Lol people. You weren’t all doing something more entertaining on Christmas day I guess?
This thread is about HELPING people understand that there are many different aspects of elite college admissions that are beyond their control. It’s to give them some perspective for understanding why their amazing application, great essay, glowing recommendations, and dedicated extra curricular activities weren’t enough to get them in early decision, or, in a few months time, no better option than a waitlist.
You ARE great applicants, and there is probably nothing wrong with your application. You’re just up against a lot of competition who, for a number of reasons, have an advantage over you. Those advantages are beyond your control. ETA: You’re also being evaluated holistically for “fit”, and if you don’t have that, your odds are lower.
Focus on applying to colleges that you have a reasonable chance of getting into. Hardly any elite colleges with low acceptance rates offer a reasonable chance of admission, unless you’re a top in-state student for UC Berkeley, UCLA, or Michigan, perhaps a couple of others. Try to let go of the “dream school” idea.
@privatebanker
Have to second the comment above to Private Banker - always appreciate their viewpoint, insight and thoughtfulness toward the CC community.
The schools mentioned in this post have tremendous amount of applicants for whatever reason - excellence, reputation, and even some of them working the system figuring out that the way to drive apps in is to offer no fees, no or optional essays, etc. Many of these fine institutions could fill their classes with valedictorians, salutatorians, perfect ACTS/Perfect SATS. If they did that they would most likely be worse off for it.
Everyone has a story of how their student or a student was great and didn’t get in with the backdrop of someone else who might not have been as great did get in. But how would one know what the whole package looked like to be able to compare? Last time I checked, I don’t see parents/students sharing what each other’s apps look like as they apply to the same school (maybe they do somewhere but not in our parts). The schools do their best they can looking out for themselves, students (and parents as appropriate) hopefully do their best in identifying which schools match up with what the student wants/offers and away they go. Have seen in action top students go to interview with alumni and not know why they are interested in their top school of the day (“my mother thought it would be good to apply” or “I like the set curriculum” (that school doesn’t have a set curriculum of any kind). Stories of stats is great to support a viewpoint but not the whole story - never can be. I would not dissuade any student from looking at the numbers and trying to determine if they are in the game to any extent and then build their case on their app for why they should be there. Just recognize - it all comes down to a limited number of seats at a given school and the admissions department is trying to build a class that they feel will be what they want to have represent them when they graduate that class and go on from that school.
Even though this thread seemed to get off track a couple of times, it seems like a great topic for students and parents as they head toward RD acceptance time. I think it’s pretty important to be as realistic as possible when applying to these under 15% schools and for kids to think about whether or not they are up for multiple disappointments after a lot of work. I had the benefit of reading CC for a couple of years before going through the application process with S19 who was unhooked and applied to 3 Ivys and 3 other top 20 schools (plus some selective LACs) . I think I had expectations in check and he had some good back up options. While I tried not to be too pessimistic with S, over several months I tried to explain how low the odds were for some of the schools and made sure he really wanted to do all those essays when there was a good chance of lots of rejections. I felt he was up for it and is also the type of kid who could do well and be happy at most schools.
Some might have said they were wasted applications for an unhooked average excellent kid who was not the very top of his class (but did have a 36 ACT and IB diploma) and had good but not stellar recommendations from a large public Title 1 school. We had a strategy and the schools were chosen for specific academic and fit reasons and with the hope of good financial aid. But the “fit” part is confusing to me and likely to a lot of students regarding holistic admissions. I have read countless posts about how important it is to research schools and demonstrate fit through essays and the application (assuming you have the stats that fit their academic profile). However, even if you think you fit perfectly at a certain school, and even if you demonstrate that in your app, the AOs may not agree, or they agree but there are just not enough spots.
For example, even though I thought S19 would enjoy and do well at Brown when we were putting the “reach” list together, he and I both though that Dartmouth would be a much better fit. The Dartmouth alum who interviewed him (yes I know interviews don’t count for much of anything) shared a lot of interests with S and said multiple times that he was the perfect candidate for his alma mater. Still, I knew it was a big long shot and of course S was wait listed in the end.
But how did he get accepted to Brown? How did he get into a school that had a RD acceptance rate of around 4%? Not really sure. I do think his Brown essays were particularly good compared with the others he did. The graded paper from his IB lit class also was very strong. He demonstrated excellent leadership in multiple sports? They must have seen something in him but what? I do think he is different in some ways than what I think of as a “typical” Brown student. And that’s the thing that’s confusing because these schools also want variety. So, all these 17-year-olds are working hard to show how they are the perfect fit for certain colleges. But how do they really know what the schools want or what to emphasize? How do they know which school might want a jockey kid who loves skateboarding and fantasy football but also loves philosophy and poetry?
I wonder how many times the Harvard lawsuit documents are going to be used as evidence for what happens with applications at all “elite” schools. It’s now the favorite document for those arguing certain positions about hooks and admittance rates everywhere–regardless of the school profile being discussed. It repeatedly appears as the one and only source for these sorts of debates. I have even seen it applied to NESCACs on CC!
It would be great if other colleges made that granularity of data public. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. That said, most of the Ivy League shape their classes in similar ways to get similar percentages of minorities, legacies, international, athletes, and first gen. They all try to field athletic teams that are competitive in the same conference with each other. No school, not even Brown, wants a football team that is at the bottom of the rankings every season. Historically, Cornell, as something of an outlier, has been a little less selective than the other colleges.
Trinity has been mentioned in this thread… but as a reference to the Trinity High School in NYS, in regards to whether attending a selective private HS like Trinity is a hook for college admissions.
The title of this thread is “… under 15% acceptance rate schools.” Trinity and Connecticut college are both >30% acceptance rate schools that haven’t been mentioned in this thread and aren’t particularly relevant, nor is what a different set of posters may have written in a different thread about a different topic. The initial lawsuit references in this thread specifically mention that they are referring to Harvard , which is a <15% admit rate school, and is relevant to this thread.
@Data10
So any college <15% admit rate can be compared to Harvard in terms of admission practices? You would use those stats discussing Bowdoin or Pomona, for example?
I think you’re missing my larger point about the new reliance on the Harvard lawsuit documents.
It’s obviously possible to use a reference incorrectly, but that’s not what was done. The lawsuit comments were not in reference to admissions at Bowdoin or Pomona. They were in reference to admissions at Harvard, and the wording made that clear. As an example, the first reference in this thread from post #31 states,
"Harvard is one of the few schools for which specific numbers are available due to the lawsuit sample. Some numbers from the final year of the lawsuit sample are below.
…
Many other selective private colleges will be very different, particularly the NESCAC LACs "
The statement explicitly states that many selective private colleges will be very different, including NESCAC LACs. I don’t see how someone could read the statement and think it applies to Bowdoin or would be used as a reference to Bowdoin, which is a NESCAC LAC.
It would be nice if we had this level of detailed information for Bowdoin as well, but it is not available, so instead we emphasize schools for which the information is available and are of interest (Harvard was a common focus of interest long before the lawsuit publications).
Perhaps you could explain why, @ProfSD, you think admissions at Pomona is so radically different from admissions at Harvard. The applicants greatly overlap. The admissions officers frequently change jobs between these types of schools, and are often alumni of one or the other or a comparable school. What basis do you have for claiming the Harvard experience does not apply?
My point is that the Harvard lawsuit is continually cited as a representation of what happens at every elite college. I realize it’s the only “inside look” we have, but it’s still ONE source. Why is it so difficult for people to acknowledge that? It doesn’t make the information invalid, but it does reveal its limitations.
I prefer arguments that present evidence from more than one source—or at least acknowledge the limited nature of the actual information.
Additional evidence would be most welcome, but since colleges do not provide it willingly, I will take the evidence obtained by court order and extrapolate from that, absent a good reason not to do so. You are of course free to ignore any and all evidence.
Not ignore, just acknowledge the limitations of only having ONE source. If you read my statement, I was clear that it doesn’t make the Harvard lawsuit information invalid. You are of course free to ignore the limitations that come with having only one source.
Of course there are limits to just one source, but my point is, marketing material aside, Harvard is not unique. Nor is Pomona. Elite schools are receiving applications from the same overall pool of applicants, and the process used to evaluate those applications is more similar than dissimilar. Hence the relevance of the Harvard data, for some.
So in terms of being helpful to students and parents looking at under 15% schools, it seems like some takeaways from this and similar threads would be:
If you are a high stats student without a hook, your chances at these schools are much lower than you think they are based on looking at average GPAs and scores.
If you are a high stats student with no hook, typical ECs without leadership, average community service, and who is not an especially good writer, your applications to these schools might be "wasted". Not my word but perhaps time should be spent on other types of schools.
If you are a high stats student without a hook but can put together an overall strong application with great essays, you still have a low chance. However, if you are able to somehow demonstrate your fit for that school (or meet some need or catch someone's attention in an interesting way), you might be one of the lucky few.
The previously quoted first lawsuit reference in this thread explicitly states, “Many other selective private colleges will be very different, particularly the NESCAC LACs.” I don’t see how someone could read this and conclude it is a representation of what happens at every “elite” college. If you are referring to different comments in a different thread about a different topic, with different posters; I’d suggest posting in that thread.
Instead it’s been my experience that forum posts that imply a representation of what happens at all elite colleges rarely list a reference to a specific college, such as a reference to Harvard lawsuit. Instead such posts tend to list no specific colleges and either list no source for the comment or vaguely suggest it is based personal experiences. Without specific source details to review or a specific college listed, the statement is not limited to a specific college, so it is easier to extend the belief to all “elite” colleges.
^^If you are “a high stats student without a hook,” you can be 100% sure you will not be admitted to any college to which you do NOT apply!
Don’t be discouraged. If you think a college would be a good fit for you, apply to it. But do be realistic, also applying to targets and safeties that share some of the characteristics you admire in the colleges to which you are applying that admit such a small percentage of students, yet admit a higher percentage of applicants than these. Then, you will be sure to end up at a college where you can have a great four years.
Put together your best application and give it a try! It is not a “waste” to be ambitious. Yes, some applicants may be favored for reasons (“hooks”) outside your control, but all the top colleges also have many students just like you-- ‘unhooked’ high achievers with enough ambition to apply.
This is where some game theory or Monte Carlo simulations would be helpful to applicants. If you are going to apply to a maximum of 12 colleges, how do you select those 12 colleges to maximize the expected value of the quality of the best college to admit you in a probabilistic sense? The fact that Harvard, for instance, might admit 100-200 average excellent students in the RD round each year is besides the point, if there’s 10,000 other average excellent students just like you competing for those 100-200 spots.