Do you also expect to win every time you buy a lottery ticket?
I think the CC community in this thread is being a little harsh on the OP. Like most parents, he/she got admitted to college 30-35 years ago and hasn’t given the admissions process a thought since, until a child got into high school. OP’s shock at the admission results is perfectly reasonable - 35 years ago, this kid would have been choosing between multiple Ivy/MIT offers. So to the OP, here is how the world has changed:
- In 1980, 1 Million kids applied to college in the US. This year, 2.4 million applied, for roughly the same number of spots.
- In that time, the number of students applying to the top 20 schools increased by significantly more than 2.4 times, so the competition at the top has ramped up even more than at lower ranked schools
- URM's, first generation and lower income students have become much more of a thing, especially for the top colleges which have big enough endowments for a lot of scholarship money. As a result, unhooked kids are now competing for less than half the available slots at all of the top schools, vs roughly 75% or so 35 years ago.
- Many unhooked kids now spend the majority of their high school (and earlier) years preparing a resume for college, many of them being guided by high $ consultants hired by mom and dad or their private school. Kids these days graduate with some incredible awards and EC's (like those mentioned upthread) which were unheard of 35 years ago.
The result of all this: if you are unhooked, you are facing a world with way more kids applying for far fewer available spaces, and the majority of those applicants have close to perfect grades and scores. The ones who get in have amazing EC’s and clever essays, or something else that makes them stand out. Or they win the lottery.
@lostaccount the only reason i said that about Michigan was its sheer size. i think the class size there is way bigger than most schools so we were thinking he might have a good chance.
GT the more we look at it seems like the place he belongs and now that read your comments i feel pretty lucky that he was accepted there. i cant wait to hear his final decision!
Thanks all…so many helpful comments and insights here.
Let me add a bit of perspective, especially focusing on schools like Cornell and Duke.
Between recruited athletes, legacy, URM, Pell grant awardees, first generation college attendees, underrepresented states, unpopular majors, women interested in engineering/computer science, and possibly some other considerations, the number of seats remaining for `well-qualified candidates’ is small – probably of the order of 25-30% of the class. Then when you consider the number of seats filled with ED candidates, it is possible that an even smaller fraction of RD seats go to these candidates that do not add to the diversity of the class in any fashion.
This makes it a blood-bath for a white/asian upper-middle class male engineering applicant from a state that is not underrepresented.
Congratulations to your son on all his fantastic accomplishments in high school and the great choices he has for college.
The GT story 
Your making me tell this story. Did I tell you he got wait listed from GT? … Lol…
So we went down to GT to look at the campus since why wouldn’t they take my son? We are all listening with baited breath to every word the Admission Officer was telling us. He looked like he was 16. Seriously. Then it happened. One parent of the about 100 people there asked “How does Georgia Tech teach the latest technologies compared to other engineering programs”.
Without missing a beat the 16 year old looking Admissions officer said “Here at Georgia Tech we create the world’s latest technology for the rest of the world to use”
There was a large gasp by “ALL” the parents and then the room was silent. Each parent looked at each other like, yes, my kids getting in. Sorry about your kid.
We all (yes me too?) rushed the 16 year old looking AO, to ask questions that somehow would be so brilliant that he would have to admit our children on the spot. One parent asked "excuse me, where’s the restroom? "
I never had an experience like that at any other engineering college. About GT being better then Michigan… Hmmm… My son’s at Michigan for industrial engineering. Ranked 2. Georgia Tech is ranked 1. Foiled again! ?
With UMich, remember that UMich is a MI-funded public (with a board of directors who are elected by MI voters) that feels obligated to favor in-state kids. The admit rate for MI residents is substantially higher than for OOS. Add to that the COE admit rate is lower than the general admit rate to UMich.
Add it all together and the unhooked male OOS applicants to UMich COE likely face a single digit admit rate or close to it.
For GTech and some engineering majors at UIUC, your son probably faced the same type of odds (if he was OOS to both of those).
So you should be really proud that your son got in to GTech and UIUC engineering.
GT turns down some in state kids with perfect scores and high grades. You should be very pleased with that admission. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he hadn’t gotten in there.
Even if he is a good writer, kids often don’t really realize what the purpose is of admission essays. For other applicants and parents reading this, you want to be sure to have a reviewer with that knowledge. No telling if that was an issue for him, but it is possible.
Remember that he can only attend one college anyway, and he has solid choices.
Congrats on your S getting into GT, which is ranked #7.
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/eng-rankings
This puts him below MIT, Stanford, and Michigan (ranked 1, 2, and 5), but above NCSU, Penn St., and RPI (ranked 24, 35, and 41). Thus, it kind of makes sense where he got in.
But to answer your question, “what more could he have done”, I’m assuming that he did not get a basketball scholarship. To do so usually requires a whole lotta talent and some practice, or some talent and a whole lotta practice through playing club sports. However, this route may have cost about $15k with all of the traveling involved with club sports.
@RockySoil I don’t think the comment that “in 1980, 1 Million kids applied to college in the US. This year, 2.4 million applied, for roughly the same number of spots” is correct. There are about 20 million college students now and there were about 12 million in 1980. The population has increased a little over 44% since 1980 and the number of spots in colleges has increased 66%.
What might be true is that spots at the most selective colleges have not increased as fast as the population. That would need some more research. What I do think has happened is kids apply to many more schools than they once did (it is much easier to do so now) and a higher percentage of students are shooting for the same “elite” colleges.
I am surprised about UM? The others are just crapshoot
Georgia Tech is fantastic though
^ Remember that he also got in to UIUC. Also top 10 in engineering.
Oh, and in all this talk, he also got in to RPI.
How did RPI become an also-ran?
It’s merely one of the top undergraduate-focused engineering schools in the country.
“But to answer your question, “what more could he have done”, I’d say that if he got a basketball scholarship that would have helped. That probably would have involved playing club sports and traveling for games, which would have cost you about $15k a year.”
That also would require height and talent.
@“suhel d”
You shouldn’t be surprised by the UMich result. See my post #45.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate
As much as I love Michigan just want to be fair here. GT tied 4, Michigan tied 6. Just saying.
But I did see this 
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/eng-rankings
So this week Michigan is that much better… ?.. Lol
Duly noted, and updated:
Congrats on your S getting into GT, which is ranked #7 and UIUC, which is ranked #10
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/eng-rankings
This puts him below MIT, Stanford, and Michigan (ranked 1, 2, and 5), but above NCSU, Penn St., and RPI (ranked 24, 35, and 41). Thus, it kind of makes sense where he got in.
But to answer your question, “what more could he have done”, I’m assuming that he did not get a basketball scholarship. To do so usually requires a whole lotta talent and some practice, or some talent and a whole lotta practice through playing club sports. However, this route may have cost about $15k per year with all of the traveling involved with club sports.
Congrats to your son OP! He has fantastic options on the table.
See @PurpleTitan’s post about UMich. Valedictorian at my DD’s school wasn’t accepted either and he had perfect ACT/SAT scores. For OOS students, engineering is a reach for all students. I think Naviance hasn’t caught up with the trend. Also note that even though U Mich is very large, they get a crazy amount of applications so the acceptance rate is still very low.
I think it’s super important for parents and students to dig deeper than overall acceptance rates, especially at OOS flagships. The instate vs oos acceptance rates are usually very different as are admit rates for certain majors (CS, eng, finance). When you look up a school, it shows the overall acceptance rate - that included, EA, hooks, athletes, instate, out of state, and the least selective majors.
^ With some sports, enough hard work can make up for innate talent. Nothing can make up for height in basketball, however.
I’ve stated on multiple occasions elsewhere something similar to the following statements by @hebegebe: “The first thing to understand is that when it comes to the most elite schools, anywhere from 30%-50% of the class is hooked in some way (legacy, URM, geographic diversity, etc.). So your son was not competing for the entire class, but a subset of it. What this means is that unhooked students who are admitted cannot be just “average excellent”, but must be truly exceptional relative to the normal applicant pool.”
Except that my % of the class is much higher than 30-50%. According to Daniel Golden (in his book, “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges–and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates”), Robert Birgeneau, then chancellor of Cal-Berkeley, told him that his estimate of those students without any hooks (and geographic diversity isn’t considered a hook) are vying for only 40% of the slots at elite colleges. In other words, 60% of the class is hooked, according to Birgeneau’s estimation. That was more than 10 years ago. Back then, FLI (first-gen, low-income) wasn’t a hook as it’s fast becoming now. Today, this subset alone consists of 20-25% in the most elite colleges. When I stated elsewhere in the past that non-hooked students are vying for only 20-30% of the slots at elite colleges, my own estimate may have been conservative even if some of the subsets are cross-overs, i.e., URM-FLI or athlete recruit-URM-FLI. Then, subtract, too, about 2-5% of the class that consists of those applicants with super spikes, i.e., Nathan Chen (Yale), Chloe Kim (Princeton), Yo-Yo Ma (Harvard), Terence Tao (Princeton), etc. Even the “normal” spiky applicants enjoy an advantage of those who possess no spikes but otherwise well qualified academically and EC-wise.
I also agree with @hebegebe that the admission to elite colleges is not a lottery ticket after a certain threshold in a sense that AdComs are reaching into a hat and pulling out some numbers at random. No, each and every applicants, especially after a threshold has been met with, are given a thorough consideration. Those who pass are those considered fitting that particular class well for that particular institution’s needs and wants.
It’s then not all that surprising that an applicant with perfect academic qualifications but with a “normal” or even above-average set of non-spiky EC’s receive disappointing news from elite colleges on a routine basis.
@RockySoil, I would normally agree with you that posters are being a bit harsh with the OP, except the OP has been a CC member for 3 years with over a hundred posts. I would assume that they did their research before applying and knew the odds of acceptance to reach schools.
GT for engineering is a tippy top school. Michigan for engineering is a tippy top school. What do people think when they see that a school accepts fewer than 15% of the applicants when there are tens of thousands of applicants? Does everyone think their own kids are so superior to others that they would garner multiple seats in such select schools. The misguided self esteem movement taught an entire generation that they were special. What a mistake that was. But, worse, the parents seem to have gotten into the Koolaide they’d made for their children. Stop drinking it. It’s too perplexing to those of us with typical kids.
“his science EC’s were: head of Science olympiad team 4 years, pres of Chem club, organized a science fair for the middle school, and is in an engineering 4 year “track” at the school. i believe he is CAD qualified or something like that. highest math completed is AP Calc BC”
Were these top ECs?
For Science Olympiad, did he attend public school in Solon or Mason, Ohio ( Ohio SO rocks) or Troy Ca? Or, did he earn medals in events at Nationals even if not on one of those teams. Or, if he wasn’t on one of those teams, did he graduate from a high school in a state where the schools are so competitive that another team beat them out last year but they went the year before? 60 teams (each comprised of 15 members of which 7 may be seniors) competed at Nationals last year; there may have been 420 seniors.
In terms of math, many kids run out of math (incl AP Calc BC) freshman year (HS)-end up taking college classes. The most recent AMC 11/12 was administered in 1458 schools to 19108 students-many traveled long distance to access a test site). High scorers go on to AIME (aprox 2000+ students). Top AIME scorers in the US may be invited to take USAMO (from which three are 12 winners; 14 hon ment) or USAJMO (from which there are 11 winners; 14 hon mentions). While those are individual competitions, there are also national and international math team competitions. Most elite universities in the US would rather a high scorer or winner on one of these competitions than a student who was busily leading a ton of school based clubs even if the busy student had all A’s and perfect ACT scores.
In terms of science fairs and clubs, approx 1800 students participate in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair each year. Winners can go on to compete in tons of other invitation only competitions. Let’s not forget the expanded Biotechnology Institute challenges that are local, national and international among other prestigious competitions. There are national First Robotics and First Lego winners. There are tons of well known and highly competitive arts, music, computer science competitions. Some students have publications in the Concord Review. Others played instruments in All State for states like NY or California. Talk about talent! And of course one need only to look at the “chance me” threads for the most selective schools to see how many students have extraordinary accomplishments.
This post will likely generate the sentiment that “shouldn’t kids be allowed to be kids?” Yes! Of course they should. And luckily there are “4,298 degree-granting postsecondary institutions” (wiki) in the USA. Of those, most students will find open doors to about 4200 schools. But that isn’t what some people want. They want their kids to “be allowed to be kids” and to attend the schools looking for kids whose childhoods were not typical and who, instead racked-up extraordinary achievements. Disappointment is nearly certain for those who reject the 4278 schools in favor of 20 schools less interested in students who were “allowed to be kids”.