(Harvard lawsuit) from the NYT:
These practices were generally known or suspected but the details were hidden. It is probably correct to extrapolate these “secrets” to many competitive private colleges.
The average admit rate for this unhooked subgroup is almost always much lower than the overall admit rate for the college. The chance of admission for individual unhooked applicants varies wildly. A large portion of applicants will have effectively 0% chance of admissions. Some will have a high chance of admission, that is much higher than suggested by looking at average admit rate for GPA and scores. Much of the decision depends on other factors besides GPA and scores, so how strong an applicant is in non-stat factors often has a big influence on chance of admission.
Again, it might be a “low chance” or a “high chance.” The bulk of the decision is not random, so I wouldn’t phrase being admitted as being “lucky.”
A more fair statement might be, the average admit rate for unhooked kids at highly selective colleges is often far lower the overall admit rate for the college. At <15% admit rate colleges, “far lower” may extend well in to single digit numbers – less than 1 in 10. This is especially true for RD applicants. For example, during the Harvard lawsuit period, unhooked Harvard RD applicants only had a 2.7% admit rate. Specific admit rates will differ for other colleges.
With such a low acceptance rate, the very small minority of unhooked applicants who are admitted are not average applicants within the pool. They often excel in multiple admission criteria compared to the applicant pool, beyond just having excellent GPA and score stats. Those additional criteria are often impressive within a national pool, having things that couldn’t be said about many/any other applicants from your HS. There are many possible contributing factors to these acceptances, and many different colleges and college departments emphasize different types of criteria.
“Fit” is one of many relevant factors in decisions, which includes things like having an application that matches well with the field to which you are applying, and showing you are truly passionate and knowledgeable about the college, rather than applying primarily because it is a <15% admit rate school. It also may include college specific “personal qualities/character” type factors. MIT gives a good summary of some of the additional factors they look for at https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/what-we-look-for/ . Various other colleges will differ.
Don’t burst some of these folks bubble on views - logic is not what they want. They would like to believe that it is luck that gets a student in (especially if their student doesn’t get the nod) as how could they have denied Jr. - he was as good as so and so…wasn’t he? Perhaps the admission folks flip a coin on the last few in? Sure - go with that if it makes you feel better.
The admission folks do the best job they can looking to build the class that the university wants - that is the bottom line. If your student can present themselves in their best light and feel strongly that it is a fit with university then apply and take a shot. Don’t be discouraged - take your best shot!!
Realize a 15% rate means 1 out of 6-7 not one out of 2-3. And also realize applying to 13 15% acceptance schools doesn’t mean that you will get into 2 of them by way of default. Spread out applications to the reach, target and safety schools - if the only schools that fit your desires are all <15% acceptance schools figure out what is driving that - are there programs that those schools offer that no one else does? Maybe but probably not.
Note that the applicant’s idea of “fit” is not necessarily the same as the college’s idea of “fit”, and it is the latter that matters for admission purposes. Indeed, in some cases, the notions of “fit” can be the opposite of each other. For example, a college with a world-renowned CS department may be overloaded with CS majors while other departments are begging for students, so it may find that applicants interested in other majors “fit” its goals better applicants intending CS (or whose applications suggest a strong likelihood of CS even if they list their intended major as something else).
A few observations:
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Too often we confuse admit rate with probability of admission. The two are far from the same thing. Without data on the underlying applicant pool, admit rate tells us very little. Sub-15% admit rates mean different things for different schools.
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Without detailed cross-admit data, we can’t infer correlations of admissions to different schools, and therefore, no joint probability of admission to multiple schools. No computation or simulation is possible. We know admissions to two different schools are never fully correlated or fully uncorrelated.
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Finding a true “fit”, especially from the college’s perspective, increases one’s probability of admission, but to different degrees and in different ways for different colleges.
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Probabilities of admission to nearly all top holistic colleges are low for almost all unhooked applicants because of the sheer number of applicants who are led to believe they have a chance and a significant number of seats that are essentially “reserved” for applicants of various hooks and early applicants.
Well, it’s because the admission rate is 15% or below. When you have an admit rate that low, after a certain point, all the applications start looking identical. It’s 2 parts lottery and 1 part competition. 20 years ago, scoring a perfect on the SAT made news headlines. Now, it’s been dumbed down to where any kid in the top 15% can get a perfect score, so therefore they should apply to Harvard.
Admission not following SAT scores well does not mean it’s mostly a lottery. Instead it suggests the admission decision depends on other criteria beyond SAT scores. As selectivity increases and colleges have far more excellent stat applicants than they could possibly admit, non-stat criteria tends to weigh increasingly more in admission decisions. Performance in non-stat criteria is less visible to applicants and less easy to compare among applicants whose decision is known. This can give the appearance of admission decisions being mostly random.
^While it is not a random lottery, certainly a luck factor is involved.
I look at three students I know about- similar stats, similar demographics, even similar extracurriculars. Each of them ended up at a different one of the Amherst, Bowdoin, Williams trio. It would be hard to find three more similar colleges.
Why, for instance, would one of these students be accepted to Amherst but not Williams? It is not necessarily that the Amherst student “fit” better at Amherst. After all, those three colleges are pretty similar. I honestly think that, in most cases, someone who would be happy and thrive at one of these colleges would be happy and thrive at either of the other two as well.
In the particular mix of applicants being reviewed at a certain time, each of these colleges gave the nod to a different student. Who knows why? It could have had to do with the order in which applications were reviewed— one college may already have accepted enough students of that type, whereas the other college was still open to looking for students like that. One can only speculate.
That, in my mind, is one of the best reasons to apply early decision. Why not be accepted as an oboe player, a student from Nevada, a legacy, a URM, a first gen student, a potential walk-on cross country runner… before the college has already found plenty of other oboe players, Nevada residents, legacies, etc. in the ED round?
[[Of course, ED is not a foolproof strategy either, and there are stories on CC of kids being deferred from Williams and then accepted to Amherst (or being deferred SCEA from Yale and then accepted to Harvard). It happens. And of course more students are accepted in the RD round than the ED round.]]
But that is why people use the term ‘lottery.’ It is not a random lottery-like process, but rather the admissions officers are deliberate and sincere. Yet, individual results can seem random, because there is indeed a factor of luck. Who reads your application, and when do they read it?
Admissions officers have different personalities, so different ones may react differently to the ‘soft’ factors (essay, extracurriculars, etc.) of the same application.
Which day (the first, the fourteenth, the thirtieth?) or time of day (first thing in the morning, late in the day?) is your application read? Which applications proceeded it?
Admissions is not an exact science.
Admissions is not based purely on random luck.
Admissions is not based solely on hooks.
To say that admissions is any of those three things is an oversimplification of the process.
Yes, there are hooks. Yes, there is some attempt at some science with ranking methodologies and with reference to studies about who is likely both to matriculate and to graduate. Yes, luck plays a role.
Admissions officers face a huge number of applications from qualified applicants, with many applicants able to fill each niche they might consider. At how many info sessions have you heard, “We have to reject many applicants who are fully qualified and would do very well as students here,” or, “If we replaced our stack of accepted applicants with a similar stack of rejected applicants, we would have a very similar class”? You hear this so often because it is most likely true.
I think it is important to keep this in mind, especially if you are rejected somewhere. Being rejected does not mean that you were not a strong applicant or that you would not have done well at the college had you been admitted. Hold your head up high, and be excited to attend one of the colleges to which you have been admitted. Odds are, if you go in with a positive attitude, you will have a great four years!
“But, I find it unlikely that other recruits in a non revenue sport like Golf, fencing, etc would have a different experience than ours as my daughter was one of the highly sought out recruits in her graduating year.”
I have many anecdotes about athletes that play non-revenue sports at ivies and Stanford that refute your conclusion. You do not need the same level of stats and grades as a non-athletes. This doesn’t mean that you can get in with a 3.0/24 say, but you don’t need a 4.0/35, that’s for sure.
From an admissions perspective, the 3 colleges have some major differences. For example, Bowdoin is test optional, while Amherst and Williams are not test optional. ~1/3 of the entering class at Bowdoin applied test optional, so being test optional impacts a good portion of applicants. Bowdoin is also the only one of the 3 that says it considers interviews in admission decisions. Bowdoin’s specific wording is, “a personal interview is strongly encouraged.” Being test optional may increase the relative weighting and influence of non-test portions of the application, including the interview. Bowdoin is also the only one of the 3 that offers ED II, which probably relates to why Bowdoin’s ED admit rate is much lower than the others.
Williams has won the NACDA Director’s Cup for best overall in Div III athletics during 19 of the past 20 years, including each of the past 7 years. The others are no where near as successful in athletics as Williams. Bowdoin is particularly weaker. This has implications about relative athletic influence at the 3 colleges. Nearly 40% of students at Williams are varsity athletes, so degree of advantage for athletes has impacts a good portion of applicants, as does connections with coaches. Williams is also the only one of the 3 that says it considers religious affiliation in admission decisions, although the CDS may not be accurate, as this is unusual.
The 3 college websites all mention emphasizing different non-stat portions of the application. I have no way to verify how accurate such statements are, but I’d expect that the 3 colleges use a different admission system, including things like rating students in different admission categories and emphasizing those different categories to different degrees. The colleges also have notably different major distributions, institutional needs, and admit pools.
In short, there are many possible reasons why one of the 3 similar stat students you mentioned might end up at Bowdoin, Amherst, and Williams instead of all at the same college. This is especially true if some of the 3 students did not apply to each of the 3 colleges, or were accepted to multiple colleges… The order the applications are read and who happens to be the admission reader(s) can certainly be random elements, but I wouldn’t assume that is the primary reason why a particular student attended Bowdoin rather than Amherst/Williams, or similar.
Instead I’d expect that if you randomized the order (still keeping ED and RD pools separate) and swapped out the admission readers with a different set, the vast majority of applications would have the same decision. Some students would get accepted to Bowdoin nearly every time, while being rejected from Williams and Amherst. While others would get accepted to Williams nearly every time, while being rejected from Bowdoin and Amherst.
Way back when, there were certain schools that had a reputation for preferring applicants who were spectacular in one area (“super pointy”) while others supposedly preferred the students who were “a jack of all trades” (well-rounded). While I don’t think the line between the two was ever that bright, this did seem to be borne out in the alumni from these schools that I know. It does seem quite likely that different schools value different profiles and attributes, so assuming that every highly selective school will behave as Harvard does doesn’t really make sense.
I like @Data10 's breakdown of the 3 schools. All very selective, but each with a slightly different emphasis.
You don’t need a 4.0/35 as a non athlete. And, I just don’t believe you “have many anecdotes of fencers, squash, Golfers, getting in with ACT’s less than a 32.
Wanted to add, if you know “many” recruited athletes to the Ivies, then you must know how incredibly challenging it is to be at that level athletically and simultaneously academically. The AOs do as well.
“You’re also being evaluated holistically for “fit”, and if you don’t have that, your odds are lower.”
That’s pretty vague and not going to make students that were rejected feel better. Things like holistic, fit, craft a class, don’t really make much sense with teenagers. To them, a rejection is personal, that’s how they think. Saying to a teenager that’s been rejected, that admissions is holistic will not make them feel better, especially if their peers have been admitted to those schools. This research done by psychiatrists and neurologists far smarter than me pretty much says teenagers will look to peers first for validation, not adults. If they didn’t get in, and their peers did, nothing an adult says will change how they feel, however well intentioned.
I am friends with the parents of two recruited athletes who attend Ivy League schools…neither one plays a revenue sport.
The first student had a 3.9 weighted and an ACT score of 32. The second had a 4.0 weighted and an ACT score of 31.
I have a family member who was looking at several Ivy equivalent schools (Duke etc) as a recruited athlete. One school told him to try and aim for a 31 on the ACT.
Agreed…being an athlete at this level is challenging in ways that we can’t imagine. I have watched these families dedicate their lives, time, support etc since their kids were just about 3 or 4 years old. One family in particular…their kid was never part of the school environment. She spent all of her free time practicing…she missed all birthday parties, school dances, etc. Her mother took her to practice…an hour away…at 4:00 am and then drove her to school…every single day …for 12 years.
The challenges, strength, dedication that these families have…is unbelievable to me.
It is a voluntary EC, so let’s not make too much of the sacrifice- and I do have a relative who played a nonrevenue sport at an Ivy. Yes, she chose to dedicate a lot of time and effort to it (but in her case, she also had a normal social life). She recognized that it was a choice, and that she was privileged to be able to make that choice, just as some devote effort to beloved music or are passionate about debate.
Yes it’s a choice…agreed. And in my opinion it’s a choice that many in the family need to be on board with. I have seen this choice fall apart as senior year approaches…suddenly the interest isn’t there from one.
I have a colleague whose daughter is passionate about music…as is her entire family. She played in Carnegie Hall more than once. I have seen what that entails. I know another young lady…an extremely talented ballerina. She attended practice every day until 11:00 pm and still managed to graduate HS as #3 in the class. She joined a dance company.
Your post shows you don’t know what level an athlete has to reach to be recruited to an Ivy, nor what it takes. It’s absurd beyond measure that you would compare it to being passionate about debate. It’s not in the same galaxy.
Absolutely. I can attest to all of this.
Would you mind sharing the sports? Great post. Thank you for sharing.