College admissions are a "crapshoot"?

Like many, I’ve been lurking this site for quite a while. I’ve been looking at chance me’s for many selective schools and often I’ll see people claiming college admissions to be a crapshoot. I had a few questions regarding this:

Are admissions actually this inconsistent?
Can you give an example that illustrates it being a crapshoot?
Are there ways to avoid this uncertainty?
Particular colleges infamous for being inconsistent?
If you can answer any of this question or add any general remarks that’d be much appreciated.

In a time where you have no certainty with your college admissions experience, it’s very comforting to see some sense mad out of this randomness. Thank you in advance!

Yes. These super-hooks make you nearly a sure-thing admit:

  • parent is POTUS
  • win the Nobel Prize at 17
  • have Olympics qualifying athletic stats
  • have parents ready to donate a $100 million new library wing
  • be a world famous actor/ess

I would say belonging to an URM or URN qualifies as well. A highly qualified Native American, Latin American or African American applicant, or an equally appealing citizen from a country like Belize, Tibet, Senegal etc…The grades and test scores obviously have to be there, but assuming that they are, the odds of admission are pretty good.

@Alexandre - I think you are overstating the advantage of being a URM. It may put the applicant in a different pool, but it is still a very competitive pool.

@Zinhead If you are being fair the person you are responding to did write “The grades and test scores obviously have to be there…” Nobody is denying that the pool of URMs is competitive. However, an URM with a 35 ACT and 3.9 GPA has a much better chance at acceptance than a white or asian with the same stats. Being a URM brings much more certainty to college admissions assuming that the grades/scores are great. Certainty is what the OP was seeking.

It’s schools with extremely low acceptance rates that can be a “crapshoot”. Duke, for example, boasts that it rejects more 75% of valedictorians. When schools have that many people applying with similarly solid applications then it makes sense it becomes harder for them to distinguish between applicants and harder for applicants to determine what will help distinguish them. Agree that in those cases, “super” hooks may provide more certainty. URM is a hook that can tip things in an applicants favor depending on the school and the application, not a “super” hook that provides certainty in the most competitive schools.

Its annoying to call admissions , especially in smaller, uber competitive schools that craft/build a class on interesting and unique students, a “crapshoot”. Just because the applicant doesnt know what transpires around the admissions table doesn’t mean its a “crapshoot”.

We went through selective admissions process a couple years ago. D had a 36 ACT her GPA was “only” 3.83 UW good not great ECs. In looking back at things, the admissions decisions were not random. There are a lot of very talented students applying and I think many students don’t realize how nuanced admissions are at the very top colleges. Your application needs to tell a story and it needs to be interesting

Typo above-- should say craft a class OF interesting and unique students. Agree with @Wje9164be. Be interesting, be likable, make the school want you, not the other way around.

@Proudpatriot - The part I took objection to was “the odds of admission are pretty good.” Being a URM applicant at a top school might increase the odds from say 5% to 15%, but those are still lousy odds. Of course, if they raise the odds to 50%, then I am incorrect, but I doubt they provide such an increase.

I agree Zinhead, which is why I clearly stated that the student must have strong grades and test scores. But I stand by my statement, a highly qualified URM or URN applicant faced significantly better odds of admission into selective colleges and universities.

Add recruited athlete to the list of super hooks.

Fully qualified appicants have a pretty good chance of admission (~50% or higher) at even highly selective colleges at which the acceptance rate ranges from about 25-30%. At the about two dozen schools nationally that are significantly more competitive than this, the chances for similar applicants may appear to have a more random aspect.

Apply to a safety or two you can afford and would be happy to attend.

At very competitive schools, under 10-15% acceptance rates, they are trying to choose between nearly perfect applicants and other nearly perfect applicants. For the student who’s done absolutely everything they could have done and still doesn’t get in,it can feel like a crapshoot. Schools choose on different admission criteria so it’s difficult to understand outcomes. One of my daughter’s friends last year was accepted to UCLA under a very competitive major, yet wasn’t accepted to USC. How could that be? If you look at the numbers UCLA has much higher stats. Well, UC’s are race blind admissions, the decisions are made on GPA, scores, and essays. USC is not race blind admissions, this student being an over represented minority and in a competitive major means less qualified applicants (lower tests scores and GPA) got in while she did not. Our guidance counselor says no student should count on a top 25 schools, have back up plans you’ll be happy with.

When people use the term “crapshoot” for selective schools, they mean that it appears to be. There are just so many kids applying for so few spots. There are more than enough qualified kids for those spots, that admissions officers must look beyond GPA and test scores. And those things are not as objective and quantifiable as GPA and test scores so it becomes harder to figure out what a school is looking for. And those admissions officers are human, so you never know what might catch one’s eye.

People are also observing things that don’t make sense to them. Student A got into school X but not Y, yet school X is higher ranked. It makes the process look like a “crapshoot”. But who knows, maybe if student A had applied the year before or the year after they would have gotten into school Y but not X or into both or neither. The pool of students that student A is being compared to changes each year.

There are just too many variables in the process to fully understand and predict and so people call it a “crapshoot”.

I never used that word with my kids, but I always told them that while they were academically qualified for any school, we just didn’t know what an admissions officer might be looking for or what may/may not resonate with them.

@Alexandre - But how much better are the odds for a URM? Lets say a school has an overall acceptance ratio of 10 percent for students in the middle 50% of their SAT/ACT score range. How much of a boost would a URM get? How would the odds be between a black male compared to a Hispanic female?

I am just trying to quantify the advantages, and there is precious little information out there on this issue. Going from a 10% chance of admission to a 20% change doubles ones chances, but the overall chances are still poor.

If you mean at super-selective colleges, admissions may appear to be “random” when looking at them from the outside. From the inside, the admissions people know what their criteria are, and have a view of the entire application pool, so that the selection process is likely far more consistent from their point of view.

USC frosh had higher test scores, but probably lower HS GPA, than UCLA frosh. UCs tend to weight GPA more heavily than test scores (in comparison to the relative weighting at most other schools), so a GPA-heavy applicant may get into UCLA but not USC, while a test-score-heavy applicant may get into USC but not UCLA.

I’m talking about an applicant that was over 2200 SAT and 4.6 gpa, top 10 at a very large and competitive high school. It may seem random, but it’s not. Shchools just have different admissions criteria and ways of differentiating otherwise qualified applicants.

As far as URM, it totally depends on the school. If one is applying to UCLA is will help them not at all, race blind admissions. At some schools it may be a significant advantage, at other shchools a very small advantage.