Is getting into a top college a "crap shoot" or "dumb luck"?

I recently joined this site but having spent a considerable time reading many admission threads I see many comments that getting into a top college is arbitrary, a crap shoot, luck, etc. I have a hard time believing this line of thinking. It would seem to me that it’s a given that you have to have top scores (i.e. high GPA with a rigorous course load, high SAT/ACT tests scores); next you have to demonstrate excellent character and qualities such as leadership skills, long-term commitment to a cause, program, or project, be passionate about something and pursue it with vigor, significant extracurriculars inside and outside of the HS classroom, preferably in your intended major/career path. You need to write persuasively and “sell” yourself to the college on how you would enhance there institution. Lastly, having a hook can help being accepted (URM, athlete, legacy, special talent, socio-economic background, work experience, or overcoming a significant adversity).

Where does “luck” come into play?

It doesn’t. But it’s an opaque process as few (the superelite kids who are awesome in all/many respects) can be confident that they can get in even if they are terrific in their corner of the world and even if they do all the “right” things.

If by “luck” you mean some element of randomness, then it certainly does come into play. The group of students meeting your listed criteria or some other desired criteria (child prodigy, president’s daughter, famous actress, etc.), is larger than the accepted class of School X. In theory, any one of these students “could” be accepted. It may come down to who else is in the group in a given year, what the adcom had for lunch, or other random factors totally out of the control of the students themselves.

It’s a mix. There is only so much that’s within an applicant’s control. If the applicant is world level talent at certain things, then there is little luck involved and s/he’ll be admitted. But for the 99.99% of applicants that aren’t world level talent, once they’ve proven they’re academically capable, that’s when the luck comes into play a bit. Here are some examples of the things that influence who is admitted but that are almost completely out of an applicant’s control:

  • Number of other students applying from the same school and their relative talents. As an extreme example, if you were the absolute top student from Pakistan the year Malala applies, that's going to decrease your chance for admission because most of the tippy top colleges don't take too many internationals from a single source each year and the Nobel prize winner is probably going to get one of those spots no matter how otherwise qualified the other applicants are.
  • Situational makeup of the other applicants - schools with more of one type of applicant (boys, girls, one race, etc) may have fiercer competition among the over-represented populations and/or easier standards for under-represented populations.
  • School seeking to change student body. Sometimes schools decide that although in the past they prioritized characteristic X, Y and Z they've determined that going forward they want students with quality R to make up more of the student body.

When you look at the likelihood for 1 specific highly selective school it can seem like a crapshoot, but for the very top candidates the likelihood of at least 1 acceptance to even the highly selective schools isn’t.

It looks like an opaque lottery to outsiders because outsiders have no real way of comparing how a given applicant’s subjectively graded application aspects (essays, recommendations, extracurriculars, etc.) compare to a super-selective college’s applicant pool and that college’s goals with respect to what it wants its frosh class to look like (some such goals may be stated or inferred from public statements, but others may not be publicly announced).

“Outsider” means anyone outside that college’s admission office.

@Dolemite, yet, we see really amazing kids get shut out of all their reaches every year (granted, they don’t apply to all 30 or so Ivies/equivalents) and the super amazing kids get in to all of HYPS(M). Probably 100-200 of them each year.

"we see really amazing kids get shut out of all their reaches every year (granted, they don’t apply to all 30 or so Ivies/equivalents) and the super amazing kids get in to all of HYPS(M). Probably 100-200 of them each year. "

I always wonder about those. No way to really know for sure. I always guess it’s one of these things:

  1. Essays not compelling, mediocre or show in some way student isn’t a “fit”
  2. Mediocre recommendation letter(s) - how would you ever know? You may think someone really likes you but they don’t, or they don’t take the time to write a good letter
  3. Too many 1600 SAT, Concertmasters who are also captain of the robotics team and did an internship at Berkeley that year. (AKA - looks the same as many other applicants so doesn’t stand out even though the achievements are top notch)

I would even go out on a limb to state that there is nothing random or chance about the admission process for highly selective schools. Every 'accept" has a reason and purpose as there are so few spots available especially once the “hook” candidates are factored in.

Recently, one of our close friends D applied ED to a top 3 college. Brilliant kid, ACT 36, GPA 4.6, all 5’s AP exams, impressive ECs, #1 in class, etc. Denied! Clearly, this college is getting top talent and was looking for a certain kind of student in early decision, but I would never say that the kid didn’t get in because of bad luck, randomness, etc.

It’s a calculated risk.

I think @milee30 is onto something with point #3. Kids who do the same academic and EC things that lots of other students do, even if they do them very well, don’t stand out. The ones who often get in have struck out on their own in some way that distinguishes in them from their peers, often in something outside of their school community (starting school clubs isn’t particularly enticing to top schools). Once the applicant shows that they are capable of doing the work at the college via a reasonably high GPA and test scores with decent rigor, the college moves on to, “What else have you got?” And if “what else you’ve got” is what hundreds of other students have – well, your odds of admission just went down. They want “sparky” kids – kids who strike them as interesting and genuine and unafraid to strike out on a path that is not the one the rest of the herd is following.

Of course, ALL students need to apply to matches and safeties they’d be happy to attend, even if they seem like they’ve got the goods for top schools.

I like the calculated risk analogy. No one gets into Yale with dumb luck alone. However, the best of the rejected and wait listed students pool doesn’t look all that different from the students who were accepted. You can work really hard to be competitive yet still come up short at the end due to no particular fault of your own. There are more well-qualified students than spaces.

An insider (in the admission office) will have visibility on the applicant pool and the college’s admission goals, and will know these things, so it will look reasonably rational to the insider. That is completely different from how an outsider sees the process as mostly an opaque one with limited information on the college’s admission goals and no real way to compare a given application to the rest of the applicant pool.

I agree with @intparent. Sometimes I think that choosing a unique EC is one of the most important things a student can do, similar to choosing a project for a science fair. My three kids all did great jobs on their projects, I thought, but my oldest son’s wasn’t “sexy” and he didn’t place. My daughter’s project involved homemade hot air balloons (dry cleaning bags powered by candles). TBH, her project wasn’t as technically challenging as her brother’s, but it was very cool and she got fourth place - pretty amazing for a totally non-STEM kid. My middle son built wooden trusses, analyzed them, and tested them. At the fair, he hung a HUGE barrel of sand from a truss he built - it really stood out and he got first place, also amazing since he usually struggled in school.

So if I were a parent of a middle schooler or 9th grade, I would help him or her look for a unique EC.

Next week, we parents are doing an interesting excercise at my D high school on the college admission process. We are to review 3 potential college applicants file for admission to a ficticious university in the Northeast. Each applicant has a unique background but to @MaineLonghorn point, the one applicant really stands out to me is the student who lost her aunt to breast cancer and is now interested in Patient Advocacy/Public Health/Pre-Med. Her ECs were all related to breast cancer awareness, raising funds, counselor aid at camp for kids with cancer, and internship at a radiation therapy center. Much better ECs than creating a random club on campus with only 3 members (as a side note D’s high school has about 50+ clubs. When I was in a similar sized high school (granted it was in the 80’s) we had about 6 real clubs).

Once you pass a certain level of stats, etc. it definitely becomes a crapshoot. What stands out to one application reader may not to a different one and you have no control over who reads the app.

@droppedit Isn’t the admission process done by committee, especially at the top colleges?

Re #14

Yes, you will get a hypothetical insider viewpoint where it will be obvious how the applicants compare. But each hypothetical applicant will only know his/her application (and maybe not even all of it if recommendation letters are included), so s/he will see only opacity and randomness in the process.

At colleges with high application volume, initial reading and scoring of applications is distributed. If a centralized committee is used, it may only have to handle the smaller number that score well enough in the initial readings.

Correct. @ucbalumnus my point being the process is not luck or random (even though it’s not transparent to the student). There are rules set-up and followed by the admissions committee when reviewing applicants. I just read another thread calling the process to top schools “a lottery”. Really?

I would hope my kids followed the advice mostly attributed to Samuel Goldwyn/Thomas Jefferson : “The harder I try the luckier I get”