I’ll list them individually and an estimate of the total. Note that the total sum is far less than the sum of the individual components because there is a lot of overlap. For example, ~30% of admitted URM are also SES disadvantaged, so the total portion of the class who is either URM or SES disadvantaged is substantially less than 23.5% + 16.5%. The total is not precise because the lawsuit treats SCEA as hook, so it is also excluded. I can say with more certainty that ~60% of admits were in one of these hook+international categories or had the SCEA application “hook”. I’m guessing that 15% of admits only had the SCEA “hook” and of the others, bringing the total down to 45% of admits in the listed categories.
URM – 23.5% of Admits
SES Disadvantaged* – 16.5% of Admits
Legacy – 13.9% of Admits
Recruited Athlete – 10.7% of Admits
Dean/Director Special Interest List+ – 9.3% of Admits
International – 8.9% of Admits
Staff Related – 0.8% of Admits
Faculty Related – 0.5% of Admits
Z List& -- 0.2% of Admits
Total – Approximately 45% of Admits
*First Gen excluded since first gen was not given admission boost unless also SES disadvantaged flagged
+Includes developmental admits
&Z-List are “deferred admits” and are not treated as admits in typical admission stats
My post said " Div III, athletics admission boosts works very differently from Ivies.’ Amherst is Div III, which works very differently from Ivies, which are not Div III.
I’m sure the only reason my son got into Amherst was that the track coach was from Maine and liked DS. They really hit it off when we visited the campus. DS didn’t end up going there, but he was honored to get accepted!
@data10 thanks. This is awesome info. You’re definately in my CC hall of fame.
So it’s approximately half.
But excluding ses and first gen hooks that are important at other schools. Perhaps Harvard gets this through the esssys and assigns a higher personal rating.
Also Z list accounts for 15 or 20 spots too I’ve been told.
So that means there are approx 490 spots less z list at Harvard per gender for unhooked Asian and Caucasian.
If we then add in the Asian group it’s close to the 70 percent spoken for prior to unhooked Caucasian. Interesting.
@Data10 one more request and I promise to leave you alone.
If Harvard has 40k applications. How many of these would be in the non hooked Asian and Caucasian category fighting for the 490 spots. Because i think the athletes development etc don’t take up that many applications. And this figure is the real admit rate for the vast majority of students.
I included “SES disadvantaged” in my earlier post. The SES disadvantaged flag is given to families that readers believe are from a “very modest economic background.” It seems to correlate with less than ~$80k/year income. Both the Plantiff analysis and the Harvard internal OIR analysis found that getting the SES disadvantaged flag was a boost, with a greater chance of admission than other applicants who received comparable category ratings. However, the Plantiff analysis did not find a significant boost for first gen alone without getting the SES disadvantaged flag, nor did first gen appear to influence the personal rating. Specific odds ratios are below. 1.0x means the same chance with and without first gen, for comparably rated and comparably hooked applicants. It’s possible that first gen preference has changed since the lawsuit analysis period.
First Gen Odds Ratio
Personal Rating – 1.01x (not significant)
Overall Rating – 1.01x (not significant)
Admission Decision – 1.00x (not significant)
SES Disadvantaged Odds Ratio
Personal Rating – 1.8x (significant)
Overall Rating – 2.0x (significant)
Admission Decision – 4.6x (highly significant)
This type of stat is easy to generate with IPEDS (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ ). . In 2017-18, there were 91 colleges with <= 27% admit rate. However, many of those colleges were small and non-traditional. For example, Curtis Institute of Music had a 3% admit rate and admitted 12 first time freshmen. If I limit it to traditional academic (not conservatory, not military, not nursing, not focused on religious training,…) colleges that either reported an ACT score or are well regarded test-optional LACs, then I get 60 colleges with <= 26% admit rate and 78 colleges with <= 30% admit rate.
At those 60 colleges, there were 79k first time freshman. 20k of them attended publics, 15k attended Ivies, 17k attended non-Ivy top ~20 USNWR type private colleges, and 11k attended LACs. There were also several colleges that are do not top rankings or test scores lists. For example, College of the Ozarks had a 13% admit rate and a 25th percentile ACT of 21. Ozarks charges no tuition and instead has a student work type program.
Some folks need to venture into the heartland and get to know a person or two. They would be surprised how many of them, even the really smart ones–the future neurosurgeons, astronauts, & novelists–could not care less about the Ivy League; much less Ivy+, Quasi-Ivy, Near-Ivy, Wannabe-Ivy, or Pret’ Near Ivy.
@privatebanker I agree with you , at most 50% of the seats are unhooked but I would bet lower, Being international isn’t what we would consider a hook, but year after year the top Ivies have ~10% international which removes seats for US applicants and functions as a hook. Pell grant is a hook, being from wyoming etc. I would honestly say only about 25% of these schools’ seats are primarily based on academic merit. (doesn’t mean others aren’t strong students just that’s not WHY they got in primarily). Time and time again I see examples of people not realizing hooks.
I beleive alll of the contributors on this thread know the subtle diffencd between some categories and what we call hooks. Colleges don’t call them that either.
This is an odds thread to me. And isn’t or wasn’t for me about hooks. More about real world expectations for students outside of some known categories including institutional focus or preference. Not geographic diversity etc.
So if the real world odds are really 30000 applications chasing 980 seats vs 40k applications total for 1900 seats, it is illuminating.
Both are incredibly long odds but for the majority of students that fall into the broader group and smaller pool, it’s even more daunting.
This type info can perhaps level set expectations and application strategy for future years.
@privatebanker Thanks for that superb post. I think this is a thread about expectations and future application strategy, and you said it well.
Do you have a source for the data that 3600 kids got a 1600? As recently as a few years ago it was 400-500 (and another 1500 scored 36 on the ACT) so if true, it’s means that test score inflation has arrived big time.
@OhioMom2 and others, the data for athletes at NESCAC’s is eye opening. I was aware of the 70 or so recruited athletes, but not the other 70 who need to fit the academic profile but then get preference. I think the Ivy’s are more like 10% total because of their bigger student bodies.
30% of the class gets an athletic tip of some kind, Amherst has one of the highest percentages of URM’s among the most selective schools, and I would guess that it gets many fewer “Hail Mary” applications than HYPSM, which makes it’s 10.8% admissions rate is misleadingly low.
Does that mean that Amherst may be the single toughest admit for the unhooked student?
One more consideration for the math in this odds thread…
With 2.2 million taking the SAT, the top 1% should be 22,000. But with the advent of Superscoring, the estimates I’ve seen say as many as 2% or even 3% of the test takers now submit a top 1% score (1% as measured by the College Board). I know that sounds weird (and it is), but as my father-in-law would say, 'tis a “true fact”. Colleges don’t give much more weight to a 1560 than a 1500, so even moving the 1% bar up to include Superscores doesn’t do much to differentiate anybody. I believe that means that since advent of Superscoring, many, many more kids have the scores to enter the “lottery” at the most selective colleges. Am I missing something here? It sort of fits with my anecdotal experience this year - at the very top end, test scores don’t mean that much any more.
Amherst Div III athletic tip is very different from Ivy League (or other Div 1/1A) recruited athletes. Percent of admitted students who receive athletic tip is also substantially lower than percent of athletes in matriculating class at Amherst due to lower yield than HYPSM… . Using some specific numbers, it appears that 2-3x as large a portion of the admitted class are athletes at Harvard than at Amherst.
Admits who are Endorsed by Coaches
Amherst – ~5% of Admits, ~14% of Entering Class if all attend (67 “athletic factor”)
Harvard – ~11% of Admits, ~13% of Entering Class if all attend(1 Athletic Rating)
Other Admits who Receive Athletic “Tip” Beyond Treating Athletics as Usual ECs
Amherst – ~6% of Admits, (60-90 “coded”)
Harvard – ~16% of Admits (2 Athletic Rating)
The “single toughest admit for the unhooked student” depends on the student. For example Caltech, Stanford, Amherst, Cornell Hotel, Curtis Music, and USAFA are all highly selective colleges that emphasize different admission criteria. If you look at stats of admitted students, then one might say Caltech is toughest. If you look at admit rate of unhooked kids without considering applicant pool, then one might say Stanford and Curtis are toughest. However, I expect few of the Stanford and Caltech admits would be accepted to Cornell Hotel, Curtis Music, or USAFA had they applied since they place a stronger emphasis on non-academic criteria. A particular unhooked student might have a great shot at one of them, and little chance at the rest. While a different student might have a great shot at a different one and little chance at the rest.
@Data10 Thanks for bringing the numbers once again. Did I read it right, that 27% of Harvard admits got a boost from athletics beyond treating them as the usual EC’s? Wow
And thanks for pointing out that I misread OhioMom2’s data - those were admit numbers, not matriculations.
@rockysoil@privatebanker@Data10 the odds of a perfect test go up since I know for a fact that U. Chicago and MIT use true superscoring. At recruited athlete visit U chicago ad officer said when I was specific it is true superscoring - the committee only sees the top score for each section. I asked about ACT but assume same for SAT - meaning even more kids than you think have the “top” score . (this is also the most fair since these schools are probably using superscores to USNWR. Not sure how it works at Ivies, but at least for ones (if any) that use superscoring should ethically be the same to match treatment of students with USNWR reporting standards
@Data10@RockySoil so Amherst acknowledges using 67 athletic factors; athletes who would never get in without that hook. (spread across all sports teams; 14 for football). example I know is for example 27 ACT dual sport athlete. however that is probably as low as it goes for white/asian athlete and the teams outside of football would only get 2 AFs per year. Williams W. soccer roster I was told ranged from 29-36 ACT. Kids who are above the average for the school and recruited athletes do not count against recruiting class numbers so don’t even need strong “tips”. e.g. a 34 or higher ACT at amherst and williams would be unlimited. However, not many kids exist with those grades are at that level that are top 1% players (all-state, all-metro,). I have heard roughly 37% of Amherst is recruited athlete and 40% at williams (even though bigger school). However, Ivy league likely letter slots (7 on average for women’s soccer per year) do not have a range for the whole team but just a floor, so the average ivy team as a whole will be much less representative of the school based on test scores as a NESCAC team. e.g. the average ACT score for Ivy teams is likely 30 ACT whereas will probably be a 32-33 for top NESCAC. Also why generally Ivy athletes are better than NESCAC, Ivy has bigger player pool to recruit from.
Yes, in the lawsuit sample 26.6% of admits received a 1-2 athletic rating. A 1 rating is considered a recruited athlete. A 2 rating is not a recruited athlete, but still gets a significant athletic tip. Among White students, the rate increases to 36.3% of admitted students received a 1-2 athletic rating.
One contributing factor is that Harvard usually sponsors ~42 varsity athletic teams, which is probably more than any other selective college in the United States. To be able to field so many Div 1/1A teams without athletic scholarships or similar strong motivator to play all 4 years, they need to admit a lot of potential athletes.
The Ivy League conference athletic admission rules are primarily based on AI academic index, which includes the teams meeting a certain average AI across all team members. In the lawsuit sample, 1/7 of recruited athletes received a low 4 academic rating. Recruited athletes with this poor an academic rating had a 70% admit rate; while non-athletes with the same low academic rating had a 0.07% admit rate – 1000x lower. As such. being a recruited athlete was by far the most powerful analyzed hook and was a completely different order of magnitude than the tip from getting a 2 athletic rating.
@anon145 “the odds of a perfect test go up since I know for a fact that U. Chicago and MIT use true superscoring. At recruited athlete visit U chicago ad officer said when I was specific it is true superscoring - the committee only sees the top score for each section. I asked about ACT but assume same for SAT - meaning even more kids than you think have the “top” score . (this is also the most fair since these schools are probably using superscores to USNWR.”
I’m not sure the single sitting 1600/36 kids would agree about the fairness aspect
