Acceptance Rates--Reality Check

<p>A 15-20% admit rate amongst very very qualified students still intimidates me.</p>

<p>American Idol kicks Harvard’s butt. Out of 100,000 plus “applicants,” only 100+ make it to Hollywood.</p>

<p>Harvard needs to seriously up its game. ;)</p>

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<p>If Princeton has instituted the 1800/3.0 standard like many of its peer institutions, his application will not even be considered.</p>

<p>^Aw, haha.</p>

<p>My point is this: schools should post actual acceptance rates that MEAN something to applicants. Like:</p>

<p>-applicants with a 1700 SAT? 2000 SAT? 2200 SAT?
-applicants who are valedictorians/salutorians?
-3.5UW? 3.85 UW? 4.0 UW? 5.0 W?
-AP 5.0s?
-applicants who have translated cat meows into English?</p>

<p>“i wish i could remember which school i saw recently that did state statistics like percent and SAT scores, gpa, and rank- it was in the top 20”</p>

<p>UCLA and I think Berkeley do.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_fr/Frosh_Prof09.htm[/url]”>http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_fr/Frosh_Prof09.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Brown does, I dont feel like looking it up, but it showed the percent of valedictorians admitted, 2400s admitted, 700-800 CR, etc etc etc</p>

<p>^Yes, a few universities provide those statistics (Stanford and Princeton among a few others) and they do provide a better measure of one’s chances than a basic acceptance rate.</p>

<p>Didn’t TokenAdult do an analysis a while back that basically indicated that given the number of kids getting into the tip top schools with very high SATs, they are actually a rather scarce commodity. That is, there aren’t really that many scorers 2300+ to fill up HYPS coffers in their >75 percentile ranges. So just having that plus great grades and a rigorous courseload make your chances far higher than the much ballyhooed <10 percent rates. </p>

<p>His analysis was very data-driven and I may very well have misinterpreted, tho.</p>

<p>No one is a shoe-in, of course. From what my son at H tells me the athletes and legacies and URMs are just as ridiculously brilliant as everyone else.</p>

<p>If this is true it is sort of encouraging… I read on the Princeton board that last year around 11.000 of the applicants had a SAT of >2100, out of pretty much 22.000 applicants; Princeton still admits around 6 percent of the applicants with scores ranging from a 1900-2090, but admit rates for lower scores were drastically lower.</p>

<p>There are many issues involved here, but certainly a big one is the false premise that acceptance rate is a good measure, in part, of what makes a “best” college. To the extent it had any truth or logic to begin with, it has long since ceased to have any relevance as technology and the behavior of the schools changes. Same with other factors that USNWR measures. A variation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.</p>

<p>It is not pretty that highly selective schools give candidates false hope, but at the same time there is SO MUCH information out there that is readily available it is ridiculous for any parent or student to be that uninformed and/or delusional. If they have the information and choose to apply anyway, well then that is their $50 or whatever to spend on their version of the lottery, except the odds are probably less in many cases.</p>

<p>I would encourage you guys to remember that correlation does not imply causation. Just because the group with higher SAT scores got admitted more frequently to Harvard does not mean that these higher scores were the cause of such admissions. </p>

<p>I’m sure Harvard doesn’t want to encourage this kind of thinking, and it’s probably why it doesn’t post acceptance rates by SAT scores.</p>

<p>Bigb14 - I have no idea what you are trying to say. Of course high SAT scores alone won’t get you into Harvard, but low SAT scores will almost for sure keep you out. I would say for the latter case there is a very high r value between being turned down and low SAT scores, although again admittance decisions are multi-pronged.</p>

<p>I think a better way to put it, and what I think you are trying to say, is that having high SAT scores is a necessary but not sufficient condition for getting into Harvard.</p>

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<p>Exactly, well put.</p>

<p>On another note, I really don’t think that Harvard is that much more selective than other Ivy (caliber) schools. I know far too many people that just apply to Harvard on a whim (its essay is optional…) because their parents want them to or because they have a “chance” of getting in…even though their true reaches are NYU or BC. That influx of applicants just makes it look like Harvard has a lower acceptance rate relative to other schools (Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Chicago) which are generally more selective in their applicant pool.</p>

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<p>That is very true. The University of Chicago, for example, has no where near the same degree of selectivity as HYPS, yet is academically comparable.</p>

<p>“Bigb14 - I have no idea what you are trying to say. Of course high SAT scores alone won’t get you into Harvard, but low SAT scores will almost for sure keep you out. I would say for the latter case there is a very high r value between being turned down and low SAT scores, although again admittance decisions are multi-pronged.”</p>

<p>The OP’s point was that it the actual acceptance rate of 8% does not apply for everyone in the applicant pool. While this is true, what I am saying is that it’s impossible to draw any type of meaningful conclusion about your “actual acceptance rate” from test scores alone. I’m sure there have been people with SATs under 2000 who have still gotten into Harvard, however few.</p>

<p>Ah, yes. That is true to an extent. But I think the real point was that if they made it easy to see (and I am making these numbers up, I have no idea what the real stats would be) that SAT < 2000 = 0.1% of accepted students, SAT = 2000-2099 = 9.9%, 2100-2199 = 20%, 2200-2299 = 30%, 2300-2400 = 40%, then people with 1800 SAT’s wouldn’t waste their time. But who knows, maybe they still want to see those apps, for whatever reason. I don’t think in Harvard’s case it is to preserve their USNWR ranking though.</p>

<p>I think you could draw meaningful conclusions from test scores alone if you saw that the odds were extremely low for getting into Harvard if your SAT score was 1800.</p>

<p>I think a below average SAT score (i.e. people applying with scores in the 1800s) often accompanies an overall less qualified applicant (also in terms of grades, ECs etc.), although there are some notable exceptions (which constitute the 0.1 percent admitrate) of people who have an extraordinary profile otherwise. </p>

<p>I do think a lot of international applicants apply as long shots, just because they aren’t really familiar with the criteria US colleges expect. I, for one, are sort of a long-shot myself (I have a 2040 SAT…) but the rest of my application should be up to par. But I also know internationals (2 of the 4 I know) from my country applying with 1700 SATs and no extra-curriculars. They could account for the inflated numbers as well.</p>