We understand that well. It’s still often very unpredictable. There are of course reasons but think of the kid who gets rejected from a handful of CSUs several mid level UCs and then gets into Cal. It’s not the norm but it does happen.
But that is from an insider (inside the admissions office) viewpoint. Most students and parents have no way of comparing how the student’s package compares with others in the college’s applicant and admit pools. They may not even know the full contents of their own packages, if there are recommendations that they do not see in them.
To predict admissions results with accuracy, I think you need to do several things: 1) Really look at the data from each school to which you’re applying (CDS, and other resources); 2) Listen to your school’s college counselor and understand where you (or your child) fits into the bigger picture, including admissions results from your HS at different colleges; 3) Build in a degree of randomness to your thought process.
My D20 applied to some colleges, which had 30% admit rates (overall), but kids from her HS (according to Scattergrams and discussions with her college advisor) were accepted nearly 100% of the time. In the case of some reach schools, she was in the zone on paper, but so many kids from her HS applied–including kids with higher stats–that it was unlikely that she would be admitted (and she wasn’t). The lesson is that you need to understand the big picture and the more specific picture in terms of your HS’s applicant pool and where your student fits within that group.
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Sorry, but I do not completely understand.
I am suggesting that many would know the better applicant.
And that the people who did all the work, gathered all the data, spent the time… could do either in isolation.
For the 2 million or so students who start college every year, it is pretty trivial to predict the outcomes of the vast majority of the applications which they send out.
Some predictions are pretty trivial.
For example, prediction is actually easy for colleges with very low acceptance rates. If you tell 10 applicants to Harvard that they will all be rejected, you are likely to have an 80%-90% accuracy rate. Or if you tell a legacy athlete with decent grades that they will be accepted to Harvard, you will also likely be correct. This is true for the 50 or so college with acceptance rates of 15% or less. If an applicant has a GPA which is below 3.7, then predicting that they won’t be admitted to a college with an acceptance rate of 15% or lower is also going to be accurate close to 99% of the time.
Furthermore, the vast majority of colleges also accept more than 50% of their applicants, and most of these admit based almost entirely on stats. So it is easy to predict admissions to those, as well.
It is also pretty trivial to predict that a very highly accomplished, high stats applicant is almost never rejected from a college with an acceptance rate of over 40%.
So it is predictable in most cases, but that is pretty trivial.
However, on CC, everything is focused on the fewer than 10% of all applicants who are stressed about their chances at about 5% of all colleges. The results of those maybe 3%-6% of all applications are not very predictable.
So most of the 2,000,000 college bound students every year have a pretty good idea what their chances are at the college to which they applied. A few thousand do not.
Of course, the vast majority of people on CC are parents of those few thousands or are the applicants themselves.
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You would not necessarily know that the better applicant would get admitted to the college in question (or that the worse applicant would get rejected), unless the college offered a good deal of transparency in its admission process.
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So you are suggesting that admissions is predictable for most and not all? Of course, nobody will predict correctly 100% of the time. On the other hand, very astute people can predict admissions 99% of the time. And that is pretty amazing. I think the real “hidden” point you are making is that it is harder to be objective about yourself. That is a handicap that many people have with college admissions and other areas, too.
Seeing as no applicant can actually do that, the argument is pointless.
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The applicant, his/her parent or a smart helper could. We could not… but you gave the example, so I went with it.
No, the only people who can see and compare the full packages properly are the AOs. You’re saying with perfect information we can predict the outcome, which is obviously true but useless in any practical sense to college applicants.
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With sufficient information, many results may be fairly predictable. It was suggested to this OP, for example, that she should pack her bags for Philadelphia:
And it was suggested to this student that they “try to act surprised” when they receive an acceptance from Carleton:
The only people with the authority are AO’s, but many can do it.
I would bet against her for Penn, but I do not know the background.
There is enough to go by and public data, too.
By clicking on the link, you can read the entire topic, of course.
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I don’t think you can predict. Why would S19 get into Bowdoin but not Amherst or Williams? The schools really look for the same things. Amherst and Williams have more first gen and URMs but is that the only reason he didn’t get in? Why did he get waitlisted at Middlebury but into Hamilton and Davidson? That also makes no sense. If we could have predicted those denials then he wouldn’t have wasted time and money applying.
I can look back and come up with some possible reasons for the discrepancies but none were clear until afterwards and I still feel like many of the schools on his list could have gone one way or the other depending on what each school needed from its RD pool.
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homerdog, i get your point but it seems completely logical to me that someone gets into the Bowdoin and not Amherst and Williams. Amherst and Williams are a different level. Same with MB. It makes perfect sense.
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MB? Middlebury? Midd has double the acceptance rate of Bowdoin. RD bowdoin acceptance rate was 7.5 percent in 2019. Same as Williams and Amherst.
As for rankings, Williams and Amherst are 1 and 2. Swat is 3. Bowdoin is sixth but kind of fifth since Wellesley and Pomona are a tie at 4. Not sure you can say there’s much difference between the caliber of any of these six schools.
Plus I know kids who got into Williams and not Bowdoin. How would you predict that?
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Not completely predictable.
One of our kids is a Boston University graduate. He was outright rejected from University of Maryland. We 
At the time, and still occasionally wonder why this happened. I should add, he applied to 7 schools and got accepted at all but one…UMD.
Our other kid was very predictable. She applied initially only to three colleges and she felt confident she would get accepted…and she did. She then added a reach school, and we asked her to add a parent choice. She was rejected from the reach (not a surprise) but was accepted by the parent choice.
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Acceptance rate tells us a bit, but truly just a bit. There are lots of other factors that you are not considering.
Amherst and Williams take a stronger average student than Bowdoin (and there is also the test optional factor).
Middlebury takes a stronger average student than Hamilton and Davidson.
No comment on people you know. That is usually the worst source of accurate information. It’s a game of telephone.