<p>As I'm sure we all have noticed, the acceptance rates for the top colleges have been dropping almost every year. (For discussion purposes, let's use the top 25 National Universities in USN&WR as a flawed definition for "top colleges" in this thread.) However, people are also applying to many more colleges than they did before. I'm wondering whether these steadily falling statistics really signify falling chances for fully qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Say a hypothetical student has the following traits:
- most challenging courseload at high school with one or zero B's
- 2300+ SAT or 35+ ACT
- 750-800 on SAT Subject Tests
- leadership in some extracurriculars
- some awards, national and regional
- some talents (e.g. music, sports, art, debate, etc.)
- volunteer work
- good recommendations
- essays that the student has worked hard on
- pleasant interview
- etc. (in general, anything else that would make said student quantitatively and qualitatively an appropriate fit for a top college)</p>
<p>Would this hypothetical student really be rejected or waitlisted (and never accepted) at every single top college that he or she applies to? And if so, what do you expect the future of college admissions to be if even excellent applications stop mattering?</p>
<p>Here’s how college admissions work from my experience: </p>
<p>Hypothetically I apply to Stanford( a 6% acceptance rate) - my chance of getting in? 6%
I apply to Upenn (14% acceptance rate) - my chance of getting in? 14%
you get the picture</p>
<p>At this point essentially every applicant to these top schools is extremely qualified so really your chances of getting accepted is just if you’re part of that lucky 6%. </p>
<p>So, a little simple math. you want to know what your hypothetical chances are of getting denied at every school. if you have a 94% chance of getting denied at stanford, 86% at upenn and say 70% at michigan then your chance of getting denied from all three is .86<em>.94</em>.70= -> 57% voila! a simple answer</p>
<p>Of course this logic is flawed but it pretty much holds for the top colleges. Everybody who applies is well-qualified so it comes down to a luck factor. Nobody is a shoo-in anywhere. I have a friend who got accepted to Harvard and rejected from bowdoin. She got the 6% dice roll at harvard and the 80% dice roll at bowdoin.</p>
<p>It’s getting a lot harder every year. More and more people are applying to more colleges every year. Plus, applicants are also getting stronger as more kids learn to gear their HS careers towards getting into top colleges. For example, Vanderbilt’s class of 2016 is the strongest in the school’s history, and next year will probably break that record. Similar trends are happening for many other top schools. </p>
<p>Nowadays, it’s really about the ECs, essays, and recs. Pretty much everyone who’s applying to top schools have near-perfect stats these days that simply having straight As and a 2400 isn’t enough. Colleges want to build a diverse class, and as a result, people who stand out or are interesting/unique will have an edge over the typical 4.0/2400/math+science EC applicant.</p>
<p>"Of course this logic is flawed " That’s an understatement. 3 colleges’ admit rates are independent events but also correlated to applicant. An unhooked 3.0 GPA applicant to those three is 100% going to be rejected at all three.</p>
<p>In my experience, most really stellar candidates get accepted at a some Ivy caliber schools, and rejected at most; which isn’t the saddest story. However, there are kids who just plain get accepted everywhere. My collegues’ kid got accepted to Harvard, Princton, MIT and Yale, to name a few – not even a urm. Gold must fall from her mouth when she speaks or something… or actually I think that a very important factor in becoming that “it” kid is having several very credible teachers say things like "in my 25 years of teaching student X stands out the smartest and most talented kid I’ve ever met… " in their recs, or words like that. Very few teachers will go quite this far, but if you have the stats, and ecs, and your teachers say something like this, your odds just improved dramatically. For the rest of the mere mortals, you may not get in everywhere, but you’ll be okay too.</p>
<p>There’s so much that goes into determining which colleges accept you that it’s kind of crazy. A friend of mine has an older sister that applied to all the Ivies with a 4.0, lots of sports and extra-curriculars, as well as volunteering. She got into all but Harvard. The reason she got rejected from Harvard? Because her family is one of those stuck-up families that goes sue-crazy, and Harvard got wind of their most recent load of garbage law suit. So they rejected her, even though it had nothing to do with her. Colleges (especially the top colleges) look for every little reason to deny a qualified applicant so that the absolutely perfect ones can get in. If this girl didn’t get stuck with an arrogant family, she would have gotten into Harvard.</p>
<p>“Because her family is one of those stuck-up families that goes sue-crazy” This was the sole reason that Harvard chose to not accept your friend? Tell us about your surveillance system inside the Cambridge meeting room.</p>
<p>The internet has changed the game. Used to be that only the really dedicated info hunters and those “in the know,” knew what the elite colleges were looking for in a candidate. Now, everything is spelled out on the school webpages for all to see, so of course the demand and degree of difficulty has gone up. It’s a sheer numbers game and to make things even more difficult is the yearly “it kid,” demographic each school is seeking to nab. </p>
<p>The moral of the application story is BE DIVERSE. When picking your schools, unless you have tons of application waivers or tons of money/time to spend on carpet-bombing the top, elite schools with your applications, learn that it’s most times a crap-shoot when it comes to distinguishing your supreme stats from another applicant’s supreme stats. Be smart and choose schools you know you’ll be happy to attend safety-to-dream.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter that the high school graduation population numbers peaked a few years ago. The numbers are still very big, and more importantly, in the words of the article that someone posted the link to, “More people are going to college than ever before and more people are applying for competitive colleges than before… many of those students who are applying today simply wouldnt have thought of applying 30 or 40 years ago and would have just attended their state institution.”</p>
<p>Not to mention that 30 to 40 years ago we applied to one college. Today, the common app and computers make it easy to apply to many more schools with very little effort.</p>
<p>The problem with the OP’s theory is that fully qualified applicants are applying to more schools than they did before, too. Some of the most qualified applicants are also some of the people applying to the highest number of schools.</p>
<p>OP, your hypothetical student is the run-of-the-mill applicant at these schools. Run-of-the-mill applicants get accepted at very low rates. Even for extraordinary students, it’s a crapshoot. </p>
<p>Admissions is a black box. No one on the outside will ever know why one student gets accepted and a similar student gets rejected, and there’s little point in trying to figure it out. Even tippy-top students shouldn’t put all their eggs into the Reach basket.</p>
<p>Seeing as over 34000 people applied to Harvard alone this year, and seeing as there are tens of thousands more applicants to all the top schools in total, even just being a 2300+ scorer puts you ahead of the majority of applicants to those top schools.</p>