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<p>I am not saying the decisions of Harvard and Yale are correlated because they collude. Here is a thought experiment. On the day admissions decisions announced, you check Yale’s site first and find out you got in. Doesn’t that piece of information raise your estimated probability that Harvard accepted you at least a bit?</p>
<p>Q, ime: realistically, what you describe is common. So, taken as you wrote it, he may not stand out. In fact, good chance he doesn’t, as is. And, the actual breadth and depth of the ECs matters- not award or award level (with exceptions.) So, what is his tip or the thing that makes his reviewers enthusiastic, willing to go to bat for him?</p>
<p>A legacy not applying Early is not penalized for that, ime.<br>
Beliavsky, it does not necessarily raise your probability, as you do not know “what” go you the first admit. It can raise your expectations.</p>
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<p>At any public magnet school, there is a concerted effort to be representative of the region represented (in this case the state) racially as well as geographically. This is necessary for continued funding from the state. I would expect that every county in the state would be represented at IMSA. </p>
<p>So I don’t think it makes much sense to say that Northwestern might want to limit IMSA kids because they want kids from the inner city or who grew up on a farm. So yes, IMSA kids are privileged in that they got to go to that school, but I don’t think it’s a clean comparison to New Trier which I’ve heard only draws from an affluent area. And certainly I wouldn’t describe a place that draws from the entire state as homogenous. </p>
<p>One of the positions that Pizzagirl espouses is that if Northwestern wanted to decide to reject all Illinois students, or everyone except for the state of Delaware, there would be nothing wrong with that either. It’s hard to argue with a total relativist point-of-view.</p>
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<p>Even in English class, people can rigorously describe what’s going on in a novel or poem, not just on the surface in terms of plotlines, but the mechanics of how it is constructed, the word choice, imagery, etc… Ironically, there is a sizable chunk of primarily left-brained people, Sheldon Coopers of a kind, who think that the realm of humanities and emotions should be celebrated but that they are not penetrable by any sort of reason. They think they are completely wishy-washy. If you’ve ever seen a poet describe what they are doing, there is a logic, a reason to what choices they have made in their art. And yes, there can be correct and incorrect choices, or alternatively, choices which “make sense” in the larger context of what they are trying to achieve. And the larger context itself can be argued.</p>
<p>Related to the topic of STEM major advantage in Y admission, I think a lot of what we see is the result of yield management because usually people draw conclusions from matriculation data and don’t have access to detailed admissions data such as data broken down by intended majors and cross-admits. We see Harvard has more of those who have special talents or “prodigy” type but it could be because those students tend to have multiple offers from top tier colleges and they tend to choose H when cross-admitted. Similarly, we see more “weaker” STEM people went to Yale, but it’s not necessarily because Yale would admit weaker STEM applicants but rather currently they can’t yield the strongest when they are cross-admitted by say M or H. Yale however does dig right into the same applicant pool of HPSM and is willing to sacrifice their yield significantly to have a chance for the strongest STEM talents, so the “weaker” ones they eventually managed to yield might still be well in the range of what the other schools are looking for. That’s my understanding. Maybe someone out there has evidence to prove otherwise, i.e. that Yale indeed starts out admitting “second tier” STEM talents so they have a realistic chance of yielding them?</p>
<p>IMO, it most definitely hurts legacies who are good candidates if they don’t apply SCEA. The next level of Ivies with ED definitely hold it against you if you don’t apply early. Penn says upfront that you only get a boost for legacy in the ED round. </p>
<p>As far as I know, the only real difference between Stanford SCEA and Y, H, and P is that Stanford rejects a higher percentage of early apps, whereas Y and H–I don’t know about P–only reject a small % of early applicants and defer almost everyone. If you aren’t going to get into your choice of top school, I think knowing that before the other applications are due is very much to a student’s benefit.</p>
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It’s possible that Yale has to admit more STEM applicants to yield the right number. This would mean, I suppose, that a really strong but not auto-admit STEM person might have a bit better chance at Yale. But I can’t believe that it’s a big difference.</p>
<p>I agree with Hunt re STEM students at Yale–I’d say that a really strong but not glitzy STEM applicant would have a good chance there. In my particular STEM sub-field, Yale is excellent.</p>
<p>curious, what is your STEM sub field QM?</p>
<p>lindz126: That gets down to 5 or so faculty members at Yale, so I’d rather not say.</p>
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<p>In my son’s experience, this was definitely true. He was a Penn legacy, but Penn was not his first choice, so applying ED was not realistic. We knew that Penn only gave a boost to ED legacy applicants, but he did a lot to show interest in Penn. He attended local “dog & pony shows”, talked with the local adcom, visited Penn, and attended a class at Penn. But, he did not keep in contact with Penn’s legacy liaison. Based on Naviance data for his HS and his GPA/SAT, he was well within the range of applicants that had been historically accepted to Penn. I expected that he would be a “match” for Penn, but he was WL. (It was the only application I was wrong about.) I think that failing to apply ED actually worked against him in the RD round.</p>
<p>It is interesting to see the Princeton now values demonstrable interest in applications. When we visited Princeton, the tour office (in response to parents asking where to sign in to show that they had visited) announced that Princeton did not track interest as part of their decision-making process. It was actually kind of a “snooty” announcement, along the lines of “we don’t care if you are interested in attending Princeton, Princeton will decide if it is interested in associating with you.”</p>
<p>Q’s question was: does not applying early hurt a legacy’s RD chances? Does not getting a boost hurt their chances- or just not offer that tip? No penalty. Not, “well he didn’t apply early, so forget him.” Small detail, but I’m feeling it. Maybe just how one sees it.</p>
<p>The lore goes something like, “legacies get an extra look, but only if they apply early.”</p>
<p>Of course Beliavsky is right that getting admitted to Yale means that you have a much better than average chance of getting admitted to Harvard. In the distant past, I think cross-admits made up almost half of the admitted pool at both colleges. My impression is that in recent years the degree of cross-admission has gone way down. As there are more and more highly qualified students in the pool, even if many of them are in both pools the chance increases that the two colleges will choose different applicants to admit. And that’s recognizing that the criteria they are applying are virtually the same, and the people applying the criteria are virtually the same, too.</p>
<p>One thing does occur to me: I think Harvard has indicated that it values SAT IIs and AP test scores to a high degree, more so than Yale may. I don’t know about Princeton.</p>
<p>I want to quibble now: learning that you got into Yale doesn’t have any affect at all on the chances that Harvard will take you. What it may do, though, is provide you with some information that may help you to evaluate your chances differently.</p>
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I would cut the Princeton folks a little bit of slack. I’m sure the tour guide office everyday is peppered with requests to sign some sort of book-indicating-interest. (Even after the described announcement, I bet the staff receives persistent inquiries from some parents: “No really. Where is the book? I’d like to have little Johnny who’s a National Merit Scholar/plays the piccolo with his nose/invented a new type of energy-efficient laser/started a “foundation” for orphans in a far-off country/etc. to sign the book.”) The perceived “snootiness” was probably just misinterpreted borderline exasperation among the tour guide staff. Parents operate under the assumption that, if they can get their son’s/daughter’s name in that book, their application will get a small but meaningful boost during the application review process. Considering the sheer number of the prospective applicants that tour the campus annually and the far more important information which comprises the student’s formal application, it seems rather presumptuous to think that admissions officers would grant any advantage at all to applicants simply for making a “pilgrimage” to the campus.</p>
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<p>I am using the Bayesian (subjective belief) rather than the frequentist definition of probability, as discussed in [Probability</a> interpretations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_interpretations]Probability”>Probability interpretations - Wikipedia) .</p>
<p>Certainly, if you get into Yale, that is likely to increase your own perception of the likelihood of getting into Harvard (which is what I take to be this Bayesian sense). My point is just that Yale’s decision does not have any impact on Harvard’s actual decision (assuming they aren’t colluding).</p>
<p>But the information is valuable, certainly. If you were accepted at Yale in the SCEA round, that would tell you quite a bit about what sorts of schools you might want to apply to in the RD round.</p>
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That may be true, but looking at DC’s school’s Naviance, the average GPA and SATI of H have been lower (not by much though) than P, Y and S year after year. Not sure if this holds true for other schools. In any case, I suppose for these schools, “stats driven” is not the right term for any. Rather, stellar stats is pretty much a given. It’s other things that set one apart from the “mass” with great stats.</p>
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<p>I think it’s probably true that because I’m fairly conservative / risk-averse, I probably steered my kids away from the very tippy-top, but then again they weren’t in a social milieu where the very tippy-top was revered and held up as the be-all-and-end-all. I think we were very strategic, though, in our approach. I am just too risk-averse to have been able to stomach “let’s apply to all top 20 schools and the state school as the backup.” I believe that having a sweet spot a bit below is not a bad strategy.</p>