Why should colleges/universities have to be totally transparent? They are businesses still and shouldn’t have to give up their “special sauce” IMO.
They already fill out Common Data Sets (shame on the few who don’t make those readily available) and many schools go beyond that in providing interesting Institutional Research.
There is plenty to parse already. Having more data broken down into minutiae shouldn’t change anyone’s process if they are truly doing their homework and putting ego aside and being analytical about it. Good skills to develop for students interested in going to top colleges.
The most that has been said in defense of secrecy has been that it perhaps does no harm. That is hardly a rationale for it. It may very well be that many students can parse the data currently. Why should they? And what of those students who can’t? What social good does secrecy promote in this context?
“If they are businesses then they should not be tax exempt.”
All nonprofits are still businesses. The difference with nonprofits are that profits aren’t distributed to owners and they benefit society. Colleges meet those criteria regardless.
You may be right, @Tanbiko. The initial rationale of the admissions secrecy was of course to keep Jewish, Catholic, and other applicants rejected. Not sure why anyone would defend the practice now given its sordid history.
Here is the problem as I see it, and I’ll start with a recent Harvard admit quote.
“ I saw admission to Harvard as a game, I love games so I worked out how to play the game and I won.”
If you know all the particulars of the application process you are much more likely to present a profile that tries to meet those criteria, and not be reflective of your true self. These schools want to be able to get a true reflection of the applicant so they can choose them as the right fit for the school.
Try reading “sideways” from the MIT application website to get a better understanding of why you would not want to be totally transparent in admissions.
In the end 95% will still be rejected and transparency will not change that.
I don’t know why what happened at H nearly 100 years ago is always an explanation for your doubts today.
And no matter how often some repeat the word “secrecy,” it’s still not some concerted effort to deny you answers to every question you come up with.
Applicant chances rest on the quality of their apps. Too many kids think it’s just their resume, some titles/awards and any old ‘standing out.’ Not. Look at chance threads.
Do you demand every detail when, say, applying for a job? Or realize the onus is on you to figure the full qualifications and determinants?
Most people seem to accept it’s a holistic process until their 1570 SAT, 4.5 GPA kid doesn’t get the acceptance they were hoping for.
I’ve yet to see a Chance Me post on here that starts with, I think my letters of recommendation will be excellent, I’m really happy with my essay…
They all start SAT 1560. GPA 4.3.
We know it’s not a purely stats driven procedure, the colleges tell us this, yet most lead with stats.
If we’re already ignoring the information that is available I’m not sure how more information would help.
Of course it is a concerted effort to remain secret. It took federal litigation now for Harvard to disclose its Asian statistics. Quotas were used through the 1970s in the Ivies, not just 100 years,ago. Many believe they are used now
The real reason that these colleges won’t reveal these statistics is the fear that people like us might actually use them (notwithstanding the cynical attitude of the long time posters on this thread - we aren’t all stupid sheep). If thinking parents/students saw the truly bleak reality of the admissions game, applications to top schools would drop and their vaunted institutional reputations would suffer, and all of that would feed on itself. The Wizard of Oz figured it out years ago, schools are just following the playbook.
3.6 million students graduate from high school each year in the United States. Harvard gets something like 40k applications a year, I believe (domestic and international). If ‘everyone’ were falling for the ‘Wizard of Oz’ playbook, more than 40k students would be applying. This is not a problem of most people not understanding the signals Harvard (and other elite schools) are sending. The vast, vast majority of student understand that Harvard is not the school for them.
This is a problem of average excellent students not understanding how many other students fit their same profile. Those 40k students could all be the ‘best of the best of the best (with honors)’. Statistically it is almost possible for all 40k to even be in the Top 1% of all graduates each year.
There aren’t enough spots for all of the students who would be fantastic Harvard, Yale, Princeton (insert your own dream elite here) matriculants. There wouldn’t be more spots if there was more transparency.
If basic numeracy is beyond some of the applicants, more information is not going to help.
The only reason people want to know exactly how admissions work at each school is so that they (or their child) can figure out exactly how to get admitted. Period. Otherwise it’s just not that interesting.
You know the wrong people then, CU123 and looking forward. I know plenty of people who think admissions is an important matter of public policy who don’t even have children, just like I care about access for the disabled even though no one I know well is in fact disabled. We are not all so self centered as to only care about issues which affect us personally.
Admissions to your state publics is an important matter of public policy.
Bothers me far more when kids with potential are shut out of their state systems, often by cost.
But, nooo. Folks unleash their uncertain frustrations on elite privates. Presumably, if they annoy you so much, you can take them off your radar.
Perhaps that will be the next source of challenge for athletic preference. By definition, if a certain number of admissions slots are held for athletes, those slots are not available to disabled students.
I couldn’t agree more. Whatever the elites do with their admissions standards, they will never be able to take more then a minuscule number of this country’s college ready kids. The state publics are where our attention needs to be focused. There must be good, reputable schools that kids can actually get into and afford. Those seem to be disappearing and its heartbreaking. I will be going through all this again in 10 years. Who knows what will be available by then. I pray that our good state schools stay accessible and affordable. Its one of the few advantages of living in NY.
Take something like student/faculty ratio. Say it’s published as 10:1. We all know that doesn’t mean all classes with one prof will be 10 students or that there’ll be 4 profs for a class of 40. It’s an average, across the board. And it’s a standard, across all colleges, to measure this in basic math. You may get a class of 100 and some prof may teach only a handful of kids in some subject. If they don’t break it down for you (intro classes are 1:50 or by different fields,) you can still grasp the idea there can be variation. They aren’t trying to decieve you.
It’s like that with many details. There’s a co-responsibility to learn what you need, assess, get an idea of what truly matters to your chances. Not guess. And not look for some FAQ index that covers every conceivable question.
To me, knowing you have a 1% chance shifts little from a 5% or even 10% They’re all bad odds. This isn’t a big open pool of kids and throwing darts, selecting at random. It’s not first come, first served, nor rack and stack. In holistic, your app must meet their needs, no matter what or any chance goes down. Same applies to a college that accepts 40%. You fulfill various things they want or not.
That’s why I continue to nag to get what info you can about what a college values. Up your chances through the info that IS there, not focus on statistics broken down by demographics.
And the higher the tier you aim for, the more important it is to both be inquisitive and dig, that type. You need to be the sort who does look farther than your own hs glory, can process what info IS there. And be realistic.
@roycroftmom well good luck with that, many of the applicants (especially in the later half of the class) are chosen for subjective reasons, not objective reasons. You might as well ask the AO why he likes the color blue over the color red. He/she just does and they won’t ever be able to explain exactly why.
