<p>There is some kid who got waitlisted by Wash U today with a 4.0, 2400 SAT I’s, 2400 SAT II’s, 2x USABO semifinalist, Intel SFS (or something like that) Semifinalist, and a bunch of school EC’s. Granted, Wash U isn’t an Ivy League school and it is known to waitlist overqualified candidates…just thought that I’d throw out that even perfect applicants can get less than favorable results.</p>
<p>“how do we evaluate quality?”
How would YOU qualitatively compare a Da Vinci to a Picasso? or a Van Gogh? How would YOU decide which is “the best”?, or second best? Do you line them up next to each other and say “this one has more brush strokes”, or “that one has more colors”? NO. Quality can’t always be reduced to a score card. Often it is judged by how it makes one FEEL, as in when an admissions officer goes to bat for an all around good student coming from a poor school with few outside academic opportunities- “this is a terrific, hard working kid who has made the most of his circumstances and I think he would bring a lot of great qualities to this school”. That is what is meant by a Holisitic approach to college admissions- for the great “murky” middle band of students, sometimes admissions officers GO WITH THEIR GUT, rather than trying to translate all the elements of an application into numbers, tabulating them on a score card, and letting a number make the decision for them.</p>
<p>Some schools also have the sense to recognize when a student, despite the numbers, wouldn’t be a good fit at their school (or that they’d be a perfect fit elsewhere). In retrospect, it was no surprise how S1’s decisions shook out, and I expect the same thing will happen with S2.</p>
<p>As I told my kids many times, the essays are your chance to make your case. The numbers and hardware just get you on the selection committee table.</p>
<p>CD, I know many parents feel my effort here is a fool’s errand. Even if it true, fool’s errand is fine as long as it is harmless. PG’s post #609 raises the concern that it can be harmful to people. I certainly don’t have that in mind.</p>
<p>I allow for kids who are in range to have rejections, even superstars. Please see my definition earlier. </p>
<p>My heavy weighting on class ranking is influenced by the discussion we had upthread on the successful admissions of top students from top ranked high schools. We can tune this too.</p>
<p>I ask that you (plural) try to suspend your judgment on the impossibility of this feat and approach this with an open mind. What if…</p>
<p>PCP, how did you choose your wife from among all the women you could have dated / married? Did you assign her points based on her face, body, waist measurement, family wealth, educational level, sense of humor as quantified by number of jokes told, etc? Did she get extra points if she won a beauty contest?</p>
<p>Or did you just have a feeling and fall in love?</p>
<p>Do you not get that after a certain point – once a certain academic standard is met – it becomes about the overall gestalt and feeling? </p>
<p>Why you keep making it into some scoring whereby a 2400 gets you these points and a 2350 gets you these points is missing the point entirely. It’s as ludicrous as suggesti g that colleges in Asia will be impressed by my kid’s soccer prowess and volunteer work. Please stop trying to force a model where it doesn’t belong.</p>
<p>And frankly the end goal is supposed to be what school fits my kid best. Not stretching this limb and chopping off that one to make my kid fit a school. </p>
<p>You’re better than the posters here who think the meaning of life is getting your kid in an Ivy; time to start acting like it.</p>
<p>PCP, with all due respect, you’ve got things backwards. When a person with great stats does not make it into an Ivy, there is no reason whatsoever to think that there is any articulable reason that the applicant was “lacking”.</p>
<p>The admissions process at Ivies is not like an episode of Surviver where someone gets voted off the island each week. It’s the inverse – its more like the process I go through when I buy oranges the market. I walk over to the orange bin with my bag – lets say I want to buy 10 oranges and there’s a bin with 100 oranges in it – and I kind of look around the bin trying to pick the 10 best-looking oranges. There are some oranges that I don’t pick because something wrong with them – maybe one is too small or too green or seems to have some sort of blemish. But most of the oranges are perfectly good, and I just pick the first 10 “good” ones that I see. Once I’ve got 10 in my bag – that’s it, it doesn’t matter how many beautiful oranges are left behind. </p>
<p>As long as you are looking at someones stats and wondering how it is that they got rejected despite the apparent strength of their application, you simply fail to understand the competitive process in a highly selective environment. </p>
<p>The question to ask is, “why did this individual get selected” (not why did they get rejected). And not, “why did X get selected over Y”. Again, they are not measuring student X against Y and looking for reasons to reject on or the other. They are picking students with qualities that appeal to them … and the best thing a student can do above and beyond having great stats is to be able to present some particularly appealing and unusual qualities.</p>
<p>Why unusual? Because unusual is attention grabbing; it stands out from the others and it also is immune from competition. When you try to derive a point-based checklist for qualities like winning specific awards at specific levels, you’ve just designed the “what not to do” list. Not that those criteria are bad – but if you can categorize, then so can the ad coms. </p>
<p>Your formula would make sense in some other circumstances – like admissions criteria for some state universities. At least some here in California have used that sort of formula to choose among students. </p>
<p>But it doesn’t work in this context. Nine out of 10 applicants to the top schools are rejected. Of those 9, I figure that 3 (30%) probably have specific weaknesses in their records or applications that someone could point to as the reason for rejection. (That’s just a guess --maybe its 20%, maybe its 40%-- but probably not more). If it’s 30%, that leaves 6 students who are rejected for no other reason than that they didn’t make the cut.</p>
<p>PCP, you’re turning into a POIH or Dad Ii with your singular focus on Ivies. </p>
<p>The game is over. Your son already won. He got into U of C EA–more power to him. Frankly if my kid got into that kind of school EA, we’d close up shop and be done with college apps. Isn’t it sort of pathetic that UofC isn’t “enough”? That you seriously think he hasn’t yet proved himself til an Ivy comes through? Can’t you give it a rest? Your ego is showing.</p>
<p>Calmom, menlopark and countingdown have all given you great wisdom and insights. Please listen to them.</p>
<p>MPM, your painter example is a good one. It is hard to say who is better because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It has to do with personal preference, hence highly subjective. However, most people would agree they are all great painters and this is the level of resolution we seek in our model.</p>
<p>Harvard already tells you that the majority of applicants are qualified to do the work. They already tell you that they could select 5 freshman classes from their pool and be equally happy with any of them. Why don’t you take them at face value? They only have so many spots. It is unbelievable that you have been around cc as long as you have and still think that a qualified candidate who didn’t get in was “lacking” and if only he’d gotten one more award he’d be in. I don’t know where you got this paradigm but it’s completely incorrect.</p>
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<p>If your kid already got into UChicago then why are you concerned about finding the profile of an Ivy caliber applicant? You could just look at him because UChicago is just as legit as the Ivies.</p>
<p>PG, I appreciate your earnest advice, really. </p>
<p>I don’t have any ego to boost. You know my S1 does not have vast majority of what I listed here. Ivy-caliber /= Ivy-league as we had discussed in the beginning. I don’t know why people still assume I’m doing this because of S1 despite my claim to the contrary. It’s just that when I see other “scholarly studies” on this subject, I thought we can do our own study/analysis on cc. It is really an intellectual exercise for me. I’m drawn to the mysterious - my wife falls in this category :).</p>
<p>I apologize for causing such consternation among my good friends here.</p>
<p>:confused:</p>
<p>:eek:</p>
<p>I have not seen any scholarly studies referring to detailed hierarchies of quantitative acceptance standards, and such suggested combinations and permutations as PCP as theorized. Nothing from which one could derive an algorithm, or even a range of algorithms.</p>
<p>The one consistent “qualifier” (or set of qualifications) which is apparent in “studies” (“scholarly” or not) – in other words, in observing the data – is what Hunt mentioned I think on page one: </p>
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<p>It helps to be phenomenally good at more than one something, actually, but the singular indefinite will suffice. It’s the student who excels across the board. And in all the studying and reading and observing and conversing I’ve done regarding multiple-Ivy admissions, my D is the rule, not the exception. </p>
<p>I said this in a PM to PCP, but I’ll say it publicly now: He’s placing way, way too much emphasis on standardized testing – both on the SAT I’s and the SAT II’s. The Elites simply do not view the scores in the kind of hierarchy of rankings and rigid categories he does. You will not find those correlations in the Accepted Students group; it will not be there. And he places way too little emphasis on e.c.‘s. There are way more admitted students with under 2300 SAT scores but rockin’ great e.c.‘s, than with great scores and middlin’ e.c.'s.</p>
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<p>PG, I resent that!!! </p>
<p>As a parent who may not have any kids attending IVY schools. I really don’t give a *&%^#$%%# what is their profile. Our kids work hard and did their best in HS. They are (will be) happy at where they are (will be). Ivy or not really does not bother me much now.</p>
<p>Sounds like DS is waiting on an Ivy admit (perhaps Brown or Penn). And certainly Stanford isnt too shabby. Be proud, not resentful.</p>
<p>I’ve got to defend Dad II as well. He figured out a long time ago that loving his children was a better use of his time than creating elaborate and misleading algorithms. You go, Dad II, you win the "Greatest improvement " award on CC this year!</p>
<p>Once dadIIs son’s acceptances and FA offers are received and the decision is made as to which offer to take/which school to attend, it will be easier to discern how much improvement has occurred. Hoping for the best, and hoping he’s willing to share that information, as we all learn from each others successes, experiences, decisions, etc.</p>
<p>jym626, isn’t this about the attitude not the result. </p>
<p>blossom, thanks. I don’t know if I “improved” per se. I did do things differently this time around.</p>
<p>No, dadII, its about both. Posters come here to learn from each other, which includes each others experiences during this process and the outcome. You have certainly benefitted a lot from the kindness and wisdom of posters here. To share your good luck, good fortune, experience and outcome is all part of the process. Its about sharing and giving back and paying it forward. New posters can learn how you/your son make the decision about what school he chooses to attend, how you navigate the FA web, compare and negotiate offers, etc. It is all part of the process and the outcome.</p>