"Many kids with 2400/36 get rejected every year claim"?

Applying to College
101

<p>Proof that I need reading glasses -I ignored the blue box as too small to read. </p>

<p>At 50% yield, you can see that Notre Dame is indeed highly selective when you compare with the non-ivies in top 20 (I am missing a few here and I believe Yale is 75% but one of my numbers seems to be off). So one of the main attributes of this selection is a way to determine one out of every two students admitted is expected to show up. So behind the selection process, the school has built a sophisticated tool that provides them with the probability of a 50% outcome and the desire mix of class too.</p>

<p>I kind of sense you dont want to believe me when I say a lot of decision making is dependent on the yield but right here is the proof. You turn down 50% of your perfect scores since you know there is zero chance all those admitted will show up. Even the others might not show up but they do know based on past experience something on the application tells them which of the 2400 score students are most likely to actually show up (I predict legacy here!).</p>

<pre><code> seats admits yield %
</code></pre>

<p>Brown 1,500 2,804 53
Caltech 250 673 37
Chicago 1,350 3,560 38
Columbia 1,419 2,397 59
Cornell 3,181 6,541 49
Dartmth 1,094 2,159 51
Duke 1,724 3,972 43
Harvard 1,663 2,110 79
JHU 1,349 3,765 36
MIT 1,072 1,611 67
Nwestern 2,128 6,351 34
Penn 2,404 3,780 64
Princeton 1,300 2,148 61
Rice 958 2,634 36
Stanford 1,700 2,300 74
Wash U 1,650 5,000 33
Yale 1,305 1,951 67</p>

102

<p>

But what’s the point? Why would they do all that for yield? By itself, it’s a fairly meaningless statistic, not often cited in seeing which school is better. In rankings, it compromises ~1% of the ranking (so the difference between +0.5% and +0.4% is very little). I’m just not buying that they would turn down students they thought were excellent, just to get a higher yield.</p>

103

<p>I suppose I’m not really sure why I should care if a school has a really good method for determining / maximizing its yield or not. That’s their problem.</p>

104

<p>At a school like Notre Dame however, the overwhelming majority (I can’t find the number!) said that ND is their first choice school. The students at ND are self selecting, and you never know if that high scorer doesn’t have ND at the top like many other kids. I personally know our Val with a 23xx that only applied to ND and our state safety bc ND was the only school that she wanted to go to. </p>

<p>Not every “Ivy League” caliber kid wants to go to the Ivy league and is a prestige who*e. Many pick a school, not because of the ranking, but fit and the feel of the school.</p>

105

<p>Billy - You should not worry about ulterior motives. Yield is truly important to ensure a specific number of kids show up based on how many you admit. There are two sides to this - too many show up or too few which means the admissions people really messed up (there was an year 2007/2008 (?) when some top schools had an extra 200 show up and they tightened up the admits by a lot the following year). Last year Harvard had to pick 94 people off the waitlist and so they admitted 60 more (I saw a number somewhere in CC) to ensure they did nt need to take so many off the waitlist. If Notre Dame gets 2200 showing up this year, they will only admit 3700 next year and if they get only 1900 instead, the admits will go up to 4100 or something.</p>

<p>But if you think about 2200 showing up when the dorm space is locked in at 2000, how does it reflect on the school? </p>

<p>As a potential student of ND, do you think a school wants to be in a position to send a letter stating we royally messed up, we dont have housing for you and you need find housing on your own somewhere when you show up?</p>

106

<p>

I’m tired of this repeated insult aimed at kids who want to go to schools with highly competitive students. The equivalent would be saying that they don’t want to go to Notre Dame because the students there aren’t as bright as those at the Ivies. I guess that’s fit, too.</p>

107

<p>But the students at ND aren’t any less bright in general. As shown by the ACT averages in my previous post (ND tied for #3) show that they are as bright and maybe brighter than the Ivys with “highly competitive students”
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108

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<p>Well, there are students who apply to every Ivy just because it’s an Ivy and then there are others, like my son and perhaps your kid, who selected 3 of the Ivies that seemed to be good fits and then looked elsewhere for other good fits.</p>

109

<p>I suppose there are some kids who are just chasing after prestige, and we do see some of them on CC. But this idea that all the kids who are looking at schools like that are only after prestige is tiresome.</p>

<p>But jcold9, I won’t pursue additional numbers to prove that Notre Dame kids are dumber than Harvard kids, as long as you reconsider labelling others as prestigitutes.</p>

110

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<p>I think it’s pretty clear on CC whether a given kid was looking for excellent fit among top universities (and naturally several Ivies made the cut) or whether a kid is just looking for “Ivy” and doesn’t give a darn that Brown and Columbia couldn’t be more opposite if they tried to be.</p>

111

<p>Well, yeah, Pizzagirl, but I have to tell you that my son applied to both Columbia and Brown and really liked both of them. They’re both in cities, after all.</p>

112

<p>Each of the ivies have a different thing to like and give you a different feel. </p>

<p>The core curriculum at Columbia is really great but then then the no core at Brown can be equally appealing. The only ivy that can really turn off people is Harvard (I am waiting for the firebreathing dragons!). We are Harvard and dont need to convince you about coming here but we will decide whether you deserve it is the attitude we got during our visit.</p>

113

<p>My son wouldn’t apply to Dartmouth or Cornell because of their locations. All the other Ivies looked pretty good to him. He thought Stanford was too far away.</p>

<p>We were somewhat turned off when we visited Harvard by the tone of the video they showed ("Harvard has eleven gazillion books! Harvard has fifty thousand Nobel laureates!) and the grim, beaten-down demeanor of the two students who spoke at the info session.</p>

114

<p>Hunt, was your S delighted when he got into a top school and feel humbled by the opportunity? My guess is yes.</p>

115

<p>Delighted, yes, humbled, well
I will say that we weren’t at all sure that he would get into one of his reaches at all, so we looked very hard at matches and safeties.</p>

116

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<p>That, I think, is the crux of how to differentiate the person who is just prestige-chasing and the person who is solidly thinking about a strategy. </p>

<p>The prestige-chasers tend to assume that they will waltz into a Top 20, so they throw all their energies there, and don’t even think about still-good schools that are a rung below. Hence, they are “disappointed” if they hit only 1 or 2 (or in some cases, 6!). They slice the bologna very thinly, as I’ve said on another thread.</p>

<p>The ones who are more thoughtful don’t hold any illusions that a Top 20 is in the cards, fully understand and prepare themselves for the fact that these schools are reaches for everybody (even if they cured cancer, won the Olympic Gold Medal and scored 2500 on the SAT’s) and seem to employ a more thoughtful approach that encompasses some matches or safeties that are a bit further down the line.</p>

117

<p>

So, you think this attitude might be detrimental to many top scorers?</p>

118

<p>Well, you make your own happiness in the world. You can decide to be as pleased as punch that you got into an elite school and think “it’s all good - all these schools are great, and many others, too,” or you can pouty-pout that you didn’t sweep them all and sigh loudly that you “only” have to settle for a non-Ivy top 20 or some-such.</p>

119

<p>Personally, I’ve always found this prestige and ranking obsession that many students show here to be very misguided. I have several options for where to go to school, and I can tell you one thing that won’t play a part in my decision: that this one’s 20ish in a money-making college “ranking,” or this one’s 40ish or this one’s 50ish or whatever. It just seems pointless. Regardless of some flawed ranking, I felt like each school I was seriously interested in had something to offer me that no other did.</p>

<p>Along with the sense of entitlement, I think this idea that one excellent school can be innately better than another because of some corporate ranking needs to be done away with. This is an education we’re talking about.</p>

120

<p>Billy - what other schools are in your consideration mix?</p>

<p>Hunt -Did your S get into both Columbia and Brown? Where is he going?</p>