<p>its a big giant game of eeny meeny miny moe from the pool of very qualified applicants...and it is arrogrant to claim otherwise...</p>
<p>I am actually totally confused by this person. He is saying that most people he knows applied to a number of extremely selective schools and were accepted to at least two. If I roll the dice a dozen times, I will make a seven statistically half the time. (If I got this wrong, please forgive me, it is late.) What I mean is that if you apply to a number of extremely selective schools, you can get into an average of two of them, and there can still be luck involved.</p>
<p>Nobody is saying that Joe Stupid can apply to Harvard, and luck determines if he gets in or not. People, college guides, and newspapers are saying that so many applicants are applying to so few schools that among the extremely qualified who do not have hooks, it is a lottery. They only have so many places, people. There is only so much space. There are not automatically enough open slots for everybody who deserves to get accepted to get accepted. For everybody who gets in, there are three or four people who are the guy's clone who get denied. Why is this so hard for some people?</p>
<p>If you apply to eight colleges (the Ivies), and you have a 90% chance at three of them and a 80% chance at three of them and a 70% chance at two of them, then I would say the following:</p>
<p>1) You are a highly qualified candidate who do well at any college.</p>
<p>2) The probability that you will be denied at all eight colleges is:
(.9)(.9)(.9)(.8)(.8)(.8)(.7)(.7) = 18.3%</p>
<p>3) The probability that you will accepted to at least one college is:
1 - 0.183 = 81.7%</p>
<p>4) If you are one of the people in the 18.3%, it was luck.</p>
<p>I know, when rolling dice it comes up seven 1/6 of the time. Stupid.</p>
<p>I was also admitted to Stanford last year (during the early action round) without any athletic, musical, or URM hooks. I'm white middle-class too. Do I have intellectual curiousity? Heck yes. Do I have passion? Definitely. Am I the pinnacle of academic and intellectual development? Umm, I really don't think so. To say that luck had no part whatsoever, or even that luck played a small role, is completely wrong. I was damn lucky to get in, and I'm sorry that someone as arrogant as the inital poster is attending Stanford also.</p>
<p>That said, I do believe there are some geniuses who do belong in the "pantheon" of intellectual vibrancy, but they constitute a small minority of top schools (even HYPSM).</p>
<p>so let me break down what this upper middle class white male slash little boy is telling us all. he's got 20 people on his AIM buddy list. big words. those 20 buddies managed to get into multiple ivy League schools. more big words. from what i can tell, apparently U. Penn isn't cool enough to be on his Ivy League list. he's like a picture from a college brochure...he's the white surrounded by people from everywhere he's never been. Apparently everyone who goes to Ivy Leagues (minus Penn) love to show the love of what they love 24/7/365...366 on leap years. </p>
<p>All Ivy League people (minus Penn) spark like spark plugs in an engine fueled by love to show that they love what they love...yet again more big words. i guess applicants are compared in batches of 1600, which i find to be a rather odd number, why not 1599? (it is brought to my attention that 1600 could be an SAT score...well he didn't clarify that, so just roll with it) more big words. people that love to show the love of what they love are apparently really good at molding to the generic shape that society wants them to, while smart people can't. </p>
<p>admissions directors are all just human meteorologists forecasting if little billy will be rain or shine in the 7 day forecast i like to call life. Technocrat lawyers, doctors, bureacrats, teachers that can think are all endangered species, which this boy seems to know because he's traveled the world and only made 20 buddies. there are 2 levels of passion: simple passion, and passion AP. obviously this boy took the latter. and this is news to me, but i guess Harvard has scouts looking to recruit prime atheletes. i missed that memo about Harvard caring about athletics. </p>
<p>big words...college applications fail as MRI machines that show the admissions directors how your heart and brain work. to my knowledge applications are designed to give them a general idea of what you've done in high school, oh and where you live. big words, something about essays showing that you learned to read and write along the yellow brick road of the educational system. </p>
<p>more big words...he used a lot of big words in this paragraph, and sparatic latin phrases too...god those impress me. Apparently se</p>
<p>This is my take. College admissions aren't quite the crapshoot they are made out to be, but to say no luck is involved is ridiculous. There are many adcoms who have posted on here that have said that many of those they fought for in the admissions process were rejected. Therefore, even an admissions officer could not tell you for certain if someone would be accepted or not.</p>
<p>However, there are certain patterns that I agree that separate the 4.0/1600's, 3.9/1500's etc. I remember reading a 4.0+1600+3x800 who was rejected from just about every Ivy League & then some. However, he posted his essays and we noticed that they were mediocre at best...everyone knew it. This could very well have been why he was rejected at these schools that he should have been accepted at.</p>
<p>Therefore, my theory is that college admissions is a semi-crapshoot. HOWEVER, since we don't get to ready everyones essays, rec letters, etc...as far as CC is concerned, HYPS etc is a crapshoot.</p>
<p>Saying that the top schools are a lottery only works if you consider all the applicants having an equal chance at getting accepted. Fact is, that doesn't happen. Students with very weak scores and grades are immediately tossed out the window (have you watched the Amherst video?). Now, if we only take students with the exact same statisticts and pit them only against each other, it's still not a lottery! Each college will accept who they feel will best excel at their colleges. As I mentioned in my earlier post (that no one reads), it all has to do with how you present yourself in the application, essays, and interview. There exists a top, top core of elite students who will get into all the schools they apply to and by calling their acceptances a sllight deviation of the norm~ with an element of "luck," no less~ is not giving these kids the credit they rightfully deserve. I'll copy the first paragraph of my first post below:</p>
<p>"There exists a world of superlatives~ there's always the good-to-great student in the local context, but when compared across the country as well as international applicants, some kids simply aren't as amazing as their friends, families and teachers (and themselves!) might imagine. There's always the good applicant that has a relative shot at the best schools, the great applicant that might get into one, and the BEST applicants that get into most of the top schools."</p>
<p>I know and have heard what admissions officials have to say, but what else do you expect them to say- "you're really not as good as the students we have accepted this year..." And what do you expect the books to say? - "Warning: this book is only for the top 200 students across America; we don't care about reaching out to a wide and hopeful audience and cashing in, we are just doing a community service." I know the OP's comments are very easy to attack, but there have been others who have made valid points as well (and have been woefully disregarded, as a whole). Consider spoonyj and his own personal experiences- I think I wouldn't off if I said that he thinks the admissions at top schools are "fair." Somehow these schools always know which are the right students to pick... Are there some who have got in from luck? Well, if luck you mean the happy circumstance that they are applying in a particular year- then yes. Colleges want diversity in all forms and sometimes a certain year's class is lacking that certain someone excelling in that certain something, and one very thankful individual gets admitted for these purposes.</p>
<p>TTG</p>
<p>TTG, I am interested in your response to this line of my post:</p>
<p>"There are many adcoms who have posted on here that have said that many of those they fought for in the admissions process were rejected. Therefore, even an admissions officer could not tell you for certain if someone would be accepted or not."</p>
<p>Just curious. :)</p>
<p>stambliark41~</p>
<p>I'll add a post from my line [I added a little bit to it-</p>
<p>"I know and have heard what admissions officials have to say, but what else do you expect them to say- "you're really not as good as the students we have accepted this year...you shouldn't have applied, nor anyone else in a similar situation, because we really, really don't care about receiving a lot of applications and on top of that, we really really don't care about selectivity numbers, etc..."</p>
<p>=) (<---- sorry, i don't know how to do cool smiley faces)</p>
<p>TTG</p>
<p>What I mean is there is an admissions panel of X amount of people. There are people in that panel would choose to accept kids that others wouldn't and vice versa. If it was a completely objective, accurate, non-luck process, they would all agree unaminously, but this is not the case. Now you have to be pretty good to have one of the admissions officers pulling for you, and there are distinct qualities that put one in this position, but there still isn't any guarantees.</p>
<p>If a particular applicant's record is so compelling, then there is no reason any rational person would reject him or her. This is was I meant when I referred to, previously, students as the "BEST" or "top, top" applicants. There may be one person who chooses otherwise, but one dissenting vote isn't going to result in a rejection. I'd even suspect that's sometimes a vote casted in such a manner is for show- like dissenting votes in the ICJ so that the person can voice and physically show concern on a particular topic, but I'm equally sure the committee will stop short in doing something completely stupid (like rejecting that student). </p>
<p>TTG</p>
<p>Icki, </p>
<p>your argument that the common trait among your HYPS admits is intellectual sparks. And they mostly possessed the same jocular qualities, playfulness...etc. I tend to think young 18 yr olds who have just been admitted to the world's most exclusive club would act that way. </p>
<p>Success come early to you, and it entitles you to posit this grand thought about, well , let me put it in most explicit term, you are saying that some people like yourself are borned to go to Harvard, Yale or Stanford or Pton. That is what you are trying to say. Isn't it?</p>
<p>Today the Surgeon General brought to the attention of the United States a new study showing links between ivy league schools and being a complete tool. Focusing mainly on students, the study found that many young men and women applying to these schools experienced episodes of disolusionment, often thinking they were superior to everyone else. Other effects included unnecessary usage of "sophisticated" words, an inability to say anything remotely interesting, and the desperate need to prove and brag about their "intellectual spark".</p>
<p>This condition also apparently wreaks havoc on the personal lives of the students. Many experienced a severe drop in their love life since developing what has now come to be called "Toolbox Syndrome". Most of the men studied were even unable to locate the private parts of a female on a chart. </p>
<p>Many long time sufferers of the condition are still attempting to lose their virginity.</p>
<p>This condition also leads to halucinations, many taking the form of a "pantheon" where musician and athletes apparently reside. This "pantheon" has yet to be located in reality, although some believe it to be inside "XXX Arcade" in Southern California. </p>
<p>As more information comes in on this troubling condition we will keep you updated.</p>
<p>It has been supposedly explained that if an applicant applies to multiple extremely selective schools, then he will be accepted at some and reject at others because different extremely selective schools are looking for different kinds of extremely strong applicants. However, what does somebody put on their app that makes them the kind of person that Harvard wants and not the kind of person that Yale wants? Is it how you fill in the blanks? Is it something the teachers/GC write in the recs? Is it your EC's or something that you write in the essay that will make a Harvard adcom say that this person is for us, but makes a Yale adcom say that this is more of a Harvard person?????????????????????????</p>
<p>If there is luck in getting in one, then it is just probability as to whether you get in all or none.</p>
<p>I think it's fairly obvious how the admissions process to highly selective universities works. They receive a pool of applicants, they shave off those out of their league, with low scores, sloppy essays, etc etc and end up with a pool of highly qualified applicants that while much smaller than their original pool is still larger than their admitted pool. Getting into this secondary pool is a reflection of your skills, talents and work. Getting out is the crapshoot. These highly selective schools simply aren't big enough to house all the qualified students that apply, and based on some lesser criteria, some students must be rejected. For every school like the OP's where "everyone gets into two or more ivies", there's a public high school like mine that sent five kids to Harvard, and no one (including those five) got into any other ivy. So what are you going to tell me about those five kids? Harvard made a mistake by admitting them? Brown made a mistake by rejecting them? Or maybe, just maybe, it was the roll of the dice.</p>
<p>let me put forth my own pontification</p>
<p>those who are accepted to HYPS are demigods who should be worshipped, others are destined to work at Mcdonalds</p>
<p>LOL!!!</p>
<p>if the OP doesnt realize that it is the individual person's efforts and qualities that lead to success in life, then no amount of stanford will push him out of the cave</p>
<p>Meh . . . i agree with many criticisms of the original post.</p>
<p>I don't think there's as much luck involved as many students (who, I'm very sorry to say, were ultimately rejected) say. Sure, there has to be some because there's such a human facotr involved. Did your application specifically appeal to the person who picked it up to read it first or not? and other things like that. BUT, colleges, especially selective ones, treat their admissions process with respect, and go through a lot to train the officers to look for exactly what the institution wants. Many, many qualified students are rejected, and someone with on face level similar stats may be accepted simply because of a few lines they wrote that really stood out to the person reading the application. Is this luck? Partially... but the applicants who were rejected had the asme opportunity to write something just as appealing.</p>
<p>Just reading on this site shows you how many kids who don't stand a chance apply to the ivies. Once they've cleared away the 60% who didn't stand a chance (those wondering if their average ECs will make up for a 1440) they are still left with enough qualified candidates to fill many classes. That's when luck and what they want this year takes over.</p>