<p>Does anyone know where I could find information on the admission rates of elite schools (Ives, top LACs) for kids without a hook? (no URM, athletic scholarship, or sliver spoon kids). In other words, what percentage of "regular applicants" get accepted?</p>
<p>Don't know where that kind of data is available in one place. You can get some idea of URMs, athletes and legacies because that info is often available but development kids, celebrity kids are usually partitioned out as a searchable stat. Also many "hooks" happen to be things on a college's wish list for a particular year. If the classics or physics department is having a draught, that can be a "hook". If pickings are slim for orchestra or the choirs are drying up, that can be a hook. A student working on a special project can have that hook. The daughter of the adcom or anoher university employee working in the same building can be a hook.<br>
I read that Harvard accepts about a third of their kids purely on academic excellence. When you look at the accept rates at various SAT ranges, it can give you some idea where the breakpoints are where it becomes a better chance to get in.</p>
<p>csleslie, I don't think you're going to find that information. You will find the percentage of each category accepted as it relates to the total accepted, but colleges are not likely to reveal how the number of each category accepted relates to the total applied.</p>
<p>Also, the ivies and most selective LACs don't give athletic scholarships. Need based aid may be biased toward the student that the COLLEGE needs, but they do not overtly "buy" students no matter what their hooks.</p>
<p>Also, when analyzing percentages don't overlook the possibility of multifaceted admits, especially at the LACs. The same kid may be a URM AND a musician or a legacy AND an athlete.</p>
<p>Bottom line in order to get admitted to a very selective school you need to bring more than one dish to the table. </p>
<p>If you're using "regular" as a euphemism for white/middle class/non-athlete, then yes, "regular applicants" get accepted all the time, as long as they are academically accomplished and will contribute to the campus community either intellectually or through some other talent or interest.</p>
<p>cleslie, I don't know what region you're from, but that can be important. A "regular applicant" with no hooks but highly accomplished can find acceptance to elites a challenge if their region has chronically been overrepresented at those same elites. A student with a quite-similar profile but from a previously under-represented region may find it a tad "easier." That's why, as another poster said, it would be difficult to find equivalent ways to compare.</p>
<p>Basically take the published rate and divide by two, and you won't be far off. (At my alma mater, because the percentage of varsity and junior varsity athletes is known, as is the projected number of legacies, and Pell Grant recipients, you can actually work it out, and is a little less than that.)</p>
<p>And don't be fooled into thinking that a decent violinist or debater is looked at the same as a vaarsity football player. The schools HAVE to fill the football slots or they can't play, whereas having another violinist or debater falls into the category of "nice".</p>
<p>my D once applied to a highschool, small, it had 150 in the class...with 1000 applicants -we looked at it this way- of the 1000</p>
<p>divide by 2 to get approximate gender, so we were at 75/500
now, of that 75, siblings were given preference, so the pool was now at 40/500
add in athletic recruits- leaves us at 25/500
add in "donars"- now 20/500 none "connected" would get picked....</p>
<p>nice odds huh...not to scare you, but what started at 75/500 or 15% with all the catagories my D didn't fit into, we were at 4%...needless to say, we really weren't disappointed when she was waitlisted...</p>
<p>just wanted to share something not that relavant but kinda</p>
<p>my kids are set in colleges where they wanted to go so the info I'm looking for won't relate to them. However, I am currently helping out at the local public high schools with current students. Was looking to find more "hard core" data as local school system administration likes "facts" (anything referred to with #s, however biased they may be). Am from a quite unrepresented part of the country with many URMs and almost no legacies. Some kids are high performing. This year one hs has 5 NMSF, the largest # in awhile. The higher performing URMs are getting in almost everywhere they apply while equally high stat non URMs are being turned away. I realize you can't prevent someone from applying to a school that is too far of a reach. Just want to give them as much info as possible to help them make their choices.</p>
<p>If you are working inside the college counselling offices, then your best information will be the experience of students from those high schools. If you have the records, review the admissions decisions, sorted by SAT and GPA. Then add in what you know about hooks. From what you describe few will be legacies and development admits are rare everywhere. The students who are admitted in the lower range of a given college are those who brought something else to the table, as others have noted. At the most elite college, which could fill their classes with high stat students, those extras have to be truly compelling, and it may be the lower half of the class (by stats) for whom hooks made a difference.</p>
<p>csleslile,
Thanks for that interesting information, and for confirming in your corner of the world what I have seen in other corners, and what anyone who does their homework can also confirm: non-URM's are not being passed over by underperforming URM's; they are being passed over for comparably performing URM's. (Just an aside, because it's always such a controversy on CC.)</p>
<p>I still say it's hard to make generalizations. The reason I say that is this: recently my daughter and I were looking at the admit rates from her school to two similar privates, on different sides of the country. While neither is an "elite" per se, both are very selective & very popular privates; both draw widely from the national population. We pulled down the Naviance scattergrams from her school, which reveal (anonymously) scores + GPA's of seniors who applied, & what the results were (accepted/rejected/waitlisted), including EA/ED deferrals, etc. What we saw was that these 2 schools in the same category of difficulty & selectivity had different priorities for admission: one school admitted the higher GPA's & was more forgiving about scores; the other was clearly more interested in scores than GPA's. There was a consistent pattern there. Naturally it was also not possible to compare how & which extracurriculars were weighted at the 2 schools, but at least the hard numbers could be compared.</p>
<p>Brown does not have the same priorities necessarily as does Cornell, as does Princeton. The top liberal arts colleges have fewer spots, & often less financial aid available; HOWEVER, many of them are quite committed to URM admissions. In the case of the LAC's, the student's demonstrated area of academic interest sometimes make a difference (because of the smaller population of the school & sizes of the various programs).</p>
<p>Congratulations on your volunteer efforts. Very commendable of you.:)</p>
<p>Here's a link to the "common data set" thread. You can find the CDS for almost any college by doing a google search or a search on that school's own site. The CDS may not have everything you want, but there's lots of numbers and information.</p>
<p>epiphany: I see plenty of URMs beating out higher stat white kids. So while I agree that "underperforming" is a pejorative term, and I don't think unqualified URMs are getting into elite schools, it is still discouraging for higher stat white kids to be turned down by the same school that accepted their less-qualified URM friend. In a neighboring town with lots of diversity, life long friendships have been strained. Differences in SAT scores can be 200 points, with the URM having no hook, ec, or any talent above the white kid, yet the URM gets in. White attorney dad, black physician mom, million dollar home, yet still being given an admissions boost. This is the type of URM that raises the hackles in AA debates.</p>
<p>SS,
And the examples you are thinking of are HYP, Stanford, MIT? (And all non-athletes, too?)
As to the middle-class URM professionals you mention, if they're URM (at that particular institution), they're URM. Now, for financial aid, they would not be looked upon more generously than a non-URM of any ethnicity, necessarily. By income they either do or do not qualify for need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>But your mention of economic class does speak to the concerns mini & others have raised about "lack of economic diversity," yet again, lots of <em>non</em>URMs who are nevertheless needy, are often granted admission, even sometimes versus the middle-class URM. This is according to self-reporting on the CC forum by students & parents: I don't have side-by-side statistics to offer.</p>
<h2>"I don't think unqualified URMs are getting into elite schools, it is still discouraging for higher stat white kids to be turned down by the same school that accepted their less-qualified URM friend."</h2>
<p>Wow, then it must even more discouraging to see 'connected' white applicants accepted at elite schools over Asian Americans with significantly higher, near perfect stats. It happens all the time. They lump everyone from the China to India to Bangladesh into the Asian/non-URM category and expect perfection, plus standout ecs....and then still reject them.</p>
<p>By the way the example cited of an 'unhooked' URM with the wealthy parents is a little misleading. That applicant is so hooked and not just by ethnicity. The parents won't be asking for financial aid (the best kind of URM in the eyes of college admissions whether they want to admit it or not) and the kid possibly qualifies as a 'developmental admit' (parent = big donor). So don't burn him on the racial leg up...that may not be the tip at all.</p>
<p>SS, I also got the idea from csleslie that the non-URM and URM students of which she knows had very similar stats. Did not mention a 200-point difference, but perhaps s/he can clarify.</p>
<p>But the point is, with <em>limited</em> spots at the elites, and with a mission to severally diversify a particular institution, what will be looked at, even aside from diverse e.c.'s, is the following: geographical diversity, economic diversity, ethnic diversity. Some attempt at juggling & eliminating qualified applicants has to be done (they feel) in order to achieve a less homogeneous look to that elite. (Heavily Northeast, heavily white+Asian, heavily upper middle class & from advantaged households & schools.) I don't see sub-par scorers being let in at the top elites in significant numbers over the "more" qualified. I see an occasional blip here & there. </p>
<p>As to the life-long friendships being strained, it's happened to my D, too -- admitted over a double legacy at one school, with an almost-equal profile to her. Both students, Caucasian. If there was one "more" qualified, it was, numerically & e.c.-wise, my D. I think the friendship strains are inevitable. With a push to greater regional diversity, it is less common than previously that blocks of students from the same school, same region, are being admitted to the same elite. It's about picking & choosing, & about <em>limiting</em> numbers of admits from any one senior class at one school.</p>
<p>Well, I'm talking NJ, less than 15 miles from Manhattan. So nobody around here is filling a regional diversity spot at an elite school. We're stacked like cordwood in these parts! I'm referring to kids from the very same h.s, so the only diversity spot the college fills is one of race. Comparable economic profiles, too. (Not development potential, by the way.) Privleged, professional parents. No athletic advantage. In short, the only hook the kid has is his skin color. That still pulls more weight than superior stats. Schools like Brown, Dartmouth, etc. I'm not talking about a random kid here and there, who may have some hidden compelling story or knock-your-socks off essay. It's a consistent pattern. Move down a tier & the same thing is happening.</p>
<p>I don't want to rehash a big AA debate here. But I do still maintain that lesser qualified URMs are getting in over whites. Not unqualified losers, mind you. But still lesser qualified when measured by grades, ecs and the like.</p>
<p>My point exactly, SS. ("No one around here is filling a regional diversity spot.") So Brown & Dartmouth apparently felt that these URM's are still URMs at their own colleges. Further, Brown is still need-aware, so as ldmom mentioned, the lack of need is a hook @ Brown. So that's 2 hooks: race, non-need. And the idea is to maintain & expand regional diversity, but not to shift it dramatically to a diff. part of the country. Let me tell you, the A-An of which you speak can probably better handle the material at Brown or Dartmouth than most from my own region. The quality of the high school education is a big factor in admission.</p>
<p>Since I started this I'll just jump in again. Many of the URM students here that are going to the top schools are not receiving financial aid. However, some who opted for "slightly lower on the ladder" schools are getting full tuition to full rides. NMFs and valdictorians who do not have the URM hook aren't even applying to Ivies but rather other top LAC's where they have researched merit aid and are getting great financial packages. At the beginning of the summer I rounded up high performing kids from the three high schools for a newspaper article (all of the articles in our local paper seemed to focus on the athletic scholarship kids). Many brought their stats with them so I was able to see where they had been accepted and what scholarships and aid they received. It was impressive to see how some of the kids had figured out how to get the best education at a school where they wanted to be at a great price. As far as stress on relationships goes, it hasn't become a big issue yet as to who got in where but you can see it hovering around the edges. Meanwhile, our school district thinks it is doing a really great job because two of their kids are going to harvard!</p>
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The higher performing URMs are getting in almost everywhere they apply while equally high stat non URMs are being turned away.
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NMFs and valdictorians who do not have the URM hook aren't even applying to Ivies but rather other top LAC's where they have researched merit aid and are getting great financial packages.
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<p>CSleslie: can you make these two statements jibe better? I may be misreading them, but if non-URMs are not bothering to apply to Ivies, how can it be said that URMs receive preferential treatment by Ivies' adcoms? It may well be true, but that is not the way I read your posts.</p>
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Further, Brown is still need-aware, so as ldmom mentioned, the lack of need is a hook @ Brown.
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<p>No longer - from the Brown website: Beginning with the Class of 2007, Brown implemented a need-blind admission policy for all US citizens and permanent residents.</p>
<p>Gosh, I hope not. Lot's of my friends have gotten ahead of me, and I am happy for them. Even if I thought I "deserved" the chance over them, I cannot think in terms of resenting my friends. </p>
<p>Even the smallest Ivy accepts over 1,000 students each year. If you are rejected, why take that out on the only one of them who happens to be your lifelong friend, as opposed to the 999+ whom you have never met?</p>