@TV4caster, the very tippy-top candidates aren’t just very accomplished. They’re the type of kid that comes along only every once in a while in an area (talented, accomplished, high stats, write very well, deep yet charming, etc.). Every year, maybe 50 kids (or less) get in to HYPS. However, if they had bothered applying to the other 5 Ivies, most of them would have gotten in all 5 of those as well.
If an applicant gets a “likely” letter, what would you say the odds of getting accepted there would be?
PurpleTitan, It’s really not about commendable, it’s about laziness which leads to optimal behavior. Why apply to more schools if you already gotten into the one you want to go to? Plus I don’t think his private school will write any more recommendations for him if he gets in EA at his first choice. They are pretty strict about these things and want other kids in the school to get those scarce recommendations.
Now if he doesn’t get EA in his first choice then of course he will cast a wider net and apply to several schools - match, safety, reach and all that. I hope he won’t have to bother with that, as applications are not fun.
@DadofTeen, sometimes, laziness is commendable.
I think one of the reasons why the elite privates are holistic is because they want to control how cut-throat the atmosphere gets at their school. They want a student body that will go on to do great things, but they don’t want a student body that is almost all gunners who will employ any little edge they can to get all A’s.
@PurpleTitan I don’t buy the theory about the once in a while kid having such high odds. We had a kid like that at my kids school, which is one of the better HSs in our District: perfect SAT; highest GPA in school history; HS All-American; great kid; winner of every award you can think of; etc. He didn’t get into either of his 2 Ivy’s.
It’s possible you just didn’t calculate his odds correctly.
Very high, but that is knowledge after the fact. Going into the process there were many others with the exact same qualifications who received rejections. What do you think the odds are of being accepted after receiving a rejection letter? They are zero, but they weren’t zero before they applied. Same thing with the likely letter kid on the other end of the spectrum.
PurpleTitan, I think laziness is the absolute best characteristics that a person may have, as it always urges them to work smarter, not harder. In the process they find some amazing things that advance human society as a whole. Imagine if Archimedes popped steroids to pull the ship ashore instead of creating the pully system? Imagine if Gauss tediously added the numbers from 1 to 100 instead of creating a formula for arithmetic series? Worse, imagine if Woody Allen kept producing and directing movies after he reached his pinaccle with Husbands and Wives?
Oh wait, Allen didn’t stop. He went on to produce and direct The Curse of the Jade Scorpion instead. Bad example, but you get my point …
Apparently, the school felt the need to send likely letters to several hundred applicants. Did they have the exact same qualifications as “many others”? Do you think they were picked at random?
@TV4caster, I’m siding with @JustOneDad.
I would say that writing is extremely important.
I read a book of college essays back when I was applying to colleges 20+ years ago. Most were forgettable, but one has stuck with me even now, 20 years hence. That kid matriculated at Harvard (I think he got in a bunch of other places as well, but don’t remember).
Yes, essentially. I have heard many an admissions director from the tippy top schools say the exact same thing.
Speaking of odds of college admissions, perhaps someone can create an web site where kids go and enter their applications, stats, essays, and recs if open book, and people bid for or against them. Essentially, buy or sell futures on a kid’s likeliehood of admission to a certain college. It would be interesting to see how accurate the market is in judging those odds. It’s super efficient and accurate when it comes to elections, which are essentially the same crap shoot.
You’d have to be very explicit about what you’ve “heard many an admissions director” say.
@JustOneDad I’ve heard “we could fill several of our schools with students who are equally as deserving of a slot as those that we admitted”, and “there is really no difference between those whom we let in and those we turned down. In the end it comes down to a guess”. One of those was the UVA Dean and I don’t remember who the other one is, only that it stuck with me. It might have been from one of the books I read when my kid was applying (like the one from the former Dean of admissions at Duke).
“I have heard many an admissions director from the tippy top schools say the exact same thing.”
Well. I visit admissions offices for a living (34 campuses in 10 states in 2014, 15 campuses in 8 states so far in 2015, and I’m happy to provide the list if you’re interested). I can’t prove that they never do anything at random. But the day an admissions director ADMITS to an outsider that they do anything at random is the day he loses his job.
I need to remind you that we are talking about the most competitive students in a given class and not the class as a whole.
My son was interested in both Columbia and Brown–but not Dartmouth or Cornell.
One thing that rubs me the wrong way about these kids who got into all 8 Ivies plus other schools is that it seems likely that they probably got into one of HYP through SCEA. If they did, there was really no reason to complete all those other applications, or to keep them open. The need to compare financial aid offers is unlikely to require them to keep all 8 plus applications open. So it does look like trophy-hunting to me. At my kids’ school, doing this was looked down on by other students, because they thought (rightly or wrongly, I don’t know) that keeping those other applications open might negatively affect the RD chances of other kids from the same high school.
On the other hand, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a kid who really wants to attend a college with a lot of highly accomplished students to apply to a substantial number of such schools–and not everybody applies early somewhere.
somehow double posted with the post below
@Hanna those quotes weren’t to me but thing I have read that they have said. To me the issue is that those admissions officers weren’t specifically saying the decisions are random. What they were saying is that they had so many applicants with nearly identical qualifications that they could have chosen any group at random and ended up with just as strong of a class. In my mind that is essentially saying that admissions are relatively random*. You may feel differently.
*when the overall pool consists of a huge percentage of very high achievers.
Whenever we discuss college admissions decisions, I think it’s important to distinguish between things that actually are random and things that appear random because they take place behind a curtain and based on criteria we don’t know.