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

Parents Forum
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I wrote," the primary reason why Stuyvesant and TJ get a lot of acceptances to top schools is because they are have selective admissions, resulting in having a high concentration of top students compared to typical public HSs." “Primary” does not mean the only factor that has any influence. However, the high concentration of top students is no doubt the primary reason for the larger number acceptances. Suppose you have two high schools in the same district with a similar SES and similar interest in applying to top colleges, among similar quality students. If school A has 200 students who do especially well in the criteria top colleges are looking for, and school B has 10 comparable students, then school A is likely to have a much larger number of top a college acceptances than school B. The primary reason for the larger number of acceptances is not school A’s resources or counseling, it’s that school A has a tremendously higher concentration of amazing students.

Harvard has an entering class of ~1650, so the maximum possible number of high schools is 1650. It’s statistically impossible to have a large portion of US high school’s represented in the entering class. However, this doesn’t mean the more than 1000 schools that are represented are almost entirely TJ or Stuyvesant type. I attended a HYPSM… college, and this certainly was not my impression. Such colleges make a strong effort to have a diverse class, with a wide variety of backgrounds. I’d agree that top public/private schools are overrepresented compared to the general population., but there are still students from a wide variety of schools and school types.

TJ is full of the top students in Fairfax county. The school has an average SAT of 1480, with many high GPAs kids who are achieving amazing things, both in and out of the classroom. You need to compare apples to apples, when comparing admit rates. What is the admit rate among the subset of comparable kids at typical public HSs?.. .not the admit rate or number of admits, forthe overall HS. This is also a more relevant metric for determining whether TJ gives kids an overall advantage in college admissions than the total number of acceptances.

I attended a basic, public HS in a small town. During the time I attended, they offered 3 AP classes, did not have impressive counseling, and the majority of kids failed the NYS regents exam in math . Now they offer some more AP classes, but it is still a basic, public high school that is nowhere near on the level of TJ or Stuyvesant. As a comparison, I’ve listed historical admit rates across many years at this basic, public HS for the 5 colleges I listed for TJ above. To do an apples to apples comparison, I only included applicants with stats somewhat on par with TJ kids – a 1400+ SAT and a top ~10% GPA. Note that the historical acceptance rate among high stat kids at this basic, public HS matches or surpasses the acceptance rate among TJ kids for all but MIT.

Princeton – 9% (3/32)
Duke – 11% (3/27)
Penn – 16% (9/58)
MIT – 5% (1/22)
Cornell – 41% (43/105)

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Harker is a private school.

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In Harvard’s freshman survey, roughly 1 in 7 kids reports a family income below $40k each year. Yes, that is obviously a minority, but that’s still hundreds of kids in any entering class. If you attend this type of college, you’ll meet such kids on a regular basis. You’ll meet even more kids from middle class families, who attended typical, public HSs.

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My kids attended a big suburban high school with an average SAT score somewhere around 1500 out of 2400. There was a pretty big segment that did not graduate in four years. But they managed to offer 22 AP courses and every year, 2 or 3 kids got into Harvard and many others into other selective colleges There’s a huge, huge difference in what high schools are like in this country. But yes, with a class of 1600 or so obviously one school (or even one school times 25 or times 50) can’t take every deserving student in the country.

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Many of the kids enrolled in schools like probably could have had made the top 5% of their class in their home, regular high schools if they stayed. Where as if they don’t make to the top 1/3 of their class in Stuyvesant or TJ, their chances to be admitted into top schools actually diminished due to squeezing out by their higher ranked classmates applying to the same schools. So dramatically superior resources and counseling support behind them means nothing if they couldn’t make the top dogs there.

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@Data10 :

No need to be patronizing.

Your claim that the resources offered to kids at top public schools (a group which includes TJ/Stuy–but also includes hundreds of top public schools across the country that do NOT have admissions standards beyond living in a district boundary) is not an absolutely critical factor influencing the acceptance rates of top high schools is flatly illogical. If you still maintain that the self-selecting student population of TJ/Stuy is the primary factor in play, replace TJ/Stuy with Cupertino, Palo Alto, New Trier, etc and evaluate whether that argument still holds any ground.

It’s a hell of a lot easier for a kid to look brilliant on paper with three varsity sports teams to captain, two dozen clubs to run and win awards through, counselors who are aware of the ins and outs of the application process, extensive options for standardized test prep, a national lab next door to do research at, etc. You can choose to gloss over this fact all you like–you certainly did so in your previous post–but that doesn’t make it untrue.

Again: if school A has a hugely developed infrastructure dedicated to helping its students check the boxes top colleges want to see filled and school B doesn’t have that infrastructure, students at school A will be at an enormous advantage in the application process. You’re essentially attributing everything to some innately higher capability of the students and nothing to the school or surrounding environment, which is just an absurd conclusion to reach.

Re your last point: Calculating admit percentages off a tiny sample size already paints a skewed picture. Deliberately omitting all applicants with uncompetitive scores while also neglecting to mention the number of years it took to collect those stats skews the numbers further. At a truly average US high school, a score of 1400+ is legitimately rare–keep in mind that that’s multiple standard deviations above the average score. At a top public school, it might be normal for a quarter of the class to score 1400±-in part because students have huge infrastructure in place as early as middle school in order to promote higher scores. Comparing only apples to apples doesn’t work here–one of sample groups is 95% oranges.

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I wrote," the primary reason why Stuyvesant and TJ get a lot of acceptances to top schools is because they are have selective admissions, resulting in having a high concentration of top students compared to typical public HSs." As I’ve discussed, the key is having a high concentration of top students compared to typical high schools. Selective admissions like at Stuyvesant and TJ is one way to have a high concentration of top students compared to typical high schools, but it is not the only way.

You mentioned Cupertino and Palo Alto. They also have a high concentration of top students, even if they don’t have selective admssions. I’ll use test scores again to show my point, even though selective college admission obviously requires far more than test scores. Cupertino has an average M+CR SAT score that is 1352, and Palo Alto is 1344. Both schools are tremendously above both the state and national average. They no doubt have a high concentration of top students that selective colleges are looking for, kids who do amazing things both in and out of the classroom. If you just look at number of students doing extremely well on the criteria HYPSM… type colleges value, you’d expect far more HYPSM… admissions than the average public HS, although not as much as at TJ (except for at the nearby Stanford). Someone posted the historical stats for Palo Alto on this forum, and that was exactly what occurred.

If you are talking about an individual student, this would look ridiculous on an application. Colleges aren’t impressed by being in 2 dozen clubs. If you are talking about the full resources available in the school, almost any typical public high school would offer a lot more than 3 sports.

I interview students for admission to a HYPSM college. I typically interview kids who attend one of 3 high schools – one is a public high school that has a reputation for being less desirable in my area and is certainly not a top public, one is a what I associate as a typical private school that likely has good counseling resources, and one is a small charter than offers no AP classes and focuses on project based learning, with many projects out of the classroom. I’ve seen little pattern about kids from which high schools have the ECs that best display the criteria the college values for admission. The activities that I feel best display this criteria are rarely school sponsored activities, like captain of a team or ran a club I’ve interviewed kids from all 3 high schools meet the desired criteria very well, and I’ve also seen kids from all 3 high schools met the criteria very poorly. All 3 high schools have also had acceptances in recent years. Sure some schools offer more assistance in finding ECs, “packaging” the student, better test prep, or whatever; but these are not the primary reason why high schools like TJ, Stuyvesant, Cupertino, and Palo Alto get more top college admissions than your typical public high school.

The comment that led to this tangent was, " The admit rates are not even high enough to imply that students would be better off going to TJ than staying at their old typical public HS, for the purposes of college admissions (there are many benefits to TJ besides college admissions)." TJ is not a middle school. It is a magnet high school. Students attend typical public middle schools in Fairfax county that generally do not have a special infrastructure in place for higher scores, then apply for admission to TJ for high school. TJ admission criteria includes doing well on a SAT like standardized test with verbal, math, and essay sections; so you won’t see many TJ students who do poorly on such tests. Any high school that requires high SAT-like scores for admission is expected to have high average SAT scores, regardless of whether it has a test prepping infrastructure. If an admitted TJ kid moved to my HS in upstate NY instead of starting at TJ, his score would not suddenly drop to the typical 1000-1100 score at my high school. Nor would his chance of college admission drop to the typical admission rates for the overall student body. Instead he’d most likely be in the rare 1400+ SAT group you described, and would most likely also have a high GPA… essentially the subgroup I used in my comparison.

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The predominant Asian population at TJ and Stuyvesant may have been partly responsible for the lower than expected admission rate at elite colleges. The same applies to Palo Alto or any competitive high schools in California. In addition, average students at these magnet high schools may perform better at school than average students at other regular public schools, but it does not exclude the possibility that top students at regular public schools may be just as talented as the top students at TJ or Stuyvesant. After all, elite colleges are not looking for average students; they are looking for students who stand out in their communities.

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My kids, though this is a while back, confirm @Data10 's observations. I have no doubt that if we lived in a place with a TJ, Stuyvesant type of school, they could have been admitted (based on their test histories). But we don’t, nor did we live in a public school system like Palo Alto or New Trier. Rather, they attended the local public with at the time 6 or 7 APs and few Honors courses, --also few sports teams and other “top school” amenities, though a pretty good music program. Like Data10 says, being there didn’t make their scores drop–each of them scored about 600 points higher (turn of the century M+V style SATs) than the school average (~about 900). And they ended up at a top LAC and an Ivy. I actually think going to this “regular” school was good for them in many ways that the “top” school would not have been.

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I have to mention that schools with large numbers of top students (both magnet and regular public) also have significant peer pressure to excel and lots of educated parents who are hanging out on CC all day :slight_smile: This might make more difference than school resources.

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Our well regarded, highly ranked, suburban NY city suburban HS has kids that do well in college admissions, including Ivys, but in the last 3 years have NO kids that got into two of them. The top kids would have been much more likely to have gotten into those schools from one of the private prep school where the college counselors have a much closer relationship with the AOs and where there may be more focus on crafting an application that it likely to get the student admitted. Our school does not have Intel winners like Stuyvesant. At other Ivys and at all schools just below the top 5, our students do very well. I would imaging that the top kids form our HS who do well at their colleges would also be an asset at the schools where they are not getting admitted.

However, they are just not adding to the diversity or standing out from the other BRWKs, although these kids are academically well above “bright”. Maybe they also would have done better in admissions if they were from a school where they were clearly the top student, rather than one of many such kids. OTOH, a kid with similar stats from a less well regarded local high school seems less likely to top 20 schools, which appears to be due to our district HS seeming to have a more challenging curriculum.

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Not a school, but the year my eldest son applied to college, five kids from his math circle were accepted to MIT, with three of them being homeschooled. MIT apparently loves this math circle (or did), as the previous several years, at least 5 others were also accepted. Just an observation; nothing really to add to the conversation. :slight_smile:

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K1 is a 2nd year at UChicago and K2 recently was admitted SCEA to Harvard. Both kids went to a large public high school which is one of the better ones in the state. K1 was a legacy at Chicago and K2 was unhooked. Both kids have been very fortunate throughout their lives and were born into favorable circumstances. However, I am not sure if dumb luck or a crap shoot would aptly describe their college admissions outcomes. They were both top students: K1 being in the top 5% of the class and K2 being in the top 1% of the class. Both kids made informed decisions throughout high school in terms of course selection and extra curricular participation. They also made very informed decisions as to which colleges to apply to and both made use of early action. Moreover, they put together very cohesive and focused college applications which told a good story. As a parent, I actually thought that they would get into their respective colleges. Perhaps this was all dumb luck but perhaps not.

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“The predominant Asian population at TJ and Stuyvesant may have been partly responsible for the lower than expected admission rate at elite colleges.”

Same for the bay area high schools in the Cupertino, Palo Alto and Fremont areas. The Asians are competing with other Asians for spots at most of the top private schools, MIT and Cal Tech excepted. For public schools, it would depend on the state, UCs e.g. cannot use race but I think other public universities can use race-based preferences. At a local HS, 100 kids apply every year to Stanford and 5 get in, matching the general accept rate. So even if you have ten future nobel prize winners in that hs, only five are getting in. It’s a soft quota so it’s not illegal.

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A few years ago, there was a thread about the “AND” factor. I could not find it, unfortunately, but it was about how kids who tend to get into the most selective schools have the usual superb grades, rigorous curriculum, scores, school leadership. But they also tend to have the “AND” factor on top of these. @arsenalozil 's daughter is a case in point. Top 1% of the class with the other factors noted above, AND superb musical talent and passion.

I think Admissions Officers must recognize this “AND” factor immediately when they see it. I like to think that there is no crap shoot or dumb luck with these applicants. However, given the international nature of the applicant pool, I suspect the kids with the “AND” factor must number in the thousands (maybe tens of thousands looking across applicant pools), which is still more students than there are spots. So it must come down to very fine distinctions. This is where @lookingforward cautions that any small thing in the application can matter at this very competitive level. A sour note in a recommendation. An off-putting sentence/topic in the essay. An overrepresented geographic area. Too many superb kids from one particular school.

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A few days ago, @makemesmart said:

They are certainly far more accomplished. My son is into math, and one time he looked into the old AMC exams and found them almost trivially easy. The exams today are much more difficult.

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@sylvan8798 said:

That’s a bit over the top. I have written about this before, so I will just repeat it.

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@Data10 your posts are true to your name, full of data! Thanks for the insights.
Speaking about magnet schools and cut-throat competitiveness often is mentioned, case-in-point Stuyvesant’s mass cheating (granted, it is from NY post https://nypost.com/2018/01/27/cheating-still-rampant-at-disgraced-stuyvesant-school/). Then there is the high hs suicide rates in Palo Alto area…(http://www.newsweek.com/after-rash-teen-suicides-palo-alto-cdc-sends-team-investigate-427383)
I blame it all to the “ivy”- mania!

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@hebegebe hats off to your S!
Not sure I agree with you that today’s youths are a lot more accomplished, on paper they might look so. I have always told my S that in real life, the hardest part is not having the ability to solve a given problem, but the ability to find a problem in the first place.

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In my opinion, for the most part, the old version of the AMC exams reflected what a fairly talented math student could figure for him/herself without much prior access to problems at that level of difficulty or higher, no examples of how to solve that sort of problem, a set of standard (though decent) math textbooks, and high schools teachers who might or might not be able to solve the problems themselves.

With the internet, the opportunity for students to encounter challenging problems has grown very substantially, so they have some experience with more difficult problems before they reach the current AMC. The AMC level has adjusted accordingly. Of course, it still takes a lot of ability + effort to do well on the AMC, so it is a significant accomplishment. Whether the students’ raw intellectual power has grown in parallel with their developed power? I tend to doubt it. Some of the top competitors are coached by people who coach or have coached the US IMO team.

One sees a similar phenomenon with the National Spelling Bee. The words in the initial rounds (the paper test, before the competition is televised) are straightforward enough, but by the time the competitors get to TV, the words are pretty crazy, in my opinion. There are extensive Internet resources to prepare for the Bee. (Back in the “olden” days, very few families owned an unabridged dictionary, and the one at the library could not be checked out.) Long ago, the Scripps National Spelling Bee used to have a pamphlet with words that look trivial now. Then they went over to the Paideia, for prep. Now I think they have transitioned to “Spell It,” which provides instruction in words in Arabic, Japanese, Dutch, Slavic Languages, Old English, and “New World Languages,” as well as Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, and German. “bobbejaan,” anyone? I am pretty fond of Old Frisian, myself, and expect it to show up eventually. Some of the top spellers have had different coaches for Greek, the Romance languages and German. Many of the competitors go to the National Competition for multiple years, or have older siblings who were “Spellers.”

I think it would be hard to set up an academic competition these days that did not have some of the competitors preparing for it with laser-like focus over many years. Well, as the saying sort of goes, something’s gained, but something’s lost.

In my view, this all ties into the question about a “crap shoot” element in top college admissions in the following way: Students (and parents) believe that it is an advantage to have national-level awards for admission to top colleges. I suspect that it may confer an actual advantage, and not just correlate with the qualities the colleges are looking for. One of the other posters claimed high accuracy in predicting Stanford admission, based on the information applicants posted on CC (without access to essays, letters of recommendation, etc.)–and a specific element that he looked for was a national-level award.

IBM salesmen used to tell customers looking to purchase their next computer that “No one ever got fired for purchasing an IBM.” Similarly, I suspect that no one ever got hassled for recommending the admission of someone with a national level award (assuming there were no glaring character faults, and the basic academic qualifications for admission were present).