@vhsdad
I am literally laughing out loud.
But I agree with one of the posters earlier, luckily for most of us, where u go to college does not determine ur future. Most of the time, things turned out ok for most of us. And I want to make sure that my S knows how fortunate he is.
@makemesmart Full disclosure, my S18 has been accepted to one of the crap shoot schools, but we are seriously considering another school a half tier down that is offering a merit scholarship.
Yes, in actual diving competitions, all of the competitors can see each others’ dives and the judges have to give scores, so they can compare themselves to each other and observe whether the judges have any specific biases or preferences. In the hypothetical in reply #34, none of this would be visible to the divers, just like how much about college admissions is not visible to applicants and other outsiders.
@ucbalumnus but how do u know whether a given AOs personal preference (in ur post #34 scenario) is not in the play? I guess nobody can know for sure whether it plays a role but everyone knows the influences r there.
U r saying our perceived opaqueness is not opaque on the Inside, but I still don’t see why that’s the case. Probably why I didn’t get into TT in the first place 30 years ago. :))
@CottonTales “I get irritated when parents say it is random or a crapshoot, usually when their kids don’t get into whatever elite school they are hoping for. Admissions people usually get it right for the most part, so to insinuate they are incompetent or just throwing darts to choose the class is ridiculous. Kids and parents alike are disappointed initially, but don’t things usually work out just fine?”
At least one of the reasons you see words like “lottery” and “luck” thrown around CC and conversely why you hear some parents say “I don’t know how little Susy got into Harvard”, Of course she must have had some excellent credentials but they are being modest.
For the denied applicant, parents and students don’t want to admit that their high school resume wasn’t quite good enough to be one of the chosen few. I just can’t fathom AOs randomly choosing their freshman class from a large hat. I’m sure they take their job very seriously and make decisions based on a myriad of admission factors, down to the very last accepted student.
@socaldad2002, I agree 100%.
You don’t know.
It should be pretty obvious to an insider who can view all applications for comparison why some applicants were chosen and other not, even if the reasons were “bad” ones. The point is that what may be relatively transparent to the insider may be quite opaque to the outsider.
Some higher education experts estimate that, at each elite institution, up to 70% of the entering class is made up of hooks: recruited athletes, URMs, FGLI (first-gen low income, which is now gaining momentum as desirable priority), development cases, politically and otherwise well-connected, etc. Add to this other highly desirable applicants, such as special talents in performing arts, STEM, civic records, etc.
For the applicant, otherwise with excellent academic records and test scores, who doesn’t possess any of these, it’s not difficult to see why the selection process might appear random, especially given today’s reality that such applicants are trying to enter the gates that only allow a single digit percentage of all students who seek to pass through. Yes, there is a degree of randomness but I’d characterize it as extremely competitive randomness, not the pick-from-a-large-hat kind.
^^^awww I was hoping the bigger the hat, the larger the chance. Was getting my big hat out from the back of the closet.
The top 2% of our high school class who had rigorous schedules and decent scores all got into the most selective colleges. Most did not get into all the colleges they applied to. For example in my son’s class - #3 got waitlisted at Harvard and had to make do with Princeton. #8 got into Harvard, but was rejected from first choice MIT. #8 IMO had more unique activities and filled an institutional need at Harvard that year. (They were expanding their engineering program and planning on adding 100 new professors in the next few years.)
So according to some of you, I guess that means that my genius kid (yes, he’s been tested) wasn’t special enough. His many EC’s, the play he wrote, and the Cum Laude Society membership weren’t up to the top school’s standards. That’s such a load of cr*p!!
He was a boy interested in comp sci, coming from an area that was not far enough outside the top school’s area. So there were a lot of other kids just like him. If he was a girl, going into engineering, coming from a state far away, I’m pretty sure it would be less important what his grades were. It doesn’t matter how “special” you are. It matters what the college is looking for that year and whether you happen to be in a pool of thousands or hundreds or only several, based on your interests, your location, your major, your gender, etc.
Maybe if he had said he wanted to go into philosophy, he would have been more “interesting” to the top schools. Their loss. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with honors for 2 degrees. He’s now working at a top school under a certifiable genius (like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory), and the guy is extremely impressed with his work because he’s amazing. So BLEH to you Ivies!!
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I’m in the “crap shoot” camp. My very-high-stats daughter got into some great colleges, didn’t get into others, went to one, graduated, and is now in a great university for grad school. She’s special, as are all the students with similar qualifications who did and didn’t get into those and other colleges and universities.
A lot of people have no understanding of how good (or not) they look on paper to an AO and what the competition is like. My DD had better admissions results than most of the students ranked above her and it surprised people. I believe it was because she was interesting and gave AOs a good idea of what she was about, what all she’d accomplished, and what potential she offered. She worked on those applications and essays and didn’t just let her high(ish) stats speak for themself.
@BrianBoiler–you do realize that your post (#30) will be solely responsible for a 200% increase in applications this year to intern at the United Nations, right? 
I think most applicants are interesting.
“So according to some of you, I guess that means that my genius kid (yes, he’s been tested) wasn’t special enough. His many EC’s, the play he wrote, and the Cum Laude Society membership weren’t up to the top school’s standards. That’s such a load of cr*p!!”
Genius is good, but it’s not enough. There are too many geniuses out there for that to be enough, unfortunately. My son goes to a magnet school where every single kid there has been tested and has a genius level IQ - it’s part of the entrance requirements. Many, many Sheldons in every single class. Of the approximately 200 kids that graduate each year from this school, would you expect all 200 to get into the tippy top schools? And that’s just one school in one state in a great big country, meaning there are thousands of genius kids out there applying.
It doesn’t mean your kid isn’t awesome. There are a lot of factors that go into it. But just being a genius and having great ECs isn’t enough since there are thousands and thousands of kids who fit that description. Whole lotta awesome out there…
By definition a random process (or a lottery) is one in which all possible outcomes have an equal chance of occurring. In admissions that would mean that all applicants have an equal chance of getting in. You don’t have to look very hard to see that’s not true.
ucbalumnus has it right. It’s not random or luck so much as it is opaque. And beyond the basic stats. it’s also subjective. Thus, to an outside observer the process of choosing among the top candidates looks quite random, but inside the committee room every accepted kid gets accepted for a reason.
Where “luck” (in the sense of “good fortune”) might a play role is where you happen to fit a niche that the school is looking to fill that year. Say you happen to be a top bassoonist applying to Harvard in the same year that all the bassoonists in the school symphony orchestra graduated. That kind of good luck might give you a boost in that particular application cycle that you wouldn’t have gotten had you been applying the previous year.
Fully agree post #52. Top schools are not looking for bunch of geniuses to build a rocket, but rather a bunch of bright kids that are not only succeed in academic but also are great presenters and communicators in transforming ideas. Though my DD was among the tops in her school, but she wasn’t among the tops in our area (one of the highest rated school district in the US). She had good ECs, languages, music skills…, but you can also say that she fits into the"jack of all trades" category that most what she did was average. Yet, what she could (and still can) do was put her activities and her HS life into a delicate story. I remember reading her essays after she already submitted that both her personal and supplemental essays were not applications but like children’s story books: there were hopes, disappointments, failure, unexpected turns, struggles, overcomes, angry, sadness, and happiness and worthiness of being in those activities, studies, experiences, and dark moments in life facing the questions of life and death while still being just as a normal high school kid.
DD told me that she were asked by few of her friends (some of them I knew) who were as much as or even more accomplished than my DD and was aiming for tops schools to have the last minutes review of their application essays. DD said that she felt that many of the essays were accomplishments allover the places type. Although, she pointed out to them and tried to let them know, it was usually too late for them to change to a more personal essay to beat the deadlines.
In the end, DD only applied too two schools, got into her ED crap shoot school and had to withdrew from her state safety, because she even had to chance to try those top to the tops crap shoot and more safety in the RD round.
Whereas, those ones we were expected having great chances (including the few passed their essays for DD to review) did not get into their dream schools and had to settle into the state safety that my DD applied too. I do think the personal essays have a thing or two to do with that.
corrections after proofread for #57:
In the end, DD only applied to two schools, got into her ED crap shoot school and had to withdraw from her state safety, before she even had the chance to try those top among the tops crap shoot schools and more other safeties in the RD round.
It’s also very, very difficult for us to objectively assess our own children. When my kid finally shared his essay drafts with me, I honestly didn’t like them. But they were reflective of who he was (apparently his inner dude is a 70 year old constipated man who is about to yell at the neighborhood kids to get off his grass) and for whatever reason, they resonated with certain AOs.
Colleges don’t see our kids the way we see our kids. Heck, there was recently a parent who posted that she was worried her daughter would not be able to do laundry or wake up on her own when she went off… to Princeton. Does anyone think for one second that Princeton sees this kid as being a risk for not being able to figure out how to use a washing machine?
As parents, not only can’t we objectively assess our own children, we only see a small fraction of the competition out there. It’s just not enough info to be able to know with certainty what will happen with admissions at a tippy top school who sees thousands of apps and only a tiny representation of each kid. All we can do is encourage our kids to be within the range that they’ll have a chance and then hope good things happen. An acceptance doesn’t mean our kid is perfect and won a lottery ticket to fortune and a denial doesn’t mean our kid is a doomed loser.