<p>The number of acceptances is a lot more than 30% more. Only three of those colleges – and maybe not that many – have yields of 77% or more, which is what the average would have to be to support keeping acceptances to 130% of the beds available. Even recognizing that a certain number of those slots is going to go to large young men bound for the NFL or NBA (and many other athletes who will remain amateurs, at least technically), and maybe a dozen or so movie stars, there are plenty of slots in top colleges for great students, as long as (a) you do not remain narrow minded about which colleges are “top,” and (b) you aren’t terribly sensitive to how much they cost</p>
<p>Keep in mind, however, that, on average, the bottom quarter of those schools are hooked applicants (the Ivies, especially, bring in even more athletes than the DivI Ivy-equivalents both because they sponsor so many sports and because they have a higher attrition rate; without a scholarship as an inducement to keep playing, many Ivy athletes give up their sport after a few years to concentrate on studies and job-searching). To get in to Harvard, I think you almost need either a hook or some spectacular achievement to get in (or attend Harvard Extension School :)).</p>
<p>However, a kid who is 99th percentile in both test scores and GPA with some good (not spectacular) EC’s and works on their essays&rec’s <em>should</em> be able to get in to an Ivy/Ivy-equivalent/near-Ivy <em>if</em> they can manage to be full pay <em>and</em> they follow a smart application strategy (for example, ED to Northwestern, EA to UMich, & apps to all of Cal, UVa, Cornell, Georgetown/JHU, ND, and several others . . . maybe including UNC, UCLA, USC, NYU, and UW-Madison).</p>
<p>If that same kid’s application strategy is SCEA to one of HYPS and RD apps to some mixture of the the rest of the Ivies/Ivy-equivalents but no big state schools (which seems to be roughly the strategy of several kids every year), they’re setting themselves up for heartbreak.</p>
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<p>I don’t think you get any benefit at all from attending Harvard Extension School. It’s really treated separately and as a benefit to the general population in the Cambridge area. It’s Harvard’s way of giving back to the community.</p>
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<p>This is very interesting. My son will be one of those kids in 4 years with hardly any ECs and mediocre essays but likely with OK scores and GPA and unknown recs. Full pay will not be a problem anywhere. Very interesting strategy.</p>
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<p>Strange. The sense I get on the forum is closer to “parody of Nietzsche’s egotism and exceptionalism and of Kant’s moral stolidity” than to Whitman. </p>
<p>Would they have to commit herem to get to that land of milk and honey? That sounds too much like Ancient Near Eastern zealotry. We’re progressives, we’re radical, world-beating, secular, eudaemonia-seeking, restless and ceaseless, like the much-maligned-and-stereotyped Smithian capitalist, the snow in “The Dead” or (if you have a peculiarly mordant sense of irony) the beaters-on in the Gatsby: we can do better than that! Fierce equivocation and honeyed pertinacity are more realistic and not-at-all contradictory. Ideologies aside, who were the previous occupants of that land, and under what conditions were they expelled? If I were promised a land of milk and honey, I’d want assurance that no one would issue a riv against me some years down the road, whether out of moral rectitude and divine clout or…something else. Greed?–but then, history goes on, and the World Spirit (or YHWH, or Allah, or perhaps the Demiurge) will not be cowed by such things as “will” and “morality.” We should listen to Pozdnyshev when he says that negation is the best affirmation, because with so many stipulations and incongruities to the acquisition of that Canaan, even Whitman and Nietzsche might have been cowed out of their creative and life-affirming pretenses, and when Primo Levi wrote, channeling another great sufferer, that “all who are tortured remain tortured,” I doubt that he could have imagined such grief.</p>
<p>@AndreiTarkovsky: I was kidding. Attending Harvard Extension won’t help get you in to Harvard College, but you can actually graduate from Harvard Extension School with a Harvard University degree (but not a Harvard <em>College</em> degree, some people would note).</p>
<p>PurpleTitan, I didn’t know that. Very interesting.</p>
<p>Thank you for the strategy though for kids with poor ECs/essay/recs.</p>
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Not yet, but at several recent site visits, Yale seemed very eager to expand and improve it’s engineering departments. I suspect that strong and motivated engineering students could do very well there and draw some substantial funds to support their activities. I know some strong engineering students who would like to go there and do just that.</p>
<p>I was also very impressed by their support of undergraduate science. Apparently, 99% of Yale Pre-Meds gain medical school admission.</p>
<p>Yale has been working on that since it re-introduced engineering, a couple of decades ago. It has at least gotten to the point where undergraduate engineering majors (they claim about 260 of those) outnumber engineering faculty (59 ladder and another 30 adjunct). </p>
<p>Andrei, if your kid still has 4 years to go, why would he have “virtually no ECs”? </p>
<p>Midd 280/667
<a href=“Middlebury News and Announcements”>Middlebury News and Announcements;
<p>MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Middlebury College has offered 280 students early admission to the Class of 2019. Chosen from a pool of 667 applicants, the admitted students will represent about 40 percent of a class that is expected to total about 690. The College deferred 80 applicants, who will be considered for regular admission in the spring, and denied admission to 307 students. - See more at: <a href=“Middlebury News and Announcements”>Middlebury News and Announcements;
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<p>PG raised the questions about “hardly any ECs” which makes little sense if there are 3-4 years to find something --anything-- to be passionate about. Frankly, compounded with being full pay, that makes little sense. And, fwiw, what makes ZERO sense is the speculation about mediocre essays. Few students are natural-born great writers; many become very competent through dedicated editing and combining the efforts with attentive reading. A bit of encouragement will go a long way. That or investing a few bucks in hiring someone who can pave the right approach for you. </p>
<p>Sewanee, oh you mean Flannery O’Connor’s alma mater? I learned about Sewanee in Catholic girls school because we had to read Flannery, and I’m not even from the south. But I agree, the fact that international applicants and others ignore the elite LACS is at their peril. I went to one - Pomona – and every single one of my friends, myself included, not only got into the Ivy or public Ivy grad school of their choice, they’ve all had successful careers in a wide range of fields. Swarthmore, Pomona, Bowdoin, Williams, Wesleyan, Amherst, Carleton, Reed, Middlebury, Wellesley, the list of LACs that will catapult graduates into lives of success and prestige is long.</p>
<p>@lauriejgs the ED admits to the ivies from my child’s top prep school, were legacies and development cases. The school’s URMs and some of its 2300+SAT scorers got deferred. I take that to mean that un-rich, unconnected kids who have everything going on stand a better chance in RD and will get into several great schools including ivies.</p>
<p>@stw2sg, I hope you’re right. But I’m not optimistic given that the RD rates of admission are much lower than in ED. </p>
<p>@lauriejgs I know it sounds discouraging but remember that lots of the growth in application numbers are international students who are applying to 17-20 schools these days. Also, the ivy deferrals need to continue to express interest. </p>
<p>I think the entire system of early admission–especially ED–is insane. I’m not saying it’s not fabulous, as a student and as a college, to have an early and positive end to the trauma, but that it’s artificially difficult, in a year that’s already difficult, to decide by November 1 one’s absolute first choice, and one’s best strategic position, not to mention one’s best merit aid-financial aid-economic choice. It is no wonder to me that so many kids are unwilling to commit themselves to one college–why should they be, really?–but feel they must, nor that some kids feel inclined to game the system by applying to more than one ED school (see thread re: that topic). The fact is, the ED/EA system is designed to benefit the colleges, not the kids, who are given fewer choices and more pressure, since they know their chances are better ED than RD. The success of U Chicago as an unrestricted EA school is less due to its marketing than that it offers another option.</p>
<p>I always thought the whole application process was invented by aliens who believe a kid is born at age 14 to be dropped off at high school since they don’t want anyone to discuss ECs or accomplishments before a kid got to high school. May be this is to discourage kids in 7th and 8th grades from inventing cures for cancer or give virtuoso performances at Carnegie Hall before they get to high school.</p>
<p>But it looks like someone who has zero ECs before starting high school will make out like gangbusters in this scheme. 
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<p>Interesting multi-post discussion on the Ephblog re this year’s ED decisions at Williams. </p>
<p>Typically, only about 15-20 ED deferred get accepted RD. So at least for Williams, the deferred have a lower chance of RD admission than those who skipped ED and applied only RD. </p>
<p>SATs have dipped a tad, but still over 2100. Probably because of a renewed push to enroll URMs.</p>
<p>Reversing a many year trend, 20 more men–132 to 112–were admitted than woman. Going back at least to college class of 2012 always women>men except for 2012 when it was equal. Overall, it’s about 51 percent to 49 percent female to male, which is close the the U.S. ratio. </p>
<p>This whole ED/SCEA system is due in large part to USNews and other people attaching importance to a low acceptance rate/high yield rate, evidently believing that that is how you should rank/tier/judge colleges by.</p>
<p>Attach importance to criteria (acceptance rate/yield rate) that is gameable, and the players will inevitably start pursuing strategies that they believe will keep their acceptance rate low and yield rate high.</p>
<p>marysidney: It’s hard to come up with something wrong about unrestricted EA. Unlike ED or SCEA, it doesn’t obviously hurt kids or deprive them of choices and a chance to change their minds. You implicitly acknowledge that by speculating that Chicago’s success in generating EA applications is because it offers “another option.”</p>
<p>And yet, and yet . . . . I think the fact that Chicago clearly gave out way more than half its available acceptances to an EA pool that represented a third of its applicants sent a pretty negative, and stress-inducing, message to this year’s applicants. If you do the right thing in the wrong way, it’s not right.</p>