I agree with the notion that there are a group of very stellar applicants that get multiple top acceptances–not “all” of course, but many . And if you know these kids in person they typically have the rigor, and stats in range AND have done something extra that sets them apart, AND have challenged themselves, AND are just great, kind kids that would definitely have good recs. Folks love to say on here its a crapshoot–and maybe on the borders it is in part–but there are kids who truly stand out from the pack, in stats and beyond. For these super-elite schools, 1500 - 1580 spans the majority of admits–that isn’t academically very different; the differences are found elsewhere, so it has to go beyond basic score and GPA.
I agree more clarity in what precisely the colleges are looking for might help, and certainly a pre-screening/round 1 type of acceptance model might help cut down the volume of applications for the school and for each applicant, providing predictability and direction earlier in the application season for everyone.
There are approximately 26,727 high schools in the U.S. (source).
950,000 students in the Class of 2021 took the SAT (source). A 1490 was at the 98th percentile for 2021 (source). Thus, about 19,000 seniors had an SAT in the top 2% of test-takers. A 1430 was the 95th percentile, thus there were 47,500 students with an SAT in the top 5%.
The Ivy League (being used as a proxy for “tippy top” schools for ease of gathering data) had 281,060 applications, admitted 22,805, and expected 14,483 to enroll (source).
Almost 2 million applications. 226,234 admits and 106,316 enrolled at arguably the top 56 colleges in the U.S. (universities & liberal arts and top publics) which will hereby be called “top 56” for brevity (source).
My thoughts on the facts:
There are more high school valedictorians than the number of students admitted by Ivy League schools.
Sadly, some high schools’ valedictorians will not have received sufficient academic preparation to handle the rigor of the Ivy League schools. Other schools will have a plethora of adequately prepared students, far exceeding even the top 20 students in a graduating class. Thus, we’ll say that an average of 10 students/high school would be academically prepared…resulting in 267,270 academically prepared students. But if the “top 56” only accepted 226,234 (which includes huge universities taking big numbers of students like U. Michigan & UC Berkeley), that means that there are academically prepared students who won’t get any acceptances. If they all applied to the Ivy League institutions, then less than 10% would given an acceptance.
If all of the top 2% of SAT takers decided they wanted to attend an Ivy League school, there wouldn’t be enough space for them in the 14,483 seats allotted. And if all of the top 5% of the SAT seniors applied to the Ivy League, less than half would be offered an acceptance.
But what about the kids with a 1600 SAT and a 4.0 UW GPA? Wouldn’t they be shoo-ins? That’s when we get to the holistic part of the review. If their accomplishments entail being in the National Honor Society and participating in debate tournaments and writes a fine essay, would the university rather accept someone with a 3.8UW and 1420 SAT who was a varsity athlete in multiple sports, worked a part-time job, and had 600 hours volunteering at the animal shelter and writes a stellar essay? It gets sticky. And that second student is probably not going to fall into any of the “fact” categories listed above as the person didn’t get a 95th percentile SAT and probably isn’t in the top 10 with that GPA.
So, once we add in the people whose ECs, leadership, and awards give them added strength even if they’re not in the top 5% of test-takers or in the top 10 students in the class, that total number of students in-play for a spot at the “top” colleges just keeps getting bigger.
With the considerations above, maybe it’s a pool of 300,000 “good” applicants that would get past a pre-read stage and be deliberated with on an ad coms team? There’s 226,234 admissions to the “top 56” schools and 22,805 at the Ivies. There are good students who will likely be shut out.
Then you combine just the raw number of students with how many school applications are being done by each applicant. I believe the current average is about 7 applications/student (obviously much higher with most people on CC). But if each of those “good” applicants did 7 applications that’s 2.1 million applications. And interestingly enough, there were about 2 million applications for the “top 56” colleges.
The uncertainty and anxiety continue to the job consideration (post college) as well.
I have seen a few high school kids who entered colleges for their interested majors but all of them switched to CS eventually. I felt lost when thinking of their efforts and interests in high school before attending colleges.
The competitiveness has driven this process in a weird direction, there are kids I personally think qualified for engineering programs (awesome records of STEM curriculum or involvements) but rejected from the engineering programs in the selective schools. (ie. UC). The uncertainty is really devastating.
Agreed. I think it may go beyond that – in practice, I think it is VERY difficult to apply holistic criteria CONSISTENTLY, all the good intent notwithstanding. Again, I do not have the answers why colleges should not apply a holistic approach - which clearly has its benefits as stated by many posters in this thread. The applicants have to really know that it is just uneven and random, and probably more so at some colleges than others.
We have friends with 2 kids who are incredibly academically accomplished. Both valedictorians at a rigorous private school, took only AP classes since sophomore year with all A’s and an ridiculously high GPA. Aced the ACT with almost perfect scores.
They got rejected from all the T25 schools.
Why? Because IMO they’re not “well-rounded” kids. They really didn’t present anything else to these colleges other than rock-solid stats and academic rigor/accomplishment.
To me they’re the example of holistic admissions at play.
I think I mentioned earlier that our school manages to place about 35% of the class into a T20. This seems to suggest to me that the process is somewhat deterministic. It is not completely random. You need to be mentally prepared to check some boxes that the colleges like to see, and start from a bedrock of class rigor.
IMO engineering is more egalitarian than many majors, with grads from rack and stack schools like Iowa State generally experiencing excellent job outcomes, and working along side engineers from far more selective schools. And students who meet the admission number based on a formula (GPA, core courses, plus test score) could have that ISU acceptance by August/Sept of senior year.
Yeah I tend to encourage students to open their minds on the schools. In fact, there are lot of affordable and good state schools.
My point is some students with stellar records considering UC their safeties. And I don’t think that’s naiveness, that confidence was based on previous classes before 2020. This may turn out false (randomly)… The safeties really aren’t those T50 or highly ranked schools even if they show academic excellence.
The Top X schools seem to want students who are doing ALL the things, and it’s no longer good enough to be a great student. They don’t want just participation in extracurriculars either; they want leadership. They’re not that interested in school recognitions; they want state/regional/national level honors. Many of the students they’re accepting are doing these things authentically, as they would have been this way regardless of what admissions standards were. But there are a lot of others who have been very calculating at crafting their high school careers with a Top X as their goal. And it feels as though “regular” people, even with very impressive stats, are getting passed over by those pursuing a more ambitious resume.
Right. I think so too. There is another post in CC talking about ROI and engineering programs. Lot of good non-tippy-top schools. They shouldn’t tie the school name to their career prospect in STEM fields. At least I hope that’s the case.
You’ve just identified exactly which kids I think “holistic” admissions officers are admitting - the students with the “authentic” resume of activities and interests versus those with the “crafted” one.
I’m not against the idea of a pre-read type system; I’m assuming the reference to athletic recruiting is not unintentional. It seems to work with a small group of kids with a combination of high expectations, multiple options and (as you mentioned) the money to pay for the extra “service”. This reminds me very much of the system in place up until World War Two when the overwhelming majority of applicants were from full-pay families who knew within a fair degree of accuracy which ivies and little ivies they would likely gain admission to.
It’s a plea to simplify the system, but it’s also a plea to simplify the world we live in where the number of seats at “prestige” colleges has remained stagnant over the past 50 years while the percentage of the country that completes a college degree has doubled. • Americans with a college degree 1940-2018, by gender | Statista
I find it hard to pity the kid who ends up at CMU instead of CalTech, or JHU instead of Princeton. Most of the talk (in my town, so anecdote and not data) focuses on the kid who “should” have been a shoe-in and oh the tragedy of it all, The conversation quickly devolves into “who” got your kid’s seat- an immigrant? First Gen? Someone from a Housing Project? Damn that Holistic Admissions that allowed someone to cut the line.
I dunno. When you live in a place like the US where there are SO many fantastic universities; not a single one either makes or breaks your professional life (unlike in some parts of the world- where one are two universities are literally the on-ramp to a career in the diplomatic core, engineering or anything tech, management training programs in a multi-national corporation, etc.), the notion that a kid needs a balanced list because high grades don’t guarantee you a seat at a place that rejects 92% of applicants, most of whom are academically qualified- I’m scratching my head. This doesn’t seem like rocket science.
I think you misunderstand the concern. As kids, and their parents, do not know the criteria used for admission to Princeton or JHU, a subset of UMC students run themselves ragged with sports , extra curriculars, public service, etc, in addition to academics. As those kids trickle down to somewhat less competitive schools, the stress level ratchets up there too, so even kids applying to schools ranked, perhaps, T50-100 are trying to produce a dizzying resume for admission. High school students in the US are under a lot of unnecessary stress. I fully understand that many kids have bigger problems, but we should not be necessarily as accepting of the stress level of these kids, either.
I do not know any high school kid these days who isnt stressed out, regardless of which college they hope to attend.
I know plenty. They go to school (mercifully, not remote, I agree that last year was a stress-factory for every adolescent I know). They work on the yearbook or they work at the Gap or a local diner after school; they are now busy obsessing about prom (is that a stressor? Sure. What to wear, are we getting our nails done?) The athletes are enjoying what is likely the end of their competitive careers as they come to terms with being a weekend runner and not a track star.
They go to the local state college branch and live at home, or they head to the state flagship and are looking forward to dorm living.
Not too stressful. Most of the kids in my neighborhood do not run themselves ragged. The ones at parochial school have slightly more on their plate- the school requires community service, that’s time consuming for the kids who aren’t naturally inclined towards volunteerism. And getting in to the desired Catholic college (we’re not talking Georgetown here… more like Sacred Heart, Seton Hall, Providence, Stonehill, Assumption) is more important to their families than it is for the ones interested in secular schools.
I get that it’s regional. But can’t a parent meaningfully contribute to both increasing the stress vs. decreasing the stress? The assumption on CC is always that our kids are passive victims to whatever the trend du jour happens to be (starting a non-profit, working to cure cancer at age 16, spending the summer on SAT prep vs. working as a lifeguard at the town pool). Are parents powerless in this dynamic?
I’m going to be like @Catcherinthetoast and agree with both @Blossom and @roycroftmom. Many kids are putting tons of unhealthy pressure on themselves to be “successful” and become stressed and anxiety-prone, often leading to even more unhealthy forms of self-medication. Instead of being limited to students gunning for T5, or T10, or T20 its now drifting further and further down the “ranks.” It’s becoming pervasive at schools, even where the majority of students were not originally thinking about a Top X school. It’s very unhealthy, unproductive, and should stop.
But I also totally agree with @Blossom that if students applied to a balanced list of schools (particularly if they were weighted on the likelier side rather than the unlikelier side) that much if this anxiety would be reduced. And, sadly, I have also seen the snark about who a high stat individual has “lost” their seat to. It’s just broadening the fissures is on our society.
All that to say, I think you’re both right and thank you both for contributing so much to this community!
Is it stressful applying to Salve Regina, Stonehill, Providence? Is it stressful applying to Baruch or U Mass Lowell or the dreaded Merced where apparently you need to be hit on the head with a 2X4 to even consider going there? Kids who have never even tried a programming course and barely passed trig are obsessing about getting into an impacted major- really? Do you know what CS is?
So much of this is under our control (I mean us- the grownups in the room).
I think a lot of the stress depends on a couple of factors:
Are the majority of students college-bound? If so, likelier to be to be having the high-stress environment.
Is the family upper middle class? If so, likelier to be in the stressful rat race described above.
Has the student had a “dream” college or a “dream-type” college since before high school started? If yes, likelier to be in the stressed-out group.
Even if a student is going to be applying to Salve Regina or some of the other quality programs you mentioned, if a sizable number of students at the high school are in the ambitious/competitive mode and trying to get all leadership positions, and do ALL the things, and are posting or sharing things on social media about the students who did 20 million wonderful things and “didn’t get into a single college” (even if they only applied to T20s), the stress builds in that environment, regardless of what is happening at home. Once the kid gets to Salve Regina, the student might well relax and feel much more comfortable. But if they go to a pressure cooker high school, it can really stink.
All that to say, when my child is beginning the college search, I will not be mentioning Top X schools or rankings. (ETA: If he brings up Top X, that’s fine. I will not initiate the discussion of those, unless it seems like it would be a good fit and the right program; no school would be mentioned because it’s Top X.) We will be building our list from the bottom up as we look for the right possibilities. If my child decides to apply to schools that are less likely for admission, it will be the minority of the applications (or he’ll be paying for the extra app fees).
