<p>How about the alternative hypothesis of striving for sheer excellence? The Ivy and other top schools were focused on finding and recruiting the best students long before any formal rankings ever existed. The definition of what constitutes the “best” students has evolved over time. It used to mean the sons of the “best” and richest families. Nowadays it means the most accomplished (in many fields of accomplishment) and the top academic students, hopefully all rolled into the same persons. But whatever the “best” currently is, the top schools always want them.</p>
<p>Look at it this way, Harvard was widely regarded as the top college in America in the 17th century, the 18th century, the 19th century, the 20th century, and they are off to a pretty good start in the 21st century. Staying at or near the top for that long doesn’t happen by accident. You can’t just coast on your brand name for 375 years. It happens thanks to great effort - effort to find and admit the best students, hire the best professors, conduct the most important research, and have the most influence. And, not incidentally, develop and maintain the biggest endowment to pay for it all.</p>
<p>Finding and recruiting top college students is in many ways similar to recruiting top college athletes. Putting together a top student body is like putting together a top football team. You’ve got your superstars at the very top, but you also want to be as strong as possible at EVERY position. And as a college coach once said, “Recruiting is like shaving. You’ve got to do it every day or you very quickly start looking like a bum” </p>
<p>So does all this success by the top schools hinge on sending out a bunch of post-EA/ED recruitment e-mails to mailing lists comprised of bright students? No, probably not. But that is one more tool to use. One more method of searching, of turning over every rock, to make sure they get all the best students they can. And it’s a tool they would very likely be using today even if USNews and all the other rankings never existed.</p>
<p>Does all this add up to the rich getting richer? Yeah, for better or for worse, it probably does. But like I said, you don’t get to the top by simple happy accident and you don’t stay on top by coasting.</p>
<p>coureur, there are two problems with your hypothesis. (1) The most selective colleges freely admit that they turn down highly qualified applicants, because they already have more than they can possibly admit; (2) that does not answer the OP’s question - why are these highly selected colleges soliciting applications from students their competitors have already rejected or deferred - or the question of why they do these mass mailings that include students who clearly are not in the feasible admission set, and who can be clearly identified as such by things like their PSAT. Two weeks after my sub-1900 PSAT daughter completed the test, the mailings started, most from colleges where she was a likely admit, but also from places like Chicago, Penn, and Columbia, where she would stand no chance at all.</p>
<p>The top colleges are casting a wide net. I believe they really are trying to find the best people, including URMs, “diamonds in the rough,” and people who will fit in well in terms of interests and abilities. They differ somewhat in what they are looking for, so they realize that they may want somebody one of the other schools has deferred or rejected.</p>
<p>They don’t care about rankings, in my opinion. They also don’t care about hurting the feelings of people who get onto their broad mailing lists but aren’t really candidates for admission, or who don’t understand what marketing is.</p>
<p>Or could it also be that the huge increase in applications in recent years justifies enlarged budgets and staffing for admissions offices who, in turn, are able to increase those resources further (or hang on to them) with a continued push for more and brighter applicants? </p>
<p>I recall last year that some universities saw jumps in applicant numbers while a few others seemed to stall. I also remember those admissions offices were asked to explain why they also didn’t see jumps. On the macro level (admissions directors, et al) the department may be stoking the fires by which they then stay warm?</p>
<p>Your points are answered very well by Hunt in post #83.</p>
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<p>Hunt:
“The top colleges are casting a wide net. I believe they really are trying to find the best people, including URMs, “diamonds in the rough,” and people who will fit in well in terms of interests and abilities.”</p>
<p>Me:
Hunt is right. It’s true that they reject many fine, qualified students, but they are constantly looking for students that are even a better fit and even more accomplished than the candidates who have currently applied.</p>
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<p>Hunt:
“They differ somewhat in what they are looking for, so they realize that they may want somebody one of the other schools has deferred or rejected.”</p>
<p>Me:
Hunt is right. Plus, they may also be looking hard to find applicants for which the EA/ED school simply made a mistake. The EA/ED school SHOULD have admitted this great candidate but managed to miss their chance somehow. Time to swoop in and see if you can scoop them up for yourself in the RD round.</p>
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<p>Hunt:
“They don’t care about rankings, in my opinion. They also don’t care about hurting the feelings of people who get onto their broad mailing lists but aren’t really candidates for admission, or who don’t understand what marketing is.”</p>
<p>Me:
Hunt is right. These kids are not getting personal, hand-written invitations to a party held in their honor. Mass marketing is a very blunt instrument. A blanket mass mailing is just one of many tools these schools use to find and recruit students they MIGHT want to admit. But with this and some of their other tools there are also going to be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of kids getting those e-mails and brochures who aren’t interested, won’t be admitted, or don’t even qualify. Sorry, but that’s the nature of mass marketing.</p>
<p>Except that the lists they use would allow them to filter out the obviously unqualified, if they chose to do so (and they would save a lot of money in the process). As long as the USNWR rankings consider admit rate - more properly, deny rate - the most probable explanation for the overkill marketing is to find more people to reject.</p>
<p>And we just had a study, an article quoting the Yale admission directory and starbright who is intimate with the inside meetings on these issues at a college and people still say I think that this does not happen? If those things do not convince you then I guess people can believe in whatever they want.</p>
<p>Do you seriously believe that Harvard’s admissions department wants to process an extra 10,000 applications, read an extra 20,000 essays, and arrange an extra 10,000 admissions interviews for the sake of moving their already-lowest-in-the-country acceptance rate a couple of percentage points lower? All for the sake of a very slight improvement in the score that comprises a grand total of 1.5% over their overall ranking score? Get real.</p>
<p>^^No, you’re over-estimating the effect of 200-300 more students by at least 5-fold. Do the math. Harvard’s current admit rate is about 6.7%. They get about 30,000 applications and they offer admission to about 2000 applicants. If they boosted their number of applications by 300 up to 30,300 their admit rate would drop all the way down to 6.6%. How much higher will your USNews score be with a 6.6% admit rate instead of a 6.7% admit rate when the entire admit rate counts for only 1.5% of the total?</p>
<p>Harvard’s admit rate has gone from ~10% in 2004 to ~6% in 2011. Since they accept the same number of applicants (~2000) every year, that means over the past seven years the number of applications has risen by 10,000, from ~20,000 to ~30,000. Now I was on this board in 2004, and everyone was then (correctly) saying that Harvard had more than enough excellent, qualified applicants to fill up their incoming class several times over. Some were also (incorrectly) saying that Harvard should stop recruiting, stop trying so hard to find more and more of the best and encouraging them to apply. With 20,000 applicants they’ve got enough already. </p>
<p>Now the cynics among us would have you believe that the admissions committee at Harvard has over the past seven years deliberately burdened itself with the task of dealing with an extra 10,000 unneeded applicants every year, with the evil intention of offering admission to none of them, with the sole object being to improve by a few percentage points a factor that in total comprises all of 1.5% of its USNews ranking score. I repeat, get real.</p>
<p>^^Yeah, I know. And Harvard’s actual admit rate was 6.9% for the class of 2014 and 6.2% for the class of 2015. But I was using the nice, round 2K,20K, 30K numbers to more easily illustrate the point.</p>
<p>With 35,000 actual applicants, it just means that the statistical effect of adding 300 more is even less.</p>
<p>But Princeton and Yale are right behind them with about 1 percentage or less. You need to spell out how they calculate that factor, what does 1.5% really mean? If the first place and second place are within 1 percent or less in total score, then this could be the decider.</p>
<p>It’s true that people from the top schools are aware of the USNews ratings. It gives people at Harvard and Yale something to laugh about when Princeton is ranked first.</p>
<p>Scmaltz: You quoted my admitted grandiose statement (The rankings and stuff that outsiders harp about? For HYPMS, Amherst, Williams: we really don’t care. Frankly, we’re above the conversation.) and your reply: "Riiiight, because one never runs into anybody from those schools who is aware of their USNews status. "</p>
<p>Certainly I’ve met, worked alongside/above/beneath, interviewed, hired/fired people from schools on the USNWR top 10 list — and from people not in the so-called top list. And it confirms to me even more how worthless the rankings are. Like I said, in the real world (except for some companies who insist on accepting resumes from top-5 MBAs only), the fact that Princeton is above Harvard one year or not the next affects me as much as a crayfish burping in the rainforest.</p>
<p>If a Princeton grad said to me non jokingly: Hey we beat out your school again in USNWR? I think my jaw would literally drop. In my life, I’ve NEVER heard or engaged in a USNWR discussion except within the narrow confines of how it negatively affects college admissions – just like Jeff Brenzel (Yale) says.</p>
<p>And yes, these schools turn down plenty of hyper qualified kids – from Scarsdale and Winnetka and New Canaan and Atherton. Annasdad, don’t you think it’s a GOOD thing these schools are reaching out to a promising young girl in the rural part of Illinois who (if she had stayed at her local public school) wouldn’t be hearing about these kinds of schools from her classmates or guidance counselors because to them even U of I is a fantasy? That’s precisely who intrigues them – not Yet Another HyperPrepped Kid from Short Hills.</p>
<p>Yep, annasdad’s D is getting those mailings because she’s from the rural Midwest, historically one of the most underrepresented areas at most of the Ivies.</p>
<p>Right. So if a few kids in Short Hills who don’t understand mailing lists get personally hurt because they thought Harvard was talking to them personally – oh well. Small price to pay, much like JHS’ American Idol analogy.</p>
<p>If kids from rural or out of the way places are what they are after, then why mass mailing to a list of deferred kids from other Ivy’s. They can look for these kids many other different ways. No they couldn’t possibly be praying on the disappointment and anxieties of these people, could they? How many of these are so strapped and can’t afford to pay for more application fees like Sunshine mom?</p>