply everywhere), many people resort to folk wisdom, risk-averse heuristics, and gut feelings.

Mulberry complements these introspective techniques with dispassionate, numbers-driven advice. You input estimates of your admissions chances at each school and the amount of utility you associate with going there, and Mulberry sorts the schools in the order you should apply to them to maximize your expected utility.

The interface is at maxkapur.com/mulberry, and the code is on GitHub.