<p>Though I was just reporting what the Princeton study asserts, the 1200-1300 figure makes sense for the reason I wrote above -- any systematic advantage (50 extra SAT points, 0.5 extra GPA points, etc) will tend to have the greatest effect for people who miss the cutoff by an amount that can be compensated by the added advantage. For the others their odds are improved but it's either not much needed (at the top) or still a crapshoot (at the bottom). The people getting 1500 SATs are seeing a difference between good and excellent odds whereas the 1200-1300 are seeing in increase from no-hope to good that represents a greater change in odds for more applicants. I can look at the study again in more detail but I guess that's what is going on.</p>
<p>Well, siserune I have to disagree with you...You say "her academic credentials do not sound overwhelming" ??? May I ask you what you consider overwhelming?? A Presidential Scholar is one of about 100 high school students chosen because of having one the HIGHEST academic credentials in the country! ( from 1.4 million annual high school students !) You ask me, what could that mean "in admission terms" ??</p>
<p>As far as the ability to pay, just recently H began to offer more aid and for a reason. They were not doing it before. They were always being accused of taking too many rich people.Your argument on this is rather weak.</p>
<p>I was not clear about her hispanic background. First generation and English was learned as a second language. How about that?</p>
<p>Her parents are both professionals but not rich. They were willing to make the sacrifice so that their kid would not have a debt ending college. So now my friend is being punished for that?</p>
<p>You also said you would not be surprised if she got rejected from all the ivies? With these credentials? Fortunately she did not. She got accepted to all the schools that she applied to, except for that Wait List at H that never came through.</p>
<p>My take on this is completely different. I think is has to do with crapshoot admissions or perhaps with a mistake or perhaps because she was extremely disliked by someone over there ( for some reason.. who knows ..)</p>
<p>This just illustrates how unpredictable this whole process is. It is not possible to explain it on the basis of some obscure model, really.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You also said you would not be surprised if she got rejected from all the ivies? With these credentials? Fortunately she did not. She got accepted to all the schools that she applied to, except for that Wait List at H that never came through.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You just confirmed what I wrote (and showed that your friend validates the Princeton model), if "all the schools she applied to" includes several other schools in the top 5-10. If the Princeton formula predicts her chances at 95 percent and the result is that she gets in at 6 out of 7 of the top ten and waitlists at Harvard, the formula is doing fine (and according to your latest information, the formula does apply, i.e. she is likely to be treated as Hispanic). </p>
<p>Note that my comment was not that she was unlikely to get in, but that the situation sounded binary: either she obviously clears the admissions hurdles everywhere, or there is some weakness that would kill her application everywhere. You clarified that it's the first option and Harvard apparently is an anomaly, though not by much -- it waitlisted rather than rejecting.</p>
<p>She certainly wouldn't be the first very-strong-on-paper applicant who gets in at, say, 9 out of the top 10 schools and is waitlisted at the tenth.</p>
<p>re: Presidential Scholarships, my contention was that the selection criteria are unclear. There are programs that select a much smaller number of students from pools of similar size or strength, where not all the selectees make it into every university of their choice. The Presidential doesn't have any hard standards that I know of.</p>
<p>These applications are read by REAL people, whom I would like to believe make their decisions on the basis of personal factors that can not be clumped into numbers and statistics. You are making an "after the fact" analysis to make it fit in your model.</p>
<p>It does not work that way.</p>
<p>
[quote]
These applications are read by REAL people, whom I would like to believe make their decisions on the basis of personal factors that can not be clumped into numbers and statistics.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The Princeton model is a (successful) predictor at the population level, and that's all it claims to be. There is a very high correlation between its predictions and what we observe in reality, which means that for most individuals, especially if they apply to multiple elite universities, the results will usually be close to what the model predicts. Your friend appears to be an example of this, although you didn't disclose which schools she applied to.</p>
<p>What is "after the fact" about that? You say she falsifies the model, but after providing fuller information it turns out that her individual results are consistent with the population level predictions. No data has been used selectively to fit the model; the selection of data was performed by you, in fact.</p>