<p>Luisarose,</p>
<p>I have no idea where you got your financial aid stats for Caltech and MIT. Can you be specific? Personally, we found Caltech far less expensive than MIT for UG. Sorry, but I am bothered by broad statements without specifics.</p>
<p>I don’t think that it is possible to maintain simultaneously that:</p>
<p>1) H, Y, and P are all looking for essentially the same qualities,
2) When the admissions outcomes at H, Y, and P differ, the difference is unpredictable or even inexplicable, and
3) There is no element of randomness in the admissions process.</p>
<p>If you think all 3 of these are true, would you please clarify? Thanks.</p>
<p>Fill me in: What was the 2004 cc Yale massacre?</p>
<p>bookworm,</p>
<p>My son found that to be the case, as well.</p>
<p>Financial aid packages in order of generosity of the schools he applied to: (He didn’t apply to H, Y, or S):</p>
<p>Vanderbilt- Our billed amount would have been $900
Caltach- Our billed amount would have been $1400
Princeton - Our billed amount would have been $5200
Penn- Can’t remember, but billed amount was maybe 9K (package included loans)
MIT - Before appeal, our billed amount was $9100; after appeal, the billed amount was $7600 (package included loans)
Harvey Mudd - Billed amount was something like $10,800, our exact EFC from last year. (package included loans)</p>
<p>Son attends MIT but they do allow outside scholarships-up to 6K a year-to cancel out loan (3k) and work study (3k), so MIT turns out to be a great deal for kids who can get outside scholarships.</p>
<p>I have seen a lot of comments about the effect of SES on the admission process. I am new, so could someone explain how colleges know your SES when you apply? Is it because those of lower SES make it known in their essays to try to leverage an admission advantage, or do applications somehow come right out and ask? Is it possible not to reveal such information? Thanks.</p>
<p>sbjdorlo, Yes, Caltech was much less expensive for us, and at the time, they had upper class merit awards. We were full pay, as the grandparents left their money to grandson, and colleges at that time had a right to 33% (I forget exact numbers) of son’s inheritance. A few years later, the financial aspect would have been different. Absolutely no regrets that the worm did Caltech for UG and MIT for grad. For him, the smaller environment at Caltech was a blessing, and he got involved in ECs that he might not have in a larger U.</p>
<p>redpoint: In year 2004, it seemed that many absolutely outstanding applicants to Yale were denied. On CC, we began to refer to that year as a massacre. I’m sure Xiggi will recall more of the details. As terrific as my young friend’s stats were, he was not an athlete, had not held a prominent position in HS, and I felt he would be thrown under the train. From my recollection, kids denied at Yale in 2004 were accepted at H and P and other terrific colleges, just not Y.</p>
<p>I’d like to try to unpack these a bit:
I think this is true–but there is some wiggle room in “essentially,” like the ice dancer jonri mentioned. There may be enough special cases to make a real difference, especially if some of them have to do with areas of academic interest (i.e., if Yale is trying to beef up its engineering department this year).
I think when you use terms like unpredictable and inexplicable, you have to indicate by whom. If you are talking about by persons on the outside of the selection process, that’s one thing. We may have no way to know that Yale adcoms have been told to try to get more engineers this year, or that Princeton wants more kids from the far west, or that Harvard is cutting back on internationals. But people inside the system could explain it–but they won’t.
Here, I think it depends on what you mean by randomness. Despite lots of jokes about it, I don’t think adcoms are flipping coins, or tossing applications down a flight of stairs, or anything like that. I believe them when they say they are doing their very best to make rational, well-thought-out decisions to craft the best classes they can. But because this is a subjective effort carried out by human beings, there is an element of randomness–or better, variability in how the decisions will turn out. So, if you are a qualified candidate, but not an automatic (or near-automatic) admit, you might be admitted at Yale because the adcom thinks the jokes in your essay are funny, and be rejected at Princeton because the adcom there thinks they aren’t very funny at all. Is that random? In a way. But neither adcom would admit that there was any randomness in his evaluation.</p>
<p>I think it’s possible that the admissions folks at each of these schools absorb a “tone” or “vibe” from the school that might color their evaluation of soft elements like essays, recommendations, and interview reports, and that this might result in some preference for certain “types.” But I have to believe that this is only at the extreme margins, and that most differences stem from things like Harvard picking one oboe player biology major because he’s from Braintree, and thus rejecting the one who’s from Atlanta. The Atlanta guy gets into Yale, because being from Braintree is no advantage there. That’s not exactly random, either, but it results from the extreme complexity of life that mere mortals can’t predict.</p>
<p>Thanks for your detailed post, Hunt. With regard to item 1), I think that H, Y, and P are looking for qualities that are largely the same, but I do perceive some differences in the “patterns of strengths and maturities” that are sought, as lookingforward put it. So with regard to item 2), if the outcomes differ at the three, in some cases I think that can be understood from the outside. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I would surmise that aside from the “auto” admits, there is probably a group of applicants who have quite strong support from at least one admissions committee member, and this entire group cannot be admitted. Here, the unseen admissions priorities mentioned by Hunt in #47 can come into play. But also here the dynamics among the admissions committee members are very likely to come into play, in selecting from among this group. Beyond the variability in reactions to the essays, I think that the order of presentation of the applicants in this group may matter–not merely in the sense that at some point, Harvard may have a sufficient number of students from Braintree already admitted, but in the sense that the committee dynamics could play out differently with different sequences of discussions. The term “element of variability” suggested by Hunt is better than my “element of randomness.” That captures my basic belief that if the process could be re-run de novo with the same set of applicants, under slightly different conditions (different days of the week of review, different orders, different times of day) the outcomes in some cases would be different. Unfortunately, the experiment is impossible to run.</p>
<p>With regard to differences in reaction to the essays, a real-life example comes from a post by a Stanford admissions staffer, who read an essay written by a young woman on the topic of hating her dog. He thought it was really funny, and she was in. One could reasonably expect variability in the reactions to this essay.</p>
<p>As far as the “Who cares?” angle on this goes, I think that it is very valuable for a student who is extremely strong, with odds of admission that are realistically much higher than the raw odds, to understand in advance that there is variability in the process, aside from a rather small number of auto-admits.</p>
<p>This may be very old news at this point. However, you’ll note my join date. At that point, the understanding of the admissions process that can now be gleaned from CC was not yet available in some parts of the country (like ours).</p>
<p>Hunt explained this very well. And QM is exactly right with the Stanford dog essay example. But the bigger question is - why isn’t this just a statement of the obvious to most people? This all just seems so obvious and intuitive that this is how life works in all arenas - who you meet / date / befriend, what job you take, etc. – why is it so difficult for people to understand and accept that variability in college admissions? Yes, of course if you took my kids ’ apps and reinserted them in the admissions pool this year, they might or might not “re-get in” to their schools. But so what? If you want guarantees, apply to schools where it’s all stats-based.</p>
<p>If said bright student doesn’t get that there is that randomness and variability in life – then he’s not all that bright, QM. Sorry. This falls under “book learning but no life smarts.”</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I have the impression that you live in an area where a significant number of students go to the “top” schools. If so, then many things that are obvious to you are not obvious in other places. Intelligently read, the current version of CC makes the nature of admissions obvious to a lot of people who don’t have sufficient direct examples. The 2004 version of CC? Not so much, at that time.</p>
<p>ProudMom- in general, you don’t try to win by laying out the SES details (“My parents are poor, look at me differently than someone else,”) but facts can come through. The GC (and or teacher) letters may explain some challenge (even indirectly,) parent occupations/education are on the CA, the school district’s demographics will be known. There’s precious little space on the CA to say everything. When needed, speak with the GC about some point you want him/her to consider making.</p>
<p>The Stanford dog essay would have had to be appreciated by more than one reviewer; and her other writing (and LoRs) would need to be in line, nothing counteracting that strong impression.</p>
<p>Hs kids don’t have practice in this sort of strategy. It’s hard enough to get them to write a positive essay, much less id and respond to the subtle needs and likes of a college. The benefit, imo, is in one-on-one support. But, this is an interesting topic.</p>
<p>I always think, jokingly: Yale needs kids who can endure New Haven, P needs kids who can adapt to that rather laid back environment and the local SES. H needs kids who can endure Harvard, itself. Partly kidding.</p>
<p>Re the Stanford dog essay: Of course. But if the first reader had our recent experience, when our dog had a spindle-cell sarcoma (he is still alive, thanks to a really good veterinary surgeon), the outcome might have been different, and there’s no telling.</p>
<p>Another element that I think is different: For most jobs that I know of, there are not thousands of openings, so the situations are not parallel. I suppose that it would be possible to date thousands of people, but I don’t think it would be possible to marry thousands of people. Some of my Facebook friends have thousands of friends, but I don’t, and most of my friends don’t. I really think that you view the issues differently if you work in admissions, or if there are many students from your area who go to top schools.</p>
<p>I also think that CC has performed a great service for those who would otherwise have been under-informed.</p>
<p>I agree. It seems to me there are many intelligent parents with intelligent children who don’t have first-hand or even second-hand experience with highly competitive college admissions. I stumbled upon this site after the application process while google searching likely letters - a concept completely foreign to our family and our local high school guidance counselor. It had never occurred to me to turn to the internet for advice on the college search or crafting applications. Of course, this was back in the dark ages of CC. I seem to remember briefly reading a couple of other college application information sites at that time, but none so informative or useful.</p>
<p>Although some of us have been on here so long we are weary of a lot of the repeated discussion, it is new to others. I agree with QuantMech that CC performs a great service. This seems a very useful thread to me for newcomers to the board.</p>
<p>Oh, Gawd, Q. Our dog, too. Didn’t make it. Best of luck</p>
<p>QM - no, I don’t. I don’t live in a New Trier-like type of setting. Vast majority of my kids’ classmates go to community college, a directional, or U of Illinois. D was the first kid from her high school to apply to Wellesley. There are maybe 5-8 kids who go to elite schools and thats drawing the definition of elite pretty wide. East coast LACs aren’t known. </p>
<p>But that’s not the point. It’s not about having experience w elite college admissions. It’s about having experience with life. If you know that Harvard has a low admittance rate, you know it’s holistic in nature, then of course you know that all the kids who apply are academic superstars and maybe the adcom will like your essay about poodles or stamp collecting or maybe she won’t. Because they are humans, and humans make subjective decisions and have unconscious biases and preferences. Some people will like you in this world and others won’t, and that’s true whether it’s your neighbors, coworkers, potential employers or college adcoms. I’m sorry, you don’t need to live in Fancy McFancyville or have an elite degree to know this. This is common sense.</p>
<p>“I think that it is very valuable for a student who is extremely strong, with odds of admission that are realistically much higher than the raw odds, to understand in advance that there is variability in the process, aside from a rather small number of auto-admits.”</p>
<p>I think anyone applying to a 5% acceptance rate school who doesn’t already know this isn’t smart enough to attend.</p>
<p>looking forward–thanks. So are you saying that either the student or the GC, or teacher’s recs are slipping the info in to try to sway admissions, and if not the adcoms would have no idea? As far as the question about parents’ education and occupation, how is that even legal to ask? Does it have to be answered?</p>
<p>ProudMom,</p>
<p>I think you may be missing the fact that if you are from a lower SES it IMPROVES the odds of admission. If your mom works at a local elementary school as a school aide, your dad is a city bus driver, neither of them went to college, and you attend a high school where only 50% of the kids go on to post-secondary education, getting a 2250 on your SAT is much more of an achievement than it is if your mom is a partner in a major law firm, your dad is chair of the math department at your state’s flagship university and you attended one of the nation’s top boarding schools.</p>
<p>Colleges do want to know extra info. Maybe there’s a kid applying from Rye High School–Rye is a very affluent place. But this kid is actually a foster child who has only been living in Rye for 3 years. Before that, the kid attended terrible middle schools sporadically as he bounced among different foster families and thus entered Rye High School with far worse preparation than his classmates. Shouldn’t those facts be known to the college making the decision whether to admit him?</p>