Prior to this past year, admission to TJ was also primarily based on stats. The change it made at the end of last year effectively imposes quotas on individual schools. Even with the change, which is highly controversial, I still wouldn’t call TJ’s system “holistic”.
Prior to COVID, getting past the first cut and becoming a semi-finalist was primarily based on stats. Roughly half of applicants made it from applicant to semi-finalist, so I wouldn’t say that this semi-finalist cutoff is the primary factor in the decision. And getting from semi-finalist to admission was a holistic process that considered personal qualities, LORs, essays, and other factors. You may assume that the admission panel decisions of which semi-finalists would be offered admission was primarily based on having the pinnacle of highest stats and not the likely more varying metrics in the evaluated holistic criteria, but I expect the assumption is not based on actual admission data.
Regardless of whether you’d calls their admission system “holistic”, TJ calls their admission system “holistic” on their website (" The admissions process for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) utilizes a holistic review") , as do external evaluators of their admission system (“decisions about which students to admit were based on a holistic evaluation…”) . I think calling it “holistic” is an accurate description as well.
“Holistic” admissions apparently mean different things to many public institutions. If their admission process isn’t completely formulaic, they’d claim it’s “holistic”. They simply don’t have the resources to perform “holistic” reviews on the large number of applications they receive. They may incorporate a few “holistic” elements in the final reviews of a small number of applications. Rutgers, for example, calls its admissions “holistic”:
https://admissions.rutgers.edu/applying/admissions-profile#:~:text=Rutgers%20conducts%20a%20holistic%20review,4.5%20(“A%2B”).
TJ’s current post-COVID admission system is test blind – scores are not considered. Even if TJ wanted to have a formulaic admission based on stats, it would not be practical to do so, as they need some way to distinguish between the many 4.0 core GPA applicants. In any case, it sounds like you are assuming without evidence that the admission system is primarily based on having the pinnacle of highest stats and that the admissions panel doesn’t really use the many evaluated more holistic criteria in their evaluation such as essays, personal qualities, LORs (prior years), and SES/diversity… in spite of being required to place a notable weight on holistic non-stat criteria in the school board’s policy guidelines and having political/government pressure to use an admission system that increases diversity rather than closely follows stats. Many people make the same assumption for HYPSM… type college admission.
Prior to COVID, TJ used to receive between 2 and 3 thousand applicants. Suppose half got to the semi-finals, so you have a little over 1000 semi-finalists… a small fraction of the >70k kids that applied to Rutgers in your example. Would it really be an impossible resource usage for the admissions readers + panel to take the time to actually seriously consider their holistic admission criteria in their evaluation of those ~1000 students?
Highly selective privates have a lot of “top of their game” athletes and exam schools don’t. There are only so many math genius that top colleges want, they need other types of kids too.
You can see in the TJ numbers that the yield at MIT and Stanford is substantially higher than at the other schools listed, that is not the case at other high schools (Yale and Harvard general yields are well over 80%). The kids at TJ are more STEM focused.
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The elite prep schools also have well-connected dedicated college counselors who can steer students to applying to “reach” colleges that are mostly likely to see them as fits. I.e. instead of all of the top achievers applying to HYPSM with most getting rejected and going to a “likely” or “safety” college, the elite prep school counselors will mention to each student which other “reach” college(s) may see that student as a better fit and more likely / realistic admit (some of which the student probably would not heard of at the local public school where each counselor handles 400 students and does stuff other than college application related stuff), hence resulting in more “reach” college admissions among the top achievers.
But note that there is often a private college bias at the elite prep schools. For example, between UCLA and USC among high schools in California, an elite prep school is more likely to have a USC bias, versus a UCLA bias at a public school.
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Indeed, many smaller private colleges “need” many more athletes (and potential walk-on athletes) than they “need” elite-level math majors (and many smaller private colleges’ math departments may not have enough advanced-enough courses for elite-level math majors).
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NBC News story on the Amherst change. Amherst College Ends Legacy Admissions - YouTube
And there are public schools that send a good number of students to the elite schools and whether the student can attend that high school is based entirely on the address. If you live in this zone, you get to attend the top public high school in that district.
The top private and public schools have good counselors who know how to prepare the applications. The catholic high schools have connections to the admissions counselors at Notre Dame, Holy Cross, BC and Georgetown. It’s just a thumb on the scale, but if the application looks a certain way, that kid gets a little boost.
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Is it a bias or a cost issue? A student in a public HS in CA is more likely to choose UCLA for its much lower cost (at least for most families). An elite prep school student is more likely to get into USC and the extra cost is usually less of an issue.
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Yes, most highly selective public magnet schools (including TJ) are STEM-focused. They generally don’t send as many of their students (percentage-wise) to the elite schools that are less STEM focused as their elite prep school counterparts.
I agree with you about kids at Thomas Jefferson HS for Science & Technology being more likely to be interested and accepted to techy colleges than at most other selective HSs. However, I don’t think it’s that unusual for Stanford/MIT to have a higher yield than Harvard/Yale over a small sample size at particular HSs. The overall average yields across all admits for 2019-20 (before COVID) are below. HSM are all have similar yields, and Yale lags a bit behind. With the typical small sample size of admits at particular HSs, if one Harvard admit chooses not to attend, it could be enough to knock Harvard yield below Stanford/MIT yield at that high school .
2019-20 Average Yield (across all admits and high schools)
Harvard / Stanford --82%
MIT – 77%
Penn / Princeton – 70%
Yale – 69%
Yield is also well correlated with use of the early round. For example, if Harvard only admits hooked REA kids at a particular HS, then yield is probably going to be near 100% at that HS. However, if Harvard admits a lot of RD kids at a different HS, then yield may be notably lower.
Rather than yield, I think the most striking difference from other highly selective HSs was to which colleges the TJ students applied. For example, a comparison with the selective, private HS Harvard-Westlake is below. One clear difference the techy colleges CMU and MIT. At TJ, CMU was the 2nd most applied to private college and MIT was 7th. In contrast At HW, few applied to both CMU and TJ… a fraction of the applications to other east coast highly selective private colleges, such as most Ivies. Cornell and Stanford follow a similar pattern. Stanford appears to be a much more popular college among TJ kids than HW kids in spite of HW kids being in-state and TJ being on the opposite coast. The TJ applications have more of a bias towards schools with excellent tech programs, after controlling for location.
Another difference is the HW kids seem more likely to target not quite as selective colleges that have a high historical acceptance rate, such as WUSTL, NYU, and Tulane. All 3 of these popular colleges among HW kids received a negligible number of applications from TJ kids. This is pattern of applying to not quite as selective colleges seems particularly common among unhooked HW kids that do not rank near the top of their class of outstanding students. Rather than use their ED/REA/SCEA on an unlikely long shot HYPSM… type college, many of the unhooked HW kids instead apply (probably via binding ED) to a less selective college where they will likely have a better chance of admission. This likely relates to a difference in GC advising between TJ and HW.
Most Applied to Private Colleges among Unhooked Kids at HW (2017-19)
1 . WUSTL
2. USC
3. NYU
4. Penn
5. Brown
6. Cornell
7. Northwestern
8. Tulane
…
~40. CMU / MIT
Most Applied to Private Colleges among Hooked Kids at HW (2017-19)
1 . USC (1st by large margin, lots of USC hooked kids at nearby HW, including legacies)
2. NYU (tie)
2. Penn (tie)
4. Harvard
5. Stanford (tie)
5. WUSTL (tie)
7. Brown
8. Cornell (tie)
8. Yale (tie)
…
Low. CMU / MIT
Most Applied to Private Colleges among TJ Kids (2017-19)
1 . Cornell – 37% applied
2. CMU – 32% applied
3. Stanford – 28% applied
4. Penn – 28% applied
5. Princeton – 25% applied
6. Duke – 23% applied
7. MIT – 22% applied
8. Harvard – 21% applied
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The volume of goodwill and positive press that Amherst is receiving for a decision that will lead to perhaps a net annual “gain” of 25 non-legacy kids, 15 or so of whom will be non-full pay, is remarkable.
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Agreed. The legacy rejection rate at elite schools is 75-85% -and for admits who have legacy, it usually involves a smallish admission boost to an applicant whose family has been supportive of the school - whether through donations, volunteerism, alumni efforts, demonstrated interest, or other. It’s also a yield enhancer, much like Early Decision.
Legacy at a Brown or Cornell just isn’t going to be an admission boost if the school hasn’t interacted with the parent(s) over the years.
When looking at legacy rejection rates, it helps to compare to non-legacies rather than view the number in isolation. For example, the document at https://pr.princeton.edu/pub/profile/PU-Profile-201819.pdf mentions the following admit rates for Princeton’s class of 2022.
Princeton Class of 2022
Legacy Admit Rate = 217/684 = 32%
Non-Legacy Admit Rate = (1941 - 217) / (35,370 - 684) = 5%
A 32% admit rate for legacies may sound low in isolation, but it sounds much more significant when compared to the 5% admit rate for non-legacies. If you compare legacies to unhooked, the admit rate would no doubt drop further. For example, it might be 32% admit rate for legacies vs 3-4% for unhooked. While there are no doubt correlated variables influencing the higher legacy admit rate such as legacies tending to be stronger applicants or being more likely to apply REA, the difference in admit rate is too large to assume that legacy only gives a “smallish” admission boost in specific limited circumstances at Princeton, as well as at many other colleges. For example, the Harvard lawsuit legacy vs non-legacy admit rates were extremely similar to Princeton’s above, and the boost for legacy remained quite significant after controlling for strength of applicant, REA, hooks, and other factors.
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Some of those Princeton legacies are also athletes, so they are getting counted in more than one category.
Some of those Princeton legacies are also athletes, so they are getting counted in more than one category.
If Princeton is anything like Harvard, legacies aren’t as likely to be recruited athletes as one might think. One can estimate the rate of legacies being recruited samples by comparing the Plantiff’s first analysis, which included athletes to the 2nd analysis that did not include athletes. As summarized below, this comparison suggests <2% of legacies were recruited athletes. That’s higher than the athlete rate for non-legacies, but with a <1% difference between the athlete rate for legacies and non-legacies, it doesn’t have a huge effect on the overall conclusion.
With athletes, legacies make up 2.95% * 150,701 = 4446
Without athletes, legacies make up 2.94% * 148,769 = 4374
Percent of legacy applicants who are athletes = (4446 - 4374) / 4446 = 1.6%
Percent of non-legacy applicants who are athletes = 0.9%
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If you consider the pre-selection bias the often cited large boost for athletes and legacy in Harvard admission data probably would probably vanish. I know for a fact that in my DC year over 300 girls applied to be RA in golf at Harvard and only three were offered a spot. In another word, the RA applicants would have received pre-read offer before they apply. The same can be said about legacy applicants whose parents have volunteered or donated for years and known regional AOs well if they believed early on their kids would have a shot at their alma mater. Legacies generally would have a very good sense of their chance of success before they apply. In both cases, the ones with little chance of admission would have gotten the signal early, probably not bothered with an application to begin with.
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That’s a fair point for athletes receiving pre-reads, but I’ve never heard of legacies receiving pre-screens by the college in the same way that athletes do. It’s certainly possible that legacy parents would be more knowledgeable about actual admission chances and discourage kids who are less likely to be admitted from applying. However, the opposite can also be true. For example, I interview kids for a different HYPSM school. It’s not uncommon for me to interview a kid who says the main reason he/she applied (one of my usual questions) is he promised a relative who attended the college that he’d apply, even though he doesn’t appear to be that interested in the school or a good fit. I don’t see the full application, but from what I do learn about such applicants, they often do not seem to be well qualified. I get the impression that some know they are not well qualified, but the relative who attended does not realize how much admission has changed since they attended. All persons I’ve interviewed who met the description above were rejected.
In any case, all 3 of the Harvard lawsuit analyses (Plantiff’s expert, Harvard’s expert, and Harvard OIR) used models that controlled for the strength of the applicant, which includes but is not limited to reader ratings of applicant. For example, they compared legacy applicants who received a 2 academic, 2 EC, 3 personal, and 2- overall to non-legacy applicants with the same ratings, With these controls, controls for other hooks including athlete, and controls for other factors; all 3 analyses concluded that the legacy boost remained quite strong. I listed specific numbers and more detail in an earlier post on this thread.
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My point is that it is helpful to understand the different types of “legacies” as it pertains to admissions odds.
There are legacies that are “friends” of the college - very involved monetarily, or through volunteer, alumni, or other activities.
Then there are the legacies that simply graduated years ago and are not that involved in the community - it is these legacies whose children receive very little admissions boost. But there is a perception that even these “inactive” legacies provide exponential increases in admissions odds to their children - they don’t.
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