The recruited athletes to top universities from my son’s school are not taking APs. If they are, it’s usually one or two. Of course there’s academic wiggle room for a student who will be getting camera time in the future.
Let’s look at the definitions:
“luck” – success or failure brought on by chance rather than one’s actions.
“crap shoot” – roll of dice with random results.
“lottery” – a process of where success or outcome is governed by chance.
I don’t believe there is any upside to telling your kids that whether or not they get in to a top college is going to be based on the above. Seems like an excuse or rationalization for getting a rejection letter.
It is a crap shoot once you have a seat at the table. Your credentials get you the seat at the table, but because there are multiple qualified people competing for each place, you need luck in your favor, too.
@BasicOhioParent “It is a crap shoot once you have a seat at the table. Your credentials get you the seat at the table, but because there are multiple qualified people competing for each place, you need luck in your favor, too”
“crap shoot” – roll of dice with random results
So what you are saying is once they have narrowed the list of prospective students using GPA/Test scores, it’s random on how they select students?
I look at college admissions similar to recruiting for a position for my business. There are many highly qualified job seekers that I interview but some are a little bit better for the position than others (e.g. additional work experience in my field, expertise or interest in a certain area, worked with Fortune 500 clients, credentialing, motivation or enthusiasm for the position, demonstrated ability to work in a face-paced team environment, etc.).
AOs and recruiters for a business are doing their best to match up applicants with available spots in the university/business. When I hire for a position, there is little randomness to the process.
While it is not random for the most part, it looks random to outsiders since many aspects of the application, comparison with others in the applicant pool, and unannounced preferences by the college are unobservable by outsiders.
Job hiring is often similar.
^^ For the applicant there is a sense of randomness if you need a violinist and they play the oboe. Especially if they are just as qualified and worked just as hard as the violinist to get to the point of consideration.
Life itself is a crap shoot too. Some are born rich, some are born average, and some are yet born with learning disabilities. Some have high IQ, whereas some come with high EQ, and the best have both. Then how can we complain this is unfair and that is not right in this college application process when at the start of one’s life, it is not already on an even footage for everyone? We might as well learn on how to deal with the frustration each time the life throws at us the unfairness we feel and see what pare we could have done better, so next time — were it is job research, career promotion, marriage proposal… — we got better in preparing ahead or deal with our emotion better afterward. 75 years ago, most 17- and 18-year-olds were dealing with where they were likely to be sent to fight the WWII in the coming years and what likely their % of coming home. Now we are taking about what % of getting to the top of the tops universities for these 17- and 18-year-olds, and if they missed their first, second, or third choices, and we parents get mad. We are certainly a spoiled generation.
@stardustmom while there may be a “sense of randomness” to the applicant, the actual selection process is anything but random. They are looking for highly qualified applicants who are violinists, not oboe players. The oboe player wasn’t chosen because he/she didn’t meet the criteria for the spot.
@theloniusmonk - You’re missing my point entirely, so I’ll try again, without the subtlety.
As they strive to build the strong athletic teams, the coaches screen and choose their prospects very carefully. Before admissions support is formally offered, the prospects’ athletic skills have been thoroughly analyzed. In fact, the level of analysis given to these athletes’ athletic talents often exceeds the attention given other applicants. Resultingly, an academically marginal athlete will often have a much better chance of admission than an unhooked academic superstar, for whom results are more unpredictable, or random.
The coaches are screening for athletic talent, not academic promise, which often results in great teams and poor students.
@socaldad2002 From the point of view of the applicant, it is random. That year they needed a violinist. Next year, perhaps they will need an oboe player. “Had I only studied violin…” When my son gets a coveted job in which many applicants were considered I don’t tell him he’s “special”. I tell him he’s “lucky”. I think it’s important to remember that you are not that much better than all the other applicants, because there are many people who will eagerly take your place if you become complacent.
Thanks to Common App, it’s very typical that highly competitive students nowadays apply to multiple highly selective top reach as well as match and safety schools. One (but certainly not infallible) way to see whether pure luck was involved with the very top schools with the lowest selectivity is in the results. I’d say it’s safe to assume that luck wasn’t a factor with applicants with multiple acceptances to, say, HYPSM and other tippy top schools. If an applicant gets rejected by all such schools, it’s harder to explain away the admission process as a mere crapshoot. It’s in between these two extremes that the question of pure luck creeps in. Of course, there’s no way of knowing for those applicants who choose to withdraw from all applications upon being accepted in the EA or ED round.
As I stated earlier, up to 70% of each class at these top schools is made up of the institutional wish list of students, i.e., recruited athletes, URM’s, FGLI (first-gen low-income), politically and otherwise well-connected, etc. Their wish list of students then extends to those special, outstanding talents in performing arts, STEM, civic engagements, etc. Once these institutional wish list has been processed, we’re then looking at roughly 10-20% of the remaining class consisting of those non-hook, average well-rounded students no less valuable to the institution. When someone mentioned the “opacity” of the admission process, I believe this is what it was talking about. For those that belong to this 10-20% category of students to fill the remaining class, the process certainly appears to be random or pure luck or crapshoot. Having a plenty of these 10-20% category of students among thousands of applicants, enough to replace them all with another batch from the waitlist without losing any quality, the process at this point does come down largely to luck, say, an admission staff happened to liking that essay on the choice of Starbucks coffee over the one about WalMart although both are equally well-written in a thought-provoking manner or a teacher recommendation letter, one lukewarm and one enthusiastic and genuine although both applicants are equally qualified, etc. etc.
I wholeheartedly disagree equally with those who are on the camp of “the whole admission process is a crapshoot” and those on the camp of “there’s no luck involved in the admission process.” To see through the opacity, one first needs to understand what each institution wants and needs, NOT what you want or need.
@stardustmom I think the point is that applicants think its random but it really isn’t. The AO are looking for certain factors among high-qualified applicants to make their decision on who to extend offers to. I agree with you that it is a mistake for parents to think that just because their kid gets into HYPS type schools means they are “special”, it just means that they have/had qualifying factors that better met their criteria for that year’s admissions.
True story. S started out his 6th grade accelerated math test with a 50%. He was upset and the teacher said that at the end of the semester, if he was close to the next grade level (an “A”) she would drop that first test. So for the next 4 months he worked his tail off, we got him a bi-weekly math tutor, and he achieved high marks throughout the semester and his grade point average kept climbing 70%, 80% , 85%, to 89%. This week he approached the teacher and reminded her about their “deal” and she said that she has never seen a student of hers improve so much over the course of the semester. She ended up dropping that first test for him and he ended the semester with a 92.5% and got an “A”.
While we can claim that he was very “lucky” or it was a “crap shoot” to have a teacher that was willing to work with him to help him achieve the “A”, you cannot discount that he worked extremely hard and did all the right things to be in a position to earn that “A”. It goes back to my post that the harder you work the luckier you get…
No one can claim that there is no element of luck in admissions. Just ask the ten applicants who replaced the ten applicants Harvard rescinded last year.
This thread has run its course and has been repeatedly stated, whether you believe there is an element of luck or not depends on how your student fared in the process.
“No one can claim that there is no element of luck in admissions. Just ask the ten applicants who replaced the ten applicants Harvard rescinded last year.”
That’s the “10-20% remaining class” that I was talking about in the above post. So, yes, there’s an element of luck in admissions, but not as a blanket statement to characterize the whole admissions process.
agree with @TiggerDad there’s also luck in whose pile your app ends up in. It’s luck whether you get assigned to someone who thinks you’re cool versus someone who just saw an application just like yours come across their desk and already got a nod
I like to refer the application process as the “admission game” because that’s all it really is. How do you market yourself so the top schools will recognize your talent and offer you admittance? Yes, you have all the high stats needed, and you have all the EC’s and LoR’s. That gets your foot in the door. But did you “play the game” properly? Did you make your EC’s and classes and essays “tell a story” about who you are? Did you have something extraordinary that no one else had, and did you advertise that in a way that was interesting to admins? Did you show demonstrated interest if the college looks at that? Did you have the right information on your facebook page, and did you open all the emails the school sent you? Did you pick a major that isn’t a common one? Did you apply to schools that were far away to fill a slot for diversity? And on and on and on. It makes me nauseous just thinking about it.
This is what the admissions process has become. Nothing more than a game. You just have to know how to play and hope you score. Remember when you used to just get good grades and have a few EC’s and colleges would just admit you? Those were the days…
@stardustmom Maybe the parents are worst offenders. Successful students tend to know how close they were to not getting accepted at top schools. Most have a few rejections to their name, and know there could’ve been more. I’ve never met an elite-school kid who thinks they “earned” everything on their own, or had a story to tell about how they “knew” they were going to get in.
“This is what the admissions process has become. Nothing more than a game. You just have to know how to play and hope you score. Remember when you used to just get good grades and have a few EC’s and colleges would just admit you? Those were the days…”
Megan, these are STILL the days. There are literally hundreds of colleges who admit this way. Hundreds. And the number of students they admit dwarf the number of kids who attend the colleges whose process is more complicated.
The problem isn’t college or the admissions process- the problem is that we live in a consumerist society and nobody will ever admit to wanting “less” if they can get "more. Why buy a three bedroom house and have your kids share a bedroom (like most of us remember) if you can get a five bedroom house and your kids don’t even need to share a bathroom? Why buy a second hand Valiant (like my parents did) and drive it into the ground if you can swing the payments on a nice Lexus (leased of course).
Everyone wants the shiny object. But if the holistic admissions process makes your nauseous, there is an easy solution- apply to the colleges which have very straightforward and formulaic admissions- if you present with this, you’ll be accepted. period. Heck a college near me has “Admissions Sundays” where parents can go get an espresso at the coffee bar while an admissions officer sits down to review the kids application. Kid meets parents at the coffee bar- they’re in or not. If not- admissions officer tells them “bring your math grade up final semester and you are in”.
The previously linked article mentioned 13% recruited athletes, although it can be substantially lower at colleges with larger student bodies, such as the 6% listed for Cornell earlier. I’ll use the higher 13%. URM percentage can vary significantly between colleges. Most ivies are a little under 20%. I’ll use 18%. I’d expect URMs to be overrepresnted on sports with a lot of recruiting, such as football. I’ll assume 25% of recruited athletes are URMs, for the two which makes the total between recruited athletes and URMs 28%. First gen, low income can vary quite a bit. Cornell lists 13% first gen. Harvard lists 15%. I’ll use 15%. First gen, low income, no doubt have a substantial overlap with URMs, as well as some overlap with recruited athletes. I’ll assume ~40% for the purposes of this example, This increases the total between URMs, recruited athletes, and first gen up to 37% of the undergraduates. Developmental admits make up a few more, but I’m still not getting totals anywhere near 70%.
This also fits with my personal experiences at a HYPSM.school. The vast majority of students I knew appeared to be high achievers without super hooks – not athletes, not URMs, not developmental admits, etc.
Daniel Golden, the author of “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges–and who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” quoted the former chancellor of Cal-Berkeley, Robert Birgeneau, who stated that about 60% of the students at these top schools constitutes hooks. And that was about 11 years ago when FGLI’s (first-gen low-income) weren’t even considered a hook. More recently, and I’m sorry I lost the source, an admission dean at one of the Ivys stated 70%, which made sense considering now that FGLIs are more sought after by the top institutions in contrast to a decade ago when this group could hardly dream of being admitted. I didn’t make up these percentages from my personal guesses. Of course, these figures are not something that the Adcoms would love to talk about.