<p>Somewhere, I read that Harvard and Columbia receive over thirty thousand applications a year. What I want to know is how many of these are actually "qualified" for the schools they're applying to? By qualified, I mean they have SAT/ACT scores in the average (or above) the average for their school, they have shown extracurricular dedication (or have ECs at all), great GPAS. They take rigorous courses and remain near the top of their classes.</p>
<p>I know the admission process is cutthroat competitive, I just wonder how many applicants of top schools (schools with prestigious reputations like Harvard) actually stand a fighting chance in front of an admissions officer.</p>
<p>What I'm wondering is how many people you're REALLY competing with. I somehow doubt that every applicant for a school like Harvard would be competitive in admissions.</p>
<p>I know of one kid who barely spoke English, was taking the SATs super late, and claimed he was only applying to Harvard because that was the only school that interested him.</p>
<p>As far as I know, he didn’t get in. There’s definitely a few delusionals out there. However, there ARE more qualified applicants than places.</p>
<p>What difference does it make? Whether you are competing against 30,000 students or only 20,000 “really” qualified, the odds are against you even if you have perfect grades, perfect SATs and impressive ECs. Fact is, Harvard doesn’t just want to admit the best and most promising students - it wants to create a class. So if the class is missing, say, a tuba player, you may not get in even with your perfect stats and it’s the tuba player who ends up with the fat envelope. Despite perhaps having lower stats than you.</p>
<p>With SLIGHTLY lower stats perhaps. But there are enough tuba players out there with straight-A or near straight-A stats that Harvard isn’t going to have to settle for a B student to fill a musician slot – for a 1000-yard rusher maybe or for a guy 6’8" with a lkiller jump shot, but not for a musician.</p>
<p>At one of the schools’ information sessions – maybe Harvard – the speaker said that over 80% of the applicants are qualified. I think the definition of qualified is something like “capable of successfully completing the coursework if admitted.”</p>
<p>^ I concur w/Zephyr15. “Qualified” means one is capable of graduating. The work at HYP, etc. is certainly challenging. However, admissions officers know that many applicants are quite capable. That’s where the “art” of choosing a class comes in.</p>
<p>I would bet at least half of that are people without even close to the right stats. I know a lot of people who plan on applying who don’t have a chance.</p>
<p>zephyr15 - yes, that seems about right. I visited Dartmouth last week and at the information sessions the speaker said about 80-85% of all applicants are academically qualified. Unfortunately, because college admissions is very competitive today, the acceptance rate is much much lower.</p>
<p>The “right stats” today have little to do with being qualified enough to succeed. Generally most Ivy admins would say at leats 80% are qualified well enough to do well if admitted and some even test this from time to time.</p>
I interviewed for my IVY and this was not true in my experience … all applicants were given interviews … and the 80% estimate seems about right to me as virtually everyone one I interviewed was “qualified”.</p>
<p>Around 75-80% of the applicants are qualified to do the work, meaning they have the capability of graduating.
But, lets say they need a soccer goalie urgent and he has a 3.6 GPA, then he would get accepted rather than a 4.0 GPA 2400 SAT guy.</p>
<p>Most are “qualified” . . . Brown rejected about 85% of the ~ 8000 applicants who had a 750 or better SAT Math and said no to about 87% of the ~2500 Salutatorians and Valedictorians who applied.</p>
<p>rokr32, I bet that soccer goalie has pretty good stats if he gets into an Ivy. I know a guy who was #1 in the world in his (preppy) sport. He had about 3.5 GPA. Did not get into any Ivy he applied. His sister was highly accomplished in that same sport but nowhere near #1. But she had 4.0 and very good SATs. She got into several Ivies and chose Princeton. </p>
<p>I really do think the Ivies want their athletes to be also impressive academically, and will turn down a top player in favor of a lesser-accomplished player who also excels in school.</p>
<p>Obviously Harvard knows how to create a class, every person that comes out of that school is something. Look at Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, Harvard knows what they want when they see it, and it boggles my mind still how they can pick out just the right kids, when about 80% of the Harvard applications are cliche or very similiar.</p>
<p>This is slightly different, but an article on Stanford’s admissions process said that in the first round of reading, they sort applicants into three different piles: “clear admits” (5%, a subset of which would get a likely letter), “competitive” (read application again), and “not competitive” (about half the applicant pool). It’s from 1998 but I doubt things have significantly changed:</p>
<p>Stanford said in another (more recent) article that 90% of the applicants are capable of doing work at Stanford. So if by “qualified,” you mean that they could succeed as an undergrad there, then most are qualified. But if you mean that they are seriously considered by the admissions office, then probably not much more than half.</p>
<p>It’s likely very similar at other top schools.</p>
<p>At Cornell they get approx. 35,000 applicants. The first step in application is applying to a specific college & major. 1,000 applicants a year are rejected because they can’t even complete this most basic direction. I’d say 80% may be high.</p>
<p>They do something similiar to that process at MIT. At MIT the applications are divided up to certain adcom officers depending on how “qualified” you are. The adcoms actually take them with them seperatly go through them, and choose which ones they like to MOVE ON to different committees, where comments are written on the applicants profile that they great fit etc. When the applications reach a final committee supposedly adcom officers get the quota for acceptance one adcom said for every person accepted seven applications had to be tossed. </p>
<p>If you go on MITs website there is a blog from one of the adcom members that describes the process and what it feels like to have students academic lives in their hands.</p>