<p>The admissions officers at tops schools probably don’t feel too bad. Most of the students they reject are very talented and can get big merit scholarships elsewhere. </p>
<p>@Pizzagirl Well, I disagree. It’s not only the rankings. So many admissions blogs and newsletters begin by saying “This year, we had the lowest acceptance rate in our history!” Translation: “We rejected more students than ever before and we are proud of it! Forget the fact that they paid $75 to apply and spent hours writing essays. This year, we have 95% of people a big fat NO! :D”</p>
<p>
I think it’s important to consider the source of the “quote” as it’s most often the student newspaper reporting on the results as opposed to a member of the admissions committee.
In other cases, I suspect the presence of the exclamation point has more to do with successfully completing the daunting process than it does with pride over the numbers they turned away.</p>
<p>The “we had the lowest accept rate in history” will be repeated next year and the next. It’s just a fact of more and more apps chasing a fixed no. of seats. While some schools are looking to shrink their admit rate (cynically so), others (MIT & Yale, e.g.) are shrinking their marketing outreach in order to lessen the numbers of unrealistic applicants.</p>
<p>So it’s not universal and no one really associated with top school admissions really celebrates the tiny admit rate. That’s crazy. To your first question- - that’s bonkers too, IMHO. It’s a job – you admit/sift/hire for your org – the fact that it gets down to coin flips with some doesn’t matter. I fully know that 95% of applicants to my alma mater (and among those I interview) will be rejected. That doesn’t affect me emotionally one bit. Why/ Because these are generally amazing kids who will have great futures.</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be a coin flip. Resourceful administrators can always figure out if the school needs one more or one less flute player this year.</p>
<p>I do interviews. I agree with @T26E4. I am sorta of vested in the kids I interview and feel bad when the ones I enthusiastically recommend don’t get accepted. However, my recommendation is just one piece of the puzzle so I don’t get depressed over it. </p>
<p>Calicash…I’m not sure your point. It isn’t the fault of the admissions staff that a gazzillion students apply for admission and they can accept only a certain number. </p>
<p>I know admissions and financial aid folks at a few schools. They really like their jobs. </p>
<p>And these are not personal friends who they can’t invite to their daughter’s wedding. These are applicants for colleges that have historically has far more…FAR more applicants than available seats.</p>
<p>It is what it is. These adcoms all took their jobs knowing what they would entail.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I see your point…at all.</p>
<p>@Tperry1982 Would your emotions change if you were interviewing thousands of students and thousands of them get rejected? I just imagined that the the repeated rejections would take a toll</p>
<p>But you know that there are only X seats. That’s what it is. You know that you can’t possibly admit every “deserving” student. But you also know those deserving students are also going to wind up in great places - just different great places. </p>
<p>There is nothing to be “upset over” that the student who really wanted to go to Harvard wound up at Duke or CMU. Maybe his dream was kind of based on nothing in the first place other than some misguided notion that Harvard was going to be ohhhhhhhhhh soooooo much more amazing than Duke or Cornell, which is really rather silly when they are pretty much six of one, half a dozen of the other at that level. That doesn’t mean it won’t be immediately hurtful for the <em>student</em> who at 17 yo doesn’t have that perspective, but adults should, can and do have that perspective.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yale is building 2 new residential colleges colleges that will lead to 200 more admissions per year. The project was halted for a few years for financial reasons but now is back on track. </p>
<p><a href=“http://news.yale.edu/2014/06/03/construction-new-residential-colleges-moving-forward-thanks-fundraising-efforts:”>http://news.yale.edu/2014/06/03/construction-new-residential-colleges-moving-forward-thanks-fundraising-efforts:</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I feel like from attending information sessions at top colleges that they are giving the message that most won’t be accepted and how tough the criteria are. They sort of wrap it in a presentation that is enthusiastic about their college, but the message is there if you are listening carefully. I don’t think it comes across in their written marketing materials, but I have been surprised at how often the info sessions tell it more plainly. Tons of students apply to those schools that have NO chance of acceptance, and some of them are getting bad advice from parents, GC, friends, etc. Because they are a big fish in their little pool, those well-meaning people in their lives assume they will be accepted into the top colleges. That also is not the fault of the admissions staff… Also, the info on accepted students is there for all students and parents to find in the Common Data set if they look.</p>
<p>intparent said:
“Tons of students apply to those schools that have NO chance of acceptance, and some of them are getting bad advice from parents, GC, friends, etc. Because they are a big fish in their little pool, those well-meaning people in their lives assume they will be accepted into the top colleges. That also is not the fault of the admissions staff… Also, the info on accepted students is there for all students and parents to find in the Common Data set if they look.”</p>
<p>Totally. I sometimes wonder if some people have lost the ability to imagine (who could be better than the S or D or the family’s fave local “star”). This is such an embarrassingly provincial view for a world now connected to information sources at the touch of a scroll-pad. CDS’s indeed, intparent. Available for all to view. Results threads on CC are also quite helpful. Often, students are amazingly revealing there, and patterns emerge.</p>
<p>Even the loathed “Chances” threads can be helpful in that regard if parents with a lot of admissions experience are responding. :)</p>
<p>And PG said,
“Maybe his dream was kind of based on nothing in the first place other than some misguided notion that Harvard was going to be ohhhhhhhhhh soooooo much more amazing than Duke or Cornell, which is really rather silly when they are pretty much six of one, half a dozen of the other at that level. That doesn’t mean it won’t be immediately hurtful for the <em>student</em> who at 17 yo doesn’t have that perspective, but adults should, can and do have that perspective.”</p>
<p>Yes. Parents are tasked with acquiring that perspective, even if they don’t have it initially. That’s one of the many jobs of a parent: to provide accurately guiding information to a S or D, not to bring a sense of desperation about the definition of Opportunity. However, it’s not about “much more amazing” in terms of quality of education, mostly. It’s supposedly Exclusive Career Opportunity at an Ivy (any Ivy, basically) vs. U’s not among those 8 + 2 more. Absurd, of course. Assumptions based on ignorance do not serve a S or D well, especially if the admissions results are zero acceptances based on over-reaches and fueled by hysteria and demands.</p>
<p>A few thoughts:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Some(/many?) schools do try to lower their admit rate, but that’s because not only USN and other rankings care but many applicants/students/alums seem to judge the quality/rank/prestige of colleges by their admit rate (which is utterly stupid, BTW; I just have to run through the example of UMich vs. UNC to illustrate why). Just drop in on one of those inane discussions that insesure Ivy Leaguers have where inevitably so-and-so tries to show that Ivy A is superior to Ivy B because Ivy A has a lower admit rate.</p></li>
<li><p>Telling someone that they can’t attend college A is no where as traumatic as telling someone that they only have 6 months left to live. It isn’t even as bad as telling someone unemployed that they’re not getting the job. You’ll gave some perspective when you get older.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>@PurpleTitan Thank you for your perspective. I do understand that comparing one rejection to one diagnosis of cancer is hardly similar. But I guess I was comparing the thousands of rejections that an admissions officer sends out and how the sheer amount of rejections can take a toll. Especially wen you just consider the connotations that come with the word rejected and how for many students, they’ve lived their whole lives to get into that one school.</p>
<p>The thing is, adcoms being adults, understand that being rejected to a college just isn’t a big deal, in the grand scheme of things, even if it (or being rejected by a member of the opposite sex) seems so to a teenager.</p>
<p>So no, I doubt it takes any toll on them.</p>
<p>“Especially wen you just consider the connotations that come with the word rejected and how for many students, they’ve lived their whole lives to get into that one school.”</p>
<p>But that’s precisely the point, Calicash. The student who has “lived their whole life to get into that one school” will ultimately be better off understanding that no one school holds The Magic Key to success - that success is dependent on the individual, not on the college they attend. </p>
<p>If anything, I suspect that desperation (“I will do ANYTHING to get into your school! It’s been my dream since I was in diapers!”) is a turn-off to adcoms, not a turn-on… </p>
<p>It just isn’t smart to think that way. The students who think that way should have adults who advise them otherwise, and who gently remind them that there are a lot of schools out there - not just one Uber Dream School which holds all the answers. It’s great to want a school - and I understand wanting it. But to “live your whole life” basing your happiness off that one goal isn’t healthy - any more than it is healthy for me to live my life assuming that I will one day win the lottery or marry George Clooney. (OK, he’s married now, but you get the idea.)</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl - Hollywood marriages always fail. You still have hope to be the next Mrs. Clooney. </p>
<p>I think when you come up through your school system as “top dog” it’s really easy to see the stratification as a microcosm for the world at large - rather than acknowledge that every high school has a valedictorian, a three season varsity athlete, a class president, etc - and that they all have similar ambitions and that those ambitions (Ivies, for instance) do not have enough seats for everyone. Moreover, college admissions is partially small scale competition (class rank, course rigor, etc) and partially large scale competition which is far more difficult to truly conceptualize. </p>
<p>Once more…the adcoms don’t personally send rejection letters to the students who are denied admission. The letters are computer generated by the college. I have to imagine that once the adcoms make a decision, they move on. It’s not like they are personal friends with these applicants.</p>
<p>Sure, I imagine there are some times when an adcom would really like to see a particular applicant be accepted, and they are not. But really…cause for depression on the job? I doubt it.</p>
<p>Calicash, I honestly believe you are terribly over analyzing this adcoms situation. It is their job.</p>