Ivy Admissions vs LAC Admissions

I am a senior in high school this year looking to apply to colleges very soon. From various sources I have heard that, with ivy and ivy-like school admissions, nearly all the applicants are academically qualified, so the admissions process comes down more to ECs and just luck. How similar is this the admissions process of schools like Amherst, Bowdoin, Colby, Swarthmore, etc? At some of these schools I am at or above the 75th percentile for the SAT, so does this give me any advantage, or does the 13%-20% acceptance better reflect my actual chance of being admitted (I have 1530 on the SAT btw)?

Pretty much the same. Those schools all have more qualified applicants than seats, so they will be picking from the many qualified students to assemble a class.

There are subtle differences – because of size, a bigger percentage of the class at yhose LACs will be varsity athletes and there may be, in some cases, preferences for kids who wear more than one hat (i.e. violin playing lax player).

With that said, there are a lot of kids who do not apply to LACS but apply to ivies and vice versa. And there will be kids who are not admitted to Harvard who are admitted to Bowdoin. And the other way round. If you are a competitive applicant for the ivies, you are competitive for those LACS as well.

I agree – all of the top schools (LACs and universities alike) have more well qualified applicants than there are spots available. Admissions officers look to create a well rounded class (including some well rounded students and some students with particular talents/interests) so it is impossible to figure out where you might get in and where you might not. If you are academically qualified you have passed the first hurdle but that’s about it.

Don’t rely on ‘luck’. Figure out what those schools value in a student and see where you fit and apply to those schools and your odds will increase.

Admissions is holistic for all of these colleges, so it is more than grades and test scores. However, it would be inaccurate to believe that if your objective stat’s put you in the top 25%of admitted students that your application is no different than any random applicant, however, you would be far from a shoo-in. Plenty (maybe even a majority) of high stats kids don’t get in at some of the most selective colleges. I also disagree with your statement “the admissions process comes down more to ECs and just luck.” Maybe you are substituting EC’s for all the qualitative considerations, like LoR’s and essays in addition to EC’s. Further given the large number of cross admits on one hand and high stat kids shut out of every highly selective schools on the other hand, you have to conclude that certain apps/candidates are just stronger than others. Luck probably does play a role, but I think people exaggerate its importance.

And figure out matches and safeties that are similar, affordable, and that you like.

Yup, most of this is far from luck. You need to be prepared to apply with the right knowledge about what matters to them and what about you needs to show. Without that, stats work no magic. That’s an applicant’s responsibility. If you just think it’s, “Here I am, I want you,” how do you make your best presentation? Be savvy. And be aware lots of top applicants have top ECs.

I think the words such as “luck,” “random” and “lottery” in describing the admissions process really don’t do justice to what thorough process that the adcoms put themselves through year in year out. What might appear as mindless random process after a certain point in the selection process, is what I’d rather call the “fitness” factor. The applicant "A’ was accepted to Stanford but rejected by UPenn, while the applicant “B” was accepted to Harvard but rejected by Dartmouth. A scenario like this happens all the time with every admissions cycle. This isn’t because the applicant “A” and “B” just got “lucky.” No, instead, the adcoms at Stanford and Harvard saw that the applicants “A” and “B” were better “fit” for the particular class at their respective schools, while the adcoms at UPenn and Dartmouth saw that other applicants were better “fit” to fill their classes than the applicants “A” and “B.” THIS is what is meant by “holistic” admission practice.

I disagree with the assertion that at the Ivy’s nearly all the applicants are academically qualified. I think they get a significant amount of Hail Mary apps - kids that think what the heck let me just apply to an Ivy just to see or just to say I did. Then there are the kids with straight A’s but low test scores for Ivies, who apply anyway because in their high school they might be the top kid. Ivies have greater name recognition than a lot of other schools, so they get apps based on that alone.

Cornell’s admissions folks tell their volunteer alumni admissions ambassadors that well over 90% of the applicants are academically qualified.

I never said I was relying on luck, just stating that it was a factor.

Yeah, I was just kind of grouping LoR and all of that with ECs, I do understand their importance but was trying to be brief. Thank you for the reply btw!

I guess I’m getting into a lot of trouble for using the word luck. I do understand you detailed the process was, I was just attempting to communicate these complex, often unpredictable for students, underworkings of the admissions process quite briefly as it was not the main point of my post.

I always wondered about this, and I think you are right. Thanks for the reply!

Ivies and elite LACs use a similar system of holistic review, yes. Grades, scores, ECs, recommendations, special talents, athletic status, legacy status etc all count.

“Academically qualified” and where that falls in application strength/probability are not the same thing. In the 2017 CDS, there are students at Cornell that got in with SAT components below 600 and sub 30 ACT composite scores. They are by definition academically qualified by the fact that they got in. The 25th to 75th percentile figures however were 690/760 Reading and 700/790 Math and 31/34 for the ACT. I think there is little dispute that kids that got in below the 25th percentile probably had 1 or more strong hooks. A 24-29 ACT kid is academically qualified since over 10% of matriculated students are in that range, but a 24/25 ACT kid is a Hail Mary unless they are a recruited athlete or the kid of a major donor. In fact there was at least 1 student who got in with an ACT between 18-23.

I don’t know how Cornell defines “academically qualified.” I do know that there is no way that 90% of the unhooked kids who apply to Cornell have the GPA and test scores that give them a legitimate shot of getting in. Looking at Cornell’s Naviance scattergram for my kid’s school, I can see that except for one or two outliers (who probably had a hook), kids who don’t have at least a 95% average in combination with an ACT of 33 or higher/SAT 1500 or higher don’t get in. And you need both of those things. Getting a 36 on the ACT does not make up for only having a 92% average. The scattergram also tells me that two-thirds of the Cornell applicants from my kid’s school don’t have a 95 plus average in combinations with a 33/1500 plus test score.

Finally, I know that Naviance only paints part of the picture. However, it’s only after you meet the GPA/test score prerequisites that the other things (EC’s, LOR’s, essays etc …) come into play.

The stats are the stats so I think you have a point, putting aside the ‘luck’ issue.

At the risk of stating the obvious, a college with an 18% acceptance rate (like many top LACs) accepts close to 2 out of 10 applicants. whereas at Ivies it’s less than 1 out of 10. So the aggregate odds are 75% to 150% better for most top LACs!

So, yes LACs are rejecting lots and lots of qualified applicants, but they are also accepting more qualified applicants than Ivies or Ivy-like larger schools. (Exceptions are Pomona, Swat, and maybe one or two others.)

So LACs offer better odds of acceptance, in aggregate, with stronger focus on teaching. I think those are compelling reasons to focus on LACs if the environment suits you!

Good luck!

@BKSquared I think the low score outliers are deceptive.

My kid took the SAT once with his cohort, for free at the school. He never studied specifically for it and he had a mild flu that kept him up all night before. He ended up with a 1350. He’s prepped for and taken the ACT twice. He’s sitting on a 33 but he wants to scooch it up with this final sitting. A 35 is in reach.

If he gets in to Impressive College (which is obviously still a big if) his test scores will deceive people who come behind him. They will see the 1350 and think that was his best.

Your kid with the 23 ACT could have had the stomach flu and have to leave his ACT sitting halfway after bubbling in random letters, but gotten a 1550 when he took the SAT. We’ll never know unless we’re sitting in Cornell’s admissions office.

^My point was that colleges “market”, especially to alums, how competitive their applicant pool is. In the case of Cornell, the % used was 90% academically qualified. What is “academically qualified” is certainly beyond the range of the 25-75th percentile by definition. Over 10% of Cornell matriculates had ACT scores below 30 and there were around 3% of matriculates that had SAT sub-scores under 600. Going to the Cornell website, Cornell allows the Score Choice Option for the SAT, so these sub-600 scores were the best the applicant had to offer. Cornell does require all ACT scores to be submitted, but they say they only consider the highest score. I would think that colleges would want to submit the highest obtained scores from matriculates in their CDS submission. In the case of your son, I assume he will only submit his highest scores unless the college requires all scores to be submitted.