Every other source I’ve seen has estimated substantially lower percentage hooks, often close to the estimate from my post above. Some of the difference may relate to how you are defining hook. For example, I’m guessing you are including legacy as a hook. At some ivies, legacies make up a larger portion of the student body than any of the groups you called hooks in your post. However, legacies average higher test scores than the overall student bodies and tend to be highly qualified, so I wouldn’t assume they are primarily undeserving admits that would not have otherwise been admitted.
@socaldad2002 – no one is arguing against that. I think what many on the crapshoot side are saying is this: what if all the kids in your kid’s school went through the same process? Well, only those in that teacher’s class would have received an A while the kids in the other teachers’ classes would have received a B.
The point is that many/most of the kids applying to these ultra-high end schools are very similar to each other. Different areas of achievement but overall they’re top notch. I’ve tried to place myself in an AO’s shoes. After weeding through and rejecting those that are clearly inadequate and accepting those that are clearly superior, I have a large stack of excellent choices remaining. Their differences are just noise. I need to pick 10% of them. How am I supposed to do that?
I think that we can all agree that there are certain criteria that will help an applicant earn a seat at the table (GPA, test scores, etc.). We can probably also all agree that these criteria may be somewhat more flexible for “hooked” applicants (athletes, URMs, development cases, etc.). The strength of the “hooks” is also relative (e.g., being a recruited athlete is probably a stronger “hook” than being first gen; being a Native American is a stronger hook than being Latinx, the strength of a “development hook” depends on the potential donations). Once you are at the table, it comes down to a variety of factors. Luck may be one, but, at the end of the day, it’s institutional need that drives the train.
I agree that teacher recs are often the unsung heroes of undergraduate admissions. Essays – the stories they tell and the glimpses into personality and character that they provide – are also often not given the credit they deserve.
And, while it may seem random that a student gets rejected from a lesser-ranked school and admitted into one or more of the HYPS schools (I pick these four as they are generally accepted as being the top four and all share the same restrictive early action policy), if it were truly random – which I suspect it is not – it would be highly unlikely that a student would get into more than one and perhaps several of those four schools, which is often the case.
I think luck has a great deal to do with. Taking OP’s first paragraph on his first post, pretty much 50% of the candidates to the top schools can truly say that they met every checkbox. But only 10% of them are going to be chosen. And luck/karma/randomness must come in play…just like they do with every other big decision/crossroads in life.
I have no interest in the topic of whether the hooks are deserving or not. The relevant point rather is that the “normal students,” i.e., that 10-20% left-over spot is what creates the impression (or reality) of the perceived randomness.
College football and basketball tend to have lots of URMs, but other college sports (the ones that spectators pay little attention to) commonly have very few.
Also note that the number of athletes varies much less than the number of students. So a small school will have a higher percentage of athletes than a large school if it fields the same set of teams.
@droppedit “I need to pick 10% of them. How am I supposed to do that?”
No two kids are exactly alike and you compare that 10% of applicants to what criteria is most important to your college. I have to believe there is a thought process behind the kid that gets into the accept pile. For example, all things being close to equal, one kid went to a private college prep school whose students have performed above average at HYP versus the kid who goes to a large public HS whose students have not historically faired as well. Advantage prep school kid.
How do YOU think they pick that 10%; randomly?
Hm, maybe like this? 
(warning: a bit of language)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tiUELkyQFg
Data10: Were you implying up thread that it was your interview that led to the athletic recruit not getting into Stanford? Or was that unrelated?
I think Data has a point, that various hooks can overlap, but maybe not to the same extent suggested. Many sports are costly and have few low income kids or URMs. However, I really doubt that 70% of the applicants have a hook that tipped the scale very much. That would suggest these schools are not crafting their classes very well.
There is certainly an element of chance once the kid is near the top of the pile. Otherwise, why would a student get into Harvard but not into any other elite school? Let’s assume this is not a kid that has some unique talent or skill set but just a very bright, accomplished unhooked applicant. The reviewers sit around and talk about the candidates and there are differences of opinion. If an applicant has something that stands out to a particular reviewer who is willing to argue her case, the student gets in. At a different school, nobody is willing to argue for that kid and she is rejected. But she would have been an asset at either school.
Of course it is not entirely a lottery or a crap shoot. Plenty of kids apply that have essentially no shot or that are not quite good enough. But once you fill all the “wish list spots” and take the superstars, there are many combinations of accepted students that will make up a balanced and successful class. There are plenty of rejected kids that would have done as well or better than the students that end up at the elite school.
Maybe I should have titled the OP as “Is getting into a top college for the remaining 10% of the applicant pool, subjective?”
My answer would be “likely”.
In the case of Ivy football last year, it’ is indeed about 25-28% (depending how you count 2+ race answer). All recruited? IDK, maybe some walk on. NESCAC just a few % fewer.
In D3 schools like in the NESCAC, a much larger % of the student body are recruited athletes (similar # of teams, far smaller student body).
Beyond 3-4 sports with more URM athletes than the general % at the school, most sports have very few or 0.
Instead of speculating why don’t we get it from horses mouth. I will get a kick out of it 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSUcwGMwc2E
Go to 2:11 when he talks about how he selects Harvard admits.
You want more laughs see this too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yjlsG3xhAA
As others posted, elite school admissions seem like a crapshoot to the applicant but for the AdComs it isn’t. Like I mentioned in my earlier post #90, applicants have no idea how many other stellar students they are going up against…they don’t know what the AdComs are looking for in that year’s admissions cycle. And keep in mind admissions at some Ivies are based on the college within the university, so an impacted college such as business school, engineering or architecture will be highly competitive to get into.
Bottom line, you don’t know what you don’t know and that’s what makes it SEEM like a crapshoot to parents and students.
@socaldad2002 – No. The AO would pick based on whatever personal bias they have.
To think otherwise means that if you took the exact same set of applications and gave them to each AO independently to rank, the AOs would come back with the same list of admissions. I seriously doubt that would happen. I think the top and bottom would be similar … but the middle would be significantly different between the AOs.
If you think that luck is not involved at all, how do you explain the frequent comment that the admissions committees could discard the entire class that they have selected and pick a second one that is equally good from among the remaining applicants?
The college sports that spectators pay a lot of attention to are often the ones with a disproportionately large number of recruited athletes, and often the ones where that recruiting has the most influence on admissions. For example, in Harvard’s freshman survey, 10% of students said they were recruited athletes, which is ~165 students. The ivy league permits an average of 30 football recruits per year, so I’d expect that football makes up almost 20% of recruited athletes at Harvard.
So, if a school admits 60-70% of its applicants who have hooks, it doesn’t mean that they end up with 60-70% of kids with hooks in each class. Really only the athletes are definitely ED. The rest may be RD and may choose to go somewhere else. Have to consider yield. If an elite LAC takes 1500 kids in order to yield 500, and those percentages are correct then as many as 600 un-hooked kids are accepted. I always keep that in mind. It doesn’t mean that only 40% of the kids on campus are unhooked, right? Because who knows if the first gen, URM, violinist will choose to go to that college?
@Data10 The # of athletes playing football in the Ivies is 896.
But many sports get up there too, and have few/no URMs:
Indoor Track 966
Track 947
Rowing 852
Cross country 554
Swimming 537
LAX 533
Soccer 450
Ice Hockey 301
Basketball 274
Baseball 251
Squash 237
Fencing 207
The rest under 200 but they add up…
@OHMomof2 ugh.
Playing a sport is not equivalent to being a recruited athlete. For example, I walked on the rowing team at Stanford without any previous rowing experience. Hardly any of the team was composed of recruited athletes, even though it was likely one of the largest teams at Stanford.