<p>To quote College Confidential after using the AI Calculator, </p>
<p>"Applicants with 8 and 9 rankings were accepted at over 90%." This is based off of Michelle Hernandez, I believe, a former admissions officer at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>This quoted statement may either be 1.) true, 2.) skewed because I've heard Dartmouth is very serious about Rank (part of the AI), or 3.) completely false.</p>
<p>I was wondering how much this truly holds in terms of Harvard's admissions, or even Early admissions. Could an AI of say, 238 with a 9/9, truly get an applicant in 9 out of 10 times? 90% is truly absurd, but even a 60% chance is remarkable with Ivy League admissions.....But can an AI near 240 really accomplish this, with a certainly-above average, all-around but not super-extreme collection of recs, essays, EC's and awards?</p>
<p>Michele Hernandez wrote that more than 10 years ago, based on her experience as an admissions officer at Dartmouth before that. At that time, Harvard had fewer than 20,000 applications, and an admission rate in the low teens, and Dartmouth got fewer than 10,000 applications and admitted more than 20%. So, yeah, a candidate at the top of the statistical heap had to do something terrible not to be admitted.</p>
<p>It’s not that way anymore. I’m sure someone at the top of the AI heap has a much better than average chance of getting admitted, but it’s nothing like 90%. Maybe half that.</p>
<p>The AI would be a far better indicator for chances of admission at some Ivy schools than others. Harvard is probably the one school who tends to ignore the AI the most.</p>
<p>Coincident or not - all the H kids (11 so far, to be exact) whom I’ve been involved with in the last several years had a 9/9 (AI >230) rating. They also had extraordinary ECs, awards, rec’s, and essays as well, of course. But I’ve not known anyone with 8/9 or less got into H in person, although several went to YPSM each year. Sincerely hope I’m wrong again… Anyone has any actual case(s)? That would be really interesting.</p>
<p>There are three different AIs used by the Ivies: the individual AI (calculated for an athletic recruit); the campus AI (the average AI for all students) and the team AI (calculated for each athletic team). Except for football where bands are used, the average team AI (and the Athletic Department AI) must fall within 1 standard deviations of the campus AI. An Ivy coach must balance his team in terms of academics (AI) and athletics. </p>
<p>The AI is not calculated for individuals in the general application pool for admission purposes with the possible exception of those non-recruited athletes who must apply through the early or regular admission process without the benefit of a slot or likely letter but with the knowledge of a coach. Such an athlete’s individual AI might be determined so that their AI’s impact on the team AI would be known.</p>
<p>That should be fairly simple to determine. </p>
<p>The rating of 6/9 starts around 220 which is roughly 1 standard deviation from the average athlete AI for HYP (208)…and 220 is the average school AI listed for HYP. </p>
<p>If you assume the distribution is the shape of a bell curve (which it really isn’t since the AI can’t go below 171), then based on plus or minus 1,2 or 3 standard deviations…roughly 15% of the athletes should have an AI above 220; 34.13% should be between 208-220; 34.13% should be between 196-208; and 2.5% of athletes would have an AI between 184-196.</p>
<p>It’s not like there is any real magic to AI. It’s just a weighted function of test scores and class rank, with some arbitrary lines. It obviously doesn’t actually govern admissions, because all these calculators severely disadvantage any top student whose school does not provide precise ranks, and we know perfectly well that students from certain of such schools (i.e., many well-known prep schools) are VERY successful in getting admitted to Ivy colleges.</p>
<p>Apart from the athletic context, all you get from the Academic Index is that it’s better to have high test scores and class rank than not.</p>
<p>Just ran the numbers; I excluded legacies, minorities, internationals and athletes to eliminate potential bias. With a sample size n=70, 34% of people reporting AIs of 9 were accepted, 33% of those with 8s were accepted, and 22% of those with 7s were accepted. Aside from one anomalous accepted 4, nobody reporting below a 7 got in. Though the sample is small, this suggests that an 8 or 9 is ideal for an unhooked applicant, with a 7 acceptable.</p>
This is sort of nonsense if they use class rank that highly without accounting for the rigor of the school. My kid is 28 out of 600, and there are 28 NMSF in her class (she is not one). If there were 3 NMSF in the class, 28th would be a far worse rank IMHO.
@Daddio3: The comment directly before yours (#15) is from four years ago and most posters from that time are no longer on College Confidential. Please don’t revive old threads, use them for research only.