<p>Sooz, I do know one thing- if you have to apply to 10 schools where you fit in the middle (academically) in order to get one or two acceptances, its not worth it. My s had 10 letters, awards in two sports, music, academics, and held offices every year. Hes a great kid and hes loving where hes at right now. So far its been easy for him academically and socially so I cant complain.</p>
<p>I just want to add that when people estimate their chances at a school and see that their basic "stats" are above the average or even above 75% of accepted students, they have to realize that not everyone whose stats are at the high end for that school will be admitted. For instance, some schools outline percentage of kids admitted who had certain SAT scores, or ranks, for example. If you look at such a chart, you'd see that kids with SATs or class rank that are on the high end of accepted students are admitted at a higher rate than those with stats on the lower end of accepted students, but still not everyone who has stats on the higher end of the range get in. So, it is not good to expect to get in just because one's stats are above 75% of those admitted. </p>
<p>Let's say a school has a 20% admit rate. The admit rate for VALS could be as high as 49%, which are better odds than in general. But that leaves lots of vals still rejected. Their odds were better but not a sure thing by far. Also, when you compare kids, like many people like to do (ie., "so and so got in over my kid but had lower stats!"), it does not take into account the MANY factors that go into college admissions. IT is not just a numbers game unless some huge university that goes more by numbers. Nobody but the adcoms has the essays, recs, interviews, resume, etc. all in hand and nobody else has the entire applicant pool and needs of the college in hand either. It is easy to play arm chair adcom but these little lists of basic stats do not tell the whole story. It isn't so black and white. It can even mean that one adcom was tired when he/she read the app, or wasn't into robotics but loved the poet types and maybe the school has an overabundence of kids who also play clarinet, are on tennis team, wants to do pre-med, and come from the same region and have the same skin color and on and on.</p>
<p>I am definitely learning to appreciate you, curmudgeon (post 550). I guess it's an acquired taste? :)</p>
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<blockquote> <p>I'm still trying to figure out how he didn't get into Yale and Princeton. What do you think? Just luck of the draw of outstanding applicants?>></p> </blockquote>
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<p>These two colleges REJECT about 90% of their applicants. In that 90% there are clearly many many students with the "stuff" to succeed at these schools. They can't accept all of students who are outstanding who apply. Sorry...but I do still believe it IS the luck of the draw. You just don't know what makes them accept one outstanding candidate over the other. These schools could enroll each class several times over with well qualified candidates. There just aren't enough places...thus..."lottery school" designation. Look...these schools also reject a significant number of students with perfect or close to perfect SAT scores.</p>
<p>Doubleplay, you don't have to have ten schools where you fit in the middle. My kids had 8 schools each. For D1, some were reaches (reaches only because they were reaches for anyone due to the low admit rates but her stats were in the right ballpark), some matches and some safeties. Like your son, they cared about being in schools that were challenging enough as they crave challenge. Their safeties were not easy schools but simply easier to get into in terms of odds. </p>
<p>D2 was in a specialized situation. ALL 8 of her schools were REACHES. Now, I know you're gonna say, what? that is so unbalanced! I wouldn't ever recommend this to an applicant. However, she was applying to BFA programs in musical theater and the admit rate at each school ranged anywhere from 2%-10%, so they had to be considered reaches. Besides academics (which were not a reach for her at the schools), there was an audition involving three skills (singing, dancing, and acting) to get in. A stressful set of odds? You bet. I prayed she could get into at least one but I also knew that she was a very appropriate candidate and thus felt that it was pretty likely at least one would come through and in fact, most of them did. But that assessment is part of it. The list must be appropriate. One need not have a LONG list. My kids had 8 schools on their list. Considering both were applying to schools that had low admit rates (other kid had some top schools, including Ivies), on their list, they did need to have 8, we felt. But that is not like some kids who have 15! :D</p>
<p>thumper, thanks, you expressed it better than I did.</p>
<p>Doubleplay, just cause I hope I was not misunderstood, I do not DOUBT for one minute that your son is a GREAT kid who has many accomplishments. I have kids like that myself :D. But when they didn't get into a school, I NEVER questioned if they didn't have the "right stuff." I knew they did but I just knew that the odds were slim going into it at particular schools and that being rejected didn't mean the other kids who got in were better! We just did not EXPECT the acceptances. </p>
<p>Also, I know many kids, including my own, where they got into X but not Y and then some other kid got into Y but not X, and so go figure. With such low admit rates, this is bound to happen. Haven't you seen kids who got into a place like Harvard but then got rejected at Georgetown, as just an example? </p>
<p>I even know kids in the TOP BFA programs in the country who were rejected at some of the programs considered a tier or two down. It happens. It is part of this crazy selective process. Some luck is involved. I still maintain that those who have the qualifications will get in some place but just may not be able to pinpoint which place will be the luck of the draw. It isn't ALL luck. You have to have the "goods" but then some unpredictable factors will come into play. Some you can't control and that is the part that is hard on parents. Maybe there are too many kids from your region. Maybe there are too many tuba players or too many field hockey players at that school. Too many kids who want to major in English. Maybe in the case of my D2, too many brown haired girls who belt when they sing and they have enough of those and are looking for more ingenue sopranos with blond hair! There are factors beyond your control. You can only do your best at what you do, apply to a balanced list of realistic schools that fit what you want in a college and be happy. There is far more than one school where a kid can thrive and be happy.</p>
<p>soozievt: I always pictured your daughters as blondes!</p>
<p>Hereshoping, nope they both have brown hair! Medium shade. So do I. No blondes in my family.</p>
<p>It is interesting how we envision complete strangers on the internet isn't it!</p>
<p>"Sorry...but I do still believe it IS the luck of the draw. You just don't know what makes them accept one outstanding candidate over the other. These schools could enroll each class several times over with well qualified candidates. There just aren't enough places...thus..."lottery school" designation."</p>
<p>There are two components in the above statement, and one is not necessarily correct. </p>
<p>Yes, WE don't know what makes them accept one candidate over another. Yes, the statistics are there for everyone to see and interpret. Single digit acceptances and rejections of 19 out of 20 candidates in the regular decision round are brutal. </p>
<p>However, the implication that the schools DO NOT KNOW how to select their students is easily debunked by the success of the students at the most selective schools. Schools are selecting the students according to THEIR criteria, and who are we exactly to label the process a mere ... lottery, especially a random one? Brutal and even unfair? Yes! Random? No!</p>
<p>Princeton and Yale did not place thousands of names of potential candidates in a giant drum and picked a few at random. They had access to something we will never have: all the files filled with information, recommendations, and tests scores. Much better than any of us, they have the tools to weigh, measure, and qualify students from similar schools and districts. In this case, both Princeton and Yale accepted dozens of students from the Fairfax area. </p>
<p>We will never know why they selected Student B over Student J, but THE SCHOOLS sure know why, and it was most definitely because of what is in the application files of the students. Because of their ability to see ALL the files, they, better than anyone else, can measure the vailidity and strength of the test scores, appreciate the difference between THE school valedictorian and one of 41, the difference between a 99% percentile SAT and much lesser ones, and many other elements. </p>
<p>If we are so worried about the personal implications of the opinions stated in this thread, maybe we could also consider that dismissing the process of admission at Princeton and Yale as a pure lottery, does also diminish and tarnish the accomplishments and merits of the student who were accepted.</p>
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Very good explanation, Xiggi. You always have a terrific way of analyzing the problem and stating it clearly. What a guy!</p>
<p>By the way, the school that disappointed my son by waitlisting him is an excellent school, but not what I thought was a good fit for him. I'm sure the admissions people knew that. He was clearly qualified, or they would have just rejected him.</p>
<p>XIGGI, VERY WELL PUT. It is so true. WE are not on the admissions committee, haven't seen the entire application or context of it, haven't seen the entire applicant pool, do not know the needs of the school or the class they are building, and so on. I think these schools know what they are doing. On top of that, there is subjectivity involved and not an exact science here. It isn't totally random, you are right. Others are also right that there are far more qualified kids who are "good enough" than they can admit and so they have to pick and choose. It is too hard to predict just which ones they will pick sometimes. One equally selective school might pick a kid and the next college doesn't. </p>
<p>It surely is not a pure lottery. Like you say, to think it is that, would diminish the selected ones. But there is some unpredicatability and lots of chance involved. And so one can be qualified, even over qualified or more qualified than many other applicants, and still not get in. Also, there are waitlists. So, for example, I have a kid who was waitlisted at Princeton, which wasn't even her first, second or third choice school, though she liked it. I have to suppose she was qualified but she didn't make the first grouping but got onto a fairly short list of those they were willing to take if slots opened depending on yield. So, this can also happen. I think the more one knows going into such a process, the less surprising it is and the more realistic one can be and the less major disappointment one may have if they understand how it can work or end up. My kids were never upset with a rejection or waitlist. They knew it was quite possible given the odds. I don't think they saw anything unfair about any of it. </p>
<p>HH: well, at least I get to be a blond SOME place! :D</p>
<p>I also think sometimes, and this is easy to do when caught up in the college admissions frenzy, people forget that most kids end up happy at a college and can only attend one anyway. So, what does it matter if X or Y school didn't come through as long as they got into a college they liked and probably once the admissions angst is over, be happy at. It isn't a contest to rack up ribbons or medals. You just have to get into a school you like that fits what you want in a college. If you have a good list, and you make sure to explore many schools, rather than fall in love with one or have an Ivy or bust mentality (either situation), then usually a positive outcome results. You get into one or some...you liked many....ok, you had a few faves.....but you have a balanced list.....the rejections are forgotten...you go to Z school....you find you like it and the other schools are a distant memory.....you go on....you strive for your goals....you know success is more about the person than the school they attended....and you have a happy life. End of story! :D</p>
<p>C'mon, Xiggi. Did you really think that any of the posters here believe that highly selective colleges are overwhelmed by the task and don't know how to choose their freshman classes and thus are literally resorting to conducting a name-out-of-hat or ball-out-of-the-rolling-basket lottery? Please. Nobody envisions an actual lottery. The term lottery is shorthand for what Soozie aptly describes as the element of chance in the selection process. Obviously, the adcoms winnow through thousands of applications by making outright yes or no decisions which are not random, which most definitely do assign preference to one applicant over another based on qualifications. But at some point, when the committee has to say reject or waitlist (which recently has amounted to the same answer) one highly qualified candidate in order say yes to another, the element of chance is powerful enough that to acknowledge does not mean one is diminishing the accomplishments of the person selected. At some level of acceptance, someone did get lucky: an adcom advocate, an essay that spoke to a member of the adcom and that person was particularly persuasive with colleagues. Or the luck that one's particular set of gifts was the one a particular college was looking for as opposed to a different set of talents; acknowledging that element of chance, whether you call it a lottery or not, doesn't cast aspersions on the applicants who got in. IMO.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>However, the implication that the schools DO NOT KNOW how to select their students is easily debunked by the success of the students at the most selective schools. Schools are selecting the students according to THEIR criteria, and who are we exactly to label the process a mere ... lottery, especially a random one? >></p> </blockquote>
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<p>Xiggi, I think you are misinterpreting what I mean. My point is that there are many many (as you point out 19/20 students who are rejected at these schools. Students applying have no idea from the outset what the schools will be looking at when they are crafting their next freshman class. The colleges DO know! But the students really don't. We have a good friend whose kid had all the stats to be accepted to an Ivy. His top choice was the school that the previous Val (he was also val) from his school attended. He got flat out rejected. You have to wonder whether that school...when crafting the next class...didn't feel they needed to accept a val from the same rural school as the previous year. We can guess that these schools look for something that makes the accepted applicants "stand out" from the pack. But the reality is that they accept good students some of whom don't have that magic hook. When <em>I</em> say lottery, I mean it in the context that applying to these schools can never be a sure thing (well...unless maybe your are the offspring of the president of the US), just as buying a lottery ticket is no guarantee that you are going to win any money. FAR more people don't win the lottery than win. Far more people get rejected at the Ivies than get accepted. You are correct...the schools DO know what they are doing when they accept the students. Of course they do...and also...they have tons of students they COULD accept who would be equally successful every year. In most cases those are the kids who chose to apply to these schools.</p>
<p>"Princeton and Yale did not place thousands of names of potential candidates in a giant drum and picked a few at random."</p>
<p>While you're right of course, the Yale rep did tell us that after having eliminated the first round of easy rejects, they probably could have had just as good a class by putting the applications in a giant drum. (I think she actually said throwing them out the window and picking up however many they needed to fill up the class.)</p>
<p>Thumper, I understand your point, and especially the clarification. I did focus on the words "lottery" and "luck of the draw" and should have been clearer by reconnecting them to an earlier quotation which your post addressed ">>I'm still trying to figure out how he didn't get into Yale and Princeton. What do you think? Just luck of the draw of outstanding applicants?>></p>
<p>Maybe, we can agree on the use of the different term of "incredible odds" instead of "luck of the draw", altough I am glad to recognize that some candidates might require an enormous amount of luck to overcome the odds of an application that is not as competitive as others' at a particular school.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1521184,00.html?cnn=yes%5B/url%5D">http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1521184,00.html?cnn=yes</a> relates to this discussion a little. Article title: What's Good About the New SAT Test</p>
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<blockquote> <p>"incredible odds">></p> </blockquote>
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<p>8.9/100 (that was Yale this year) is really POOR odds...but OK...I'll agree to incredible odds.</p>