My comments about Niche and other ‘will I get in’ sites was more directed at the Dad that was upset about paying so many application fees in vain. For me, paying $500+ in app fees to find the right school was worth it especially since this has been an open mouth, turn on fire hydrant experience.
I echo @privatebanker 's sentiment that it’s “important to see how deep the quality [is]” of those accepted, and I don’t think these threads can capture that.
My ORM twins are totally unhooked from the Northeast. I have one twin going to Harvard and one going to Yale in the fall and if you look at just their stats, it would not reveal what got them in. As with most of the students who applied SCEA to these schools, they were recognized in their ECs, spent a lot of time in a couple of them and have a very specific interest they will most likely pursue in college. They don’t attend the same high school so that wasn’t a factor. What may have got them in is the genuine spirit conveyed in their essays and a level of maturity shown in how they saw the world…and mad crazy luck.
-You should buy a Powerball ticket immediately.
-Quit your job and go on tour to have people pay big money to touch you for good luck
-Write a book called -“Who needs a Tiger Mom?”
All kidding aside. Congratulations. You obviously helped to raise two exceptional sons. Good luck and I wish them great success!
@privatebanker
OH! nothing personal of course. I see that Wharton degree keeps you busy on CC. I’m still a student, a senior to be exact. And the queen of the south we are, Duke has nothing on us. BC the jester could learn a thing or two:).
Your comments weren’t criticisms they were covert downplays that sought to close the proverbial social gap between the two schools. But I was just correcting you. I’m sure you are in the wonderful city of Atlanta for business every now and again, we should meet so you can finally see the school you should have went to. I’ll show you around.
To answer your initial question, rejected students won’t give much of a picture because even if they have higher stats than the ones who were accepted, their soft factors were the reasons why they were rejected. If we assume Schools want the best students then we also assume that students that were rejected weren’t the best for that particular school at that particular time. Best is qualified differently at different times depending on what parameters are set. FOR CC that seems to be stats for admissions officers that might be something else.
@emorynavy My degree is so old it is collecting dust.
And for a college student you seem to have plenty of time yourself. LOL.
No, I hang out on CC a lot because it’s fascinating and part of a service mission for me, in a sense.
As a recovering alcoholic with more time of my hands and a desire to give back, it’s a fun hobby for me.
All the tremendous gifts I have received in my life flow from the same spring. education. I was able to be the first person in either side of my family to attend college. It opened my eyes to a world beyond the scope of my narrow and fairly desolate, yet hardworking, landscape of my youth.
It has allowed to see more of the world than I ever imagined. New opportunities were presented to me to both grow and learn from some of the most interesting people you could ever imagine knowing.
It has allowed me to not have only financial blessings but true wealth, a loving family and many friends.
So as you go back to your studies. I would only suggest that perhaps you have more to learn from being inquisitive and curious. Remain eager and respectful to learn from others. Even old guys on the back nine.
Being the smartest guy in the room never wins the day.
Thanks for your feedback and go get em.
Depth of quality of applicant pool is definitely an issue.
My impression is overseas applicants and applicants without involved guidance counselors often apply to reach/low reach schools thinking they are matches. Unlimited possible applications, and the ease afforded by the common app, certainly supports a Hail Mary approach. The UK system (and yes I know it can’t just be transplanted here) does help address this issue because with only 5 applications allowed, and only one to either Oxford or Cambridge, students have be more careful to assess which schools they apply to. No sense wasting a Hail Mary on Oxbridge if it’s really far out of reach.
@privatebanker, great post #165. I can relate to a lot of it too.
Your one comment reminded me one of my favorite quotes, from Michael Dell:
“Try never to be the smartest person in the room. And if you are, I suggest you invite smarter people … or find a different room.”
Back on topic…
admissions is unfair for everyone not just unhooked applicants!
While applicant pools are increasing do you believe historic yield ranges will change? The following having been the ranges over the last few year…
HYPSM 75-80%
Other Ivies 55-65%
Duke, Vandy, Gtown, ND 45-55%
Emory 28%
I have always seen this as a pure arbiter of a schools reputation, cache and appeal as it is indicative of the choices made by those in a position to choose. Most application data is largely aspirational but yield suggests what the actual “consumer” thinks.
All of these schools in the top echelon draw exceptional students and are great institutions. Yield however seems to be a pure indication of how the students themselves rank the schools. Thoughts?
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I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet but, on the 2019 Parents thread, we had a discussion about which high school a student goes to. It matters. Some private schools are pipelines to the Ivies or other highly selective schools. Those universities have relationships with the GCs and they talk about the students. Some boarding schools send crazy numbers of kids to some very elite places.
I’ve done the legwork to see what’s up at our public, suburban, competitive high school. Over the last three years, only recruited athletes and legacies have gotten into Ivies. Period. Sports is big at our school and we sometimes have as many as 10-12 state champion teams. So, it looks like we have a decent number of kids going to Ivies and other elite schools but (at least for Ivies specifically) all of them fell into the groups above. Kids with perfect GPAs (in a school that does not inflate), 35/36 and/or 1550+, 5s on multiple APs, and strong ECs with state/national recognition not getting in. I think the Ivies just know how many they will take from suburban Chicago in general and they take their bunch from our school in the form of athletes and legacies. We really don’t have any URMs at our school so the universities find URM candidates at other Chicago area schools.
Move down to Northwestern, Chicago, Wash U, Vanderbilt, Duke, etc and almost all of the kids who got into those went ED. A good number were legacies. Some do get in RD but way fewer than in ED.
I was so thankful that our S19 was interested in LACs. Not many kids at our school go that route and almost all that do are recruited ED athletes. He was just waitlisted at Vanderbilt (like four of his friends who are all NMF, high GPA, all honors/AP, all 5s, strong ECs, etc) but got into a solid list of LACs RD including Bowdoin, Hamilton, Carleton, and Davidson. Vandy took three kids from our school ED. Not sure they will take many more RD.
One can look at the stats on this thread but one really has to know where they are coming from in order to see what a student’s real chances might be. Inexact science but better than nothing.
Terrific posts
I’d like to hear any story of a student who was the first to go to an Ivy from their high school without a hook. Not sure it’s worth a student’s time to apply to elite schools with no history of taking kids from their high school. I keep seeing posts of kids who are disappointed in their results but they seem to be lacking any self awareness when it comes to what their chances were.
Wrong thread
@homerdog agree that if you know what the school does it can help inform too. As I posted on the other thread. d19’s high school has a much better hit rate at MIT and Penn and in fact most ivies than Williams, as an example…but it doesn’t do well at Columbia. It’s hard to always understand why, though.
I think some of the parents don’t realize how much things have changed, too. A classmate of D19’s mom is upset her D19 didn’t get into Princeton - mom is an alum. Apart from my view on transmitting that kind of disappointment to your kid (who got into some fine schools), getting into Princeton in the 80s was just a different ballgame than doing it now. Generalizing this - I wonder how much legacy pressure there is without the alum parent really understanding how much it’s changed.
And alums need to understand that how much they give figures in. My husband and I went to a top 15 university. When I inquired about S19’s chances with someone who is still very involved at the school, he asked me if we are gold level givers. And then said S19 would also have to go ED. So there you go.
S19 was never really interested in our school and we didn’t pursue that but I thought it was telling.
@Nocreativity1 That’s assumption is flawed as your missing several steps. For your notion to be correct one must only be comparing peer institutions. BC, Yeshiva U, Fashion Institute of technology, liberty university, American U, Lehigh, etc all have yeilds higher than Emory. Does that mean they are more popular… Maybe. But does popularity correlate with quality not so much. When looking at the prowess of a school, you look at all factors. From yeild rates, the enrolled GPA and SAT averages, awards won by the student etc. Because it doesnt matter what a students personally ranks a certain school if they weren’t able to get into said school. Looking at only one Parameter set’s oneself up for false/bias conclusions. Emory’s Yeild may be lower than it’s peers( top 30 schools), but that doesn’t deter them from enrolling the quality of applicant they want . For instance as of last year Emory admits a 31-35 ACT range for its freshman class, yet Enrolled a 31-34, despite its yeild of 28%. Schools with the same admitted range and higher yeild somehow enrolled a lower ACT range than Emory did. So yeild clearly doesn’t tell enough of the story.
I before E except after C.
I do agree that for many peer schools the yield will be similar,but that at the top I think @Nocreativity1 is correct. Anecdotally, this is the discussion among D19’s peers too - what the backup is if you don’t get into HYPSM. I think @emorynavy is half correct about schools getting the caliber they target - what we are seeing is that as the competition filters down, all the “second choice” or even “third choice” schools are all seeing their stats rise, as kids who have ivy-level stats but not ivy acceptances enter their backups. True not just for Emory but for many of the top 40 or 50, as colleges that were “easy” to get into a decade ago both become much more difficult as admit rates fall into the teens, and as the increased volume allows them to pick more and more selective classes, vs their own history even if still below those at the top.
@Nocreativity1 I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the meaning of yield, but with two other considerations:
(1) compare like with like - so I would only look at the yield of the RD admits when considering the yield of an ED school.
(2) the number of applications is also a measure of desirability. E.g., per the Princeton Review “dream college” survey (it’s not scientific but it is a survey), NYU and UCLA rank surprisingly high at #4 and #5 as the students’ dream colleges. This is somewhat reflected in the number of applications. NYU receives 84,000 applications (ED and RD) with a “free yield” of around 25% for its RD admits, while UCLA receives 113,000 with a “free yield” of around 40%. Both have entering freshmen class of 6,000. Their ratio of applicants-to-enrollment is similar to the more selective schools.
@SJ2727
Thank-you I do that all the time…
One can’t use one parameter and come up with significant conclusions. They are going to be wrong a lot of the time. Just as one doesn’t only use SAT scores as the only measure of caliber, one shouldn’t just use yield either.
One of the reasons that the top boarding schools do well with placement is the fact that they are test in schools. So the majority of kids there, are proven good students and test takers before they even get there. They self select their population and virtually the entire graduating class is going to a 4 yr college.
I’ll be the naysayer in this thread. While I agree it is long odds for an unhooked kid to get into an Ivy, it’s not impossible. Especially at some of the ones with larger class sizes, because there the impact of recruited athletes is less. And schools like MIT and Cal Tech, don’t care so much about hooks.