Yeah but the yields are so high for these schools as I think someone posted earlier that the admits and enrolled students are very similar. Especially when the last 100 who get in and the first 100 on the waitlist are almost indistinguishable.
Here’s the problem: if we are talking about highly selective admissions, then a student can very well do everything right and not get admitted. Having an essay that is pitch perfect and hits every element on top of wonderful stats and impressive EC’s is enough to merit serious consideration, but not a guarantee of admission. And colleges don’t send a meaningful explanation with rejection notices – so no one knows why they didn’t make the cut.
Here’s what I learned from all the years that my daughter was a kid who auditioned for things.
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No matter how hard my daughter worked and no matter how well she did, there was always at least kid who was better.
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There are generally one or two contenders who are so wonderful and top drawer and amazing that there is no doubt that they will be selected above the others— and then there are a bunch who fit the category of “pretty good” at whatever it is they are competing for — and then there is a group who falls short. The “falls short” group will almost always be cut - they won’t get selected. Within the pretty good group, the determination as to who gets selected, and who doesn’t, is often a matter of luck or random chance. It can be arbitrary, but arbitrary does NOT mean “unfair.” It just means that a selection has to be made, and that the process of choosing among a group of equally qualified candidates is subjective and very often made based on criteria that are not particularly important except as part of the final cut or weeding out process. Their chances depend on the number of spots allotted, not necessarily where they “rank” against the others.
I think the same is true of college admissions – a small subset of applicants who are clearly better than the rest, who will be accepted; a large group of applicants who simply aren’t good enough and aren’t going to be seriously considered; and another large group of applicants who are clearly well qualified and could all clearly be admitted and do well. … but there are many more of them than spots alloted. So some make the cut and some don’t.
The “show not tell” thing is simply one way that a student who is in that pool of viable candidates can strengthen their application. It increases the odds of admission; that doesn’t mean that the student gets selected. It’s just that it’s one thing that the applicant can do to boost the odds.
No one seems to have any problem when a student decides to retake the SAT because they believe their odds of admission will be better if they can boost their score by 40 points. So why is it such a sticking point that writing a better essay is also a way to increase admission odds?
Institutional needs, too. Geo diversity, balance in majors and gender. Not so much a coin toss. And you can’t tell “better” just looking at stats and rigor. The app is the vehicle and stats alone don’t guarantee a solid app.
The value in show not tell is the reader can see it, doesn’t just have to take you at your word. Easy example: if you want stem, you’d better be able to show the courses in stem, grades, and some relevant ECs. If you want to show drives, resilience, iniative, et al, you’d better find a way to show that,not just claim it, they won’t guess or assume. Not when thousands are lined up who do show it. This is where the essay often plays, as it’s meant to reveal more than the transcript or lists of actiities can.
I was just going to say this as well. There is a lot that we don’t see in the evaluation process. Even for non-impacted majors, no school is going to enroll 80% of their incoming class in one major.
I got pretty good at predicting which students my alma mater was going to accept. Even in short meetings with students, or over the phone. In ED, it was almost all hooked candidates and the one or two non hooked that had something spectacular. In RD, it was the kids that had a compelling story that they were able to clearly articulate. EVERY KID had stellar stats and ECs. Competitive schools are looking for the “extra”. What makes you different from every other high achieving kid with great test scores and ECs? IMO, that is the “show not tell”. Highlight what makes you unique and then find schools where your strengths mesh with their mission. That’s where the research comes in. Not enough to say that I want to go to Elite U because it’s a “good school”. Why is Elite U the right school for you and more importantly, what can you bring to Elite U that would be of value to the university.
Re gallentjill’s post #255, from everything that I have read on this forum, if a student is able to apply ED to Lehigh, that is exceptionally helpful. In that case, given good objective qualifications, I do not think that any reasonable essay would be a barrier to admission.
With schools that are quite competitive, but not the single-initial CC schools, it seems to me that it is helpful to think about yield management by the schools. The admissions director needs to hit an enrollment target in a pretty narrow range. Admitting a large number of students who will not come makes the job much harder. These schools tend not to look favorably on students who are clearly using them as a safety. In my opinion, if the application indicates in some way that the student is desperately hoping for the school (and that is authentic), then a good-enough essay will be good enough. This assumes that the student has the objective qualifications for admission, and that the letters of recommendation are reasonably good.
Just my view, but I think that a student who wants to get into Lehigh should spend time thinking carefully about the people to select as recommenders. By the end of a school year, one can often tell whether a teacher can write well (with details) or not, and whether a teacher has the time to craft a useful letter, or is too swamped. One should also be able to tell whether the teacher genuinely likes the student or is lukewarm. If the student has a friend who was in the class and is good at reading people, the student might ask that friend’s opinion.
I realize that this is not directly “show, not tell” (apologies about that), but I think it addresses the wider issue that gallentjill is raising, and #255 mentions specifically high stat kids who did not get into Lehigh.
The only high stats kids I know who did not get into Lehigh in the last few years were kids whose first choice was Princeton or U Penn and they needed to find a back up within a reasonable drive from home-- and that was Lehigh. For a kid whose instate safety is Rutgers or Penn State, they probably didn’t understand the need to show a little love to Lehigh (Rutgers could care less about how much love you show them). And with so much energy focused on the marquee school, there wasn’t much left for Lehigh.
I can’t imagine that for a high stats, highly motivated kid, the Lehigh essay is make or break. But it shouldn’t say "The reasons I want to go to U Penn are: "
Regarding kids with high stats get rejected by Lehigh, Lehigh’s CDS, marks 5 admission criteria as more important than test scores. This is also consistent with Lehigh’s website, which talks about 8 criteria they are looking for in their admissions decisions, none of which is test scores. You’ll find a similar relationship at many selective colleges. Just having high test scores alone is rarely enough.
One thing that is unique about Lehigh, is Lehigh’s website mentions demonstrated interest is important, and their CDS marks demonstrated interest as important as test scores. Lehigh goes so far to consider whether the applicant has logged in to the admissions portal to check application status – https://web.archive.org/web/20160403084759/http://articles.philly.com/2013-04-01/news/38165511_1_admissions-placement-courses-high-school-students
This emphasis on demonstrated interest alone usually indicates a good portion of high stat applicants who treat Lehigh as a backup are going to be rejected.
Schools definitely consider yield. Lehigh is pretty transparent about that. They’ve published data how campus visits equate with higher yield, and students need to be savvy about that. Same with schools like JHU that give a huge advantage to students applying ED. They are up front in their admissions presentations that they fill over 65% of their class ED. In doing alumni meetings, it also seems like my alma mater tracks yield from high schools. There were certain high schools in our area where almost all the kids that were accepted, matriculated. In other schools, no one ever matriculated. I have to believe that after a while of trends, that is noticed. That’s part of why schools have regional admissions people. As an aside, there isn’t much a student can do if they go to a school that has a bad track record with a specific college, but they can make it clear that they would absolutely go if accepted (if true).
Holy cow, they do say things like, “The reason I want to go to Stanford” or Northwestern. Kiss of death. Or the describe programs not at college X or explain why they liked Cambridge, MA.
@QuantMech you kinda hit it. Clearly preferring another school, btw, isn’t just about stats and ECs; it’s in the rest of the app/supp. And not just “desperately” hoping for, say, Lehigh, but knowing enough to show your match. And LoRs: if you want xx major, try to have a relevant teacher as one of the writers. Not just the ones you think love you most or who mentor some random EC.
Agree about tracking yield. How many applied from your hs in the last x years, how many admitted, and how many enrolled. If your hs hasn’t enrolled any, sorry, it can affect. But, they are not “guessing” who will yield, you show the right things or not.
Wow, “kinda hit it”! High praise indeed from lookingforwar (for me, on a comparative basis)! I must really be onto something. 
Agree with momofsenior1 and with lf: If students from your school do not have a good track record of actually enrolling when admitted, then demonstrated interest is of even higher importance than normal, for schools that care about it.
Even the large schools do yield predictions, but I believe that they run them more in bulk, without affecting the chances of an applicant who is clearly in the well-qualified group. These yield predictions mainly affect students who would be near the bottom of the admitted group and who do not have other specially desirable characteristics; or quite good applicants who apply late in the season to schools with rolling admissions.
The predictors are pretty extensive in some cases: A friend of mine who went to the University of Massachusetts noticed that “PREDAVE” showed up on her enrollment card at orientation. After a lot of puzzling and comparisons, a group of incoming students figured out that this was almost certainly “Predicted Average.” Probably printing it is a thing of the past, but predicting it may not be.
For schools that run this type of prediction, the intended major may affect the predicted odds of success in the major, which may affect admission. Of course, lots of students drop out of engineering and pre-med-type majors (e.g., chemistry, biochemistry). But generally, colleges will not want to have a very high fraction of the student body feeling disaffected because they had to change away from preferred majors.
The issue of needing/wanting students who will major in certain fields (for diversity of interests and to keep the undergraduate classes filled) will also affect admission to some schools. As lookingforward has noted in other posts, however, the planned major has to correlate believably with the student’s record.
My daughter applied only to art schools. The most important factor in admission was probably her portfolio, which reflected her artistic imagination and skills. What could a good essay convey? Her motivation for attending (this) art school and why study at this school could help to satisfy her career aspirations.
But my daughter chose to emphasize something else: Why she liked to watch people look at her art, and what she learned from their comments and questions. It’s only my speculation, but I think this told the admissions reviewers things that might make her an attractive art student. 1) She viewed art as a form of social communication, not only personal expression. 2) She was interested in the effects of art on other people. 3) She was likely to be engaged with her fellow students. All of these would fit well with the educational process in many art classes, which is far more than just learning about materials and methods but usually involves peer “crits” (critiques) of each student’s work.
So the portfolio “showed” that she had talent, some technique, some skill with materials. The essay “told” that she was extroverted, would learn from others, and would be aimed at having an impact on others. As it turned out, after her foundation (first) year at RISD she chose to major in industrial design, and partly because of some elective courses that she took at Brown she became interested in ecological design and has made her career in that field – now with a much broader scope than “making art.” Both the showing and the telling were important to her personally and to her career.
I’ve had this bookmarked forever and though it’s now old, I feel it’s spot on. It IS the sort of thing one can go hunting for. Though it was shared on CC, many times google is your friend. (But go for what college says and shows, not the speculative blogs, etc.)