<p>After reading The Gatekeepers, it seems that whether or not you get off the waitlist can depend on how hard an adcom fights for you. You may not have had enough votes to be admitted, but you came close. If spots open up, your adcom/white knight can perhaps convince the committee that you deserve that open spot.</p>
<p>Neighbor's daughter got into Brown this week. No financial aid needed.</p>
<p>Thanks, Interesteddad, for the UVA stats. I can say that at S's school few kids have been accepted to UVA despite SATs in the upper 25% range of OOS kids. THe grades must have done them in. But a number were accepted to UMich and several did apply to both schools, so a direct comparison can be done. Too little data for UT or any of the UCs available for me to make any comments about OOS chances for those schools, or which school is tougher for OOS kids.</p>
<p>Since the total OOS figures for UVA include legacies and special interest groups with hooks, you can be pretty sure that the numbers for unhooked kids would be a notch higher. I know that when S1 applied to W& M, he was told that 1350 was the OOS SAT1 cutoff if he were not a recruit, and since the coach already had his OOS recruit quotas filled, he could only put in a word for him with admissions, not get him in through the athletic director. This was right after we had come from the admissions presentation where a question was asked about any OOS cutoffs for the SAT1, and we were all told there was no such threshhold. S did get into W&M, but his SAT1s were well above that cutoff.</p>
<p>Just for kicks, I checked the admission rates from my daughter's high school for UVA and those from the USNWR list of schools with the lowest acceptance rates. I tossed any school with fewer than 5 applications. The results were interesting:</p>
<p>Yale 0% of 18
Swarthmore 0% of 5
UVA 6.25% of 16
Amherst 8.33% of 12
Georgetown 13.33% of 15
Columbia 13.64% of 22
Dartmouth 15.79% of 19
Brown 16.67% of 12
MIT 16.67% of 6
Harvard 18.18% of 11
Princeton 18.18% of 11
Haverford 20% of 5
Wesleyan 20% of 5
Penn 20.59% of 34
Duke 30% of 20
Washington U. in St. Louis 30% of 10
Johns Hopkins 33.33% of 18
Tufts 41.67% of 24
Notre Dame 50% of 10</p>
<p>At my son's school, more kids have gotten into all of those schools except for Notre Dame more than they have UVA. And the reason ND is exempt is that there are not enough kids applying there in the last 5 years to come up with any decent numbers. Like you, I threw out any school with fewer thatn 5 apps, and went by percentage accepted. I am pretty sure the reason is the unweighted gpa, lack of rank and that AP courses are not so designated that makes the difference in those rates.</p>
<p>InterestedDad- Is there a similar list of scores for OOS and IS for WM?</p>
<p>Interesting list, Bassdad. </p>
<p>Very impressive number of acceptances. But, what is even more striking to me is the sheer number of rejection letters from that list. Man, that's a lot of tears.</p>
<p>What a different experience than at my daughter's school. Including Williams (but, not including Notre Dame because I'm out of the loop on that one), I think there were a grand total of three applications to schools on that list -- one each from the top three kids in the class. I believe those three received one rejection letter among them, a self-acknowledged "wing and a prayer" EA app to MIT. All three ended up going to their first choice schools, one ED, one EA, and one early-write.</p>
<p>Below the top three kids, there were quite a few Bowdoins, Colbys, Hamiltons, and the like -- mostly first choice schools as far as I know. </p>
<p>My daughter's school has apparently never gotten anyone into Tufts, although they do send the occasional kid to Harvard. I don't think anyone even bothers applying to Tufts anymore -- a pragmatic New England town, I guess!</p>
<p>No wonder I have such a weird view of admissions! College admission season at your school must really put the kids through the ringer.</p>
<p>No. The researchers only reported on UVa. But, I looked at W&M pretty closely because it was on my D's list and UVa wasn't after a visit. From what I could determine, I would expect W&M's numbers to be almost identical to UVa's. It operates under the same state-mandated limit on out-of-state percentage and is equally popular among the mid-atlantic, northeastern crowd.</p>
<p>W&M's applicant pool does skew heavily female, so I'd like a guy's chances better, something that is true at most elite colleges.</p>
<p>On looking at the scattergrams from our school, it seems that the UVA effect is partly caused by the stats of the applicant pool. The top 5 percenters with 1500+ SAT's and 4.3+ weighted GPA's apply to several name brand schools and get into a few each. </p>
<p>While UVA gets the occasional application from these folks, they also get a bunch from the 1300-1400 SAT, 3.5 to 3.8 weighted GPA set (about 70th to 90th percentile in this high school) which are seemingly rejected out of hand.</p>
<p>Neither set seems to realize that UVA out-of-state with no hooks is just as hard to get into as most of the others on that list. The top kids who do apply there may treat is too lightly, perhaps thinking of it as a safety. The others may simply not have looked at the out-of-state numbers separately from the total numbers.</p>
<p>I'Dad,
They (the UVA stats) are indeed eye-opening, & helpful. (Sorry, had a bad day today.) I would find it interesting to compare those In/S's & OO/S's for '99 with '05 or even '04 accepted scores. I think our friend would have had a shot even for UVA 6 yrs ago, let alone UT.</p>
<p>For UC Berkeley & UCLA, the bar both for in & oos has been high for quite some time, but esp. for non-URMs. What Berkeley did this yr. was "defer" some acceptees to the Spring term, due to enrollment pressures; I don't remember if they've done that recently. UCLA accepted a record low percentage of applicants (10%). That's comparable to HYP I think, which tend to hover between 9 and 11%. The quality of Irvine applicants has been on the rise.</p>
<p>All this, + recent acceptance stats for other major Publics, shows how widespread admission difficulty is for "competitive" colleges, across the board, & how unpredictable the outcomes will continue to be for a few years. All the more reason to Love Thy Safeties (oh siblings & others).</p>
<p>But back to the Waitlist discussion:
I note that in a climate such as we have, with so many "over"-qualified candidates, LACs who engage in "standard" waitlisting in the interest of (assumed) Yield, may risk losing more to each other than losing to the Ivies. Example close to us: Student X, with record similar to my D's, was Ivy-qualified: Deferred EA, then W/Listed. Her top favorite LAC was her #2 favorite choice, & extremely close to #1: that fave LAC w/listed her. She ended up going to her third choice -- an LAC who accepted her. LAC's like Swat, & U's like Tufts, cannot assume any longer that an Ivy-qualified candidate has a place at an Ivy. Perhaps if this candidate had applied to 8 or even 2 Ivies, one would have accepted her, but she applied only to one.</p>
<p>And I assume that this may be one reason why some students apply to so many Ivies: not because they're in love with prestige or their own egos, though on CC they seem to get the rap for this constantly. It may be because they don't relish receiving w/lists letters from half a dozen LAC's, plus one unlucky rejection to the one Ivy to which they applied that received too many applications looking just like theirs from their high school or their region.</p>
<p>It also may be that LACs competing with each other will start utilizing more of the EDI + EDII strategies in an effort to grab some excellent candidates that they would otherwise lose by "automatic" waitlisting.</p>
<p>Do any California parents have any info on OOS admissions to the UCs, particularly Berkeley and UCLA?</p>
<p>My S was accepted last week off the wait list at Wm and Mary, 3.7 wgpa with lots of athletics and volunteer hours, and 1450 SATs. He was also wl at Wash U but hasn't heard, and wouldn't switch if he did. Two sets of deposits is enough! Did not apply for financial aid, we will, but don't expect to get it.</p>
<p>Re: UVa </p>
<p>I think UVa does some selective marketing and recruiting in the South - for example, a senior UVa admissions person comes to the big college night event in our city each fall (the year I spoke with this person, I believe she was the #2 in the admissions office). The college night event draws high school kids from the big 3 private schools, the state math and science residential school and the flagship public high school with the IB program.</p>
<p>I got the feeling that UVa actively recruits in our area because they know that there is a very realistic chance an accepted high stat student will actually come, including high state URMs - last year's val at DD's school turned down Harvard for UVa. I would think that would make it even harder for a kid from the NE using UVa as a public back-up to an Ivy, for instance, they will probably have better luck with Michigan, because UVa is looking in areas where they have had success in the past.</p>
<p>"UCLA accepted a record low percentage of applicants (10%). That's comparable to HYP I think, which tend to hover between 9 and 11%."</p>
<p>Not only are the percentages comparable, but there are many more more of them. Combine this with no points given for high income status (in the form of ECs, wired GCs, "feeder schools", and very, very few developmental admits), and lots of HYP admits would have very difficult times getting into UCLA.</p>
<p>mini,
my info on UCLA that you pasted was disproved by the Times article quoted on another thread today. (hides head) Nevertheless, you make some imp. points, but the problem is, a lot of great candidates get eliminated from the UC system by the lack of differentiation provided by things like recommendations. Tremendous emphasis (therefore) is placed on essays. Particularly impacted are students from very large high schools, who might get "noticed" by a college with more application materials from which to choose, but who get little notice either from their high schools or from UC. So yes, the negative or prejudicial subjective aspects are eliminated, but along with those, the positive ones as well.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Do any California parents have any info on OOS admissions to the UCs, particularly Berkeley and UCLA?<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>I found info on the Berkeley website about last year's application season (class of 2008). 4653 oos applied; 984 accepted for a 21% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>30,341 instate applied; 7788 offered admission for 26% rate. Berkeley is 87% CA residents.</p>
<p>I remember being surprised that the oos acceptance rate wasn't that much lower than the instate rate (certainly not HYP tough). But I also think that the oos pool is self-selected---only top oos kids apply to Berkeley, while a lot of instate kids with lower stats will check the Berkeley box.</p>
<p>"my info on UCLA that you pasted was disproved by the Times article quoted on another thread today. (hides head) Nevertheless, you make some imp. points, but the problem is, a lot of great candidates get eliminated from the UC system by the lack of differentiation provided by things like recommendations. "</p>
<p>As I remember, the Times article was for "in-state" as opposed to out-of-state. And actual selectivity is likely even higher, as, if I understand it right, you get to apply to multiple UCs simply by checking a box, even if you stand virtually no chance of admission. But be that as it may, it is true that lots of great candidates get eliminated from the UCs by lack of differentiation provided by things like recs. But lots of folks get eliminated from HYP, etc. because of their lack of income (translated as the "wrong" ECs, lack of recs from Senators, lack of connections by GC to the school, lack of "feeder school rep", unwillingness to risk ED, or lack of expensive SAT prep and multiple sittings; the list could be much longer.)</p>
<p>You've got to work pretty hard to end up with a class where 80% of the student body comes from the top 20% of the population (economically) and 58% (as per recent H. data) comes from the top 5%. That's why adcoms get paid the big bucks.</p>
<p>
[quote]
LAC's like Swat, & U's like Tufts, cannot assume any longer that an Ivy-qualified candidate has a place at an Ivy.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think that Swarthmore waitlists any students because their stats are "too high" or because they think the student will be accepted to Harvard. The five most frequent overlap schools in their accepted students pool are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Amherst and I think that list has remained unchanged for a very long time (although Brown may have replaced Columbia at some point). They know they will lose the majority of cross-acceptances with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but they also know that their distinctive niche will grab a handful of those each year and that just a few will have an impact on an enrolled freshman class of 370 kids. "Tufts Syndrome" makes sense when applicants are far above your 75th percentile, but it's hard to be "far above" a 75th percentile of 770V/760M.</p>
<p>I think an easier way to understand the waitlisting of high-stat kids is to consider how few white U.S. citizen students Swarthmore actually enrolls -- just 221 in last fall's freshman class. Because of lower yields among the URMs, the overall accepted student pool has even less white/U.S. representation: under 50%. The numbers are even more sobering for white U.S. females. To offset the huge tilt towards females in the minority groups, the white group has to tilt male. As a result, only 99 white U.S. females were enrolled at Swarthmore last fall. </p>
<p>The yield focus at Swarthmore is almost exclusively on the URM pool. If the yield is as high as they want it to be, they won't need the extra white students parked on the waitlist. If the URM yield comes in low (here is where the brutal battles with other schools are fought on two fronts: against HYPS and against the merit-discount incentives), then they fill the class with waitlisted white students. Yield in the URM pool is really the "gating" number that drives the admissions process from acceptances to enrollment to topping-off from the waitlist.</p>
<p>To me, the rejections in Bassdad's numbers above hints at the danger in calibrating the college list too high and provides another explantion for the perceived "unpredictability" in admissions. It's only human nature to focus on the apps at the reach schools. But, that can really bite a highly qualified kid doing quickie apps to the schools that should actually be perfect main targets. We've got an example here on CC right now. Kid with impeccible stats, high class rank at a very highly regarded suburban high school, very strong musical background with prestigious credentials. Ideal candidate on paper. </p>
<p>Miscalibrated his list and focused so much on the HYP apps that he didn't send a performance tape to the Music Department at Swarthmore or the other similarly selective schools on his short list -- a requirement stated by both the music and admissions departments for music performance to be considered on the app. So here you have a stellar candidate, the people who would champion him not only have their hands tied, but are left scratching their heads. The whole app screams music, music, music, but he doesn't even bother to send a tape or visit the music department for an audition/sample lesson/questions. Basically gave Swarthmore no choice but to waitlist him, despite 75th percentile academic qualifications across the board and a strong EC. It was a predictable result.</p>
<p>ellemenope - My legacy S wouldn't even consider UCB - size is not what he wanted. His SAT stats likely would have held him back anyway, altho his GPA etc. would have been competitive. I had always been curious, tho, because I had somehow cobbled together similar accept rate info for oos - do you think it's largely internationals? Are they in that pool? I was figuring maybe they represent a big chunk of that - anecdotally, it seemed that way to me when there, but I was a grad student.</p>
<p>I'Dad,
Those are interesting points -- & useful info about the white female #'s in particular. But my main point was not competition with Ivies, although as you note, that's a given (i.e., the overlap). The "special niche" of a Swat is pretty similar to the "special niche" of Wesleyan, Williams, & many others, even granting that each campus has a unique flavor. Students tend to very much like LACs in general, or very much want quite the opposite (larger U, public or private). In the above w/listing situation I describe, I strongly feel that letting this student slip through Swat's fingers -- on the correct assumption that this was an Ivy-qualified candidate -- was a mutual loss for college and student. Swat did not lose to an Ivy; they lost to another LAC. And this was a Swat student if ever I saw one -- more so than the LAC of result. The fact that this is a white female perhaps explains one reason, in retrospect. A smaller average than 2 per State is a poor gamble for such an applicant, unless an ED'er with great academic assets. So, from your summary, the conclusion I would take away is: don't bother to apply to Swat, if a white female & Ivy-qualified, unless you apply ED: you have at least a prayer then. </p>
<p>I promise I won't morph into an ED rant, but I would feel better about ED & its pressure cooker aspects if info such as you just provided were more handy & visible to college applicants.... Because, as your info just shows, there is no such thing as a blanket statement that "ED is always an advantage." It depends on your ethnicity (apparently), your region (probably), & your record versus others in the early round (definitely).</p>
<p>Anyway, thanks for the info.</p>