Sounds like the UT process except 25% of its class is admitted holistically to accommodate athletes and other performers, as well as high stat/pay OOS and foreign students.
Regarding the TJHSST admission processā¦
Fairfax Co. votes to adopt āholistic reviewā admissions process at Thomas Jefferson High - WTOP News says that it is a holistic admission process but with minimum criteria of top 1.5% rank, 3.5 GPA, and algebra, among other things.
Itās all speculation because the other schools are holistic and CP is not. The bottom line is that if you donāt have an extremely high MCA score, youāre not getting into CP for CS. For most students a high MCA requires a 4.0, high test scores (when they use them), full rigor, 20 hours per week of ECs with a leadership role and a job that is major related. Students get a bump for living in SLO county or attending a Hayden Partner school. For the most part though, any student who is accepted to CP for CS will be competitive at any school you listed.
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There appear to be some differences from the points made in the first post of this thread. For example, the TJ applicant pool seems to be more self selecting, perhaps due to more clarity about what GPA/rank has little chance of admission. The average GPA among applicants was 3.91/4.0, and the average GPA among admits was 3.95/4.0. With this degree of self selection, the admit rate was a bit higher than the colleges that have been the focus of this thread ā 550/3034 = 18% compared to 486/2539 = 19% last year. They increased admitted class size by an amount corresponding to the increase applications upon going test blind + no application fee, which is uncommon among highly selective private colleges.
With going test blind this year and emphasizing GPA/rank to a greater degree, some changes in the demographics of admitted students include the following. If they are emphasizing GPA/rank without sufficient controls for rigor or harshness of grading, then this process may favor middle schools with grade inflation + less rigor. Admission also depends on other non-stat factors, such as a problem solving essay, portrait of graduate + 21st century skills (personal qualities / character / ā¦), experience factors, and member of special group (lower SES, URSchool, special education, ā¦).
Low SES ā Increases from 0.6% of admits to 25% of admits
URSchools ā Increases from 6% of admits to 31% of admits
URM ā Increases from 4% of admits to 18% of admits
Female ā Increases from 42% of admits to 46% of admits
Private Middle School Kids ā Decreases from 11% of admits to 3% of admits
Asian ā Decreases from 73% of admits to 54% of admits
ā¦ in terms of basic stats. However, there are other applicant characteristics that are not valued at CPSLO but are likely to be highly important for some of the most selective private schools, such as strong recommendations, various essays, level of achievement in extracurricular activities, and academic achievement beyond basic academic stats. Applicant characteristics not related to the applicantās achievement or choices, such as non-athletic āhooksā, can also matter at other schools but not CPSLO.
Oh yea! Absolutely! On a Cal Poly app HS Key Club Secretary has the same value as national Key Club President.
All I was saying though is make the assumption below at your own peril if applying to CP for CS.
58 fewer Asian students in the entering class.
Even 54% of the class seems like a high representation of the area public school system student body.
Have to wonder how it would look if, instead of race/ethnicity, the stratification was by parental educational attainment.
Immigrants from most countries in Asia are selected by the immigration system to favor educated skilled workers and/or graduate students. The same applies to immigrants from most countries in Europe or Africa, but the large pre-existing US populations of similar-appearing race/ethnicity makes them much less visible (in statistics and stereotyping) than immigrants from most countries in Asia.
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The new TJ system is not unlike our NJ countyās magnet school selection process. Each local district in the county gets X spots at the magnet school. They still have an admissions test though, but the results are ranked only among other kids from the same district.
From @Data10 's post, the proportion of Asian American students in the new class is 54% vs 73% from the old system, still a majority considering only 19% of Fairfax County is Asian American . Our county is only 5% Asian, but the magnet school has 33% Asian students.
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Iām not entering the debate as to toughest admit (my guess isnāt even on the list, which probably shows what I know about CS.)
That said, I thought it might be worth emphasizing that it is an open question as to what makes for a higher ācaliberā applicant for a CS program. For example, does Stanfordās reliance on other factors (recommendations, essays, EC accomplishments, hooks, etc.) necessarily mean than Stanford gets better, higher ācaliberā CS students? Or does it merely mean that Stanford gets students who better meet their standard.
Schools like Stanford play a gatekeeper role in a somewhat circular process, they define and determine what supposedly makes an applicant better, and low-and-behold they end up with these ābetterā students. Not much of a surprise.
But are Stanfordās incoming CS students really of a higher caliber? What if you swapped out the Stanford students for the CalPoly students and gave the CalPoly students the Stanford resources, education, prestige/name cache, and vice versa for the Stanford students? Would Stanford suffer under the weight of these supposedly less qualified students? Would CalPoly be uplifted? I have my doubts.
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Humans are notoriously bad at identifying randomness in events and distributions.
I am pretty sure that these colleges actively recruit these kids, and, since they can offer more than other colleges, they will get these kids. There are some other colleges that are as good as HYPSM in mathematics undergraduate, but none which have the resources that these colleges can bring to bear to attract these students. Iām not criticizing, mind you, itās great to see colleges spending time, effort, and money to get kids with intellectual/academic accomplishments rather than because of athletics, family income, or fame that is unrelated to academic or humanistic accomplishments (such as kids of the powerful or child stars).
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I should have never used the word ātoughest.ā Itās really impossible to quantify. The factors that determine who gets in where are different at each school. Stanford for example puts a large emphasis on legacies. MIT does not. Cal Poly uses a mostly academic based algorithm (the best we know because it ceased to be public facing in 2013, but students say that admissions officers still speak of it when they are visiting). Nearly all of it is GPA, test scores (which they arenāt using right now) and rigor. Students that get in need to have records that would make them competitive anywhere.
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I assume by slots you mean enrolled students since the CalPoly documentation mentions projections for 205 newly enrolled FTF in CS. Enrolled students / Applicants is not the same as admit rate, since a large portion of admitted students usually do not enroll. For example, if half of admits enroll, the admit rate is 2 * (Slots / Applicants) . CollegeNavigator lists an overall yield of 24% for fall 2020 at Cal Poly, so a little under 1/4 of admits enrollā¦ Iām not sure how CS yield differs from overall, but Iād expect Cal Poly CS admits to typically have several good options to choose from, so itās not a given that all admits would choose Cal Poly over their other options.
That said lowest admit rate is not the same as toughest college admit. The colleges have different applicant pools and different admission criteria. Among applicants who apply to both Cal Poly and selective privates like Stanford, I expect some are admitted only to Cal Poly and some are admitted only to the selective privates. Cal Poly is a tougher admit for some applicants, and the selective privates are a tougher admit for others.
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Iād like to think so, but maybe not if the true yardsticks for admissions are things like obscure academic competitions dominated by highly trained kids from relatively few (and predictable) schools.
An anecdote I keep thinking of when reading these threads . . . A few years back I had a series of conversations with a theoretical physicist who chaired his department at a highly respected school. In his observation, his incoming students were vastly overtrained in ways that he felt were detrimental to their education. They could perform, but they didnāt necessarily understand at the same level. I didnāt ask him specifically (I would have had I known the apparent importance of such things in college admissions) but I doubt he would have advocated targeting adolescents from competitive math/science competitions over kids with excellent but more traditional academic credentials. But maybe I am just projecting, as my mantra has always been more along the lines of education is neither a race nor a competition. Apparently I am doing it wrong.
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When perceived or actual educational opportunity is rationed competitively, the preceding education becomes a competition by default. For example:
- Medical school: pre-med undergraduate is a competitive process.
- Nursing school: high school and/or the first year or two of pre-nursing are competitive processes.
- āTopā (highly desired) colleges: high school is a competitive process.
Well sure. But I am not talking about positioning oneself for college admissions. I am talking about becoming educated.
The physics students I mentioned appear to have positioned themselves well for college admissions, possibly to the detriment of their education.
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I agree with you, but what we are talking about here really has little to do with āeducationā. In the elite college game kids are rewarded for performance and so that is what they pursue (whether that is via academic competitions, athletics, pursuit of the perfect gpa/sat etc).
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Perhaps the physicist you mentioned should move to a more accessible university so that students who want to study physics can learn from him without having to play the ultra-competitive college admission competition needed to get to the school where they can learn physics from him.
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If by āsuffer under the weight of these supposedly less qualified studentsā, you mean not able to succeed in the course work, I think that is unlikely. Nearly all admitted students at HYPS type are extremely successful in the classes, and I expect a similar statement could be made if you swapped out all the admits for the next group down who were barely rejected.
For example, the 2021 Harvard senior survey came out recently. In the survey, the most commonly reported graduating GPA was 3.9/4.0 and the median ~3.87/4.0 . Most students are get near straight-As, and Iād expect a similar statement could be made at Stanford. There is no hint that the next tier down who were barely rejected could not handle the work. Iād expect the level of change to be more on the order of median graduating GPA drops from 3.87 to 3.84.
With no shortage of applicants who can handle the course work, highly selective colleges often distinguish among that group by other criteria. For example, which students sound like theyād make the college a better place while attending by things like supporting classmates or participating in ECs on campus? Which students are most likely to take advantage of the many CS related opportunities outside of the classroom while attending? Which students are most likely to pursue something desirable in CS after graduating, such as starting a successful company? Which students best meet CS-related university goals (for example, Caltech and Mudd favor admitting women in CS to achieve good gender balance in CS and/or overall)?
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Surely the disconnect between education and playing āthe elite college gameā is problematic, though, right? Shouldnāt the two be more overlapping than they are?
LOL. So love it or leave it?
If he could do so while still having access to the resources provided by a major research institution, perhaps he would.
I wasnāt referring to this in particular, but something along the same lines.