This is a great post that gets at something I’ve long thought to be true even at very selective schools - an individual applicant’s actual chances for admission depend on the tier of applicants into which s/he falls. Some applicants are very likely admits, while others have essentially no chance.
I largely agree with the way you’ve characterized the upper tiers of applicants, though obviously we can quibble over the percentages of the pool at each level. I also propose adding an extra tier at the bottom. You have the lowest 84% of the pool as one big group, whereas I would speculate (it’s all speculation, I’m not privy to any inside data) that it’s really two groups with distinct admissions profiles: (1) unhooked with competitive stats/LORs/essays that only lack the “spike” or “wow” factor of nat’l/int’l EC recognition, and (2) unhooked non-competitive applicants. The latter group would mostly be students with good-but-not-great stats who are encouraged to apply by well-meaning parents/teachers/friends not familiar with the applicant pool, or who hope against hope that their sure-to-be-amazing essay or unique extracurricular will overcome modest academics. The chances of this group are likely very close to zero. The current test-optional environment has surely led to a huge increase in this latter “zero” group, since one big negative from their profiles can now be set aside.
My hypothesis is that the actual admissions chances of the “unhooked competitive” group, after filtering out groups above and below, are only slightly lower or even on par with the published rate at many schools. I’ve heard Yale AOs say more than once that around 75% of their applicants are capable of handling the workload and rigor there, which I take to mean that 25% of the pool is in the “zero” group. Based on the sudden 30%-50% increases in applications at elite schools during the TO era, let’s say conservatively that the number is now 35%. To use your hypothetical, that’s 7000 applicants with an effective admit rate of 0%, leaving 9800 unhooked-competitives for 500 spots - 5.1% admit rate. Still lower than published rate, but not sub-3%. I suspect that there is a fair degree of randomness in this section of the pool, which is what most people are thinking of when they talk about elite admissions as a crapshoot. But even if so, it’s only a crapshoot for a certain tranche of applicants; for many above and below, it seems much more predictable.
The only thing I’d add is that a safety can be THE perfect school. There’s nothing to say that a more selective school (which essentially says one thing…how popular it is) will be a fit and guarantee success thereafter for your student. Don’t get caught up in the false notion that the reach is de facto “better” than the match which is better than the safety. In a perfectly chosen list, safeties should have enough allure to be competing for the top spot.
To start with, observing an overrepresentation among matriculating students is not a good way to measure much of anything in admissions, unless you control for confounding variables. For example, in the latest NCES, 30% of MIT students were Asian. In the latest census, a much smaller 5.6% of US residents were Asian. Asian students are tremendously overrepresented at MIT, as well as almost all other HYPSMC… type colleges we have been discussing in this thread. Does that tremendous overrpresentation of Asian students among matriculants mean that HYPSMC… type colleges give a huge boost in chance of admission for being Asian?
However, I realize that being one of the 6 kids representing the USA in IMO does provide a major boost in chance of admission. MIT says this quite explicitly on their website. The main problem and point I have been making throughout recent posts is you and others are focusing on a few rare outliers. The fact that most team of the 6 kids on team USA for IMO kids went to MIT tells an average applicant almost nothing about whether character/personal qualities or ECs are given more weight for the average applicant.
The lawsuit data sample encompassed a 6 year period. Harvard Office of Internal Research provided similar analysis in later years. All 6 years and the analysis for later years showed a similar type of admission system in regards to influence of ECs and personal rating. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly better than assuming that MIT is not emphasizing character/personal qualities in admissions, in spite of saying they emphasize character/personal qualities in the CDS and website, because a few IMO and similar level national/international award winners attend .
Higher acceptance rates for these US medalists in national/international competitions mainly affect those without such awards in one particular demographic group. I’m not sure if everyone noticed that most of the medalists (at least in STEM) are Asian American males. Their impact on other demographic groups is very different.
The 2021 USAMO Qualifier list is overwhelmingly populated by Asian names. It’s hard to know what the impact for other demographic groups is, because they are so underrepresented.
Overrpresentation of Asian males is definitely true in IMO, but it’s not true to the same extent in many other categories of ECs. For example, I wouldn’t expect Asian males to be overrepresented to the same degree in national/international level awards/competitions in English/writing, or related national-level ECs, such as being an author of a well received novel who plans to study English in college. Some LACs treat both Asians and males as underrpresented groups for admission purposes.
One area that the Harvard lawsuit analyzes well is how being Asian impacts admission decisions. The regression analysis compares chance of admission for different races and genders with the same combination of ratings, which one would expect would roughly correspond to the same combination of awards – chance of admission for Asian male without national/international awards vs chance of admission for White male without national/international awards.
The analyses performed by both sides of the lawsuit suggest being an Asian female had little impact on chance of admission. Under the Plantiff’s model, the odds ratios were as follows with full controls, for unhooked students. Only Asian male reached statistical significance, and the results were very close to the border of statistical significance, so minor differences in controls can change whether in crosses the statistical significance threshold or not.
Asian Male – 0.7x chance of admission for being Asian male compared to White male
Asian Female – 0.9x chance of admission for being Asian female compared to White female
Under Harvard’s model, Asian females and Asians from CA had a slightly increased chance of admission that was not statistically significant. And Asian males that were not from CA had a slightly decreased chance of admission that was not statistically significant. The slight differences in results between the 2 sides of the lawsuit relate to minor differences in controls, such as whether they should include an interaction variable between race and disadvantaged – that is applying a different weight of hook for SES disadvantaged for each race or applying the same weight of hook for SES disadvantage, regardless of race. The analysis found that Asian kids on average received a higher weight of hook for SES disadvantage than the overall average (largely because Black students didn’t receive a SES disadvantaged boost), so having this interaction variable pulls down the chance of admission for the reference non-SES disadvantaged Asian males slightly.
Rather than national/international awards, the drivers for the lower admit rate of Asian males compared to similar average test score applicants from other races more relates to a lower rate of hooks and not excelling to the same degree as scores in all other areas of the application. For example, Asian students did average slightly better EC ratings than White students, but it was only a slight difference – far smaller than the difference that occurs for math/science SAT/ACT scores and presumably academic competitions emphasizing math/science scores.
My observation is mainly based on national/international levels of various STEM Olympiads (IMO/USAMO, IPhO/USAPhO, IOI/USACO. IChO/USNCO, IBO/USABO). I agree that other high-level accomplishments in more subjective “competitions” in STEM (STS, ISEF, RSI admissions, etc.) and in humanities (TASP, etc.) are less highly represented by Asian males.
Yes, the STEM Olympiads now are dominated by Asian American males, but those of us of a certain age will remember they once were dominated by Jewish American males. Times change.
Agree completely! I went to one of those places (as did my wife) - both currently “Top 10” schools. Mine was fairly small then, but in structure it was a research university. Large entry-level lectures, professors who were focused on their grad students, grad students who were focused on their professor/master. I have purposely indoctrinated my four kids away from that model of higher education, and toward selective liberal arts colleges. So far, it’s working. Two have graduated from high-quality LACs and then top professional schools. Two are still in high school, and hopefully have absorbed my clear bias. Some undergrads would benefit from being in the large-lecture/TA environment, but I think not many. I have a hard time understanding how otherwise smart people fall for the allure of the shiny nameplate without looking carefully under the hood.
You do get multiple instructors to go to office hours for personal assistance. Granted, this is mostly done by the more motivated students who need help.
But the real tradeoff here is that more faculty are available to offer a larger selection of upper level courses (which are typically smaller, though those in popular majors may still be large) than many LACs are able to offer. How valuable this is for a given student varies, as does the value of small frosh/soph level courses at LACs that LAC advocates emphasize.
In some subjects (e.g. math), the most advanced undergraduates commonly take graduate level courses as undergraduates and join graduate level research projects as a result. At many LACs, this is not available. It would be like if, four years earlier, the advanced math student attended a high school where the most advanced math course was precalculus.
I have no idea where you came up with that. It’s pretty well known that MIT wants really smart but nice kids that can work well together. Unlike a lot of colleges, they give importance to the interview, and they use the interview along with the teacher and counselor recommendations to filter out bright but obnoxious students like the one I mentioned earlier.
Since it appears I need to mention it explicitly, I will do so. The high level accomplishments do not make up for character defects, nor can they make up for poor grades. Those are all baseline requirements.
The high level awards help the admissions committee to decide between kids who otherwise look similar. If two kids have great recommendations, grades, test scores, but kid A has a national level award and B does not, that will tilt the admission decision towards student A over B. Simple as that.
I suspect that you were more referring to the comment about MIT’s CDS marking ECs as “important” instead of marking them as “very important”, rather than MIT’s CDS marking ECs as less important than character/personal qualities as I had initially assumed.
In any case, I agree with you that MIT emphasizes the interview more than peers and emphasizes character/personal qualities in decisions. I also agree with you that ECs can be influential in admissions, particularly with national/international level ECs, like the discussed IMO kids.
One can make inferences since the olympiad community (especially the math one) is very tight. They pretty much know whenever one of the olympiad medalists got accepted for freshman and transfer admissions.
The inferences we can draw are these:
MIT doesn’t believe one trick ponies will do well
MIT believes you do have to have good academics in addition, but AFAIK the number of those who are in the Class of 2025 who already have international accomplishments (i.e., medals) is in the 100 range, with that number expected to rise [due to contests in the summer]
Doing well in two contests is better than doing well in one contest and reflects highly positively
MIT Chris has said and I like to copy-paste, "Medals are not a prerequisite. Medals are not something in and of themselves that we value. Medals are one of many ways by which an applicant can demonstrate extraordinary intelligence, skill, contributions, etc.” Original quote here (2013): Apply straightway and get selected in MIT - #16 by MITChris
I also see that MIT Chris has said that they have turned away as many or more IMO gold medalists as they accepted. (While this is a phenomenal achievement, it is also no silver bullet. However, I’m sure applicants would prefer a 50/50 chance over a 2% chance…)
There are many markers or factors that indicate higher (and sometimes MUCH higher) rates of admission.
Being American,
Winning >1 medal, especially if there’s a gold in there,
From multiple contests,
Going to a college preparatory school like Exeter or Andover,
etc.
There are a lot of things (factors, contests, even things like MIT PRIMES, RSI, Regeneron STS, etc.) that MIT considers.
It is not only applicants… it is also those who want to break the top 1% in life in terms of career. You have to remember: A lot of us come from 5% families, and we need a significant EDGE to push ourselves to top 1% and the only and best way is to get into T20s. Frankly the top 1% is basically 90% full of people who inherited a bunch of wealth and 10% those who elevated their circumstances. Out of the 10% not specialized doctors most attribute their success to getting into T20s.
You mention inheriting wealth, so I assume you mean top 1% net worth. According to the report at https://content.knightfrank.com/research/83/documents/en/the-wealth-report-2021-7865.pdf , top 1% by net worth in the US requires $4.4 million . There are many paths to net worth in this range, which I expect generally involve some combination of having a fairly high income and investing in something that does well … not a path that requires a particular undergrad brand name.
What is your source for the only and best way to get from top 5% to top 1% is to get in to T20s? Or “out of the 10% not specialized doctors most attribute their success to getting into T20s”?
As one who knows quite a few T20 grads who are not “top 1% in life” and quite a few non-T20 grads who are EXTREMELY successful, please supply ANY evidence to back up that claim.
