<p>I was told by a teacher that every kid in the '08 class who applied to a certain selective West Coast school was rejected because that same school had taken so many kids each of the past two years. Sounds like rationalization to me, but it is true they have taken several of our kids in the past.</p>
<p>WDYT?</p>
<p>That's BS. Say that Einstein and Newton are one year apart and go to the same school. Newton's one year older than Einstein and got into his first choice school (Stanford, probably!), and a lot of other kids from his class got in as well. Then the next year, Stanford decides to cap the admissions from their high school at 0 people, since they took too many people last year. Poor Einstein, who also had Stanford as his first choice school, has to go to his second-choice school, and sadly packs his bags for Princeton.</p>
<p>I would say that it is possible. It is also possible that there is some other reason. You'll never know, unless the college tells why ... and that is very unlikely.</p>
<p>Some things will always remain a mystery.</p>
<p>Colleges claim that every applicant is competing with the entire applicant pool, not with others from their school. Many, including me, don't believe it.</p>
<p>But competing against prior year applicants from one's own school? I highly doubt it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Some things will always remain a mystery.
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</p>
<p>Like "Whip and Chill" dessert. Whatever happened to Whip and Chill? I used to love that stuff. Turned around one day-no more Whip and no more Chill. I wonder if it had asbestos in it? ;)</p>
<p>If anything, it helps if college is familiar with the school, and had numerous students accepted in the past (unless, of course, they all flunked out after a semester or something...)</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, you are in luck. Check out vermontcountrystore.com for Whip and Chill. Enjoy.</p>
<p>I think it is possible that students from a particular school who did not perform well, did not return after freshman year, etc could affect the acceptance of future students from that school.</p>
<p>Is there any area this forum does NOT cover? Whip and Chill covers everything.</p>
<p>^^^I'm finding that CC covers everything. It's a site that is becoming one stop shopping for all you need to know or ever wanted to know! </p>
<p>:D :D :D</p>
<p>I grew up in a pretty competitive high school that was about 45 minutes outside of Philly. I've known people to go to a number of the other large Ivies and they've been accepted all over, but nobody's ever been accepted to U. Penn.</p>
<p>One of my D's friends broke the "our high school never gets into Tufts" jinx today. Yay!!!</p>
<p>Well, for starters, Einstein would NEVER get into college today because he would not have had the grades, EC's, etc. In fact, I am not sure he was even well regarded in college when he was there or he probably would not have been working as a clerk in the patent office (or wherever he worked as he figured out the theory of relativity, etc.) To get into schools today, a student must be very conformist and willing and able to follow all of the rules, so someone who thinks outside of the box would have a more difficult time getting a foot in the door of a top university. If someone with the equivalent of Einstein put his stats up here, he would be laughed out of the forum. Kind of like the writing part of the SAT, where they submitted Shakespeare, Hemingway, and other authors to the readers who gave them terrible scores.</p>
<p>It's the students not the school.</p>
<p>I wouldn't completely rule it out as a possibility. LAst year we had record IVY/top level acceptances, this year same schools same caliber kids, not looking as good. 2008 is resembling our 2006 class</p>
<p>@Bessie: Agreed. Einstein hardly ever went to class when he was in college (he was also quite the ladies' man), so much so, that when he graduated, the best job he could get was at a patent office because none of his professors would give him recommendations. He also had terrible technical math skills (obviously, he focused on the big picture).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, for starters, Einstein would NEVER get into college today because he would not have had the grades, EC's, etc. In fact, I am not sure he was even well regarded in college when he was there or he probably would not have been working as a clerk in the patent office (or wherever he worked as he figured out the theory of relativity, etc.) To get into schools today, a student must be very conformist and willing and able to follow all of the rules, so someone who thinks outside of the box would have a more difficult time getting a foot in the door of a top university. If someone with the equivalent of Einstein put his stats up here, he would be laughed out of the forum. Kind of like the writing part of the SAT, where they submitted Shakespeare, Hemingway, and other authors to the readers who gave them terrible scores.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You're completely correct, Bessie. Here's a quote:</p>
<p>". . . I worked most of the time in the physical laboratory [at the Polytechnic Institute of Zürich], fascinated by the direct contact with experience. The balance of the time I used in the main in order to study at home the works of Kirchoff, Helmholtz, Hertz, etc. . . . In [physics], however, I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect [upon me] that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year. In justice I must add, moreover, that in Switzerland we had to suffer far less under such coercion, which smothers every truly scientific impulse, than is the case in many another locality. There were altogether only two examinations; aside from these, one could just about do as one pleased. This was especially the case if one had a friend, as did I, who attended the lectures regularly and who worked over their content conscientiously. This gave one freedom in the choice of pursuits until a few months before the examination, a freedom which I enjoyed to a great extent and have gladly taken into the bargain the bad conscience connected with it as by far the lesser evil. It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly."</p>
<p>I like the last three sentences especially. Einstein is so inspirational. Almost makes me want to drop out and pursue my interests by myself.</p>
<p>My thought is that:</p>
<p>1) The kids who went to the school didn't perform well (I doubt that) and, therefore, the school quit taking them; or</p>
<p>2) Too few of the kids accepted opted for other schools, and this school was tired of being burned. Isn't that a possibility? I spoke to one of the boys who got accepted at the school two years ago, and he said, "I'll go, if I can figure out how to pay for it." Maybe these high-achieving kids get into these places OOS and then realize it's not a financial reality??</p>
<p>Youdon'tsay, I would necessarily be surprised at either of your scenarios. I don't think it's as simple as "we took too many last year" but it may be something about their performance.</p>
<p>I've seen it happen in reverse - there are a few top colleges who take a lot of kids from d's high school, because they have found those kids so well prepared that they excel at the college. The high school's philosophy tends to mesh with the college's, so the kids are a pretty good "fit". I've heard admissions people say, "Oh, we love kids from X high school. They do really well here." So I would not be surprised if the converse is also true.</p>
<p>The one other thing to consider is the issue that many schools have had lately with yield. A lot of top tier schoos (the ones just below the Ivies) l in the past 2 to 3 years have seen their yields increase dramatically. At my d's college, for example, they accepted the same number of kids for the class of 2010 as they did for the class of 2009. But their yield went up dramatically, so they ended up with a class that was about 20% bigger than they wanted. This affected everything from class offerings and class size to, most obviously, housing, with forced triples and lounges turned into forced quads or quints. So for the class of 2011 (my d's class), they accepted 15% fewer students to account for the increase in yield, and made their wait list a bit longer in case 2010 was a fluke. It wasn't. They still ended up with a higher yield than anticipated, and ended up with forced triples (no forced quads, though), and didn't even reach their wait list.</p>
<p>As I understand it, the class of 2012 is even larger in number of kids applying to college than was the class of 2011. So these kids, who might have gotten in 2 years ago, may not have gotten in because the school is accepting many fewer students across the board.</p>
<p>I don't know whether the scenario you're describing is correct, but I do know that kids from high schools with many qualified applicants (magnet schools, top suburban high schools, etc.) feel that they're competing with each other for admission to the top schools even more than they are competing with the total applicant pool.</p>
<p>And there may be some basis for this belief.</p>
<p>When my daughter and I visited Columbia University, a student raised his hand during the information session and asked "Do you have a limit on the number of students you take from a particular high school?" The answer was, "Not really, but we're certainly not going to take 100 people from Stuyvesant."</p>
<p>Given that there are at least 100 people each year at Stuyvesant who would be reasonable candidates for Columbia, I would say that this indicates that there are indeed limits, but that admissions officers consider the limits to be reasonable ones. (Also, given the color that the questioner's face turned after receiving this answer, I would say that he came from Stuyvesant.)</p>