<p>As many of you know my son was waitlisted at Stanford. He just found out today that a girl from HIS school got accepted at Stanford. The girl has lower scores (by more than 100), lower rank (by 1), lower GPA, very little to no ECs, lower AP scores, no regional or state level awards, very little leadership positions.....</p>
<p>Differences???: He was going for engineering. The girl for natural sciences. The girl (also asian) may be first generation to go to college and would certainly get maximum need based aid.</p>
<p>engineering competition is extreme (Stanford is ranked #2 behind MIT), AND the first to go to college, which has been a big tip/hook lately for publics as well as well-endowed privates. (They've been reading mini's posts!) :)</p>
<p>I'm surprised a regular poster posed this question. Reading all of the college acceptance threads shows that there is absolutely no logic whatsoever. Just loving her essay could have made the difference. And women in science is a boost. First generation one great teacher's rec, playing the harmonica in the bath and on and on.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, dadofsam is correct. I really believe college admissions -- especially to the most competitive schools like Stanford and the Ivies -- is basically a crapshoot. </p>
<p>Nowadays, all colleges claim to want "diversity" in their student populations, but diversity can have a different meaning every day -- depending upon who applied that particular year and who the college has already accepted. The adcom may have "needed" more female science majors to balance gender in that college, or they may have already accepted too many white males for engineering (assuming your son is one) before they got to his application. Or maybe this particular girl has some unusual "hook" that you are unaware of and it caught the adcom's' eye (volunteer activities outside school, an unusual family history, or something as weird as a knockout essay about collecting kazoos). Who knows???</p>
<p>Simba, depending on the socioeconomic differences between your son and this girl, the Adcoms may consider her SAT's much higher than your kids. If she grew up in home where English wasn't spoken and yet had a verbal score close to your son's, that would be a significant factor to them.</p>
<p>I don't think it is a crapshoot at all. There are just factors that you don't know about - and they may have nothing to do with the two candidates per se, and more to do with the institution's own needs and priorities, and places they need filling.</p>
<p>Just because we are not privy to all the information in no way makes it a crapshoot. The admissions are highly professional people, with decades of experience, lots of training, institutional mandates from the Pres. and trustees, and competing interests on the campus itself.</p>
<p>Complex systems are often the LEAST chaotic and lottery-like because they can't be organized toward their ends to which they are directed without the most efficient and least "crapshoot-like" precision and execution.</p>
<p>Sympathy and empathy from here...as the mother of a S rejected SCEA by Stanford, I've been grappling with the "why's" and the "I don't understand's" since December, when it happened...it's easy to say "it's a crapshoot" until it's your kid, w/your kid's "package" that gets the rejection/WL...(4 out of 4 RD acceptances do help...S is happy--on top of the world--don't want to leave the misimpression that he hasn't moved on...he has; anyone who has read my previous posts knows I know he's FAR more mature than I am!)</p>
<p>One thing that helped a lot: read the Harvard admit thread...there's NO ryhme or reason to the yes's as compared to the no's--except that it's obvious that above a certain level, academics play no part...acceptances at MUCH lower GPAs and SATs than many of the rejections...the posts on that thread show the kid's summary of ECs, essays, rec's and "hooks"...but of course no knows (or ever will know) what the Adcoms saw/valued...but one thing this thread made clear to me: good grades (or at least grades better than a basic level of good), test scores, rank, etc. don't mean squat.</p>
<p>AND...I think it's clear (tentatively clear, anyway) that it's a huge DISadvantage to be the child of a parent who went to college/succeeded (financially,anyway) in life. It surely isn't my S's fault that he's the son of two lawyers. And the grandson of two PhDs. But his stellar grades, SAT, SAT IIs, ECs, rec's, essays (which may well be subjective and so shouldn't get the "stellar" adjective w/out an asterisk--I and his GC thought they were stellar, but it's only the Adcom's opinion that counts) counted for naught...</p>
<p>So maybe we shouldn't be encouraging our kids to go on to college...all it will do is disadvantage our grandkids? (I don't mean that...but it sure does look like there's a pretty big bias against high-achieving kids of parents who were high-achieving)...</p>
<p>Am I crazy, or still bitter? Or does it look that way to others, too?</p>
<p>"AND...I think it's clear (tentatively clear, anyway) that it's a huge DISadvantage to be the child of a parent who went to college/succeeded (financially,anyway) in life."</p>
<p>Harvard's own numbers STRONGLY suggest otherwise (and their Pres. has been pretty open about talking about them.) (Of course, there is the non-representative sample thing: people who post on CC. ;))</p>
<p>Ummmmmm. there are more schools in the world than Harvard....I am getting kind of disappointed in the board that all anyone cares to discuss is the Ivys. Sigh, must go elsewhere to learn about the rest of the thousands of colleges out there. The top schools have no rhyme or reason and we all know it. I find it amazing that somehow millions of people do well i life by not going to the top schools....</p>
<p>At the extreme right tail schools, HYPSM, if you force admissions to be roughly equal between male female, you will force a difference between the male 75/25th percentile scores and the female scores. THis is easily observable by looking at the SAT tables that break down the results by gender, an noting that males account for 2/3 of the highest scorers, and females about 1/3 (or maybe its about 60/40...don't have the tables handy). In any case, for male applicants to those schools which have a 50/50 ratio, if you are at the 75th percentile score published by the school, you are not at the 75th percentile for males, because it is higher than the published number, which is the male female "blended" percentile. </p>
<p>So the 100 point difference in scores, which is not a great deal to begin with, is even smaller than it seems. The women in the natural sciences factor adds another plus for the admittee, since there are gender agendas at these schools. </p>
<p>Finally, engineering has gotten brutally competitive for admissions at many places.</p>
<p>First let me say that I can understand your disappointment (and your son's). I'm sure (from what I've read) that he is going to succeed wherever he ends up, but I know that right now that doesn't offset the disappointment.</p>
<p>I truly don't mean to offend, but I think that your post explained some of what may have helped his classmate get accepted. Although it isn't as rare as it was twenty years ago (or even ten for that matter), a lot of schools are still trying to encourage females in the sciences. Of course this would have been a miniscule hook for this girl. She is also probably (as you stated) first generation. It may not seem like she has much as far as ECs, but maybe she is working to help her family or maybe she watches siblings fulltime. She may even have a lot of volunteer work that is outside of the school.</p>
<p>Please don't get me wrong--I feel that your son was a strong candidate. It just isn't as surprising to me that she was accepted and I don't think that the "crapshoot" had anything to do with her acceptance (although it probably had a little to do with his not being accepted).</p>
<p>Happens all of the time. My brother's best friend from highschool was turned down by UFL for engineer and accepted to MIT. He was probably the smartest kid in Florida that year but he did not apply early enough and the engineering spots closed out. And he was first generation to go to college AND URM to boot.</p>
<p>The Stanford adcom goofed. They're powerful but not omniscient. He can have the acceptance my S got despite two emails withdrawing his app and no mid-year report. My S's reaction when he saw the fat envelope was: "But I still like snow." :)</p>
<p>What is going on? I'll need to mark the calendar because I agree with two posts of Mini in the same thread! </p>
<p>I'm not sure how many times we read that the colleges are not building a class of diverse students but a diverse class of students. </p>
<p>It is totally understandable that rejections and being waitlisted hurt. There is, however, logic in the system: out of twenty RD students, only one or two makes it at the most selective schools. That means that there are 18 or 19 not-admitted candidates. The implacable logic is that the fortunate 1 or 2 DID something to differentiate themselves from THEIR peers. It could be that they were better athletes, better musicians, better scholars, better writers, or overcame daunting odds ... but they DID something to get the nod. We may disagree on the ultimate merit, but, according to their graduation rates, the most selective schools do not seem to make many mistakes. Every time we think to have found the Holy Grail of admissions, we have to realize that hundreds of students reached the same profound conclusion, and we all became yet another version of the Stepford children. </p>
<p>However, there is a silver lining. While not everyone can "get" in at his first choice, students who did the "right thing" and pursued excellence seem to have a LOT of great choices. After all those months on CC, reports of stellar students who did not make it anywhere still shine by their absence.</p>