@milee30 I think you missed the point of my post. I never said it was enough to be a genius. I said it was disrespectful to say that my kid (and any other kid of his caliber) was not interesting enough for a top college to accept him. And anyone who thinks their kid got in just because they were more interesting is deluding themselves. Your application was not necessarily “better”. The college just needed you to fit into their holistic well-roundedness (is that a word?).
There are tons of boys just like my S that were going into comp sci - it was like shooting fish in a barrel. In fact, our college counselor told us that he was on the short list of one of the top cs schools, but got waitlisted when they “rounded out” the class.
So the kids that got in are not some special butterflies Sorry to say. Actually, I’m still trying to figure out how S got in to the school he attended because he didn’t even interview there! LOL! :-/
Most of your post agrees exactly with mine - admission of one doesn’t imply that person is “better”, colleges want diversity so the competition is fiercer when people are in a pool with more similar applicants.
As for the rest… it supports the theory in post #59. Nobody is being disrespectful of your son or any other applicant.
I don’t think when anyone says that getting into a school is a crap shoot or dumb luck or a letter truly believes that AOs create a pile of apps that they think are all acceptable and then randomly pull out enough to meet their quota. I think the intent behind these statements is to say that a student can only present themselves and their accomplishments in the best way possible while cognizing that there are many other accomplished students. Once they do that, assuming they meet some minimum level of qualifications to have their app be considered they have no control over which app is going to resonate with a particular AO or meet a particular institutional need they would have know way of knowing about in advance
The initial triage by the adcoms is anything but a crapshoot. They know what they want and do not want. The fine tuning at the end of the game of course includes some arbitrary decisions, due to the sheer volume of qualified candidates. Here, “luck” can come into play, though (depending on who you talk to) there may be hidden criteria such certain programmatic “needs” of the school.
Bums me out when people put subjective labels on kids by virtue of where they get admitted… College admissions is not a crapshoot (see my weighted lottery post above) but is based on a snap-shot of an 17 or 18-year old at a very specific point in life. Some kids have their act together all through high school and are like young adults at 17. Other kids take longer to sort things out and don’t present as well in the fall of their senior year. I know plenty of folks for whom getting in to an Ivy was the apex of their life and struggled thereafter. I work with some amazingly successful people who went to community or local state schools and kicked butt once they figured it all out.
To suggest that they “get it right” is to suggest that there is a single “right” answer and all they have to do is find it. Which is also ridiculous. I get that students who make the cut (or their parents) want to believe that they are superior to all those who did not in some totally obvious way, but I highly doubt that is the case. From the comments made by the adcoms themselves about being able to fill the class several times over with great candidates, it would seem that they themselves see the subjectivity of what they do. Why should we doubt what they themselves are saying?
Excellent students will succeed wherever they end up.
In my son’s class, three students (one was my son) applied to one particular tippy top university. They each had a recommendation written by the same alum who knew them through an extracurricular activity for several years. The weakest student (as stated by the alum) was admitted, while the other two were not and went elsewhere. A few years later, the other two have secured sought-after internships in their fields and are flourishing, while the one who went to tippy top university is still struggling to find his path. The alum still shakes his head about the results, but that student had whatever it is tippy top u wanted at the time.
This has been an interesting thread. The process worked out well for my son last year…I think he ended up where he belonged and he is thriving. Got dinged by the place where he would have done well but he was clearly simply in the crowd of applications. He had a compelling story…but we knew it was one that would either grab the attention of the reader or completely turn them off.
Personally, I agree with the unique story/unique EC idea. Just because you got a 1600/4.0 does not entitle you to entry to any college you want.
I also know it is a numbers game. I remember when I was at Penn and they made a big deal about getting 10,000 applications (but they still had a low yield so accepted like 36% of the kids). Now they are over 40,000 and they yield is way up. Nuts!
And that’s what I meant by being disrespectful to other applicants (obviously, people are not getting what I’m saying). It’s not that your kid or his application was necessarily “better” than other’s who didn’t get accepted because that may not be the case at all. It’s about SO many other factors. That’s why it’s a crapshoot and dumb luck. One kid can be just as qualified and “special” as the next, but they just weren’t picked out of the thousands and thousands of other applicants. And there may be no rhyme or reason to it, other than the admin was overwhelmed and could have just as easily thrown a dart and come up with 70 other applicants just as deserving.
So if you were admitted, consider yourself “lucky” because there were thousands of others just like you, but there just wasn’t room for them. It doesn’t mean they won’t be successful elsewhere, but admittance is not a golden ticket to a dream life either, and I think students need to remember that.
If you kid got in then they are superior to all the others and had that "it" factor that set them apart and made them better then the best around them. To those people the ones who didn't quite measure up were not able to be objective and see that their kids were obviously not nearly as amazing as the chosen ones. Their kids were just more authentic, more desired, and more worthy - but don't worry the rest of the pretty good but not as great as my kid will most likely be OK in spite of the second tier university they are attending.
To parents of those that had students who are amazing in every way measureable way and didn’t get in it is random, a crap shoot, and luck after a certain bar has been met. They are sitting with top of the top kids, guidance counselors, coaches, mentors, teachers shaking their heads and left wondering what could XYZ possibly be looking for if not these best of the best kids.
I have no horse in this race. My only to go through the process so far had the stats and on paper (according to counselors, advisors, mentors, coaches, naviance) had a solid shot at a tippy top and were surprised that none were her idea of a great fit. Never applied to anything in the top 30 and was easily admitted to the rest of her list. With that I would have to say the balance shifts to the parents in the “luck” camp when we all have heard directly from admissions the same version of the story repeated above about filling the classes over and over and over again and not sacrificing quality of student or quality of class in any respect. Of course from their standpoint it is not random, luck, or lottery but for the exceptional 99%ers + it is completely accurate to believe that good fortune and luck had its hand in admissions or denials. To imply anything else is pompous.
What’s a 99% student to do? Cast a wide net and get into Brown but not Penn, Harvard but not Princeton. It is crazy when those schools are so different from each other except for their Ivy titles. We all know plenty of amazing and successful top notch kids who are rejected from tippy top schools. Was there a rhyme or reason - of course. Will we or they ever understand that rhyme or reason and could they have had any impact on that outcome - not likely. That makes it a fair comparison to a crap shoot lucky lottery.
I agree with adlgel and others that the selections are obviously not entirely random. Some applicants are screened out by the top schools for good reasons. Some applicants have particularly desirable characteristics or compelling applications that all but guarantee their acceptance.
Then there are other applications in a large group of the well-qualified. On the one hand, I don’t doubt that there are reasons that lead to the selection of some and not others. Yet the statements by admissions officers that they could remove the admitted students from the pool, and select an equally good class from the remaining pool beg the question: Why did they select the applicants they did select, and not the ones in the equally good group?
Some time ago, I proposed a hypothetical test for randomness, in which a year’s worth of applications to a top school were reviewed a second time, and one looked for the overlaps in the admitted and rejected groups. In practice, this probably could not be done for reasons of applicant confidentiality, in addition to the time and money factors. But one could view it as a thought experiment (an idea popularized by the Bohr/Einstein debates).
I think some applicants would be admitted by every permutation of the admissions readers and committee members, some would be rejected by all, and some would be admitted only a certain fraction of the time.
It seems to me that some types of personal statements will resonate well with some readers and not with others. (Certainly, some CC posts really resonate with me, and others don’t.) Since the applicant has no idea of the predilections of the actual recipients on the admissions committee, it’s hard to tailor the essay for the audience. The order in which the applications are read also has some effect, probably. A student doesn’t become the 239th applicant who plays the bassoon (oh, ho hum, boring), unless the applications of 238 bassoonists have already been read that year.
Being an outsider who doesn’t have all the details of the selection process does not mean there is no rhyme or reason to it. A few years ago, I tried to see if I could come up with a set of simple rules that would replicate the decisions students posted in the Stanford RD thread of this site. I was able to get ~90% decision accuracy among thread posters, even though there were huge holes in the application, such as not knowing about LORs and essays. Had I had access to the full application, I expect I could have gotten well above 90% accuracy. I used a simple system that emphasized ratings of out of classroom activities on two 1-5 scales (5 = national, 4 = state, 3 = regional) and also had different admission thresholds for URMs. I later found out that Stanford actually uses a similar 1-5 scale. My point is the decisions were very predictable among this group of CC posters, even though to an outsider it might seem like the selections were random, as the acceptance decisions barely followed stats at all. There was actually a slight negative correlation with some academic stats, among thread posters.
HYPSM specifically are a crapshoot for anyone other than prodigies and and truly impressive and unique candidates. Too many very qualified candidates apply for too few spots. So once the prodigies are in, it is down to luck which of the many other qualified but unexceptional candidates make it.
This is also kind of true for the other ivies and elites but to a lesser degree. Since the prodigies flock to HYPSM, there is more room for very qualified but more “normal” kids.
Since applicants don’t know how their essays and LORs compare to the competition, the process can at least seem like a crapshoot from the outside, assuming your stats are otherwise acceptable. Remember the essay about Papa John’s and the other one about Costco. There seems to be a lot of subjectivity in how essays are scored.
Sometimes, a student may pigeonhole themself as someone who fills a specific niche, when colleges see them in an entirely different way. It’s not enough to identify schools that seem like a good fit for you. You need to find a school that sees you as a good fit for them as well. For example, an Asian male interested in CS and entrepreneurship may see Stanford, Berkeley, Mudd, and Caltech as ideal schools for him, but might have much more success at schools like Bowdoin, Carleton, or Brown.
I have repeatedly stated in threads like these that the vast majority of students and their families do not truly understand how competitive admissions are at the most elite schools.
As a parent who has been through it with their child we as a family get it. It was not an enjoyable learning experience! Initially going one for eight among elite schools applied to and ending up three for eight after coming off two wait lists.
In my opinion it was the “softs” that made the difference. Her essays, her Lor’s.
Among many there is a lack of appreciation for the significance of character and communication skills and heart or compassion and empathy. As if those things are not talents or gifts to be valued and considered.
What characteristics do we want leaders in our society to have?
Our daughter did everything you could possibly do and still initially went one for eight at elites. She was an unhooked upperclass female.
I bristle at those who would suggest that she was lucky, although I absolutely understand where they are coming from when their child who has worked so incredibly hard has not been afforded the same type of opportunities.
As an aside but related you cannot believe the pettiness of some of the comments that have been directed at our family. Things like “she got in because they are full pay”. Full pay is not a hook at Harvard, tens of thousands of people wish it was.
“She got in because she overcame an illness”, she did what she did academically and with extracurriculars while battling a debilitating illness. Is that not an indication of resilience and character?
The challenge lies in how to deal with those who lack humility as it relates to the good fortune (not luck) of their children. I completely understand.
We taught our kid to do what you love not what looks good on a college app. If you are smart and live your life that way you will be successful. There are many threads full of smug kids explaining how their recs( which they cant see) and essays really were perfect when the truth is they play some sport the school needs or live in a state they need kids from.
Luckily kid has admits to 2 state flagships and we consider the rest of rd a challenge to see which college is looking for kid’s talents not whether kid is special enough.
Elite schools are assembling an interesting class, and it is about how an applicant can contribute to that mix. And yes, that includes character.
People don’t understand how admissions works and think there is some sort of admissions hierarchy of quality among individuals.
It is about assembling a mix that will cross-pollinate, and then go out in the world having benefited each other and the school.
Candidates are very carefully chosen: it is not luck or random, period.
Certainly, near the end of the process, the committee ends up having to choose between candidate A and candidate B who are both well-qualified, but in the end there is a reason they chose Candidate A.
I would add that many kids at Harvard and other top schools “did what they love” in high school and were not driven by admissions concerns.
“I would add that many kids at Harvard and other top schools “did what they love” in high school and were not driven by admissions concerns.”
So as of a couple of years ago, 30% of the admits at HYP came from 10 high schools (boarding schools in NE) and without a doubt from freshman year on, it was focused on how to get into these schools, how to position yourself the best, what clubs to join etc. That’s why these cost $50K a year, to get their students to an ivy (or equivalent) and a curriculum driven by admissions.
“Candidates are very carefully chosen: it is not luck or random, period.”
They’re not all carefully chosen, the athletes are not anyway. The coach comes in and says here are the kids I made offers to, the adcoms check the gpa and test scores to make sure they meet ncaa minimums or their school minimums and tells the coach, ok their offers are fine, or maybe one has to increase a test score. This is how it happens everywhere, including Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, and yes the ivies! And Stanford has the most div 1 programs (boys, girls) so a lot of spots taken up. And these coaches are more powerful than any adcom or even the director of admissions (think Coach K, Jim Harbaugh) so if they want to bring someone in a little lower than the standard, they can do it.
So the adcoms don’t carefully choose athletes, 10% of a typical class.