The Gatekeepers 15 Years Later

@Postmodern , thanks. That afterword is not in my version, so I appreciate it. I wonder what Nancy Meislahn meant by “expectations”? What are the expectations of students now, as opposed to in the year 2000? If anything, I would imagine students have lower expectations of getting into elite colleges. That is cryptic without context I guess.

^^Maybe they expect rock climbing walls and tempurpedic beds now?

I wondered the same thing @Lindagaf. At this point Spykid has no expectations, except to be fed.

Yes, @lindagaf, I found that sentence cryptic, which is why I chose that one to quote rather than paraphrase.

Glad it was useful! Let me know if there are any other questions.

@MotherOfDragons
^^Maybe they expect rock climbing walls and tempurpedic beds now?
lol
they do have tempurpedic mattresses at one of the school mentioned in this thread

Re: http://www.synocate.com/blog/when-safety-schools-arent-safety-schools

Look up the college’s common data set, section C7, or the admissions tab on its entry on http://www.collegedata.com , to see if “level of applicant’s interest” is considered in admission.

Note that even schools that do not use “level of applicant’s interest” are likely estimating yield of each admitted applicant, so that they do not admit too many or too few. They may, for example, assume that 20 “overqualified” admits (i.e. those who would see the school as a safety) will yield 1 matriculant, but 2 “barely made the cut” admits (i.e. those who would see the school as a reach) will yield 1 matriculant and make the calculations of how many to admit to fill the class accordingly.

Based on the parent questions during college presentations, I’m pretty sure some parents were more worried about the food than the academics. After 3 kids, I got to the point where I wanted to scream that all colleges had meal plans and Johnnie was not going to starve!

I had kids apply in '07, '09, and '15. The biggest differences I saw were in on-line apps and communications and the info being available in portals. That was nice, to see what info the college had, or had not, received for the various parts of the applications. In 2007 all 10 of S1’s schools accepted paper applications. By 2015, I’m not sure any of D’s did.

I can’t exactly remember Gatekeepers, but I obsessively read most of the books of that era for S1. I found most of them interesting and helpful in some regard, especially for kid #1 from a rural school that lacked much of a guidance department.

I suspect many have higher expectations, LG, what with all the extensive test prep and their efforts in ECs, most of which the kids think are “great.” What hasn’t changed among kid CC frequenters seems to be, they really don’t know much about their targets. Put another way, we keep getting new-ish kids who don’t.

Wish that recent link had backed up the algorithm comment. And note that that group is selling something: their supposed expertise.

When my S and I visited Williams for admitted students days one of the admissions officers mentioned something like that. She said they had had an analysis done and they knew pretty well who and how many accepted students would matriculate. I had always assumed that the numbers colleges accepted were just based on historical yields, but apparently it is far more complex than that.

Clearly they were very secure with the accuracy of the analysis because they were the only school that openly flaunted a “hey if you want to come, great, and if not that’s fine too” attitude.

@ucbalumnus Thanks. Document has good analysis and helps a lot in getting insights to UC admissions. I am wondering if there have been any changes over the past decade in how UC admission decisions are made. With increasing competition, I wonder if ECs and Essays play a greater role for all the candidates, or are they still secondary to GPA and SATs?

Planner, I don’t think Williams was referring to an algorithm used for individual applicants. I think they meant knowing the surplus to admit, to get yield to the right number of freshmen. And the complexity can depend on the status of various majors, institutional goals, etc. Plus, what’s up with their major competition (eg, what’s Harvad doing this year.)

For non-super-selective schools, differences in GPA and test scores can be associated with different yield rates. When UC had UC StatFinder publicly visible, it showed that yield rates were inversely correlated to admitted applicant GPA and test scores. The reasons should be obvious in that those with higher GPA and test scores have more attractive alternatives to choose from.

For super-selective schools, GPA and test scores may not be much of a differentiator between applicants, though it is possible that some other evaluation of the subjectively graded aspects of the application could be used in estimating yield chance for an individual applicant.

http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committees/aepe contains some additional information.

Note that UCs are not at the super-selective level, although UCB and UCLA can be fiercely competitive for certain majors. HS GPA appears to be a much bigger factor than SAT or ACT scores, based on some recent past threads where “test score heavy” applicants seemed to be most likely to get unpleasant surprises. See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1903428-faq-uc-historical-frosh-admit-rates-by-hs-gpa.html .

I just picked up the book again after reading it long, long ago. My Hamilton obsession took over this time, though, because all I could think of as I read the first couple chapters was, “I bet Figueroa helped recruit Lin-Manuel Miranda!”

Regarding the algorithm discussion – I do think a lot of colleges have gotten sophisticated with predicting yields. It is more than just saying we will admit x number of students because we know our yield is x%. As one poster pointed out, for some schools they calculate yield based on test scores, and I have heard colleges using geography as another tool in predicting yield. Demonstrated interest plays a factor too

^^ That is all correct. Gender and high school predict yield, too.

ucbalumnus makes a good point about predicted yield. A Harvard faculty member once told me that with regard to graduate admissions (where the students are selected by the department) the % of students they really wanted who actually came there for grad school was lower than the % of those they considered good or admissible. One year, they were worried that they had admitted more students than they had funding for. The faculty member suggested that they should move some of the students into the “really want them” category. Tongue in cheek of course.

@lookingforward

I’m not sure as it was a year and a half ago and my memory is murky, but I know they mentioned that an outside firm did the analysis so I had the impression it was pretty sophisticated.

That book was too depressing. It takes so much!