<p>A completely random question popped into my mind today, and I just wanted to ask the CC community to see what all of your opinions on this are, if you have any: About what percentage of the seniors applying for highly selective (top 20) schools are ACTUALLY qualified to get in? This takes everything into account: hooks, ECs, GPA, test scores, etc., anything that could possibly make them a competitive applicant in comparison to everyone else.</p>
<p>The thing is, you always see the typical "several highly qualified applicants are rejected from highly selective colleges" disclaimer when people ask for their chances and such, but out of the applicant pool, what % do qualified applicants actually make up? How much of a % do you guys think is made up of just rather average students who apply just for the heck of it because it's their dream school even if they're obvious reaches, people that are likely to just end up going to their state flagship or a much less selective college anyway? I say this objectively in regards to the extreme selectivity of top colleges, and I don't mean to discredit or look down upon these students by any means.</p>
<p>Of course, there's really no easy way to gauge the percentages at all, and any answers are likely to be complete guesses; I'm just asking for the sake of asking to see if anyone else really has any opinion on this (while putting off doing my homework for just a little bit longer at 3 in the morning. Shh).</p>
<p>At all of the Ivy information sessions I’ve been to, they usually said that they felt that about 75-80% of the applicant pool could “do the work.” I interpreted this as academically qualified (course rigor, GPA, test scores), I’m not sure how many of the remaining 80% are applying with 0 ECs or some other such red flag though. </p>
<p>I have heard that before… But I still am not sure that percentage of kids who can ‘do the work’ = percentage of kids who have an actual chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>Lazy kids with 3.5 GPAs but 2370 SATs could ‘do the work’.
Kids with 4.0 GPAs but 1900 SATs (perhaps test anxiety) probably could ‘do the work’.
Kids with very good SATs and GPAs but zero EC involvement could ‘do the work’.</p>
<p>etc. etc.</p>
<p>But, all of the listed archetypes above probably have low chances of admission at highly selective schools, for various reasons.
I too have considered @Constantius’s question, and I also don’t have an answer. </p>
<p>I suspect, however, that the percentage of kids who have a legitimate chance of acceptance is still significant enough to make chances of admission low.</p>
<p>EDIT: I just saw your final sentence… You basically said everything that I just posted… Wow, I feel a little redundant </p>
<p>I’d say about 30-50% has a chance based on my school’s naviance. But that should be no comfort to you, because 1/2 to 2/3 of the people who get in are near locks to get in (D1 athletes, URM’s, girls ( at like MIT or caltech), Intel finalists, RSI, international Olympiads, people with tons of great leaderships etc.), so for the regular qualified applicant it’s still as much of a crapshoot as it is before.</p>
<p>A large part of the applicant pool at places like HYPSM in recent years has been from internationals, which are judged completely separately from domestic applicants. So the domestic admit rate is higher than it appears. That said, there have to be a substantial number of domestic applicants who send it in just to say they did it or to see if they win the lottery. And the unfinished part of the statement about “doing the work” is “and we have no intention of letting in people who can merely do the work.” The reason they can let in athletes, URMs, legacies, developmentals, etc with less than stellar stats is they can all “do the work”. Anyone with a 25 ACT or above can probably find something they can major in at Harvard and get a degree. The number of unhooked applicants admitted below 31 has got to be very, very low, so you can count most of those as close to a zero percent chance.</p>
<p>When you add it all up, I think I’ve calculated that your average domestic highly qualified applicant (3.8+, ACT 32+) has about a 15-20% chance of getting accepted based on our schools Naviance data. Not sure how many of those there are out of the total domestic pool, but probably at least half have those stats, probably more like two-thirds.</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t have that combination, so I can’t estimate based on our data. But I would imagine that except in cases where the HS has a known grade-deflation environment, that combination would be less than optimal, but it would still be possible to gain admission if the ECs were outstanding. For example, I don’t think an Intel finalist or an IMO gold medal winner who just didn’t do English with as much zeal as math and science would necessarily lose out.</p>
<p>By ‘do the work’, do you mean they might have chance(that could range from someone with 3.6 and 2050 to someone with perfect scores) , or that their stats fall within the median?</p>
<p>Anyone can do the work because it depends on the major. There are fluff majors ou there. I think realistically about 30-50% of applicants pass through the first pass where they actually seriously pay attention to your essays.</p>
<p>21.6% are near-100% acceptance rate (recruited)
16.7% are 40-60% acceptance rate (hooked but not recruited directly)
18.9% are 25-50% acceptance rate (academic stars in their specific demo)
42.7% are 0-3% acceptance rate (mostly over-represented suburban high achievers with little idea how strong the competition is).</p>
<p>The 6-16% admit rates for these schools are not a real representation of any individual’s chances. 99.9% of apps can be squeezed into one of the above categories (you know it’s true because I went out an extra decimal point).</p>
<p>I’ve had the same thought. Schools like Princeton could very well say unless you’re in some way hooked, then the minimum application requirements are 750+ on each section of the SAT and an unweighted 3.9 or higher. They would be doing a favor to the 50 or 60% of the applicant pool that lacks these qualifications and has virtually no chance of being admitted. But that would never happen.</p>
<p>I would say less than 50%. People tend to over reach when they apply for that one chance. In reality, if you are not 1,2, or 3 in your class and do not have 750+ on every section of every test, your chance of going to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford are extremely slim. When high schools have ten people applying to Harvard, it is an absolute joke. If you are not the best in your little one high school, how could you possibly consider going ivy.</p>
<p>Hmm, seems I have completely botched my stats by mixing ‘percentage of applicants’ with ‘percentage of accepted class’. Obviously 21.6% of applicants are not recruited (recruits make up 21.6% of class). I though there were too few in the 0-3% group. That number is more like 64.3%.</p>
<p>“this way” refers to automatically accepted or denied by the regional admissions officer without having to go through committee review. So, at duke only about 45% of the applicant pool goes to committee. Top 5% are probably hooked/superstar applicants and bottom are the less compelling ones. Though, he does say that almost all who apply can do the work. Generally people say ~75-80% are academically qualified, so that leaves ~20% more to be automatically denied. Those 20 percent are most likely academically qualified, not exceedingly though, who lack involvement and have some alarming parts of their application. “relatively easy to identify”. The top 50% who are automatically accepted/ go to committee are then probably the actual competitive all around qualified students.</p>
<p>@YZamyatin “0-3% acceptance rate (mostly over-represented suburban high achievers with little idea how strong the competition is)” Well, sounds about right for me. Suburban high achiever? Little idea how strong the competition is? Check and check. Just kidding… maybe. Could you clarify what you think makes an “academic star” such and what makes someone just another “suburban high achiever”, as you put it?</p>
<p>@hagzzz Very informative article. It really shed light on a lot of the admissions process which I never knew about before.</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone for your input! I was expecting a lot more wishy-washy speculation, but it seems that most people agree that the percentage of qualified applicants remains rather high. I had never thought of the ability to “do work” before in contrast with actual qualification, but that certainly gives me a new perspective on things. Plenty of people can “do the work”, but not nearly as many are “qualified” to do so. Interesting.</p>
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