Any information provided about admissions to the most selective schools results in parents and the students using the information as a guide (gaming the system for admissions) to how to market themselves to these schools. But the schools are not looking for people who give the appearance of being “that type of student”. They are looking for the genuine article.
All this is true, but beyond that, in order to have any chance at the top elite schools, the student has to actually be special and that starts years before. As @lookingforward has said so many times on this site, its much more than just being president of school clubs and working at the local soup kitchen. Those are not bad things. They are wonderful things. They just don’t get you into Harvard.
Its not just the student who has used up all the math at his high school, but the student who shows promise of advancing the field. The same with the humanities, politics, engineering. And it isn’t just about specific awards and achievements. Its a specialness that comes through in an application. The accomplishments and the essays and the letters of recommendation together all paint a picture. The picture doesn’t need to be of a perfect student with perfect grades – although the grades need to be high enough. The whole application paints a picture of a student who is remarkable in something the college wants or needs. And those needs differ from college to college. Its why a student can be rejected from Dartmouth and get into Harvard.
For example consider two students (loosely based on real life examples). Student A starts a charity and collects money for a good cause. Student B starts an organization to pair hospitalized children with pen pals across the country. Not only does he get hundreds of kids involved, but he personally keeps on top of everything to make sure that the kids’ needs are being met. He develops relationships with families in need. His efforts not only help sick kids, but enable hundreds of other kids to help out by participating. His guidance counselor has a stack of letters from grateful families across the country to quote from in his LOR. His teachers all comment on the passion and drive of this kid and write about how any college will be lucky to have him. His other activities confirm not only his passion to help, but his commitment to actually make things happen. He spends his summers working at a camp for disabled kids.
Or this: Two kids work in labs doing research. Both win some regional awards. Student A has a letter of rec saying that she was conscientious and easy to work with. Student B has a letter of rec that says she not only was a pleasure to work with but has an amazing grasp of the field, a rare scientific gift, thinks outside the box, asked questions and made observations that prompted the teem to probe in new directions.
Who does the college want?
Neither because there was a third kid who was even better. 
I hate to disappoint you, but most of the students attending Ivy League schools do not actually walk on water. Good students, interesting activities, yes. But very, very few will either advance their field of academic study or change the world, nor are they distinguishable from the next thousand applicants who were rejected.
For those concerned about the ramifications of secrecy, I refer you to the thread on this year’s Harvard admissions, which remarkably shows over 25% Asian Americans in the incoming admitted class compared to under 20% in 2018. The transparency due to the litigation would seem likely to be responsible.
@lookingforward expecting the general public to understand T30 college admissions from looking at the common data set and their public high school counselors is like expecting the general public to understand the obstruction charges in the Mueller report. It’s not going to happen. I’d say I’m more informed than 99% of the general public and read avidly, but it wasn’t until my second kid was going through the process that I fully got it. As a result first kid applied to about 7 schools (in retrospect would have been 3). Second kid only applied to 3 and got into all of them including T25 and 2 instate great flagships. I would have saved about $350 in applications, not to mention the kid writing about 8 essays the kid could have done something more enjoyable.
the only beneficiaries of secrecy are the elite schools and people extracting money from the system (test prep, private counselors etc…). This reminds me of club soccer in the US that extracts unnecessary money from parents that don’t fully get it until they’ve been through it.
@jon234 the “stats” the colleges provide are mostly only the minimum required for the common data set and the department of education. Surely these colleges have acceptance rates for URMs, Athletes, and “other” they COULD provide the data that would be useful (they have it at their fingertips)… They choose not to to get as many applications as possible.
In this thread alone you have an example from someone else of them wasting time/money visiting some ivies that wouldn’t have in retrospect, In my case first kid applied to 7 schools, second only 3 (got in all 3). It’s clear the educational industrial complex financially benefits from the opacity they perpetuate. When a typical person sees their kid is above average for the school they wrongly assume they have a 50/50 chance. (they are ignorant of all the “hooks” their kid does not have.) Colleges want to legally defend themselves from lawsuits, everyone else is trying to make a dime off the opacity. Simply provide acceptance rates, test scores/GPAs and numbers for URMs, athletes, legacies, donors and “other”… The kids in my high pressure public realize that kids getting into Ivies from our school are URMs even though they aren’t the top of the class. They’ve figured it out but only after acceptances come out. The best non-IVY non URM kids are a mix of great privates and recruited athletes at those privates.
@CU123 it’s not that hard to get into an Ivy if you are willing to give your kid growth hormone. About 20% of everyone 7 foot or taller has played in the NBA. Get a 30 ACT and be a national level player at your sport gets you into every Ivy. People are ignoring it’s not about figuring out how to get in, it’s not wasting time and money through application fees, and test reports, and essays. I’m an example where my second kid applied to fewer than half the schools of first kid once I understood things better. It’s about increasing transparency to decrease application numbers and costs.
there was a nice article this weekend in the LA times about super poor hispanic kid who got into Harvard and was first generation for college. None of this stuff was mentioned in the article, it was just framed as look poor people you too can get into college. The guy had at least 3 hooks none of that was portrayed in the article. The title even says dreamed big work hard. How much was hispanic? How much was first generation? How much was pell grant eligible? How much was being forced to be separated from family? etc… most people are reading LA times not college confidential
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-college-ozzie-harvard-20190420-story.html
When you play a high stakes game, you need to put forth your best. Your chances aren’t about how many non-athlete white kids they have spots for, but the quality of your app. And however you get there, that’s what determines your chance.
It’s not the CDS. First, that’s not policed, not gospel. 2nd, holistic isn’t all about stats and some titles. It’s the full picture you present. Unfortunately, because too many kids see applying to college same as what brings rep in high school, they miss the rest of it. Even hs top performers.
Too many think hierarchically: what’s “better” or more hours, what’s a higher score, etc. But after your academics, this is a qualitative review.
So, if someone tells you the exact numbers of kids applying/admitted to various colleges or depts or breaks it down by gender or other absolutes…that says ZIP about the quality of your app.
Or whether you even get what matters, in the first place. And when you want a top college, of course you need to be the sort who at least tries to get it.
Your full app is your presentation, your vehicle. Don’t miss that.
^^ you sound like a sales agent for private high school counseling services. 
Part of the critique is one shouldn’t need a sherpa to apply to private colleges. No sherpa is going to create the ethnicity, family situation, or birth situation like the hispanic kid who got into Harvard in yesterday’s LA times. So that kind of goes against needing help creating the compelling application unless people start making up essays and life stories like they did at this school.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/tm-landry-college-prep-black-students.html
@roycroftmom isn’t it amazing how the Ivies seemed to always have <20% asian before the lawsuit (18/17% for harvard/yale most recent) yet Cal Tech has been ~ 43% Asian for years? Almost like the schools have “slots” or something for different categories of applicant that they keep secret…
Nope. But I have experience with submitted apps. I see what happens when kids and families assume. How they mismatch themselves, misunderstand a college, and make avoidable mistakes.
Anyone can choose to dig a little deeper. Certainly deeper than a bunch of chance threads or the CDS or random blogs. And top colleges expect this understanding.
No sherpa (except some on CC who share thoughts. ) The kid is applying, he should comprehend. If you want a tippy top, that is.
Your kid’s app isn’t about Landry. Nor is getting a proper picture, so you can max your high school years and then submit a great app, about random articles in the media or anecdotes.
I don’t think kids bright enough for an elite shound need a paid pro to walk them through their apps.
When people argue that “transparency” is a worthwhile virtue in and of itself, what they really mean is that they want to know the exact mechanism by which the system is rigged to their disadvantage so that they can re-rig it to their benefit.
I don’t think I mentioned stats colleges provide. I said information they provide. They all emphasize that it’s not just about stats yet most people, it seems, won’t accept that.
Or help them come up with a well-considered, realistic list? Or help them decide where to ED if there are a few schools the kid likes equally?
If a kid likes Wesleyan and Vassar, it might be worth knowing that Wes has a large football team to populate in ED, and therefore an equal number of women athletes to recruit bc of Title IX. That will take up a much larger %age of the overall ED seats.
No, @tdy123, what we mean is that we actually believe in transparency as a social good, regardless of whether we have a personal stake in the outcome of any decision. So we likely support it in government (For example, the Freedom of Information Act and Administrative Procedures Act) and in the private sector too. Absent extraordinary circumstances mandating secrecy,transparency should be the default position to instill confidence in the decision making process and legitimacy of the system. This is not a radical idea.
The problem is that the published data is an overall average and doesn’t take in consideration hooks etc. How many students who apply to a given school don’t even have the academic stats apart from the “je ne sais quoi” that the holistic model is looking for? How many apps don’t make it past the first hurdle of having the basic stats for consideration based on the student’s specific situation?
If an unhooked white male student from the NE applying to engineering to a NE OOS that wasn’t need blind and needed merit knew what the actual stats for admission for their particular situation were would they be less likely to assume that the they were a competitive candidate just based on the fact that their stats matched the schools overall admit stats rate? While it wouldn’t be practical to breakdown the stats to that minuscule a level, knowing what your chances actually were as an unhooked OOS applicant to an impacted major would allow students to make more informed decisions and there would be less disappointment if they were rejected. There would still be students who would go for the lottery bid but I wonder if having more nuanced information would decrease the number of apps that don’t even make it past the first screen and students would feel less pressure to apply to a large number of schools.
@gallentjill “For example consider two students (loosely based on real life examples). Student A starts a charity and collects money for a good cause. Student B starts an organization to pair hospitalized children with pen pals across the country. Not only does he get hundreds of kids involved, but he personally keeps on top of everything to make sure that the kids’ needs are being met. He develops relationships with families in need. His efforts not only help sick kids, but enable hundreds of other kids to help out by participating. His guidance counselor has a stack of letters from grateful families across the country to quote from in his LOR. His teachers all comment on the passion and drive of this kid and write about how any college will be lucky to have him. His other activities confirm not only his passion to help, but his commitment to actually make things happen. He spends his summers working at a camp for disabled kids.”
Then there is Student C, who also wants to do something to help a good cause. Using the problem solving skills she has developed by studying hard and challenging her biases on a daily basis, she realizes that there are oodles of fantastic charities that are already established to support hospitalized children; since they already have done the paperwork and developed the administrative protocols, 100% of her effort goes directly to helping the kids, not document filing, publicity, and reporting requirements. Student C will lose out to Students A and B in the admission process every time, because she made the correct decision for society, but the wrong one for impressing Admissions Officers.
I wouldn’t glorify this kind of “Leadership”. If parents think that is what gets kids into selective schools, the process just gets even more warped than it already is.