The more I go through results threads, the more I find that the students rejected, wait listed, and accepted do not really match up with the applicant pool that schools report on their websites. Is this because people that have CC accounts are more concerned/invested with getting into schools? To me, it seems like there is a very high percentage of high achieving people on this website. Is this why the results threads aren’t very accurate (don’t represent the full applicant pool) for numerous universities and colleges?
Partly it’s because CC is full of high achievers, and partly it’s because people who get rejected are often embarrassed and don’t post. It’s also a fairly small sample size.
You’re right. There are a lot of URMs, legacies/development cases, and athletes populating elite schools, who had inferior stats to many superstar kids on this site who were rejected or waitlisted.
Most schools want competitive sports teams, SES and racial (and other) diversity, and to cater to big donors and/or those with legacies. That’s how you get the 3.2/25 ACT at Harvard, while thousands of 4.0/34+ students are rejected.
It’s not fair quantitatively, but again, they get to choose the classes they want to preserve sports, political correctness (and honestly, diversity is beneficial per se), and fealty to some family ties and dollar donations.
You need to learn about statistics. CC result threads are as self selective as they come. There are over 30K Harvard applicants. How many replied in the last results thread? What percentage is that? What’s your conclusion after analyzing this?
C’mon. You can do better than that.
@prezbucky at Harvard the difference between accepted blacks and Hispanics on the old SAT scoring system is about 100 points in comparison to Asians. A lot of that can probably be explained by SES and the number of times some kids took the test. There is more to stats than SAT or ACT scores. What is considered high stats by some may not be considered high stats by an admission officer. A poor Hispanic kid who struggled to get a 2175 on the SAT may be considered more of a high stats kid than the rich kid who took the SAT 6 times and got a 2300.
I think diversity is a good thing. And I’m glad to hear that the difference is just 100 points . “Fairness” is a difficult goal to manage, achieve and judge given all the issues and variables in play. I realize that being holistic is one way to manage the fight between statistical and socioeconomic and racial (and other…) considerations in admissions. At the same time, I feel for kids who excel but don’t get in.
Maybe one of the main benefits of this site is that we try to make them aware of the extreme competitiveness at the most selective schools and that they should apply to multiple schools, and not only reaches.
The smaller the sample size, the less likely it is to be representative. And CC threads are self-selecting to some degree. So no, threads here are not likely to be representative of larger populations.