Poor appreciation of acceptance chances.

Parent Cafe
61

My son’s best friend has always made the cuts. He was first in his class for years, and is in the top 10% of his very rigorous high school, where only the accept rate is as low as many of the most selective schools, and for the kids to even be considered for acceptance they have to be in the top echelon of their classes. He’s a high achiever in everything. So I don’t think it was out of place or unusual that he and his parents figured he’d get into a top college. He was well within the range of those from his school who got into those schools. What they did not get, was that many of those kids had some extra hook, and that for someone like him, the chances were very small. More kids like him than seats available was the situation.

He will do well–he got into a highly selective school, a great school, a school that is many, many students’ dream school. He’s not shut out. But he and his parents did expect that he would have gotten into one of the single digit accept schools and that he’d have more choices than he does, and that is disappointing to them.

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I would not make that generalization. It was not true for either of my kids.

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@aj725, indeed, plus, the super-selective schools are looking for potential even more than achievement. So maybe some kid in NJ/CA took 10 AP classes and got a perfect 2400 (on the 5th try) and did a lot, but it’s clear from essays and activities that another kid from Nowheresville, FlyoverState despite only 2 AP classes (the only 2 offered) and a 2200 (in one try) possesses a mind, perspective, and can-do spirit that sticks with the adcoms.

64

I don’t get looking at an admit rate of 10% and believing it doesn’t apply to you. I have little patience for this.

65

Unless it’s a true safety, acceptance changes can be wildly unpredictable. And don’t forget the “big donor-board member sponsored” student applicants, trumping even the well-qualified legacy applicants.

66

Chances

67

I get it. When you’ve had those odds and repeatedly gotten the prize, you figure it’s all the same. The problem is that the odds for these top schools are generally a lot smaller than the overall numbers as some of the seats are already tagged. Also, those left consist of those every bit as good as you or better in terms of academic prowess and there are not anywhere nearly enough seats to take everyone so qualified.

Take a look at this: http://www.trinityschoolnyc.org/ftpimages/390/misc/misc_121861.pdf

A top student there might think, looking at the college destinations and the particular stats that they apply to him and he has a pretty danged good chance at a top school. What he’s missing is that a lot of those kids had major hooks, that he does not have, so his odds may be quite different. I see this with a number of kids from such schools.

68

I think there used to be some underestimation of how well SAT and high school GPA (along with course rigor) are correlated near the top of the applicant group. Everyone knows of some students who have a 4.0 high school GPA, but comparatively low SAT scores; everyone knows of some students who have high SAT scores, but couldn’t be bothered with homework. Everyone knows of some students who have both high GPA and high SAT scores, but little in the way of outside activity. So it used to be the case that when they looked at the admissions stats, and they saw that only about 25% of the group with 2400 SAT I were admitted (just as a rough estimate), they figured that the students who were not admitted had some other issue–e.g., lack of rigor in course work, lower GPA, weak EC’s.

A tremendous benefit of the CC discussion forum, over the past few years, has been to provide realistic odds for people, and to show the extent of correlation of high scores, high GPA, and strong EC’s. If the overall admit rate is 10% at a particular university, and a student has a 2400 SAT I, 2400 SAT II, 4.0 UW GPA in a rigorous set of courses, and good EC’s, I don’t believe that the student’s odds are only 10% (in contrast with PG’s view). But the odds might be only 35%, which still means that the odds are not in that student’s favor. Operationally, with a limited number of applications to colleges with single-digit admit rates, it might look pretty much the same as 10%, for some of the students.

A difference from my generation’s experience, at least in the general region of the country where I live: I did “all the stuff” in high school and still was able to go to sleep at a reasonable hour almost every night–with a few exceptions when major papers were due. Locally, the top high school students were practically all still up working at midnight to 1 am, with school starting the next day at or before 8 am. In my opinion, a lot of the work was a result of John-Deweyism-run-amok, in that there was so much emphasis on “production” (which is time consuming), and less emphasis on abstract learning (which is easy for the top group), compared to my high-school era. Some of the “production” was valuable, but a lot of it was just overkill. I think this tends to produce a “This had better be worth it” mentality, that my generation had less of (just speaking about my own region of the country and type of school). And we were much better off for not having it.

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@QuantMech‌, I agree a lot with the second part of your post. At my magnet HS, the teachers are actually saying that students now don’t do as much of the schoolwork (or rush through it or just do what they think they need for a good grade instead of exploring and really delving deeply in to something) compared to when I went because they all have tons of ECs (which they evidently feel compelled to do) which means they actually get less sleep as well as not being the students that the teachers prefer.

As for the actual odds for a student of the caliber that you stated, it really depends on the school. I do think that kids like that often are too-overconfident, so instead of applying ED to an Ivy/equivalent (where, IMO, at least at certain schools, their odds would be pretty good) as well as EA to a few others, they take their chances with the SCEA schools. Then if they don’t get an admit in that round (and aren’t satisfied with whatever EA state school accepts they pick up), they enter the (pretty brutal and unpredictable) RD round.

70

One word sums it up. Hubris.

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The whole college application process is becoming too much like China’s , in the minds of today’s top US students- i.e. you have one chance to prove yourself by getting into a top college. otherwise- why have you tried to hard?
This is so discouraging and wrong!!!
Where you go to college is not the “be all and end all” of a persons life!

72
  1. Parents and GCs often do not know much about statistics and probability. They don't understand that odds increase only slightly for each added application because there is usually a significant positive correlation among the decisions. Furthermore, if you sacrificed quality to submit more applications you may be worse off.
  2. Further complicating matters, there is a lot of misinformation out there so students and parents may have people close to them telling them that, of course they will get into Harvard et al. Not many people really understand the difference between a very good student, and a student that has a good chance to be admitted to a top 10 school. These kids are young and tend to believe what they are told.
  3. People are good at fooling themselves. They tend to believe that their chances of success are better than they are for no substantive reason. They have difficulty being objective about their odds of success.
73

The U.S. college admissions process is NOTHING at all like china’s (other than the fact that both involve chinese applicants). In China, u get one shot to take the gaokao, and your score is everything.

In the U.S., u can take the SAT/ACT as many times as u want without penalty. Your test score is only one of several factors that are weighed. Your career path and success are not contingent upon attending a half doz prestigious schools. And community college & transfer offers a second chance.

74

Changing course a bit here, but not only are there lots of kids out there doing amazing things, but there are kids “presenting” those activities in different manners.

A mother told me that being an Eagle Scout did not help her son at all on his applications. But apparently all he did was list Eagle Scout in his list of awards. My sons wrote essays about leadership experiences and community service, all part of earning their Eagle Scout rank. So being Eagle Scouts probably did help my boys on their applications. Not the title, but what they were able to communicate about what they learned, etc.

So, my point is that when someone posts stats here on CC and can’t believe they were not accepted, they may not realize that not only are there lots of other applicants with equally impressive stats, but there are also applicants whose stats may appear to be less impressive, but the application on the whole is so much more. The applicant has to somehow get across why those stats matter. For example, one of my sons won a scholar/athlete award. He had to write an essay about his biggest accomplishment as an athlete - he wrote about how he contributed to the team, even though he was out with an injury. If all you knew were the stats, you’d wonder how he won and someone with better stats did not.

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menloparkmom, I agree with part of your recent post. Clearly, it is misguided for students to think that college admission is the “one chance to prove yourself.” Admissions committees are as fallible as the rest of us. A successful career can be started from a wide range of universities, and good courses can be found in many places–as well as great student companions.

The element that in my opinion promotes “this-had-better-be-worth-it” thinking is the excessive amount of production-oriented work required in some high schools–the local one, for sure, and by most of the teachers, except for a truly wonderful few.

There is academic effort at the high-school level that essentially pays off 1 for 1 in terms of increased understanding about the world, in the arts and humanities or in STEM fields. This is great, and it needs no additional reward. On the other hand, there is the academic effort at the high-school level that is de facto required to be in the top 10% or so of the class, but has little or no pay-off in terms of increased understanding about the world. Part of this effort might possibly cause students to understand better how to get group projects done with fair sharing of the workload. But from my observations, this is mainly a function of having a compatible group to begin with. Aside from that, a lot of this effort is just wasted.

If a student spends a lot of time on the types of work that increase understanding, then if that student winds up at Large Public University alongside students who worked less, the student has not really “wound up in the same place,” because the student has the extra understanding that his/her work generated. If a student spends a lot of time on production-oriented work that actually teaches nothing, and the student is only admitted to Large Public University alongside students who worked less, then I think that the student has actually wound up in a worse place than the student who worked less. His/her ambition to go to a top school has–in my opinion–wound up just making the student an overworked sucker.

This is different from hubris, in my view. I think it is an understandable reaction to the overall situation. By “production-oriented,” I refer to displays, dioramas, construction projects, elaborate art work unconnected with art classes, many posters (though not all), and most video productions. If my comment doesn’t resonate with you, I would guess that your S’s/D’s high school is either appreciably better than the local one or appreciably less competitive–though probably the first.

Also, this is not sour grapes–QMP was admitted to 7 of the 8 colleges to which applications were sent. My comments are a result of looking at the effects of upcoming college admissions on QMP and classmates, and their outcomes. Of course, everybody settled in to the college they finally selected, and the vast majority did so happily. But I think they would have liked to reclaim some of their time during high school, if only for sleeping.

76

“If the overall admit rate is 10% at a particular university, and a student has a 2400 SAT I, 2400 SAT II, 4.0 UW GPA in a rigorous set of courses, and good EC’s, I don’t believe that the student’s odds are only 10% (in contrast with PG’s view).”

What the heck do you think the applicant pool looks like?? I think said student is foolish if he thinks his chances are appreciably different from 10%. That’s what I mean about staring admit rates in the face.

Anyway what is the point of believing your odds are 20% vs 10%? Either way they’re low and you’d best assume you’re not getting it. I think it’s mental, um lets just say self-pleasuring to believe you’re so special that you are at 20% vs 10% rather than preparing yourself that you’re most likely not going here.

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@QuantMech‌, looking through current syllabi of my HS, it doesn’t look like the teachers are making the kids these days do a lot of busy work (or more than when I went). What has changed, though, is the idea that you have to get involved in 10 ECs if you want to be competitive (and teenagers, malleable and half-formed, are much more prone to being sucked in by the idea that they need to keep up with the Jones). Back when I went, I spent maybe 50% of my free-time outside class on schoolwork, 15% on ECs, and the rest goofing-off/philosophizing while still getting plenty of sleep each night. These days, it seems common for kids to spend as much time on ECs as schoolwork (for some, even, twice as much time) while getting by on 4 hours of sleep a night. And when you do all that stuff because you feel like you have to rack up titles and accomplishments to get in to a good school rather than because you want to, then yeah, the bitterness sets in when the results aren’t what you had hoped. I’ve been struck by the many kids who felt like they hadn’t been rewarded for their hard work. Yet if you did ECs because you truly were interested in them and they were their own reward, you wouldn’t feel that way. The ironic thing is that, except for the really special/superhuman, all that work may actually extinguish the “spark” that adcoms look for.

78

“The whole college application process is becoming too much like China’s , in the minds of today’s top US students- i.e. you have one chance to prove yourself by getting into a top college. otherwise- why have you tried to hard?This is so discouraging and wrong!!!Where you go to college is not the “be all and end all” of a persons life!”

No, it is nothing like China. I’m sorry there are people who are stupid enough to believe that there is a teeny-tiny list of “top colleges” from which one can be successful, but they are completely wrong. I’m sorry that people are too stupid to look around and realize that most upper middle class areas in this country are populated by people who do not have elite degrees, but their own problem if they don’t understand that.

79

There is a “sweet spot” out there for nearly everyone, that combination of great academics, nurturing environment, just enough prestige. [For the student rejected from Bates, perhaps Skidmore or Union might have been closer to the sweet spot.]

Kids won’t do this, but parents can be enormously helpful by first looking for that sweet spot, identifying 4 or 5 great schools there, and then expanding outward to include more selective schools given a student’s stats.

I do think the safety/match/reach terminology doesn’t serve anyone particularly well, because the terms have such negative connotations to students.

80

One quick point about ECs and hooks changing the metrics for a particular kid’s chances at the “lottery” schools. Based on an admittedly limited sample of my son’s and daughter’s high schools, the kids who have been admitted to the really selective schools did not have a ton of extra curriculars. Most if not all of them did have one thing in which they were immersed and in which they excelled in addition to the pure scholastic part. Something about which they are obviously and demonstrably passionate. This Is sometimes athletics, like in the case of my son (Princeton-football) or a buddy (MIT-crew) and some times other things like his friend who has been competing in Latin competitions for years and iirc wrote his essay on trying to translate parts of the Aeneid as his independent research project (Brown), the guy way deep into model UN/foreign service/diplomacy (Columbia) or the straight up computer nerd who has been building computers for years (U Chicago). By contrast, he has another friend who is equally as accomplished academically who went 0-6 in the Ivys where he applied along with being wait listed at Northwestern and Vandy I think. The kid is a great kid, and wicked smart. But he has been involved in a superficial way with a ton of stuff, rather than delving deeply into one thing. I think the way some kids differentiate themselves is thru this expression of passion, and I am not sure that is in any way a bad thing.