<p>There are many different ways the term is used on CC. Most often it is not used in the way you just indicated, but to refer to lack of understanding of the <em>how</em> and/or <em>why</em>of eventual results. There are plenty of situations and phenomena in life that are mysterious or unstable, but it does not necessarily make those other situations “random” either. It makes them not easy to explain, not readily evident, etc.</p>
<p>I have no quarrel with your limited definition, but again that is a more circumscribed definition than would be indicated by its casually abundant appearance on the forums.</p>
<p>True. I don’t have the time or the inclination to do the math, and I’m not even sure the underlying data are publicly available, but I suspect the vast majority of Ivy applicants do strike out multiple times and never get into an Ivy. If that’s right, and given the large number of high quality non-Ivy alternatives out there, I’m a bit baffled as to why we see such a profound Ivy obsession on CC and in the larger applicant pool. Who gives a bloody rip whether your college plays in a particular athletic conference, as long as you’re getting a first-rate education? My D who has stats that are well within the plausible range for every Ivy has decided not to apply to any of them. Why? Well, because there are easily half a dozen colleges that she likes better than any Ivy, and where her admissions chances are considerably stronger. As the parent, I have to say I was initially astonished by this decision. But I’ve come to appreciate the wisdom it reflects. Go for the best college you can realistically hope to attain that best suits you— not for the Ivy League nameplate. Pursuit of Ivies for the sake of their Ivyness is a fool’s errand.</p>
<p>bclintonk, you’ve pretty much described my own attitude toward Ivy admissions. I had expected my S to show some interest in them but his approach resembled your D’s. I was really turned off after I started reading CC last year and seeing the evident crap-shoot quality of the outcomes. I’m sure the process behind the curtain is systematic. Regardless, it is turning thousands of American teenagers into dancing bears trying to outdo each other in displays of “passion” when nearly-perfect grades and scores simply won’t do.</p>
<p>New financial aid policies change the picture somewhat. If you are in that upper middle income zone of despair, it may be worth throwing one’s hat in the HYPS ring. Though it would make me feel a little cheap (never having bought a lottery ticket before.)</p>
<p>If you want to be in the Northeast and you have a preference for research universities and not LACs, and you want a strong liberal arts education then your search is going to turn up some ivies (among other colleges). </p>
<p>Sure, there are people who apply to ivies simply for prestige but it is unfair to characterize all those who apply to, or attend, these schools as people who are just pursuing prestige. Everyone who drives a Lexus isn’t driving it for prestige. It is also one of the cars rated highest by Consumer Reports and (though I’ve never owned one) people who own Lexuses seem to be very happy with them.</p>
<p>Coming back to the story of the applicant in the OP (over a year old now), it seems like he applied to some ivies but also to several other schools and was accepted at some really good ones. His admissions outcomes do not strike me as particularly unusual for what we see on C.C and I’m amused that they were considered newsworthy.</p>
<p>If you don’t put Communication, Red McCombs School of Business, Fine Arts or Engineering in the first spot, you almost definitely won’t be admitted and you absolutely won’t be considered for the college scholarships.</p>
<p>An awful lot of 2390 scorers with perfect SAT2s at a top HS in NJ would be embarrassed to reveal that they attend UVa. Is it right? No, it is not; UVa certainly will provide ample opportunities for the brightest students it has. But at the same time, it is obvious that 2-iron received poor luck. Several factors indicate this: 1) He received a likely letter from UVa, indicating that he was among the top of applicants, and 2) He received positions on extended waitlists and a priority transfer from Northwestern and Georgetown. If these universities truly didn’t want 2-iron, would they have offered him those opportunities?</p>
<p>Anyways, my real point is that this Ghosh fellow, aside from being rejected by UT, didn’t really have poor admissions luck (whereas 2-iron did). In fact, I would simply call his results typical; a 2400 candidate with 3 top schools as options. There’s nothing really to dissect, other than the obvious reality that having a perfect SAT score alone does not get an applicant into HYPSM, where admissions for all of the unhooked are crapshoots. There might not be anything necessarily wrong with his application, only that he didn’t have anything to distinguish himself beyond other applicants. It is when an applicant like Ghosh or 2-iron gets denied by schools standards lower than those of HYPSM (schools like Cornell, NW, Georgetown) where bad luck can actually be taken into account.</p>
<p>S1 applied to four top ten schools with stellar math programs – UChicago, MIT, Cornell and Harvard. Was rejected by both Ivies RD. Failure? Not a chance. He had a 50% acceptance rate at this level, and the two acceptances were EA, one with merit $$. His EA acceptances were his #1 and #3 choices going in – and his apps clearly reflected where he’d be a great fit. No sour grapes here!</p>
<p>His waitlist and rejections were the schools where he had the most concern about fit. We were not very surprised at those results.</p>
<p>A waitlist offer is a statement that you are equal to many of those accepted, but there were more compelling reasons overall to admit the others. (Thus, the reason for the W/L: if the more compelling admits do not enroll, the U still has you in the pool from which to select.)</p>
<p>I was told that a significant percentage of those who are waitlisted are to keep the yield from dropping. ie., if the student has the qualifications, but the school doesn’t feel there’s a pressing reason s/he would accept if offered, the school may waitlist and then offer to keep the yield from being affected.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that, too, Dad<em>of</em>3, but not from anyone with direct admissions-office experience. It stands to reason, though, for a school that wished to manipulate the numbers. This strikes me as the most compelling reason to admit applicants with “demonstrated interest”.</p>
<p>Dad<em>of</em>3,
Yes, that’s an additional category of the W/L’ed, but clearly that group is also “wanted,” just not quite gambled on.</p>
<p>It is typically used, for example, by some LAC’s against Ivy-qualified students whom the college suspects of using the LAC as a safety when there has been insufficient demonstrated interest. (i.e., over-qualified + under-committed = less likelihood of enrolling)</p>
<p>If that category of waitlisting exists some places, it’s not at the Ivies, which (a) don’t worry about their yield, because it’s higher than everyone else’s already, and (b) often don’t admit anyone (or hardly anyone) from their waitlists anyway.</p>
<p>I thought that was what you meant, epiphany. But I see so many posts of the genre of “Harvard is just doing this to improve its yield”, that I like to make it explicit.</p>
<p>An interesting special case: In my daughter’s year, at least among people she knew, Barnard waitlisted every girl who had also applied to Columbia, while accepting every girl with a similar profile who hadn’t applied to Columbia. This was followed up with some communications to the effect of “if we made a mistake and you really want to come here, be sure to let us know.” But, of course, they hadn’t made a mistake.</p>
<p>Nope. I think the template situation I described was the Ivy-<em>qualified</em> or clearly Ivy-<em>level</em> student being waitlisted by an LAC. (Not the other way around.)</p>
<p>Isn’t it stretching a bit to put all of the Ivies in the same boat as Harvard? None of the Ivies have a yield problem, but they’re not all at Harvard’s level either. I suspect that there’s some professional competitiveness among the adcoms at different Ivies and that they do indeed pay attention to yield data and how it compares among the IL institutions. </p>
<p>The Barnard-Columbia story is a case in point, no? And there’s a long anecdote told in the book Harvard Schmarvard about a Penn applicant who was told directly by the admissions officer that though she was a highly qualified applicant, she was waitlisted because she had not applied ED and they were doubtful of her commitment to attend Penn. </p>
<p>I don’t think the adcoms at Ivies are immune from concern about yield.</p>
<p>I would agree with jazzymom about the yield for HYP being different for the rest of the Ivies. Yes, more accepted criticism of my too-broad comment. UPenn in particular is anxious about yield.</p>
<p>I don’t know. The area/schools with which I am familiar is such that lots of students apply to Penn, sometimes as a quasi-safety school. I have never heard gossip about Penn rejecting the strongest students because they were probably going to HYP anyway; to the contrary, students actually accepted at any of HYP, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth have a 100% acceptance rate at Penn (in my little corner of the world). Almost all of the Penn “horror stories” I hear concern somewhat weaker candidates (although still very strong) who were quintuple-legacy and applied ED. I know of only one case where a top student who was expected to get into Penn didn’t (waitlisted RD), and he admitted later that he had deliberately undermined his Penn application because he was afraid his parents would make him go there if he didn’t get into H or Y, rather than to a less-prestigious, farther-away college he liked more. (This was at a feeder school where someone with this student’s class rank and test scores had not been waitlisted or rejected at Penn in the memory of any faculty or administrator.)</p>
I think the template situation I described was the Ivy-<em>qualified</em> or clearly Ivy-<em>level</em> student being waitlisted by an LAC. (Not the other way around.)</p>