<p>I’m with poetgrl…I also believe over the long term, that hard work, talent and achievement will get results. I don’t measure results by a single application to college, a single audition for casting, etc. Most successful people have had some things go positively and have had to weather some disappointments along the way but their drive, determination, hard work and talent eventually paid off in the long run. </p>
<p>I recently had an experience with my nephew. He applied to colleges in a specialty area of the arts, which in some cases required an audition, but in any case, is quite competitive. He and his parents did not go about the process effectively, including an unrealistic college list. Unfortunately, he did not get in anywhere. I had offered to help them but they did it on their own. So, after this happened, they did want my offer of help. I guided my nephew in how to go about obtaining an internship in his field during his gap year, which he got on his own with my guidance (no connections). I advised him on this college selection, building his list, and every step of his college process, which was done completely differently than they did it the first time. He could not believe how much work was involved compared to what he had done the first time he tried. He thought I worked him to the bone. But, then, he got into all his colleges but one last year. He just wrote me as he is finishing up his freshmen year. He not only loves his program (which required artistic samples and interviews for admission) so much, but he won the award for the most promising student in his department! I shared with him how I hoped he had seen how hard work, along with picking oneself up after some things didn’t go well, were lessons to remember because this was a huge turn around for him to go from no acceptances, to lots of acceptances to being chosen as most promising student in his class. He is on his way.</p>
<p>When my kid goes to auditions in NYC, she knows the odds are most likely to not be cast and she cannot afford to get down when that happens as she expects it to and forges on. She also doesn’t wait around to be cast and creates job opportunities in her field in many facets of her field. So, with most successful people, there are times when things may not go positively but if they have inner drive and talent and work hard, they tend to go on to achieve great things.</p>
Better candidates on average, but I wonder what the average applicant stats are. I know at my school, a bunch of very unqualified students applied “because it’s Harvard,” or out of delusions. Of the several I knew, none had even broken 2100 and none had “hooks.”</p>
<p>My HS is the same HS that mathmom talks about. I was the one city HS so has kids of all intellectual shapes and sizes. But, that said, it sends lots of kids to top tier schools, then and now.</p>
<p>I hope that Rice kid was a baseball player! Great team!</p>
<p>Are there minimum required SAT, ACT, or SAT Subject Test scores?
Harvard does not have clearly defined, required minimum scores; however, the majority of students admitted to the College represent a range of scores from roughly 600 to 800 on each section of the SAT Reasoning Test as well as on the SAT Subject Tests. We regard test results as helpful indicators of academic ability and achievement when considered thoughtfully among many other factors.</p>
<p>Right, and if, as Dean Fitzsimmons says, the legacy candidates tend to be clustered near the higher end of the candidate pool, it stands to reason that they would be admitted in percentages higher than non-legacy candidates.</p>
<p>Not to say that legacies don’t get an actual boost. They do and the Dean says as much. But it takes that boost combined with a stronger applicant pool in the first place to account for the observed 30% acceptance rate.</p>
This certainly seems to be the case, at least if you look at the legacies who report being accepted and rejected here on CC. Indeed, don’t the numbers quoted up above somewhere suggest that the legacy tip has the most impact at higher score bands, not lesser score bands? I suspect that the legacy tip doesn’t save a kid from low stats, but rather counterbalances a lack in the awesome ECs and achievements that are now typical at the top schools.</p>
<p>Certainly, there are athletes in the bottom quarter–indeed, the whole academic index system allows for that, although it controls how many there can be. But there may be some virtuoso musicians and talented artists in there, as well as some people who show great promise in other ways but were hampered in their academic achievements by being poor or having parents without much education, etc.</p>
<p>Not that I really care, and I suspect legacies have as good or better stats than the typical admit or matriculant.</p>
<p>But technically what the Dean said was that they were better than the average applicant (or candidate). That does not mean they are clustered at the top. They could very well be spread right around the average level, but skewed just slightly above average.</p>
<p>I suspect it is possible for a small subgroup of applicants to be above the mean for the entire applicant pool and below the mean for the accepted/matriculating. Especally when the accepted group is only 6% of the entire candidate pool.</p>
<p>Frankly, I’m hoping this is just an academic debate people engage in for amusement. Because who really cares (in the whole scheme of things)? I’m sure it’s wonderful to attend a place like Harvard. I certainly would have liked to. Things work out. There are very, very few spots at these schools, but millions of lucrative, rewarding career paths in the world.</p>
<p>Jym - Other than the two samples you gave, how were the other students academically overall in your Orchestra group? I am kind of curious because most schools I am familiar with, the people in Orchestra and Chess seem to be the ones also doing well in school.</p>
<p>I was at a Rice presentation last week and the adcom felt they were good enough this year to get to Omaha.</p>
<p>Evidently a lot of people do, because it sure gets hotly debated on CC every time the topic comes up, which is regularly. There must be a subset resentful parents and/or students who are convinced that some undeserving person did or will soon steal the slot at HYP that otherwise was intended for them.</p>
<p>^^
Yeah, I noticed that. Not the resentful parent part (I make no judgement on motives), but I did notice the repeated debate part.</p>
<p>And to correct myself slightly on my little analysis above, I guess you could say that being over average could technically mean “clustered at the top.” Because they are in the top by definition, since they are not in the bottom. :)</p>
<p>Agree with vicariousparent in 579 about the students with subpar 690 on a subset of the SATs. I know several people who went to Ivy League schools who had lopsided SAT scores such as 800 on Math and 690 on the CR. So, they got a boost in odds with the 800 and were on the lower 25% of admits on the CR and it pretty much evened out particularly if they had very high GPAs and class rank too (not to mention ECs, recs, essays that were very strong). A 690/800 split on the CR/M is still a 1490. I’m working with an applicant right now to top schools with such an imbalance but with perfect grades, etc. Kids like this DO get in. And they ain’t recruited athletes, URM, or legacies.</p>
<p>In my thirst for knowledge, I just looked for legacies in the Harvard results threads for the last four years. Obviously, this is anecdotal and self-selected, but what I found was interesting.</p>
<p>There were 12 H legacies identified. 8 were accepted, 2 were rejected, and 2 were waitlisted.</p>
<p>Of those who were accepted, at least 5 were accepted into at least one other Ivy, and several were accepted into multiple Ivies. One was accepted into Barnard, and one was accepted to Duke. The other one was also a URM (as was the student who also got into Duke).</p>
<p>One of the waitlisted students got into multiple Ivies, including Y and P, where he wasn’t a legacy. The other waitlisted student got a big scholarship at Vanderbilt, but was shut out of Ivies (surprising given the stellar stats of that student).</p>
<p>The two rejected students: one accepted at Chicago, the other at Northwestern.</p>
<p>Looking at Princeton’s class of 2014 statistics for SAT scores shows that the mid 50% range starts at 690 for reading, 710 for math and 700 for writing.</p>
<p>Since this is per section, as someone pointed out earlier, if a student had 690, 710, and 700 (combined 2100) he/she would be well below the 25% percentile.</p>
<p>So how many students are below 2100? Probably not too many.</p>
<p>Hunt, that’s a good post and what I have generally observed. Those who attribute that a kid only got into Harvard (or a school like Harvard) is due to his/her being a legacy does not often hold water when said kid also got into comparable schools where he/she was not a legacy.</p>
<p>What I observe often here on CC is when some kid doesn’t get into X elite college, a person questions why he/she did not get in. Now, in some cases, there is a reason as the student wasn’t qualified or even if qualified, didn’t stand out enough in a very talented applicant pool. But in a LOT of instances, there are kids who are rejected to schools with single digit acceptance rates where there is no reason on their file that they were rejected and they were as “good as” the accepted students in every which way (these schools say they can fill the class at least twice with their applicant pool and get a class just as good as the one they accepted and I believe them…just look at the profiles of SOME rejected kids at Ivies). So, I don’t think it is helpful to ask “why didn’t my kid get into H?” as if there is a reason. If the kid is truly as competitive as can be and was rejected, it could be for reasons beyond the student’s control such as the school needing kids from various geographical areas, diverse ethnicities, female/male ratio, intended majors, specific extracurricular interest areas, and so on. There is an element of “luck” involved once you make it to the “in consideration” pile at an elite school, where you have what it takes to be admitted but they can’t take all those who fit that criterion. So, nothing has to be “wrong” in your file but simply they have too many from your area already or you want a popular major and they need some students seeking other majors, or they have lots of strong musicians but not enough newspaper editors, etc. This happens in theater admissions too. If a BFA in Musical Theater program is taking 20 students and has an acceptance rate of 5% (as many do), there are more than 20 kids who truly have what it takes to be admitted but they are not each vying for all 20 slots. Half the slots are for one gender (and more girls audition than boys and so boys have better odds). Some slots will be for sopranos and some for mezzos. Some spots may be for character actors and some for ingenue types. They don’t want a class of all blondes either. So, in essence, you are not even vying for one of the 20 slots but maybe just a few slots that you even fit into. You can have a great audition and get into some elite Musical Theater programs and be rejected at some other elite programs. It happens ALLLLLLL the time. Even the most tippy top most talented MT applicant doesn’t get into ALL their schools. It would be extremely rare for that to happen. So, the schools that rejected them were not due to not being good enough to be admitted. </p>
<p>So, there are not always reasons why a person wasn’t admitted…there are sometimes in cases where the student isn’t up to par, but when a student truly is competitive for a spot, there are reasons beyond their control where they may be rejected when the college tries to build a mixed group of students in the class and not every slot is open for their “type/profile.”</p>
<p>
[quote>>Because who really cares (in the whole scheme of things)?<<</p>
<p>Evidently a lot of people do, because it sure gets hotly debated on CC every time the topic comes up, which is regularly. There must be a subset resentful parents and/or students who are convinced that some undeserving person did or will soon steal the slot at HYP that otherwise was intended for them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The parental jealousy is nothing new. What is remarkable to me is that over the past ten years there have been a lot of academic hours devoted to attempting to prove that legacies receive too much of an advantage in admissions. These seem to come from social scientists, and I can’t figure out why they particularly care…other than that if their arguments were supportable, it would provide a good counterweight to the anti-affimative action arguments.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly, Jian Li, the Princeton reject who filed a complaint about 5 years ago with the Civil Rights Commission for racial discrimination, also alleged that legacy preferences were unlawful. To my knowledge, to date there have been no findings released that support his position.</p>
<p>I think soozievt’s post #595 is very important, and agree with it 100%. Furthermore, in my opinion, it’s important to realize that sometimes the odds go against a student multiple times, when the student should have been admitted to at least one of the <em>very</em> top colleges to which he/she applied. I have seen it happen–not in our family, but that doesn’t make the situation seem any less problematic to me.</p>
<p>I think that the lack of transparency in the admissions process combines with the heady exhilaration of acceptances and the inevitable disappointment of rejections to push people toward conclusions that may not be justified. There are acknowledged preferences for students in certain categories (legacies, athletes, URM’s, violadad’s didgeridoo-playing daughter, who is also an Iditarod competitor), but that may have had nothing to do with a decision, pro or con, in a particular case. </p>
<p>Sometimes students with high scores and GPA’s can be a bit dull in person. (Take me; you’re probably yawning already, and I’m only part way through typing this post.) I’ve seen a lot of pretty bad stereotyping of the 2400/4.0 UW GPA students, though, in CC posts. If a really top student–here I’m including the EC’s and personal factors, too–has less than top outcomes, part of the CC community will gear up with the responses: “must have been something wrong with the file,” “you haven’t seen the essays,” “you haven’t seen the whole file,” “you haven’t seen other applicants’ files” . . . Well, I can tell you that I’ve seen the person! (Again, no relations.) </p>
<p>I understand that the committees react to applications and not the applicants. I understand that the odds at the top schools are low for anyone. And yet, I think that the “system” is not really operating as it should. Given that I know some people who are outliers, in terms of their outcomes, it seems reasonable to ask: what are the odds that I would know any appreciable fraction of the outliers? There are almost certainly large numbers of outliers among those I don’t know.</p>