"Admissions: Worse Than Ever"

<p>I tend to agree with Cheers' point of view on this. The vast majority of students are not part of this frenzy, so it doesn't apply to them. At my kids' HS, most students apply to and go to one of two nearby state U's; of the more competitve students, quite a few choose rutgers or TCNJ and seem happy with those. Of the very top students, most seemed to get into their first or second choice schools (as far as I know, there were no HYPSM apps). Four from my S's class are attending IVies, and as far as I know, only one student got an Ivy rejection (from Columbia, but he was accepted to Cornell and Penn, so hardly a case for mourning). Two not attending Ivies turned one down for a top LAC. Overall, the tiny subset of students aiming for uberselective schools are attending one.</p>

<p>IN my S's case, had he not been fortunate enough to get accepted by his ED school, he would have attended UMIch, and though by the thinking of that article, he would have been one of the "losers", in his mind and ours, he would definitely still belong squarely in the "happy with the outcome" column.</p>

<p>I think that this mindset can only hurt you if you buy into it.</p>

<p>I too think that most students are successful in the admissions process. Nearly every one of my son's friends are going to their first choice school; the few going to their second choice are very happy with the result.</p>

<p>I think part of this reflects having realistic expectations. I am occasionally amazed by some of the posts on CC by students applying to nearly all reach schools. That's a recipe for disappointment.</p>

<p>Of course there are some exceptions- Andi's son for one.</p>

<p>I also agree that most students are happy with their college choice. I think that CC places us a bit in a vacuum because most of the student and a lot of the parents that post are those who are looking most likely to attend the brass ring schools and applying to a ton of reaches in the hopes of getting into at least one.</p>

<p>The truth is (and it has been stated a few times in this thread) a majority of students attend their state universities each year as their first choice. In addition those that take a more practical approach to the college application process: they have a balance of schools that are reaches, matches and likely to admit and the school that is ranked lowest on their list they would still be happy to attend are probably most success and happy with their choices.</p>

<p>Dougled: a lot of wise advice on this thread. I've read your link, there's a vast literature of college scare stories which feed on anxieties over the unknown. Just don't buy in to it. Kids who get rejected by Harvard and Duke and accepted by Nothwestern and Middlebury don't feel victimized by the system for long. Cheers is absolutely correct, the great majority end up loving their choices, and making the most of them. I found the process, considering how daunting and chaotic it looked in prospect, amazingly fair and consistent, and I say this despite having to suck it up after a few rejections.</p>

<p>Most of the kids we know are philosphical.... a kid who really wants to be in New York may throw in a super reach application to Columbia, but know in his heart of hearts that if he doesn't get into NYU (his statistical "match") he'll be happy at Fordham or Brooklyn College. Does he indulge in the Columbia fantasy? Maybe. Is he crushed when he ends up wearing the Fordham t-shirt? Not the kids we know.</p>

<p>The few who seem crushed are those who have a top heavy list which is all over the board, and a perfunctory safety where they don't want to be. You gotta feel for the kid planning to study Engineering who ends up at the local branch of the state college system which doesn't have an engineering school, because nobody worked on a list which included Rutgers, BU, Rochester, Case, U. Missouri, U. Georgia, etc. in case MIT or Cornell didn't pan out.</p>

<p>xiggi; these case summaries are fascinating...how is it that your were in the position to "borrow" them? Taking them at face value, they emphazie the great importance of recommendations, essays, and interviews in distinguishing between students applying to schools where the vast majority have the academic credentials to attend.</p>

<p>I was a little surprised by how much the interview seemed to count in Xiggi's examples - anyone else?</p>

<p>I also think when evaluating students' reactions to college decisions, timing is a big factor. Immediately after being faced with a rejection from a sought after school, it is only natural to feel/express disappointment. But from what I've observed, most kids rebound pretty fast, re-evaluate their options, and see the opportunities afforded by schools that want them. Pretty soon, most get excited by the prospects before them, and come to feel that they are ending up going to the place that is right for them after all.</p>

<p>"xiggi; these case summaries are fascinating...how is it that your were in the position to "borrow" them?"</p>

<p>Oh, it helps to have "inside" connections at the pinnacle of US higher education. ! :)</p>

<p>On a serious note, I forget to add the sources in my earlier post. The information was "borrowed" from a couple of the ASC newsletters. Check them out at: </p>

<p><a href="http://www.yale.edu/asc/newsletter/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yale.edu/asc/newsletter/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>PS If you like "cases", you may check Chuck Hughes's admission book. It does give a few real examples of Harvard candidates.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I was a little surprised by how much the interview seemed to count in Xiggi's examples - anyone else?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>These case studies are posted for instructional use by alumni interviewers. I would suspect that it would be in the interest of the school to make the interviews sound important.</p>

<p>xiggi, fascinating case studies. Based on what I've seen on these boards about similar decisions at other schools, Yale's criteria for acceptance or denial seem to mirror such schools this year (each of course has differing levels of standards but the same, IMHO, judgment criteria) as Stanford (ironic then that Rick Shaw is going there?), Duke, Georgetown, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, Colgate, Pomona, Middlebury and Dartmouth. In almost all of these cases, it seems as though academic rigor and contributions to the campus were key.</p>

<p>The case studies mirror what some of our alumni interviewers have said - kids don't get in solely off a great interview, but a mediocre one can certainly put a spanner in the works.</p>

<p>I have been known to question the relative importance of interviewers, especially when self-appointed. The numbers presented by the ASC of Yale are pretty convincing. Get a rating of 3 - like 577 interviewees got- and your admission chances stumble to 2.2%. Only 1 out of 104 survived a rating of 2 and 1 out of 43 a rating of 1. Not a good idea to irritate the Yale interviewer. :) </p>

<p>FWIW, it also seems that the ASC at Yale seems to be heavily supported by the adcoms and not to be a loose outfit.</p>

<p>This table is in the Spring 2004 version: <a href="http://www.yale.edu/asc/newsletter/spring_2004.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yale.edu/asc/newsletter/spring_2004.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>ASC interview ratings
Rating - Applicants - Admitted - Percentage admitted
9 313 83 26.5%
8 1303 259 20.0%
7 2562 405 15.8%
6 2887 307 10.6%
5 3390 248 7.3%
4 1538 45 2.9%
3 577 13 2.2%
2 104 1 1.0%
1 43 1 2.3%</p>

<p>However, the 5 cases also show a range of cases: A student rated 4 was accepted, a student with 9 was rejected. Two out of five seem to have gone against the "recommendation" of the interviewer. What I found more interesting was to see the qualifications of rejected students.</p>

<p>I am a student in high school and just starting to prepare for the college admissions process. I feel as if I am a very competative person always hoping to apply for new things and compete for good grades, but whenever I think about the whole college admissions process, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. Even though I like to compete, the college admission process is, I think, just too competative!!! I makes kids feel depressed, not happy. Although there may be many smiles by the time April roles around, the long months getting to that result are painful.</p>

<p>Zagat: I think your view is clouded by the fact that you are on CC. 99% of the kids on CC are extremely ambitious. They are the kids that are disappointed because they have to "end up" at Georgetown rather than HYP...If you look at the the entire applicant pool (~ 4 million students) there is an average sat of something like 1050 (old SAT)...not 1450+ like on CC. Out of the 4 million about 177,000 apply to Ivy+Stanford+MIT. Out of these only 26,000 are admitted yearly. And lets say that those 150,000 that weren't admitted were extremely sad and hurt (although many ended up at schools like Duke, Georgetown, etc. thus they were probably not sad, but i won't account for that here just to make a point) that means that only 96.25% of the applicant pool was happy. However, let's also factor in those average and below average kids that were not happy because they over estimated, etc. I'd guess that overall 95%+ of all applicants to college each year are happy, and that's probably wrong I'd say more like 98% each year are happy.</p>

<p>"Out of the 4 million about 177,000 apply to Ivy+Stanford+MIT. Out of these only 26,000 are admitted yearly. And lets say that those 150,000 that weren't admitted were extremely sad and hurt (although many ended up at schools like Duke, Georgetown, etc. thus they were probably not sad, but i won't account for that here just to make a point) that means that only 96.25% of the applicant pool was happy."</p>

<p>The numbers might be slightly different. One of the results of the increased selectivity is that multiple applications are also rising. For instance, Cornell increased numbers can be traced directly to their use of the Common Application. More and more students are "loading" up on applications to Ivies, often without rhyme or reason. A great number of students rejected by one Ivy might very well attend another Ivy.</p>

<p>Yeah I meant to put in that also the majority of the rejects were probably rejected by multiple schools because many apply to 2+ of these schools. So in reality it would be less. Thanks for catching that.</p>

<p>my point still holds though...at least 95%+ are going to be happy, and most likely it will be close to 98%</p>

<p>
[quote]
In their sweaty little 17 year old hands, they have a letter that states that, come September, they are entitled to move away from those crazy people with poor boundary awareness (parents) to a Disney halfway house for the young and the restless where they can finally become the person of their dreams, teetotaller or Wild Man, as the case may be.

[/quote]

God you just made me care less about getting into my top choice!! Thank you!! God I cannot wait for that day.</p>

<p>Just as a note on the demographic trends, the current prediction is that the size of the high school graduating class is going to keep rising until high school class of 2010 or so, as a result of the "Echo Baby Boom." So from the point of view of United States applicants whose preferences stay fairly constant from year to year, it's about five years before things get REALLY dicey in college admissions. </p>

<p>But two other trends may swamp the domestic demographic trend: </p>

<p>1) Preferences may change, the "flight to quality" that has kids in the Midwest applying to HYP rather than applying to Northwestern, Carleton, U of Chicago, or a Big Ten state university may continue, so that competion at the most intensely competitive colleges keeps right on getting more and more intense. That top-level competition, of course, would trickle down into the second tier of colleges, perhaps making them more competitive too, while third-tier colleges offer ever better "merit scholarships" in a desperate attempt to keep literate and numerate students on their campuses. </p>

<p>2) As incomes rise in countries around the world, international student applications could keep increasing for a long, long time. Visa regulations implicate foreign student flows, as do other issues of international politics, but there is still a LOT of pent-up demand for United States higher education (that is, education in a free country with a free press and free-enterprise economy) that currently can't be expressed because international students are too poor to consider applying. As more countries prosper, the paradoxical thing that happens at first is that more smart people than ever LEAVE, and the brain drain gets worse before it gets better, from the point of view of a developing country. International students with sufficient qualifications to compete at the top level of United States college admission are amazingly numerous, and they could keep up application numbers even after the number of United States high school seniors begins to fall off. </p>

<p>Bottom line: the current "worse than ever" situation may not be the worst possible. It could still become a lot more bad under reasonable assumptions about unknowable future trends.</p>

<p>Bern, I think you're right. Between CC and the "feeder" private school my kids attend, I see much more dissapointment than not. Yes, a few months (or years) later, that dissapointment has melted away mostly. </p>

<p>The poster that pointed out that most kids just attend their local public college hit the nail on it's head. It really is a self selecting group that goes through the agony of the HYP chase, and in that chase, most end up dissapointed.</p>