<p>I've learned that if you aren't a senior yet, this board is a waste of time. Why, because you've already submitted your essays,sat scores, and application so why whine,complain, and fish for compliments when it's already been done. What I've also learned is that college decisions are so random and unexpected. Meaning you can have a high gpa,high sat scores, and ec's and still get rejected. You can also have low gpa, low sat scores, and no ec's and get accepted. What I've learned the most about colleges and getting accepted is play a sport at a young age and stick with it so you can get recruited, or just be yourself and let the college admissions do their job. The only thing this board has done is raise my anxiety level for acceptance to my top schools. In the end, you can only do so much and have a positive attitude. If you don't get into your top choice school why do you have to give up so easily?! Why don't you try again and go in as a transfer? This shows that you're ambitious and that you won't let anything get in the way of going to that school. My best advice for getting accepted into your top school is be yourself and if you don't get in then try again.</p>
<p>... Brilliant.</p>
<p>good point about recruitment, i know a complete idiot going to columbia</p>
<p>Transfers into most really good schools happen in very small numbers and are otherwise far short of ideal. The exception might be transfer into a flagship state university.</p>
<p>Nice commentary. 8.73/10</p>
<p>What I've learned:</p>
<p>-Stats only give you a chance.
-To get accepted you must have passion for something other than getting into college and doing well on tests.
-Coffee is essential as an IB student
-People don't take as many AP/IB classes as I thought. Apparently 7 IB and 4 AP by senior year is a lot.....
-Ivies are applied to by many
-Many of those that apply only study
-Some transfer students are godly in terms of qualifications (i.e. best programmer in India) and get rejected..... so stats one again don't get you in
-CC is an easy way to waste time</p>
<p>Admissions is random to some degree among the 12 or 15 colleges, but more predictable as you move down the USNWR rankings. The advice on CC includes practical advice on how to apply, strategic advice about how to look like a good applicant, and warnings about how nuts that admissions is at the super-elite colleges. I think admissions does look random at the super-elite colleges because of how they are trying to form a freshman class. About half of the people at the super-elite colleges are exactly the kind of people you would expect to be there. About one in four people walking around the HYP got either a 1590 or a 1600 on the SAT. The mean SAT score is around 1500, but the median score is probably much higher. On the other hand, HYP knows that they can't have all the students be like that because society would hate them and withdraw support. Thus, the fill out the rest of the class with outstanding people, but still with lower stats. (Only 40-45% of people with 1600/1600 SAT scores are admitted to Harvard.) Then they have a high degree of grade inflation to hide the disparity once people are admitted. Also, they just don't have room for everybody. For everybody accepted, there are 4 or 5 applicants who are the guy's virtual twin. I hope this doesn't sound too cynical, but they are just trying to deal with the situation themselves.</p>
<p>Daderoo is right about transfers. They don't want to give you college credits for classes that you took at "lesser" schools. If you aren't accepted, get on with your life.</p>
<p>Activity has died down on the threads for the seniors. I think there are more juniors now.</p>
<p>there'll be more seniors come april 1 when we have to make final decisions.</p>
<p>There are plenty of kids who start a sport at a young age and stick with it. They may even achieve a certain level of excellence. However, only a small percentage of high school athletes have enough talent to actually be recruited by a college. Besides that talent, for the highly selective colleges, you need to have the academics, too.</p>
<p>There is very little true randomness even among the top schools. The admissions are not decided by a lottery or by throwing darts. Human beings are making the decisions, and every candidate is accepted or rejected for a reason or list of reasons. It's just that the reasons are often not captured in the cut-and-dried "stats" amd thus not visible to those of us who are outside the process.</p>
<p>A more accurate way of expressing this is not that the process has some randomness, but rather that it has a degree of subjectivity.</p>
<p>coureur: Maybe it is only semantics, but at HYPSM, even after they deny the majority of applicants, they do have 4 or 5 almost identical applicants for each open slot and they only have room for 1. I don't think that the adcoms draw names out of a hat, but when the decision is made on whether the applicant's father is a doctor or a car salesman or when it is based on what the an adcom had for lunch, then I would call it random.</p>
<p>There are three strong indicators of this. One, people who apply to several ivies are accepted or denied randomly among the schools that they applied to. Two, the size of the waitlist is often longer than the list of accepted applicants. I think it is easier for the adcoms to waitlist someone rather than deny them immediately after denying the person's clone. Three, adcoms say that they could completely throw out the accepted applicants and start over again with who is left, and still have as strong a class as they originally had.</p>
<p>I agree that many (but not all) of the kids that are denied are often just as strong as those who got accepted. But I don't think they decide between them on the basis of what they had for lunch. I think it may often come down to things like the orchestra needs a bassoon but has plenty of French horn players, so the bassoonist gets the nod over the horn player. Was it good fortune to be a bassoonist in the year that they were looking for one? Sure, but this kid was not chosen randomly. He was chosen because of his bassoon talent. Such a decision is completely unfathomable to the horn player. He says "Hey my stats are just as strong. Why didn't I get in? It must be just random who gets in."</p>
<p>I could see the father is a car salesman vs. doctor making a difference in two otherwise similar candidates if the committee felt that the car salesman's kid had worked harder and come farther to achieve the same stats. The doctor's kid would probably be viewed as having a head start due to his parent's greater wealth and level of education. Once again, not random.</p>
<p>Random, by it's definition, means that all available outcomes have an equal chance of occuring. The classic example is a lottery. The ping pong balls have an equal chance of being selected. Unlike the ping pong balls, no two college applicants are exactly alike. Look deeply enough into the stats, essays, achievements, community service, ECs, legacies, and socio-econimic background, and you can always find ways to distinguish them. And since we as outsiders cannot see what they used to choose between them, we assume they used nothing.</p>
<p>I think it is semantics then. It is "random" to me whether they need a bassoon player or a trumpet player that year, but I agree that the two are not completely equally likely. (It is more a butterfly effect from chaos theory.)</p>
<p>From what I saw last year though is that juniors are soon going to have threads saying that there is absolutely no luck involved in the process and that if you don't get in, you don't deserve to get in. The juniors saying this of course are convinced that they are the ones who will get in. The argument I particularly liked last year was some people would be accepted to Harvard and not Yale, and vice versa, since Harvard and Yale each had different institutional personalities and were looking for different types of people.</p>
<p>
<p>The admissions officers know they have to please certain GCs at their historical feeder schools. They know that they will not (cannot!) have more than 45% of the class receiving financial aid. They know that they have to fill a certain number of spots on the football team, or the alumni will be unhappy. (They know they need fencers and track stars and etc. as well.) They know they need an English horn player, and two trombones. They better have some folks interested in Near Eastern archaeology, or the department will be p-i-s-s-e-d. They need to accept those developmental admits, and the daughters of Connecticut state senators. I haven't even gotten to the legacies. Finally, it is important to have some darker faces on campuses, even (as a current student reported on this board), almost all of them come from fancy private schools.</p>
<p>There is nothing the least bit lotteryish about it. But they don't mind us thinking of it as a lottery, for if we do, they don't have to explain themselves.
. .</p>
<p>The college guides often use the word "lottery" or "crap shoot" at the super-selective colleges. I personally do not like those terms because it makes it sound as if everyone has a chance. It is just a fact, though, that these colleges have far more super, super qualified applicants than they have room for, and that they have to somehow choose between them. For every little niche such as URM with scores in the 1300's, or orchestra player with strong interest in science, or guy with perfect SAT's and national award; they have 4 or 5 applicants who are almost identical. This is where the element of chance comes into it.</p>
<p>Also I have no idea what the post by mini is about. Adcoms do NOT want anyone to think that chance is involved. It is true that they don't want to talk about decisions because that would immediately lead into long conversations, arguments and second guessing, but they do NOT want anyone to think that they are doing anything but making hard choices in the only way possible.</p>
<p>To paraphrase a young cyber-friend of mine on this board, it is so NOT what they had for lunch.</p>
<p>I would agree with coureur that there is (obviously) subjectivity involved, as well as a degree of unpredictability. That's as far "random" as it gets. The decisions are deliberate, even when sometimes ambivalently made or between hair-splitting differences in candidates. </p>
<p>The "random" part, if any, is that you have no control over the application packages of your competitors to that school, nor demographic trends or admission trends/policies. If you want to call lack of control "random," then go ahead. But that's not exactly the meaning of the word.</p>
<p>As I said, it is more like the butterfly effect in chaos theory. You go out the door at 8:15 and you get to work, but if you go out the door at 8:16, you die in a car accident. Of course, some people would object to this because they believe in fate. You can also object to it because you don't like to think that life is that fragile ("I won't get killed in a car accident because I'm a careful driver.") It is really a matter of faith and the way you approach life. Some people want to believe that things happen for a reason and that the people in charge are well training and doing a great job. Personally I am not bothered by the concept that an adcom might be in a bad mood because the deli forgot the mustard on his roast beef and then leaning against a borderline candidate. Those 4 or 5 almost identical people that they have to chose between because they only have one slot are really almost identical.</p>
<p>Where did anyone get the idea that the adcoms are highly trained? They are a real mix of people. Some flip between being GC's and adcoms while others are recent graduates from the college. It is a relatively low paying job. I do think that they take their jobs seriously and I don't mean to insult them, but it isn't a job that you specifically train in college for.</p>
<p>So yeah, this board is great for senior year because now I'm just waiting for decisions and this is great procrastination.</p>