<p>The "crap shoot" aspect at the extremely selective schools doesn't mean that it is random who gets in. It means that for every person accepted, there are four or five practically identical applicants who are denied or waitlisted. This is the random quality. The adcoms admit to this themselves all the time and lament that they have to do it that way because they only have so many open slots. The problem is that so many students pick their schools according to the brandname.</p>