The REAL chances of admittance - Lessons from Lehigh

@data10 Your points are well taken. Anecdotally, the high stats kids who are being wait listed and rejected at Lehigh seem to have both high GPAs and Test scores. Many of them did interview as well. I think its a mistake to assume that there was some deficiency within their control that could have gained them admimssion. While this might be true for some, I bet its not for many. If all the high stats kids learned the lesson and made sure to show lots of love to the college, they would still have to be rejected in huge numbers. There just aren’t enough spots. I think kids need to know this going in. They can do everything right and still have a high likelihood of rejection.

Not seeing it. I don’t see how Lehigh is unusual at all.

No school goes solely on test scores. They all use test scores and grades in combination.

Lehigh (USNWR # 46) has an SAT range of 1230-1420. 64% of students in top 10% of HS class. Selectivity rank (grades, test scores, admit rate) is #43.

Compare RPI. USNWR #42. SAT range 1280-1480. 66% top 10%. Selectivity rank #39. Looks pretty similar to me.

Main difference is the overall admit rate – RPI is 44% and Lehigh is 26%. Even though RPI is rated as being more selective. Explanation? ED.

Lehigh fills 53% of seats via ED. RPI only fills 33% of seats via ED. With fewer seats locked up via ED, RPI has to put out a lot more RD offers to fill the class. Which drives down RPI’s yield and drives up RPI’s admit rate.

Of course Lehigh values DI. That’s why they so heavily reward ED applicants with a 60% (!!) admit rate. ED is the ultimate demonstration of interest.

I thought that was the point of the post, that Lehigh isn’t that different and to show that plenty of students are denied despite high grades and scores. But then maybe I’ve miss the point of this, I can be a little thick.

I am making only an educated guess.

But I think Lehigh has changed how they admit students in the past decade which could skew the Naviance scattergrams and the old way that prospective students looked at Lehigh admission.

My D was admitted to Lehigh 10 years ago! I can’t believe that it’s been that long! She is a graduate of their college of engineering. We visited Lehigh for the first time, spring break of 2007. The admission office loved numbers and stats, they had just sent out decisions the week before we visited. Lehigh was very transparent that they wanted their students to really want to go to Lehigh and that they were looking for women in engineering and URM’s. They wanted geographical diversity. It was the first school we visited and it remained D’s first choice always.

But we didn’t apply ED, we really couldn’t. 10 years ago there was no net price calculator. No way of knowing if Lehigh’s FA offer would be affordable. I remember being here on CC and everyone advised us not to apply anywhere ED. And in the end Lehigh met our need perfectly, very closely to our EFC on the FASFA. Another Patriot League school was $10,000 a year more!

But with the advent of the net price calculator, Lehigh can be open to those who need FA to attend. If the NPC is wrong and the price is too much, you can opt out. But for the majority of people applying with an uncomplicated financial situation (which we had), the guesswork is taken out. Lehigh can attract those women and URM’s to apply who wouldn’t before. And so they rely on ED much more heavily than they did before.

But this changes the admit rate drastically in RD and changes how Lehigh can attract the kids that they want. D who applied RD 10 years ago, would definitely apply ED now. I remember my H saying, can’t she try for ED, we can opt out if the FA doesn’t work. But I held out because FA offers could and were all over the place 10 years ago.

28% of seats went via ED in 2001. 53% of seats in 2017.

That pretty much explains it.

Actually, the point of my original post was just to warn high stats kids and their families not to assume that their chances were meaningfully better then the reported acceptance rates for any selective school. If Naviance reports an admit rate of 30%, A kid with stats above the 75% range for that school should assume they have at least a 70% chance of being rejected. As many others have pointed out, when you consider how many schools enroll a large portion of the class through ED, the chances during RD are significantly worse the the reported number. If you apply to several of these schools and include a couple of high reaches and nothing more, you have a very real chance of being wait listed or rejected everywhere.

ED is not an option for some of us, so the take away is to make very certain there are some real, affordable safeties.

It would be too broad a brush to make that assumption. Lehigh’s admission practices are not the same as that of all other selective colleges.

However, evaluation of the specific college’s admission practices, particularly when it has different admission buckets (ED versus RD, division or major, in-state or out-of-state for state schools) or heavier consideration of subjective aspects (especially level of interest), is often necessary when trying to make a reach/match/safety estimate. Also, overreliance on test scores when a college considers many other aspects to be more important can also mislead.

“However, evaluation of the specific college’s admission practices, particularly when it has different admission buckets (ED versus RD, division or major, in-state or out-of-state for state schools)”

This!!! You need to account for the fact that the heavy ED schools are, in effect, running two completely separate admissions programs.

In Lehigh’s case, they have the 60% admit plan and the 20% admit plan. Two different ballgames that need to be considered separately. The worst thing to do is to use blended stats (26% admit rate) that can mislead you in either direction. For the same 32 ACT kid, Lehigh is a safety lock if he applies ED. But a big stretch if he applies RD. Same stats, two different situations.

ED has gone so far that you need to approach private school admissions the way people approach admissions to a public Ivy like UVA or UNC. Most CC-ers know and plan on the basis that IS admissions are from Venus and OOS admissions are from Mars.

^ Eh, you still find plenty of kids show up on CC each year shocked that they didn’t get in to UVa/UMich.

Yup. And those shocked OOS applicants point out how their stats are so far above the reported averages. Which is true.

Unfortunately, the reported/blended stats are not applicable to the OOS game they are playing…

This is a great resource I found comparing admission statistics for ED and RD at hundreds of colleges. The results in some cases are really startling. http://www.personalcollegeadmissions.com/early-decision-2017

UT Austin is one of the more obvious examples; it has an overall admission rate of around 40%, but some students will see a 100% admission rate while others will see a much lower than 40% admission rate.

UT Austin also has another aspect that is opaque in that admission to the school does not necessarily mean admission to the desired major. So even an applicant in the 100% admission rate bucket cannot count on getting into (for example) the CS major like s/he can count on getting into the school.

Deb922, I went to Lehigh about 3 decades ago, and they met every bit of need my family had, which was ALL of it. They counted up the federal loan and work/study, a certain amount they thought I could earn over the summer, and then took the remaining balance and awarded it as a grant. I think to this day they are still very good on meeting financial need.

I mentioned this on another thread, but I think the ED rates vs RD rates can be very misleading for an unhooked applicant. Yes, some schools ED does help a lot, but others not so much because they accept most of their hooked applicants in the ED round. Does anyone have any statistics on this? I think it would be very helpful.

I agree, @melvin123. Many ED applicants who are recruited athletes pretty much have a 100% admit rate which will through off the overall ED admit rate greatly especially at small schools. Legacies also face much better odds ED. The admit rate for an unhooked applicant is much lower than the stated ED acceptance rate.

Of course, at a small school with a full set of sports teams, the athletes consume a far larger percentage of the class than those at a large school with a similar set of sports teams.

Any high stats student from the northeast must show an enormous amount of interest in order to get accepted. If they don’t… they won’t get in. This is what we were told at a local event. We were also told that they wanted to seriously increase geographic diversity… if you live far you are not expected to visit ( you must show interest in other ways). My D ( she was high stats) received significant merit to Lehigh, along with entry into the Scholars Program.

We visited Lehigh 3 times. D also attended 2 local events where she was told she would receive “extra brownie points” for attending. At this event they showed her the list that they have that keeps track of visits, interactions etc. D made sure to write essays showing that she knows the school- she wrote about specific classes, traditions, and all of the hills etc. She also communicated with her local admissions counselor about new awards received, and she was on a first name basis with him by the spring of senior year.

At the local events, Lehigh put us into groups and gave us applications to read. We had to decide whether to admit, deny, waitlist etc. It turned out that the legacy was WL… they did not think his application showed enough interest. They also denied a very high stats kid for the same reason. It was very interesting to see exactly how they read the applications and how much emphasis they place on essays. They also rejected one student because of the essay… they did not believe he wrote it ( this is what we were told anyway).

D attends another school. It was a very tough decision to give up Lehigh… it was the first school we visited and she loved it…but ultimately… once we really looked again and again… she was not convinced that it was a better fit than her current school.

@twogirls can you give a little information about these local events and where to find them? Do many colleges offer these?

Thanks!

They were on the website… Lehigh in Your Area

and…?

And the Catholic church is the biggest landowner in New York City.

What’s your point?