<p>Sociologists have also been inside admission offices </p>
<p>observing what admission committee members say, and also what they do. The observations can be quite surprising--or perhaps no surprise at all, but probably not like what the admission office says about itself.</p>
<p>The question asked was whether, indeed, the factors as listed below really do play into admissions in the relative importance as listed here:</p>
<hr>
<p>Very Important
Rigor of secondary school record
Class rank
Academic GPA
Application Essay
Recommendation
Character/personal qualities</p>
<p>Important
Standardized test scores
Extracurricular activities</p>
<p>Considered
Interview
Talent/ability
First generation
Alumni/ae relation
Geographical residence
Racial/ethnic status
Volunteer work
Work experience
Level of applicant’s interest</p>
<hr>
<p>An empirical question is being asked. What DOES differentiate the winning application from the losing one? I totally understand what the PURPOSE of the essays are -- to give insight as to which students are most interesting, compelling, etc. And that doesn't mean that the essays themselves are rated on a 1-10 scale. It does mean, however, that one could assign a 1-10 evaluation of how well that essay achieves that goal, where 1=makes me want to avoid this kid on the street and 10=makes me want to admit this kid instantaneously and maybe adopt him too. This is very different from "grading an essay" though.</p>
<p>Look, if I've got 2 kids, equal SAT, equal GPA, equal difficulty of school, equal EC's, and one writes a fabulous, insightful, essay and the other writes a "By pulling together, we all won the state soccer championship and so now I know what teamwork is" essay, you know that kid 1 did better than kid 2. The question is, how much impact does that essay have. And now drop kid 1's SAT down ... is that stellar essay worth 50 SAT points? 100? 200? It's an empirical question. Swarthmore might easily take the 2200 kid with the outstanding essay over the 2300 kid with the mediocre one. What if that outstanding essay kid had a 2100? 1800? 1600? At what point is the breakpoint. You know that there is some intuitive breakpoint. If you did conjoint analysis and paired up imaginary candidates and asked an adcom to choose, you'd be able to derive the relative importance of each factor.</p>
<p>This article was posted on CC awhile back:</p>
<p>
[quote]
[Harvard director of admissions Marilyn] McGrath said fewer than 1 percent of Harvard applicants, 254 of 27,462, got a perfect 2,400 on the SAT.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Perfect</a> college entrance exam scores don't help student who dreamt of the Ivy Leagues</p>
<p>Doesn't say what percent of these kids were accepted/rejected, but the numbers are there (and they're pretty drastically different than the numbers who achieved 800 on a particular section). That doesn't necessarily mean that they matter much, relative to other high-but-not-perfect scores, but they are known. </p>
<p>A quick google search tells me that Harvard rejects 25/50/65/67/80/90% of perfect scorers. Useful :p Not one of the sites I came across seemed very reliable (one was at least journalistic...that was the one that listed 25%, but it didn't provide a source for that number).</p>
<p>At Harvard, as at Yale, the applicant pool included an extraordinary number of academically gifted students. More than 2,500 of Harvards 27,462 applicants scored a perfect 800 on the SAT critical reading test, and 3,300 had 800 scores on the SAT math exam. More than 3,300 were ranked first in their high school class.
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/education/01admission.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/education/01admission.html</a></p>
<p>SATs are simultaneously all-important and decreasingly important as distinguishing tools. The great "recentering" of SAT scores in the mid-1990s was designed to adjust the scoring curve to reflect the broadened share of American students taking the SAT, which had at first been given mainly to elite students. The recentering raised average scores significantly, especially on the verbal portion of the test. "Before, there were very few seven hundred-plus verbal scores," says Charles Deacon, the dean of admissions at Georgetown. "Afterwards there was a dramatic surge upward, and many more people saw themselves as competitive candidates for the top schools." Marlyn McGrath-Lewis, the admissions director at Harvard College, says that "the double 800"a perfect score"is not that great a distinction anymore." In each of the past few years Harvard has received more than 500 applications with double-800 scores, and has accepted just under half of them.
The</a> New College Chaos</p>
<p>^^ ^^ ... and the above-quoted Atlantic article "New College Chaos" is from 2003!</p>
<p>Thanks for the links to journalists' writings on the issue.</p>
<p>"An empirical question is being asked. What DOES differentiate the winning application from the losing one?"</p>
<p>Start with family income, and work one's way down. Developmental admits have a virtual 100% admit rate.</p>
<p>"work one's way down" implies income correlation beyond development admits. Doesn't work that way. Development admits are a category of their own, with an admissions advantage. Those who are not in that category are evaluated with different assets to consider.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Developmental admits have a virtual 100% admit rate.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is tautologically true: by definition, everyone in the "developmental admit" category has been admitted!</p>
<p>Data about the broader pool of "potential developmental applicants" is more obscure.</p>
<p>wisteria, I think he meant probable development admits, (development applicants, i.e., "virtual admits")</p>
<p>(I meant the same when I used that phrase. I meant development-level applicants.)</p>
<p>""work one's way down" implies income correlation beyond development admits. Doesn't work that way. Development admits are a category of their own, with an admissions advantage. Those who are not in that category are evaluated with different assets to consider."</p>
<p>It works exactly that way. Every admissions office in the U.S. has a financial aid budget. Every year, they get within 1 or 2% of hitting that budget number. Every year, the percentage of students receiving financial aid remains virtually the same, unless institutional priorities change.</p>
<p>You should know that. Princeton is the absolute best example. For years, same budget, same result. Then the Pres said she wanted a more socio-economically diverse class. Money was placed in the budget. Presto-chango - all of a sudden, newly qualified low-income students were discovered in the "need-blind" process (doesn't exist), different students were admitted, reflecting different institutional priorities. </p>
<p>But you won't see further changes unless institutional priorities change again. </p>
<p>Give admissions officers at prestige schools credit: they've got this down to a science.</p>
<p>Financial aid budget is one thing. Desirable development admits another. Yes, they're both in the category of "budget," broadly, but it doesn't mean (your earlier post implied) that after development admits, people with incomes of $200,000 are preferred over those with incomes of $150,000. (You said, 'go down the scale,' essentially.) No. There are 3 broad financial categories: (1) Development admits, (2) Those not needing financial aid, (3) Those needing financial aid. </p>
<p>Low-income, highly qualified students were always highly qualified. It's just that, because of changes in institutional priorities, they are more likely to be considered admissible than previously. Princeton (same for peer schools) has never said that all those rejected or waitlisted were "not qualified." And the rejected have always (even now) included students with significant able to pay, as well as those with much less or even zero ability to pay.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It works exactly that way. Every admissions office in the U.S. has a financial aid budget. Every year, they get within 1 or 2% of hitting that budget number. Every year, the percentage of students receiving financial aid remains virtually the same, unless institutional priorities change.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Shhh...you're not supposed to talk about that.</p>
<p>Legacy is also a handy way of giving a nod to the wealthy.</p>
<p>"but it doesn't mean (your earlier post implied) that after development admits, people with incomes of $200,000 are preferred over those with incomes of $150,000."</p>
<p>It means that - precisely. I don't mean to imply. I am SAYING. The higher group does not (for the most part) require financial aid, the group below it does. Having taken care of the first group (rougly 50% of admits, give or take, from the top 3% of the population economically), the Princeton no-loan policy was specifically aimed at the next group down (to ensure that, in the long-run, they didn't lose this group to the competition who were, and are, offering full- or partial tuition merit-based aid.)</p>
<p>Neither Princeton (nor any of the other prestige schools, and especially those who publish the need-blind mythology) will ever publish these numbers. They have them, of course, and they study them assiduously so that they can predict yield. </p>
<p>They know EXACTLY what they are doing (and I say more power to 'em, having eliminated the crapshoot from their considerations.) Why not give them credit for doing their jobs, and doing them well? (and spending big money on it, as well!)</p>
<p>As to who is most qualified to attend? That one's simple - and tautological - those they admit! Students were "less qualified" before all of a sudden become "more qualified" - you don't think they'd ever admit accepting "less qualified" students, do you? Otherwise, they'd have to admit they denied admission to low-income students because they didn't want to support them, even though they were, ah-hem, "need-blind".</p>
<p>^^Sorry, I don't buy this. Unless you worked at a top 10 school, I don't know how you could declare this with authority. </p>
<p>Half of Harvard's undergraduates are on financial aid. </p>
<p>"Presto-chango - all of a sudden, newly qualified low-income students were discovered in the "need-blind" process (doesn't exist), different students were admitted, reflecting different institutional priorities. "</p>
<p>Isn't it possible that more poor people accepted offers of admission because financial aid was offered? Also, more poor people would apply because they felt it wasn't a waste of time to apply now that they wouldn't have to pay the entire tution.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm sure that elite universities have accrued endowments in the billions of dollars by practicing "need-blind" admissions. Given that such universities are corporations whose primary purpose is to turn the largest profit possible, it is self-evident that the financial position of applicants plays a significant role in the selection process; however, that must be tempered with aid programs to protect the institutions' prestige and image.</p>
<p>They could easily control this by limiting financial aid. They don't need to reject poor people. Poor people won't enroll unless they get some kind of aid or loans. They don't have to do this in admissions.</p>
<p>No, but if they become more aristocratic in their admissions policy, their standing will diminish as the school will become increasingly comprised of incompetent, rich individuals. Consequently, the quality of education would suffer and many potential applicants would migrate towards greener pastures, along with their future donation capacity.</p>
<p>mini, collegealum is right on this one. You are not. You are assuming black-and-white absolutes, when all of it is shades of gray. It's about value & barter; it's a marketplace.</p>
<p>A highly desirable college has several factors to consider when making its admissions decisions:
(1) budget, financial goals, available aid
(2) reputation/rank (unfortunately, too linked, but such is life)
(3) yield -- esp. for those institutions which have abandoned all early rounds; this is esp. a consideration for Ivies, since they receive so many apps of high-achieving students who are therefore likely to be cross-admits
(4) balanced composition of incoming class, esp., and secondarily of the undergrad school in total
(5) the particular combined academic & nonacademic assets of the student being evaluated, in comparison to other applicants in the same round.</p>
<p>Student A, rich but happens not to be brilliant, may or may not be admitted over brilliant Student B, who is poor + brilliant + accomplished in areas both academic & nonacademic. Depends on how many Student A's there are, how many Student B's, and who else is applying (& similarly how many of the "else" need financial aid but have compensating goods to bring to campus. Student A and Student B bring a very different Value to the same campus. If you think the committee doesn't weigh such values, <em>you're</em> the one being naive.</p>
<p>There also seems to be a false inference here that:</p>
<p>poor = brilliant and accomplished
rich = dull and little to offer</p>
<p>I doubt very much that things are so cut n' dried in the real world of admissions</p>