<p>After having been on CC for some years, and having studied the results threads for Y, P, and H pretty closely, I think it’s patently obvious that the odds for many applicants are much better than 5% at Harvard. And it’s not too hard to pick some of them out at the margins–they are kids with top stats, and with something else–a standard hook, or some other impressive achievement. On the other hand, there are plenty of kids who pretty clearly didn’t have much of a chance–and typically, they end up quite a bit further down the selectivity level of colleges.</p>
<p>We’re constantly telling people to make realistic lists of reaches, matches, and safeties–but while Harvard is a reach for everyone, it’s simply not the case that it’s the same degree of reach for everyone. I agree with those who think that applicants should try to understand just how big a reach it is for them to determine if it is worthwhile expending effort on an application. Sometimes kids will ask if they should apply to H or Y in the SCEA phase, and the answer differs depending on what their stats are. A kid with a 3.7 GPA, an SAT of 2100, and no hooks, is probably wasting his early shot on H or Y. It’s a different story for a hooked kid with top stats. Of course, everybody has to be prepared for disappointment–like the kid Benley mentioned who was waitlisted at Harvard. But the fact that the same kid got into multiple other highly selective schools shows that his evaluation of the target application level was accurate.</p>
<p>
People still think of buying a lottery ticket as low-cost. Buying one is fanciful–buying a thousand is stupid. A college application has a higher cost, especially if it requires a bunch of essays–and doing too many can degrade the quality of all of them. That’s why strategy is important.</p>
A couple weeks ago, I looked through the stats/ECs/awards/… for the posters in the Stanford RD thread. After comparing various factors, eventually I worked out a weighting system that gave the correct acceptance / rejection decision for ~90% of posters (CC posters in the thread were more likely to be accepted than rejected, so one could not simply assume 100% rejected and get 94% accuracy). I expect the remaining ~10% mostly related to things that were not posted such as LORs, essays, and unique circumstances . The admissions are obviously not done by random chance, which results in different applicants having vastly different chance of admission from the default across all applicants, which is 5.8% for Harvard and 5.7% for Stanford… not 5% at either school.</p>
<p>
Most people do not just buy one ticket. In the US, the annual lottery sales per capita is ~$200. In some states, annual lottery sales per capita is near ~$1000. That’s enough to pay for a set of college applications every year.</p>
<p>Did someone on this thread say something like that?</p>
<p>My remark about previous years’ outcomes was based on schools like Boston Latin and similar schools. The Wikipedia article says that Boston Latin has recently averaged sending 25 grad a year to Harvard. Does this mean that next year’s #1 student from Boston Latin is guaranteed a spot at Harvard? No. Does it mean that Harvard “owes” admission to students from Boston Latin? No. </p>
<p>But would I bet that Harvard will accept fewer than 10 students from Boston Latin next year, after averaging 25 recently? No.</p>
<p>The graduating class at Boston Latin is about 400 students. In order for the raw odds for a Harvard applicant from Boston Latin to approach the raw odds for the entire pool, it would have to be the case that every student from Boston Latin applies to Harvard. This seems improbable.</p>
<p>I think that a student who has spent his/her entire high school years “grooming” for elite school admissions has a better than 5% chance, and knows it. In fact, I suspect that the student knows it from the outset–i.e., as a high-school freshman, the student knows that if he/she puts forth that amount of effort, the chances are better than 5%.</p>
<p>So when I suggested that someone with a true 5% chance might not put forward his/her best effort in the application itself, I did not have that group of students in mind. This is assuming that the students have some clue about what it actually takes to get into Harvard, so that the “grooming” is effective, and not misplaced.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for Beliavsky, but I doubt that he/she had in mind the students who have devoted their high school years to becoming excellent candidates for top school admission–they would not wind up with a 3% chance.</p>
<h2>This is fascinating to me because I never really thought about it in exactly these terms. However, years ago when my kids were applying there was a general sense in our social circle that to have “a chance” at certain schools, the BWR middle class student needed to be at the very top of the applicant pool stat wise (top couple of percent) and that it was possible to increase odds at certain schools by declaring certain majors, as vicariousparent suggested upthread. I don’t think anyone of my acquaintance would have encouraged a child to apply to schools where they really believed there was less than a 10% chance for that child. </h2>
<p>completely off topic:
vicariousparent- if you are still reading and because I am really curious. grad school, law, or something else? :)</p>
<p>There’s that arrogance/entitlement again–I am destined for an elite school, I have done everything right, I come from the right high school, and thus my chances of getting in are better than those of the other 95% of students applying. I know NUMEROUS kids with this attitude who have followed the rules, had every advantage, and still been flat-out rejected.</p>
But the thing is, there are some students that are truly exceptional, for whom they’ve done everything right and based on my (limited) observations from the results of my better than average high school, they do tend to get into the schools with <10% admission rates at a much greater frequency than the “average” academically excellent student. The valedictorian of my high school had perfect stats, took upper division math at a well known research university (and made only As in the classes), participated in a myriad of activities, and achieved some regional awards. In his case his odds were far greater than 5% and he (and everyone else at my school) knew it. He ended up being accepted to almost every school he applied to and is happily studying math at one of the HYP schools.</p>
<p>That’s in stark contrast to the salutatorian of my high school who was an outstanding student, but not particularly “exceptional”. She and everyone else knew that she would almost certainly be rejected from the Ivies and quasi Ivies (she was), and is now gladly getting her butt kicked at one of the two California state flagships. </p>
<p>These observations mirror what I’ve seen in past years. The truly exceptional students at my high school were accepted to an Ivy or quasi Ivy. The very strong, but not jaw droppingly amazing ones, are now doing well at UCSD, UC Berkeley, or UCLA.</p>
<p>It looks as if comments are highlighting different types of probabilities.</p>
<p>If 5% of the entire pool of applicants are accepted, we’re looking at a simple probability. Comparing oneself to the entire set, you have a 1 in 20 chance of being “lucky.”</p>
<p>However, if your application makes the first cut, then your odds of acceptance improve. Your application is in a smaller pool. More than 5% of this smaller group will be accepted.</p>
<p>I believe QuantMech’s original question had to do with this type of conditional probability, what “applicant type” for a particular institution might create a better conditional probability.</p>
<p>I would think that most applicants realize the odds of acceptance at the outset is tiny, given a 5% rate. And, I hope that even the most stellar appearing applicants realize that they have a chance but nothing close to a guarantee, unless they’re a development case.</p>
I mentioned analyzing the posted Stanford RD decisions earlier. About half of the rejected posters were valedictorians with a 4.0 UW. The rejected posters had a much higher median class rank that the accepted students, a higher median GPA, a higher median course rigor + number of AP classes, and a higher median SAT score. I’d expect many of this group to be the ones who thought they had followed all the rules and had an excellent chance of being accepted. Instead the rejections appeared to more related to not having something unique that really made them stand out from the thousands of other valedictorian applications like impressive awards or ECs, or overcoming a unique disadvantage. The variable that had the highest correlation with acceptance was awards/ECs that were impressive on a state/national level rather than class rank, going to a top high school, or similar.</p>
<p>Re: The “right high school”
Magnet schools and academically rigorous private schools with selective admissions, as well as public schools with great reputation often located in expensive neighborhoods where parents pay big bucks for shabby homes? Yes, the top grades or top kids there do have more credibility to AOs. I don’t think this is “arrogance” or “entitlement”. It’s incredibly hard work to come out of the big pond as a big fish. There are certainly other ways to stand out but to acknowledge the fact that some high schools have a higher concentration of highly motivated, intelligent and hard-working students is not “arrogance” or “entitlement”.</p>
<p>Thanks for the paper and for the rest of your message. The paper is co-authored by Avery, also a co-author of the “Early Admissions Game” book I mentioned. I am glad that some posters on this forum understand what it means to make rational forecasts and decisions based on data.</p>
<p>It seems to me that there is a difference between thinking that one is “destined” for Harvard, and thinking that one’s odds are better than 5%.</p>
<p>I doubt that the numerous students who thought that they had good odds of admission, but were rejected (mentioned by sally305 in post #108) went to Boston Latin School.</p>
<p>I have no brief for Boston Latin School. I think it is possible that marite’s son went there, but aside from that, I don’t know anyone who went there (as far as I know). But if 25 of their students go to Harvard each year, on average, then I think it’s evident that a top student at Boston Latin School has better than 5% odds of admission.</p>
<p>At some point, the comment from the Walter Brennan western, “No brag, just fact,” has to become operational. I don’t see any arrogance in a very top student from Boston Latin thinking his/her odds at Harvard are pretty high. Thinking that Harvard <em>must</em> take him/her, or that Harvard will <em>certainly</em> take him/her–well, that could be erroneous. But thinking that his/her odds are 5%–that seems unrealistic.</p>
<p>Whenhen- the vehicle is the application package. Not exactly that the kid had high standing and was seen in his hs context as exceptional. He has to self-present well. Had he not, your sal could have been the one everyone was crying about: why did SHE get in and he didn’t?</p>
<p>And, Benley, each kid is charged with presenting himself well. Each app review, ime, focuses on that kid. It’s disappointing when the kid doesn’t self-present well, despite the creds offered by his stats and the high school.</p>
<p>And, many magnets are not in great neighborhoods. When you look behind the superficial stats about the top performing kids, the AP scores or math champs, you often find a startling number who don’t graduate or don’t head off to “4 year institutions.”</p>
<p>Imagine someone offered you a choice of either $10 if the valedictorian of Boston Latin applies to Harvard next year regardless of them being accepted or rejected or $100 if the valedictorian of Boston Latin is accepted to Harvard next year [we assume you get paid when the valedictorian of Boston Latin receives their decision]. Wouldn’t you take the latter option? And wouldn’t that imply you think the valedictorian of Boston Latin odds of being accepted to Harvard conditional on them applying is >=10%?</p>
<p>Maybe the top students from Boston Latin have only 7% chances at Princeton. Perhaps the people at Princeton think, “If this Boston Latin student is really good, Harvard will take him/her, and he/she will certainly go to Harvard. This student hasn’t demonstrated an overriding interest in Princeton.” So perhaps the student’s odds at Princeton are even worse than the raw odds. (I doubt that somewhat, but I haven’t looked at the acceptance rate of Boston Latin applicants at Princeton.)</p>
<p>Really? My son also applied to NU within a year or two of your son and I regarded NU as a good “match” school for him academically and I told him so. (He was a “reach” for the music school * and I told him so*. Given my son’s stats I also recommended Rice and USC as “safety schools” to him. I can’t believe that you thought that your son was so average to the student body of NU that you thought that he really didn’t have a better than 18% chance of getting in (disregarding the double legacy because I have little experience with NU legacy issue). Maybe my son had better stats than your son, I don’t know, but it is not my impression that your son was marginal (and he was a double legacy). I can understand tempering any possible hubris or expectation of admission on the off-chance that he didn’t get in, but to tell him that he has an 82% chance of rejection seems almost cruel.</p>
<p>Maybe you are the eternal pessimist (or distantly related to Dolorous Edd).</p>
<p>lookingforward, thanks for your correction on my statement about magnet schools. I’m not very familiar with them, to be honest (although I do know magnet schools don’t have to be in very good neighborhoods. They select students from certain designated areas based on tests). In my little bubble, magnet school refers to TJ or those NYC big names. You get my point though. And I agree a well presented application can be a boost, and a very poorly done one could “ruin” otherwise fairly competitive stats.</p>
You get my point though. And I agree a well presented application can be a boost, and a very poorly done one could “ruin” otherwise fairly competitive stats.</p>