<p>To preface, I am aware that every applicant has his/her own strengths and weaknesses. I also know that admission to ivies are notoriously difficult, and sometimes random. I'm am, however, curious to see how arbitrary admission is. Obviously, a lot of qualified applicants make it into the schools, but what about the students who don't "fit the mold?" This question came to mind when I thought about a girl at my school who is going to attend Yale and graduate in 2013. Mind you, she is intelligent, and by no means am I insulting her accomplishments. I was, however, a bit surprised when I found out she got in. She did not participate consistently in activites at school (grades 9-12), stopped her math studies at pre-calculus, took three years of a foreign language, and had no "unique" struggle. Her ACT score was good, but not amazing. Essentially, she challenged herself in school, but didn't go above and beyond. Like I said, I'm in no way trying to take away anybody's credibility. I'm just curious to see if this occurs more often than I think.</p>
<p>It’s pretty much a crapshoot these days.</p>
<p>Sometimes I believe they just put all the names in a hat and pull them out at random…haha</p>
<p>I was reading MIT’s RD results thread and some dude with RSI, nearly perfect SATs, Intel winner was flat-out rejected.</p>
<p>And then a few posts later a 1900 is accepted.</p>
<p>How the 1900 made it into the hat in the first place who knows…^_^</p>
<p>EDIT: And I wrote that whole post forgetting that MIT isn’t an ivy. Go me.</p>
<p>It happens often. But in my experience, more often at some private schools than others. No idea about Yale, but I think Harvard was the Ivy League whose acceptances at my high school sounded most merit-based and objective. One individual was wildly into political things, had done a lot of work outside of school, and was quite a good student, generally A’s. Another two were in the top 4 ranked students of the high school class – one overcame something for sure, the other was a very highly ranked high school debator.</p>
<p>Other schools did somewhat strange things to be perfectly honest. Have faith and be sure to apply to some top public schools where you can get in purely based on academic stats, just so you’re safely guaranteed a top notch education if you have the stats at least.</p>
<p>Honestly though, from what I’ve seen, academic juggernauts don’t make the best student peers. I figure the guys with absurd scores are rejected for reasons of fit or some other factor that we would only be able to discern if we looked over the entire application. Although, sometimes there are exceptions where I just don’t know *** they were thinking, but really, there’s only so much you can get from an application.</p>
<p>Admission to these elite schools is clearly difficult, but I wouldn’t think they are as random as us applicants believe them to be. I’ve heard numerous accounts of acceptees to various colleges visiting their admissions officer 5 months after decision date and learning that that same reader can nearly summarize the student’s common app essay. I think the perspective we need to see college admissions from is your abilities in your local environment. A valedictorian can receive a 1900 and be the laughing stock of CC, but his school’s average SAT could be 900, and his 1900 was the highest score of the decade.</p>
<p>I don’t think the admissions are <em>RANDOM</em> – they are unpredictable to the extreme, however. And I think needlessly so. The reason they are unpredictable is that the criteria used for evaluation have grown incredibly soft, and I think they should be more hard and fast, even if they shouldn’t be rigid to the point of stupidity.</p>
<p>It’s certainly true that the results are unpredictable, but if you read through the accepted/rejected/waitlisted threads here on CC, i.e. in the Yale forum, they don’t seem so crazy when you see all the stats and ECs listed. Those crazy rejections/admissions we hear about are usually about somebody else in somebody’s school, and I have to think that often there’s information we don’t know. For a person who’s accepted, this may be significant achievements outside of school that people in the school may not even know about. For a rejection, there may be some blot on the record that similarly is unknown.</p>
<p>Agree with Hunt, many kids have a connection or hook they do not advertise. </p>
<p>It’s not as random as many think, there is definitely a method to the madness. The bottom line, however, is that a huge percentage of the class is taken up by candidates with a hook (40% and up) leaving little room for non hooked students. The real surprises are the great candidates there is simply to room for.</p>
<p>I think it appears random because there is 1 spot for every 5-10 qualified applicants. The 1900 kid is an outlier who probably has a special hook. There are not many of these and when you stack the very few like these against some really good stat, you just have to scratch your head, but it happens.</p>
<p>How arbitrary? Probably less than the people on the CC boards want to accept.</p>
<p>A few years back a NYTimes Education supplement had interviews with Ivy adcoms, the one point they made over and over was that they strove for a balanced class. Everything from male/female ratio to geographic, educational, experiential and artistic input was considered; an Alaskan-female-oud playing-rock climber with a 3.75/1950 adds more “flavor” to a class than one more 4.0/2400-tennis & chess playing-male from a competitive Long Island high school.</p>
<p>The people on the boards here seem to think it’s some sort of formula: 4.0UW + 2400 SAT + ECs + Essay = Guaranteed Admission. I think that premise is faulty. Good stats get you admittance to the pool, not to the school. Once you’re in the pool I think all applicants are more or less considered equal and that’s when the process starts to become interesting. Think about it, if it was just numbers you could write a software program based on GPA and test scores and just work your way down the list.</p>
<p>Why is one chosen over another? Maybe the other candidates were lousy interviews, maybe they were jerks with poor recommendations, maybe there was nothing that set them apart from the other 15,000 apps just like theirs. But I will admit that I’m very skeptical about all the 4.0/2400s that appear on these boards. I think a lot of people here, fluff up some of their numbers and experiences.</p>
<p>Admissions to top 5 schools are not based on casual chance. It is
very probable that you do not have the complete picture of a peer
you may think is just merely above average. </p>
<p>If you are willing to accept the premise that it is very hard (albeit not impossible)
to pull a fast one on a top 5 school’s admission officer you have half won the
battle already on how to represent yourself on your application.</p>
<p>I was admitted in the previous year to all the colleges I applied to and chose
to matriculate at Harvard. Most high school peers remarked at the time
that the reason I received a likely letter or merit award was a direct result
of my national level awards in science and Math. I know from the personal
feedback I have received in a few cases that it was my essay and supplemental
arts submissions that influenced the admittance decisions considerably. Students
at my high school who had equivalent achievements were rejected in some cases
or placed on wait lists. A common thread was their obsessive focus on their
achievements rather than on their area of study/interests and who they are as
a human being.</p>
<p>monstor: In all likelihood the person who got rejected from MIT
came across arrogantly in his/her essays and in their interview or
seemed obsessed with their achievements with no sense of humor.
I know a bunch of students this year from my high school who got
rejected from MIT and were pretty miffed about it (a school that
always sends a bunch to MIT). What they failed to realize was their
attitude of entitlement (caused by superior science and math achievements)
would automatically disqualify them.</p>
<p>Just because the meaningful differences in applicants aren’t apparent in a few lines on an Internet forum doesn’t mean that admissions is arbitrary.</p>
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<p>Oh please, I seriously think it’s ridiculous to reject someone with exceptional academic qualification in math and science just because they’re not personable or because they’re proud of their achievements . If they’re <em>complete</em> idiots as human beings, then fine, nobody wants such people around, but it’s a reality that many relatively high-performing high schoolers have puffed up egos (that get deflated once they get to college, often at least). I don’t think everyone who was exceptionally qualified who got rejected from MIT and was upset about it is an arrogant snob – that’s way overgeneralizing. Some people have a right to be upset, and just let them be upset and remind them that they can do great things in college and go to a great grad school, or something else.</p>
<p>A good example – my friend, who’s been doing stuff with EECS ever since he was a kid. He never said “Man, it’s BS that I didn’t get in,” but I know he really, really wanted to go, and very frankly I know he’d have done tons with his chance to go to MIT, and I know (even though he doesn’t state it out loud) that he was very sad not to get into his dream school, and I can’t imagine he isn’t sad about who MIT took from his school instead of him. </p>
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<p>If they do this to an extent, fine, but I hope it doesn’t go on to the extent that people who’re legitimately better positioned to take advantage of a school’s resources than others don’t get to attend the given school just because others add more “flavor” to the class. </p>
<p>I don’t think a 4.0/2400 is the ideal combo anyway. I think that it should be probed what a 4.0/2400 candidate is as an intellectual and achiever, and based on that, acceptance should be offered or not.</p>
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<p>Usually, for someone who’s accepted – they add something to the class that is unique in flavor. Schools admit classes, not people. Thus, people who’re otherwise superqualified can get rejected. </p>
<p>This is something I’m not sure how I feel about. I’m definitely conservative on these issues, and I like for instance how Caltech does admissions a lot.</p>
<p>Arbitrary is the wrong word. There are no guarantees, that’s all.</p>
<p>What we perceive as arbitrary or random is really just subjective. There are subjective judgments involved - particuarly in reading the essays and recs. But we outsiders see only objective part - the stats. And we can’t understand why this kid with strong objective stats was chosen over this other one with even stronger objective stats. The reason: subjective judgment.</p>
<p>To be truly random the committees would make their selections for no reason at all - perhaps actually draw the names out of a hat. There are reasons, it’s just that we can’t see them all.</p>
<p>
I think “flavor” is too narrow a term, but I do think schools pick students not only for how well they can take advantage of the school’s resources themselves, but also for what they will contribute to the school environment.</p>
<p>The colleges are trying to assemble a class. This may cause results to look “arbitrary” to individual applicants, but individual applicants don’t see the big picture.</p>
<p>As I’ve said before, people need to realize that adcoms are there to serve their university and their university’s needs and wants, not to give individual high-achieving applicants a cookie or a gold star for doing well in high school. Of course, a very high-achieving applicant is very likely to fit into <em>some</em> elite university’s needs and wants for that year, but there’s no particular reason to expect that s/he should fit into <em>all</em>, or even most, elite universities’ needs and wants for that year.</p>
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<p>Of course not, but <em>some</em> are, and it’s true that MIT tends to select against very high levels of arrogance. And yes, many bright high schoolers are arrogant, and yes, they get their egos deflated, but that doesn’t mean that one should disregard high levels of arrogance. Arrogance doesn’t just make people unpleasant (not that that is a trivial consideration - why would profs want to teach and advise a bunch of unpleasant little know-it-alls?), it can also be an impediment to learning, or to taking full advantage of one’s environment.</p>
<p>The point is that you can’t really tell, from a few lines of an anonymous post on a message board, who is more “deserving”.</p>