<p>re #1178 - Yes and at CMU the acceptance rates are quite different from school to school, but at some of those schools there are lots of different majors - I don’t think Mellon Science cares if you are majoring in physics or chemistry. I do think universities where you have to choose among schools within the school you can game the process with the caveat that you may not be able to transfer to another school at the university. Industrial reslations at Cornell anyone? Georgetown has a similar set up as well.</p>
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<p>This corroborated with my post #731.</p>
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<p>I believe this is true in at least half the Ivies.</p>
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<p>I don’t know of any. That’s why I asked the question.</p>
<p>I found an interesting piece of data from “College Admissions Trade Secrets” by Andrew Allen, who is an independent college counselor. On page 197, “Admission rates to top colleges are, on average, as follows: celebrities 95%, top recruited athletes 90%, regular recruited athletes 70%, minorities 50%, legacy 44%, early decision 40%, major contributors 35%, regular decision 8%. These admissions rates would typically combine for an overall reported admission rate of 20 to 25%.” </p>
<p>I don’t know where Andrew got his data from, but if it holds true, then we need to further discount the 8% because of the lower than mid-range GPA’s of our kids. We can approximate the “regular decision” admit rate of any Ivies and their peers by multiplying the published overall admit rate by 8/25. </p>
<p>The above was also quoted in another CC Forum thread 3 years ago by oceanview in “Official Stanford 2010 RD Decisions Thread”. The book was published in 2001, so it may be a bit dated.</p>
<p>[College Admissions Trade Secrets]( <a href=“College Admissions Trade Secrets: A Top Private College Counselor Reveals ... - Andrew Allen - Google Books”>College Admissions Trade Secrets: A Top Private College Counselor Reveals ... - Andrew Allen - Google Books)</p>
<p>^^^^ I think this is what hmom5 has been saying for a long time, but over on “My Chances” nobody seems to believe her.</p>
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<p>This is soooooo annoying. How dare they make comparisons to other kids that have nothing in common except they happened to attend the same hs, which is basically just random? How can their performance reflect in any way upon my kid?</p>
<p>flatland, thanks for that info. Makes sense all in all to me.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I don’t think the poster meant that quite the way it sounded. I believe what’s being suggested is that, if all previous students with the same GPA from the same school were successful, then that GPA at that school is consider a valid predictor of success. I see it more as a way of estimating the quality of the school rather than the individual student. I don’t think it means that the failure of previous students will be held against new applicants.</p>
<p>I’m being generous with my assumptions because I can’t imagine an admissions person would actually admit that they judge a student on anything other than the student’s own record.</p>
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<p>They might not admit it, but if a college admissions office sees that the top-ranked grads from a given HS have not performed well at that college, would it really be all that unreasonable for them to question the level of preparation that the HS provides?</p>
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<p>They are dealing with tens of thousands of applications from kids who look pretty similar on paper. The context of the school is key.</p>
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<p>I think it is unreasonable. If someone from my kid’s HS applies to College X, does poorly there, and now four years later my kid is applying … this may be a shock, but he is not that kid. They have nothing in common other than their families chose to live in the same neighborhood. Maybe my kid is smarter, a harder worker, or more naturally gifted. Maybe that kid had personal, family or emotional problems that prevented him from reaching his full potential or interfered with his studies substantially. Maybe that kid fell in with the wrong crowd. It is fundamentally goofy to link them together in any substantive way.</p>
<p>One case does not make a trend. If they see a trend of underperformance of top kids from the same hs, then I don’t blame them for being more cautious with kids from the same hs. If there is such a trend, then as Do2 said, the adcoms will “question the level of preparation that the HS provides.”</p>
<p>It is even worse than that, if a kid breaks an ED contract with a college, that college may punish the high school by not admitting students from that school for a while. There has been many examples of when GCs or students behave badly, the school gets on college’s black list and no one is admitted for years.</p>
<p>Note that I didn’t say adcoms don’t make admissions decisions based on things other than the applicant’s own record, only that I wouldn’t expect them to admit it.</p>
<p>And I also think it’s reasonable to make certain assumptions about an applicant based on the performance of other kids with similar records from the same high school, but only if there are enough data points to indicate a clear trend.</p>
<p>What’s the definition of “enough data points”, IYO?</p>
<p>I’d say at least six or more cases over three or more years, although I can imagine adcoms forming an opinion with fewer data points. It’s hard to see how all six cases would turn out poorly, particularly if their SAT scores are high relative to their peers in the same college. Some still claim SAT scores correlate very well with first year college performance.</p>
<p>Let me get this straight, the “elites” will accept 40% of their class with nothing more than a “run into our loving arms you ED-applying-athletic-legacy-URM-development cases you”, but the rest of us schlubs not only need to worry about our own kids but we also better hope little Tommy Twotimer didn’t screw HYPMS on an ED app three years ago?</p>
<p>Sorry, I’m not buying it. That implies a database of epic proportions. It implies a level of matriculated candidates from the high schools in question that flies in the face of the college’s own selectivity numbers. It implies a stability in admissions staff that from my experience doesn’t exist. Finally, it implies a level of memory and vindictiveness that would be impossible to apply annually to over 20,000 applications. </p>
<p>Yes, I believe that adcoms will look at the quality of an applicant’s high school as part of an overall assessment of their record. A student from Phillips Andover or New Trier High School is going to have an edge over one from Hillbilly High in West Virginia. But worrying about a present day admissions decision because of how a former classmate performed at that particular university is just asking for an ulcer.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m naive, but I have a hard time accepting the conspiracy theory aspect of the premise. The sheer volume of applications makes it impossible to cross-check for real or imagined slights of past applicants and the idea that all these adcoms could keep this secret flies in the face of human nature. If it is true then there is zero chance for an “Under 3.6 (GPA) and Applying Top 20” candidate. So much for my blind chickens.</p>
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<p>vinceh - how did you come to this conclusion from the above discussion?</p>
<p>Thanks, vinceh. It also raises a question … How much (if at all) do colleges then look at the kids who went there and correlate their performance over their 4 years with the factors that they exhibited upon entering? That is, do they really bother to try to figure out that students with entering SAT’s above 2300 / from Virginia / are left-handed / went to public schools of more than 2,000 students / were oboe players in high school do better at the school (GPA-wise) than students with entering SAT’s 2100-2300 / from New Hampshire / who were legacies / went to private schools? Not that such data mining isn’t feasible, but what would be the dependent variable … college GPA?</p>
<p>I don’t think they need a huge database for cross checking. All they have to do is to look at low performers to see where they graduated from. If it’s a one off, no big deal, but if a particular high school’s graduates consistently pop up, it is a red flag. If a GC has p*ssed off an adcom, they could easily not admit any student from that school. A few years back, a top NYC private school couldn’t get their students into a particular HYP. The headmaster made a special trip to visit the school before the board decide to fire her/him. The following year a handful of kids were admitted.</p>