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

Yep, I remember before my older son was applying to colleges we had several Intel/Westinghouse semi-finalists who all got into the top schools. My son tried the science research program freshman year and hated it. So he looked to do other things. I had no idea whether what he did would be considered equivalent, but at least I knew (I think he was pretty oblivious, he just did what he liked doing.) that there had to be something more than just good grades and good scores.

260, I used to say that all the time (IBM) in the 80s! Glad to know their training was consistent (and outstanding). That type of thinking spills over to many areas. Friend who was pretty high up at an investment bank told me they only look at kids from certain schools because "you can never go wrong with a X grad". I used to ask him if he ever felt liek he was missing out on a diamond in the rough. He replied "No because everyone we visit with is a diamond; best student from best schools. The odds are pretty high for good results".

I couldn’t agree more.

What is even more sickening is the people who tell you they are working really hard to close the gap but in fact are lying to you and are trying to make the gap wider and wider

@Faulkner1897 - Your wish is my command. Here’s a link to the “AND” factor thread:

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1797102-elite-admissions-finding-the-and-p1.html

I do believe that most elite schools are looking for the “AND” factor, and I think that you and @lookingforward, whom you quote, are quite correct in noting that there are subtle things that AOs are attuned to that can make or break an application.

My D’s “top college” trajectory and the quest for top merit aid scholarships brought her through myriad highly competitive application processes that seemed to differ vastly in their approaches and in their results, giving her – and me, by extension – some insight into the process. I will cite two very different cases.

TASP sought kids demonstrating intelligence and critical thinking skills, but also looked for diversity of thought, background, and experience. They relied heavily on very long, thorough, thoughtful, and honest essays and an intense interview process, along with teacher recommendations. The kids that ended up there were brilliant and very diverse. While many, but certainly not all, of them either had or went on to have good test scores (TASP initially reaches out to students based on their PSAT scores and seeks nominations; my daughter was neither contacted by them nor nominated, but applied and got in anyway). As a fully funded program, financial need only came into play for travel costs and lost wages. What they ended up with was a multiracial, multiethnic, geographically and economically diverse group of intellectually curious students, most of whom would end up at top schools, oftentimes with multiple admissions to ivies, top LACs and “elite” schools.

The Coolidge Foundation, in contrast, in selecting finalists and semifinalists for their generous merit-based scholarship, probably relied much more heavily on test scores, grades, and impressive ECs (debate, mock trial, community service), together with thoughtful, shorter essays, and teacher recs. The top 2 percent of applicants were invited to a gathering in Washington DC.; my D was appalled at the lack of racial, ethic, and economic diversity she found there. Again, most of these students got into top schools, more often than not with multiple admissions to ivies, top LACs and “elite” schools; many of them also successfully competed for other institutional and outside academic scholarships.

I presume that “holistic” college admissions would perhaps end up being an amalgam of these two approaches.

And, while both the Coolidge semifinalists and TASPers may be pre-selected groups of high achieving students, the fact that they had success in getting admitted to top schools. This can’t solely be attributed to “luck.” I agree that among the unhooked, non-legacy, non-athlete students that are admitted, there is usually an “AND” factor. And I also think that essays and teacher recommendations count way more than people seem to think.

This thread also has some useful and thoughtful information:

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/admissions-hindsight-lessons-learned/588508-tips-on-the-college-admission-process-p1.html

Based on my short (I am on CC barely three months) observation, most people who believe the admission process to be fair/not crap shoot/non-random/not luck-based, themselves or their children got in those TT schools, while those who believe otherwise didn’t.
No difference in everyday life, most people who have good jobs/happy lives think they achieved those by hardworking/intelligence, but often ignore the power of chance/luck/rich dad.

@collegedad13 ,

I am assuming you were referring to college admissions and not politics since discussion of the latter is not allowed. Which colleges do you think are lying to you and actually trying to make the gap wider and wider?

"I do believe that most elite schools are looking for the “AND” factor, and I think that you and @lookingforward, whom you quote, are quite correct in noting that there are subtle things that AOs are attuned to that can make or break an application.

I do agree on the “AND” factor and it could be good grades and URM or good grades and from Wyoming. But the thing with with the AND factor is the candidate can’t stand on their own, they need an AND factor to get them admitted to a selective school. Take Einstein, he wouldn’t be an AND applicant because he would convey his understanding of the universe (to the adcoms that could understand it) and that would be sufficient. There would be no AND, the adcoms would have a pretty good idea that they’re dealing with a two-time Nobel prize winner and accept him. They would not reject him for an URM or a first gen since he can get in without an AND.

@socaldad2002 it’s partly luck in this sense. Although I (also a dad from Southern CA) can reason and justify why my top 5% GPA wise kid got into Stanford REA, whereas other 20 kids with even higher GPA and test scores didn’t, I really don’t know why a particular adcom admitted our kid over other kids except maybe his essays resonated more. It was luck that this particular adcom reviewer my kid’s application.

@hebegebe Well said. I told my son that the real reason he can afford to attend Stanford on full pay is my now deceased Mom who emigrated to US with $10k debt and worked all her life to give me a good education (free education to Cornell because we were poor) so I could make enough money to send him to Stanford on full pay. It is my lasting regret that she died 10 days before she could hear her grandson unexpectedly got into Stanford early. I felt I had to type this post as a tribute to her.

@makemesmart I definitely don’t fall in the categories you mention. I have seen too many kids I would have admitted denied from certain schools, as well as encountered many instances where The kids I would not have admitted get in that I do not believe admins are necessarily great evaluators of kids most likely to succeed or contribute to schools. My kid got into Stanford REA — and who knows, he might have gotten into HYP had he applied there — but I know a lot of luck was involved. And no way I would say certain kids from his HS who did not get in were less deserving. For me, the fact that my kid got into Stanford REA shows me that it’s a lot of luck because he wasn’t even considering applying to an elite school until Junior year when he found out he unexpectedly became NMF, and we never groomed him for HYPSM. We just wanted him to get into UC Irvine level school.

Don’t get me wrong. My kid definitely has strong points about his application, but the fact there were few kids with my kid’s ECs in his region, that my kid somehow got accepted at several programs which became focal points of his ECs, and getting an adcom who appreciated my kid’s strong points was luck. There were some kids in his high school who got A+s and As, whereas my kid got A- in close to 50% of his classes with 2 Bs — no, he studied sometimes to barely maintain A- because he thought that along with his ECs was good enough to get into a good UC.

When adcoms say they can take the kids they admitted put them back in the pool and take another set of kids and know the second set will do as well as the first set, that’s pretty much the definition of randomness. Now of course I think they’re implying they’re pulling from kids that have passed the first screen, but the general point sill holds.

I’d like to think it’s not a crap shoot. Certainly the adcoms I’ve spoken with claim it is not. Our experience is that there is consistency as our son was accepted at 4 out of 5 of the (USN) top ranked engineering schools. Good grades? Yes. Good test scores? Yes. National level ECs? NONE. State level ECs? NONE. Local level ECs? NONE. Great essays? YES.

@theloniusmonk - I don’t see that as the definition of random. Instead, I see that as the definition of being able to create a really strong “B” team that could step up to the plate if needed. The NFL, NBA, and MLB draft backup players all the time. They are all worthy of playing professionally. However, they are not all worthy of being starters. AOs only draft starters. They don’t have the room to also draft the backups.

@Rivet2000 My son had all those things too for comp sci but didn’t fair nearly as well. So what does that say about him? Nothing. 'Cause of the “luck” factor. Maybe he was in the wrong major because lots of boys want to be in CS. Maybe he was in the wrong part of the country. Maybe he was the wrong gender or color or whatever. There’s no way to know what the adcoms were looking for at the time he applied.

The adcoms will tell you that there is no luck to it, but that would be a lie because they can’t possibly admit every student that is “worthy” of their institution. That means there has to be some randomness to it. Case in point - according to our college counselor, my son was on the short list of one of the top CS schools in the country (meaning he was more than “worthy”), but he was cut when they holistically “rounded out” the class. Why? I’m not sure because I don’t know what the rest of the applicants looked like or what “hole” they needed to fill that he couldn’t help them with.

It really annoys me when people think their kids are somehow “anointed” when they get admission into the ivies or other tippy top schools. My kid was just as smart (possibly smarter) and also had a lot to offer these institutions. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong background and major.

I think people want to believe that there’s no luck involved because that would mean that it’s mostly out of their control once they provide the grades, essays, ec’s, and recs that are stellar. All of that will only get you in the door. What happens after that is in the hands of adcoms that are trying to fill spaces that are left once they take all the athletes, legacies, etc. So you’re really only trying to fulfill the random openings that are still available. If they already have too many boys from a certain area who want to study CS (gee, what are the odds, like 2:1?), then you find yourself in the rejected pile.

@megan12 Perhaps that’s the case.
My point was that if it was totally random he would not have received those acceptances. Although I guess if you are being mathematically correct there is a finite probability that one could be randomly selected for 4 top colleges just like these is a chance you can flip a coin and get heads 4 out of 5 times.

^ @megan12 I think you and Rivet2000 may be talking about different things.
“…our son was accepted at 4 out of 5 of the (USN) top ranked engineering schools…”
If this means that as an unhooked with CS profile he was accepted to Stanford/MIT with only good scores/GPA and good essays, I think it is highly unlikely.

You can’t argue logically with someone who’s so emotionally invested in the subject that they aren’t able to understand the points you are making versus what they feel to be true.

Stanford’s REA this year has me wondering about the whole thing. Many kids my D18 knows applied and none were accepted. She hasn’t even heard of one deferral from her friends or their friends (word would have gotten around). The entire area was skunked. Her HS had two last year and in earlier years. The rumor going around the teenage grapevine is that S admitted too many kids from this area in previous years and cut back this year. I have no idea if that’s true.

@megan12 The other side to your annoyance at people thinking their kids got “anointed” is when your kid does get in and it gets dismissed as a hook or random event. If a kid is Asian, good at math, science, and music, and gets into an ivy, then whatever they did to “get in the door” was the real deal.

@jzducol OK, let me refine a little. In reality they were great grades and test scores. The characterization of EC’s and essays are spot on. He was not accepted at MIT but to me that was not a surprise as I think that MIT places more emphasis on pure-play grades/scores/ECs then the others. Perhaps I’m wrong.