The REAL chances of admittance - Lessons from Lehigh

Obviously, someone who got rejected (or waitlisted, which is usually equivalent to rejection) did not “do everything right” from the college’s viewpoint. It could be that the applicant showed interest in ways that the college values less than other ways that the applicant did not do.

A private college that wants to be opaque about admissions may not want to broadcast what its method for determining level of applicant’s interest (or other subjective criteria) is, because then applicants will “game” it.

@calmom I would caution against putting too much faith in that article. No admissions officer is going to tell the world that they denied an applicant because they already had too many white boys from the NJ suburbs. But we know that happens. They state up front that they take race and geography into account. The general acceptance rate may be 25%, but the affluent, suburban, white, RD admit rate is potentially quite a bit lower. That is not a criticism. Its just a fact.

Of course a student’s performance in an interview or on an essay, as well as the strength of recommendations will have a great impact. We can always speculate about whether those elements were the deciding factor. But are you really saying that a person’s chances come down to how enthusiastic they seemed on a tour or how many times they clicked refresh on the web portal?

Its very human to want an explanation for negative events. We all want to believe that things are within our control. Its not always the case.

@ucbalumnus So what explains the kids in the IVY day thread who were accepted to 4/7 Ivies? Did they do something right for Princton and Columbia but wrong for Penn and Dartmouth?

Yes, although not everything that is “right” or “wrong” for a particular college is knowable to the applicant or others on the outside. Not everything that is “right” or “wrong” is under control of the applicant either, such as fixed characteristics like legacy, or where in the order the applicant’s application was read, or whether the reader was having a good or bad day at the time, etc…

Admission = enough right
Rejection or waitlist = not enough right

"No admissions officer is going to tell the world that they denied an applicant because they already had too many white boys from the NJ suburbs. But we know that happens. They state up front that they take race and geography into account. "

I think it is more realistic and safer to think of college admissions for a particular school in buckets. Some slots are going to athletes, some are going to legacies, some are going to students who represent diversity in its many forms - racial, socioeconomic, first generation, geographic, etc., some are going to kids who excel in the arts - music, dance, fine arts, or to fill the debate team, etc. etc. etc. When assessing one’s chances, how many, if any, of those buckets - those seats - do you fit in? If the bucket doesn’t apply to you, those seats aren’t going to you. So, if roughly 15% of seats are going to legacies, as an example, every year, factor that in to the equation along with all those other buckets. Those seats were never open to you anyway.

“I agree with you that the four year residential experience is not an unalienable right. How many families don’t live within commuting distance of their state schools or of state schools that will admit them?”

The minority of families, I daresay. Probably all of the top 50 metro areas have publics that aren’t tough to enter and which someone can commute to. Most of the metros below that.

Looking at your state, it seems that between the SUNY’s and CUNY’s, NYS is well covered:
http://www.suny.edu/careers/employment/map.cfm

@PurpleTitan
According to this article, millions of people are living in “education deserts” without reasonable choices nearby.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/02/02/3-million-americans-live-higher-education-deserts

In my situation, if my D wanted to study biology and commute to a state school, the closest decent programs are about a 1.5 hour commute. I think that would be difficult, but doable by a very motivated student. Many people are not nearly that lucky. By the way, the state flagship requires freshmen to live on campus.

I am not of the opinion that college should be free, only more affordable to a greater number of people.

@bclintonk. Yep. With college costs soaring (due to the arms race), the top privates, if they want to be a meet-full-need need-blind school (for American fall-start freshmen) need a student body that is about half full-pays. ED is a tool. Also if they admit 15-20% Internationals (and don’t promise to be need-blind for them) and 10-15% from the WL/transfers/spring admit and don’t promise to be need-blind for them.

@PurpleTitan If the school is need blind, how can they use ED as a tool to make sure that half are full pay?

Not being need-blind with Internationals, transfers, and WL’ed candidates.

To some extent, also admitting more through ED (where the applicant pool skews richer) and possibly selecting for characteristics that are associated with the rich (though, other than admitting scions of rich famous families, probably most of the ultra-selective Ivies/equivalents don’t need to do that.

Probably mostly those living in rural areas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas has a convenient list of metro areas for anyone who wants to look.

Seems like the most questionable area could be some of the Virginia parts of Washington, DC metro where GMU is the closest in-state public 4-year university, but may be too selective for some students (not the ones posting here about getting waitlisted at Lehigh because they are “overqualified”), and the next closest one is UMW which is not that much less selective. But, other than that, the large metros all look like they have a less selective in-state public in or near them.

Yes, some people live in educational deserts. Less than 10% of the population. A little over 1% don’t even have an online option.

Many who need FA do not want to commit to a college without seeing all FA and scholarship offers. They may have a clear first choice if cost is the same, but cost differences could change their rank order.

Consider the student who needs FA, runs his/her first choice college’s net price calculator and gets a barely-affordable result. S/he may not want to commit there by applying ED, when it is possible that perfectly acceptable second or third choice colleges may offer better FA and/or merit scholarships so that attending is more financially comfortable.

Also, high schools that have a well running college admissions express train that helps students have everything ready for ED applications are more likely to be populated by students from higher SES families.

In other words, there is self-selection of do-not-need-FA students into the ED applicant pool, while need-FA students are more likely to be in the RD applicant pool.

ucbalumnus, summed it up pretty well. Also, from my experience, were middle class, and had to carefully consider if it was worth it to travel on a plane to visit Kenyon. Since we live in New England we were able to visit all the other schools by car. If colleges like students who visit, and they like some geographical diversity, this may favor wealthy students as well. Who wants to Early Decision a school they did not visit?

Universities really have just one of two choices: They can turn a blind-eye to the past and treat everyone the same going forward, or take into account the perceived injustices of history and treat today’s incoming students unequally. If they choose the later, how and when will they decide when social justice has been served?

@BennyBop I don’t know if is entirely about addressing the injustices of the past, although that certainly plays a role. Think about how often students state a preference for a diverse student body. They want to meet people with different backgrounds, cultures, life stories, etc. I don’t know too many kids who say they would just love to go to off to college and spend four years with kids just like everyone they grew up with. Colleges have to work hard to get that kind of diversity. Personally, I think that is a benefit of the college experience. If it means my daughter’s chances are slightly reduced at the school that attracts everyone just like her, I can live with that. There are other places that will welcome her.

The universities’ motives are not necessarily anything of that sort. Often, they are based on their own business motivations. For example, a university may have a financial aid budget to meet, so that it has to decide how to use it and how to admit and enroll a class of students that it wants but does not run out of financial aid money. Of course the class of students it wants may be defined in terms of its own marketability – the university’s diversity goals may be selfish ones in that it wants to be seen as a place that welcomes everyone, so that its applicant pool does not shrink in the future due to some desirable applicants self-selecting away (e.g. if the university gets the image of being only for scions of plutocrats, it may see fewer desirable applicants from non-plutocrat families in the future).

“A kid with a 34+ (And commensurate gpa) should be auto admit at Lehigh. Period. End of story. Lehigh rejecting that kid is a joke.”

@jetsdad

Happens all the time. Completely understandable. Schools are in the business of enrolling students, not accepting students. Why should a school accept a way over-qualified kid who is just going to enroll elsewhere? The schools make these decisions thousands of times each cycle. They are pretty good at predicting who will/will not enroll.

Had the kid agreed to enroll (i.e. apply ED) of course he would have been auto-admitted.

There’s even a Wikipedia page on this phenomenon (below).

"Yield protection (commonly referred to as Tufts syndrome) is a admissions practice where a university or academic institution rejects or wait-lists highly qualified students on the grounds that such students are bound to be accepted by more prestigious universities or programs. However, alternate theories regard the yield protection as a myth propagated by college students who failed to gain admission to elite universities.

Yield rate refers to the proportion of students who matriculate (i.e. accept an admissions offer and attend the college) after acceptance to a college."

@doschicos Even Ivies have spiky athletes.

“Think about how often students state a preference for a diverse student body. They want to meet people with different backgrounds, cultures, life stories, etc. I don’t know too many kids who say they would just love to go to off to college and spend four years with kids just like everyone they grew up with.”

I don’t think that’s actually true, diversity is not a top reason why kids choose the college they do. It doesn’t even crack the top-10 when it comes to reasons for selecting a college. In fact a lot of kids would like to meet the kids they grew up with. Here are the top reasons, according to actual surveys done, I’ve summarized a couple of them:

  • academic reputation
  • cost of attendance
  • distance from home
  • improved employment/grad school opportunities
  • parent's opinions
  • scholarships/grants/FA
  • campus visit
  • college size
  • social activities
  • rankings

In fact colleges don’t want to admit too much of one race or ethnicity, because then other races would not feel comfortable there. And the life story thing is a red herring, there’s not whole of different life stories between a wealthy white, wealthy black, wealthy Hispanic and a wealthy Asian, which is really how the top schools are made up.

Well, that’s the motivation from the college’s point of view – the desired “diversity” from a college’s point of view may be whatever mix (not just race/ethnicity, but also SES and other demographic factors) that makes the maximal number of desirable applicants comfortable enough so that they do not self-select away from the college.