Would students be better off it there truly was a lottery for elite schools?
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/30/why-ive-stopped-doing-interviews-for-yale/#more-3665
Elite Admissions:Rejection feels less like turning down a first date than getting left at the altar.
That article was excellent, especially the part about the number of personal hoops elite colleges make you jump through to apply, and the hype that the details of those hoops matter (i.e. the enormous importance attached to the personal essay). Students are told that showing the college your truest self is what will get you in (and that might be true, but only if they happened to want whoever your truest self is).
I’m actually comfortable with the concept of random admissions among the students about whom random decisions are being made, but another aspect of the application schools should consider is to be more clear to themselves (and students) on what information they really need and use when they make their decisions. If the essay, description of why you want to go to the school, the third recommendation is being used to find a magical student every ten years, they should give it up, or ask it for it if they think it will help.
It is not random, but it can certainly look random from the outside, particularly with the limited view of applicants from one high school (and an incomplete view of each one).
Of course, there are also external factors, like how well each teacher writes recommendation letters, which is often not known to applicants and observers.
A thread about this was previously created, and deleted by the mods for forum protocol reasons according to @skieurope. I addressed some thoughts on the “non-randomness” of the process from an adcom’s perspective in another thread:
Isn’t that how it should be? Being insincere about who you really are might get you accepted to a school that’s not the best fit for you.
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That includes the five totally amazing kids I interviewed last year, none of whom got accepted.)
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I think this is the writer’s issue. He feels that his efforts were a total waste. Obviously, he interviewed more than 5 kids, so likely he’s thinking, "I spent XX afternoons/evenings talking to applicants, and not one got in…and Yale expects a repeat performance? "
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You may have heard this chestnut: “The hardest thing about getting a Yale degree is getting accepted in the first place.” For me, it rings true.
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Dozens of people have asked me, “Wow, how did you get into Yale?”
Not a single one has ever asked, “Wow, how did you manage Yale coursework?”
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I’m reminded of an experience several years ago. I was in Calif, sitting at a HS football game with some old friends. The friend sitting next to me had a freshman son at Yale, same age as my son, both premed. She was upset that her son never seemed to be studying or doing homework…he was partying a lot (and they were full pay). This was a total contrast from his high school years…he had a spectacular resume. His reply to his mom’s concerns was that he’d heard that XX% of students are given A’s. I don’t remember the %, but it was HIGH…high enough that it would be a not too subtle discouragement to hit the books.
Well, either that rumor isn’t true (or isn’t true for the premed prereqs), or he didn’t turn out to be one of the lucky XX%, because his GPA that semester turned out to be rather modest…hovering around 2.9.
According to my son’s interviewer for Yale, my son was his first interviewee ever to get in. This man is in his 60’s and has been conducting interviews for a long time.
I can’t speak to all classes, but in my son’s CS class last semester, you had to have a 96 or above to get an A. This would seem to support the theory that a certain percentage of students get A’s.
"hat article was excellent, especially the part about the number of personal hoops elite colleges make you jump through to apply, and the hype that the details of those hoops matter "
No elite college puts a gun to any applicant’s head and forces them to jump through hoops. These are CHOICES people make - if they want to play in that league, then that’s what’s required.
I’m sorry that in supposedly sophisticated regions of the country, they are still obsessed with a handful of schools believing those to be the keepers of ultimate life success, but that’s not the fault of the elite schools – that’s these people’s own narrow-minded view of things.
The game is very, very different when you have a smart kid and you say - let’s figure out where you can get an excellent education, as opposed to “how can I get into a handful of elite name-brand schools.” No one prevents any parent of a smart kid from shifting the game in that direction.
Students need to stop being in denial about their chances at schools w single digit admit rates.
^ Great post.
God forbid the smart kid actually thinks about what kind of environment would best suit him/her and what schools have specific programs of interest, instead of falling for reputation, rankings and prestige.
“Students need to stop being in denial about their chances at schools w single digit admit rates.”
Exactly. There’s an epidemic of kids who just can’t look at the fact that Harvard’s acceptance rate is 5% and that means … their chances of admission are 5%. Stare it in the face. 19 out of 20 chance of being rejected. So consider yourself as not getting in, and then rejoice if and when you do.
OK, so my kid is obviously bright, and we tried to support him in finding a place to matriculate wherein he would be with kids with whom he was comfortable, and would find fit, according to his interests, his quirkiness, his spirit and capacity. He did well, across the board, at acceptances to some (apparently) outrageously difficult places to be offered admittance.
We had no idea that all of his schools were considered reaches, and then fantastical ones for the very top. We were not told until 7 days before all applications were due, and it was too late, so we changed nothing.
Naivete of our situation aside, can there really be that many people whose children are among the top thinkers in their small swimming pool who ONLY see the top schools for their conferring of prestige? Aren’t parents aware of the health of their children, and just want what is going to be the best situation for said child?
For most of these kids, this is their first experience at failure.
However, it’s also their first experience at overcoming failure, which is more valuable than going to the elite school in the first place.
No need to soften the blow. Let it hurt! The more it hurts, the better. It hurts so good.
…but then sometimes love don’t feel like it should…
I guess. 
There are thousands of helicopter and tiger parents who equate admission to a prestigious university with success in life, and therefore “better” for their child irrespective of their children’s actual needs and fits.
For every “chance me” on CC for a kid who applies REA to Harvard because it has specific strengths and programs that fit them, there are at least 10 who apply because they have always “dreamed” of going to Harvard. There are also a ton of kids who realize that somewhere else is a better fit, but still apply because they can’t resist the lure of seeing whether they could get admitted.
“We had no idea that all of his schools were considered reaches, and then fantastical ones for the very top. We were not told until 7 days before all applications were due, and it was too late, so we changed nothing.”
Did you not look at the acceptance rates? They are all easily available on line.
And yes, renaissancedad is correct - there are plenty of kids who “always dreamed of going to Harvard” for no other reason that they once heard Harvard was really great and so therefore they dream of it. It’s a parent’s job to correct such thinking, and not to romanticize certain schools.
Of course a diploma is easy to get. Isnt getting a HS diploma even easier? It’s graduating top of your highly competitive class that is hard. Most of those getting into yale have done that plus more. But if you think graduating from Yale as a top student is easy, think again.
^ There are also hundres of posts on CC which start with “my parents want me to go to Harvard, but I’m not sure that’s realistic”, or something to that effect.
When I was a teenager I wanted a Corvette for my birthday, but my parents corrected that thinking…
Reaches for him.
Reaches as an industry-wide term for ‘most-will-not-get-into’ was actually not familiar to us. Nor the idea that one had to save the world in order to be seen as a viable candidate. We also did not get swept up into the swell of it all; not knowing that that is how it is done.
The idea that they were lottery schools, as some have termed them, did not seem true when we looked at who he was as a student. Thusly, we had no fear, and no one telling us that it was an impossible dream. Until his GC looked into Naviance and saw what he had clicked.
I told him, and the GC, that we were done, his essays written, and let the chips fall where they may.