Why it's so hard to get into an under 15% acceptance rate school

Applying to College
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The problem is that no one knows if their story is a “waste of an app” as you say.

Unlike a lottery where everyone has an equal, extremely remote chance, college admissions to top schools is all about humans (adcoms) being influenced and persuaded by an applicants unique and compelling application, essays, ECs, interview, balanced against the colleges institutional needs and since not one application is exactly identical to the other, something in the app might trigger an acceptance.

IMO, if you have the stats to be competitive and have researched the college to make sure it’s a good fit (academically, financially, and socially), why not give it your best shot and apply. These kids work so hard in high school (and really since middle school/elementary school) they should take a shot at a reach college or two. The application fee is relatively small compared to the total cost of college and if it really is a hardship, they can wave the fee.

The bigger issue to me is that kids don’t do their own detailed research on colleges and apply to every Ivy League college and other top 20s without understanding which ones are the best for fit them.

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However, those with knowledgeable well-connected counselors (in elite prep schools, or a small subset of independent college counselors) may have a big head start in knowing which reach schools are more likely for them and which are less likely for them. Indeed, as discussed previously, the elite prep school counselors steer students away from unrealistic reaches toward more likely reaches (that may actually be matches for the specific student based on factors not captured by the usual stat ranges or known generally, but are known to the knowledgeable well-connected counselors).

However, the colleges that are the best fit for the applicant many not necessarily be the ones that see the applicant as the best fit for the college. In some cases, the opposite may be true. For example, if the college has a very oversubscribed computer science department with international recognition as a great department, many prospective computer science majors will see it as a great fit for them. But the college may not want to overload its computer science department even more, so it may see applicants aiming for its less popular departments as better fits for it. (Similar observations can be made on demographic characteristics – some colleges have shortages of particular demographics and recruit them heavily, but applicants of those demographics may be reluctant to apply to or attend such colleges because they do not want to be the “only one” there.)

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If you listen to the podcasts mentioned in the new Dave Barry thread, it was very revealing. Listen to the one from the former Dartmouth’s reader, the Smith advisor and especially the one from Penn.

You will see that each school has a very distinct style.

The types of kids who apply to the wrong one for their personality would be a big mistake.

The importance of the essay at Dartmouth and the stats focus some of the schools at Penn and less so for another school at penn.

apply to the wrong one and it’s a big problem.

They don’t offer you another school if Wharton or engineering says no as an example.

Listening to these that I believe @lookingforward is 100 percent right in his or her posts as an AO.

They all want to see the personality of the student to make them envision them and how quickly they read an application.

How once the grade threshold is met, they spend much more time trying to see who the student is a package.

The recs ecs and activity sheets are so important to them. In fact, these are more important than anything when all of the serious candidates have equal or near equal academics. They want to make sure you can handle the workload. Once that’s confirmed it appears it rests on all the other components to get to a yes.

So for me, it really emphasized that it’s a fit issue, all things being equal.

You really need to know your strengths and match them to schools that look for these.

Wharton is leadership. Engineering at penn is research ecs and pen nursing is service to others.

One requires calc bc 100 percent. The other requires all the ap physics too. Nursing prefers ap. stats

The top schools and counselors know this and that may be a big part of the advantage. Also having the resources to offer these opportunities early in the high school process to start building the resume to match the student’s focus.

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I would expect that every nursing school in the country wants service to others, and every business school expects leadership.

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The other big a ha moment related to ED. And the economic advantage of being able to do so.

They say ED if at all possible.

“There’s nothing more deceptive than an obvious clue.” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,)

They are just getting started and are really energized and refreshed for Ed.

They have so fewer files to read they really take their time with each one.

Also ecs appear novel when it’s the first time seeing it and perhaps by the 25th time in RD it just doesn’t stand out as much. They are humans after all.

Big eye opening reminder about time with the file and that they are raring to go at that stage.

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It’s not that hard to know if your story is a wasted app. Are you hooked? Are you an athlete that could potentially play at the college level? Do you have some extraordinary accomplishments like performing on Broadway or a top level musician or a unique story like David Hogg? Are your stats almost perfect? Do you attend one of the select Ivy feeder schools? If the answer is no to all of the above, apps to sub-10% schools are a waste.

Reaches, with a 1 in 5 shot for a particular applicant, should be applied to. Reaches should not be replaced with lottery schools with a 1 in 50 shot for the individual applicant.

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This website ranks high schools by the number that graduate from Harvard, Princeton, and MIT. https://www.polarislist.com/

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My point was it’s not a lottery where the odds are millions to one. Even at 50-1, if you have a reach college it’s ok to apply.

As I listed on another thread, my D20 got into a top 10 college without being hooked, having any extraordinary accomplishments, or going to the right high school. If she used your standard listed above she should not have applied to any reach colleges because it’s a “wasted appt for the first few years I’d ”. Thank god she didn’t listen to your advice.

For highly selective colleges, “holistic” (and maybe early decision / single choice early action) is a key concept as it allows you to make the argument why a particular college should choose you over another applicant.

Maybe I just hate the words “crapshoot, lottery, or random process” as I believe college admissions is far from it.

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I have a question. How many schools have sub 15% acceptance rates? Maybe 50 or so? Those schools make up less than 2% of 4 year institutions and probably matriculate maybe 100-150K new students a year out of the millions of recent high school grads. The anxiety that I sometimes see on CC threads is scary to even read.

Parent of a kid with the most infamous hook (URM) who applied to and got into the one sub 15% acceptance rate school applied to. Thank you @Lindagaf for trying to talk through the “why” behind the low acceptance rates, but what I see on CC at times makes me uncomfortable with the stakes presented in the “College Admissions Arms Race” and getting into those sub 15% acceptance rate schools.

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My daughter graduated from a private day school in NYC. The school she graduated from has one of the best exmissions to the leading Universities in the country. This was absolutely not part of the process. The College Adviser would never bring another students application into the picture in regards to a particular student’s application. In my daughter’s graduation year they had 7 girls go to Harvard. Another year this happened at Yale, Columbia…The focus is on the students fit, accomplishments, etc.

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The IPEDS database includes 2,949 4-year degree granting colleges in the United States. The following 36 colleges are listed as having a sub 15% acceptance rate in 2018-19, so roughly 1% of 4-year colleges. ~1% of US HS graduates attend these 36 colleges. They make up ~3% of US 4-year college enrolled students (not including HS grads who start at community college or no college) and make up ~7% of US 4-year college applications. The vast majority of high achieving kids do not apply to any of these colleges, particularly high achieving students who are not also high income .

4% – Stanford
5% – Curtis Music, Dallas Nursing, Harvard, Princeton
6% – Columbia, Yale
7% – Caltech, MIT, Chicago
8% – Brown, Julliard, Northwestern Pomona, Penn
9% – CMC, Dartmouth, Duke, Navy, Swarthmore
10% – Bowdoin, Vanderbilt
11% – Air Force, Cornell, JHU, Rice, West Point
12% – Ozarks
13% – Amherst, Colby, Pitzer, USC, Williams
14% – Barnard, Harvey Mudd, UCLA

The colleges with the largest numbers of applications were as follows. The only college that appears on both lists is UCLA. UCLA has a different application and enrollment pattern than most of the other low acceptance rate privates, including a larger portion who are not high income students.

  1. UCLA -- 114k
  2. UCSD -- 98k
  3. UCI -- 95k
  4. UCSB -- 92k
  5. UCB -- 90k
  6. UCD -- 78k
  7. NYU -- 72k
  8. CSU:LB -- 70k
  9. SDSU -- 69k
  10. Michigan -- 65k
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This is a great point. My daughter is in her first year at an Ivy. She graduated from an Private Prep School in NYC. Because of various reasons, I can honestly say she would be at her Ivy without attending her Prep School. It was startling to see the girls who have attended this school since K at roughly 50k per year with dreams of attending HYPMSC and this was not the outcome. Yes, about 40% of the graduates did matriculate into the Ivies or equivalent. Yet, that leaves 60% of it’s graduates whose families paid over 600k hoping for the same outcome and it didn’t happen. I agree that the GC does a marvelous job of shifting expectations to other options Senior year.

I will say the benefits of this education is absolutely realized once the student reaches College. My daughter said the coursework is no harder or easier than her Prep School, and she is at an Ivy consider by most to be the most rigorous in terms of workload. So, she was absolutely prepared. Being a student athlete has it’s challenges, so I can’t imagine how unbelievably challenging her first year would be without this preparation.

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There appears to be significant variation at different HSs. The earlier Crimson article implied that ~45% of the Andover senior + post graduate class applied to Harvard. I doubt the GCs thought ~half the Andover class were all good fits for Harvard and steered them in that direction. I also doubt that the GCs thought ~half of the Andover class had a decent chance of being admitted.

I was also accepted unhooked to what was at the time (not recent) sub 15% admit rate colleges without any of the listed criteria – to Stanford, MIT, and Ivies. The problem with using a simple wasted app if not meeting uncommon x, y, or z criteria is holistic college admission depends on more than just uncommon x, y, and z criteria; so there will be a lot of exceptions and a lot of individual students who have much higher chance of acceptance that the very low average for their subgroup. If you want to avoid these exceptions, then you’d need to use looser guidelines of what is a wasted app.

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I can say, having a daughter who is a recruited athlete at an Ivy, that athletes outside of the revenue sports with B’s won’t get admitted to an Ivy. These athletes have to have the same GPA’s, high board exams scores as a typical admit. If they do, they are guaranteed admission with being a recruit. This is the HUGE benefit of being a recruited athlete.

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I’m sure that the majority of those applicants are equally qualified. It’s a crapshoot who the AO will select. My point is the GC wouldn’t dissuad applicants from applying because other students were from my experience.

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I agree that it does not appear the GCs were dissuading a lot of Andover students from applying to Harvard. My comment was more in response to the other quoted post which mentions dissuading. Different GCs in different HSs have different policies and styles. I don’t think it’s “a crapshoot” or random, but who will be accepted is often not obvious, even to GCs. However, I’d expect GCs can predict that a good portion of applicants are extremely likely to be rejected, including some of the ~half of the senior class that applied.

Recruited athletes are generally pre-screened and are one of the few groups that can often expect to be accepted, if they pass the pre-screen, but they also have other benefits. The Ivy League athletic conference recruitment rules allow an athlete average academic index (AI is a calculation based on GPA + score stats) of up to 1 standard deviation below the overall school average academic index. There are also limits by team. For example, football is allowed a certain numbers of players in each SD band, rather than allowing all players to have an AI at the bottom of the class, even though it is probably revenue generating. Some teams have a lower average AI than others, but I’d expect all teams average below the non-athlete average.

For example, in the Harvard lawsuit sample, more than 3/4 of athlete admits had a 3+ academic rating, which is highly correlated with having stats well below the non-athlete student body average, as well as much below the hooked LDC student body average. Those more than 3/4 of athletes with especially low stats compared to the non-athlete student body were not all in the very few revenue generating sports. However, I’d agree that few athletes have B averages and/or are not capable of doing well in standard Harvard courses. I’ll use Princeton as an example since Harvard listed weighted GPA in the CDS. Princeton’s CDS indicates only 5% of the class had B GPAs (below 3.5 UW). Even if all of those 5% were athletes, the majority of athletes would still fall in to the 3.5+ UW average GPA group.

There is also minority of athletes who have AI stats on par with or above the non-athlete average. There was 1 recruited athlete in the lawsuit sample who even had the maximum academic rating of 1, which is quite rare among admits, regardless of athletic/hook status. Harvard’s expert in the lawsuit calculated that ~7% of athlete admits would have still have been admitted in an admission system without hooks, except for low SES.

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Very nice…excellent work.

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You are just wrong. Like I said my daughter is a recruited athlete and I know the requirements. I know the scores she had to have to get admitted to her University, and I know elite performers in her sport that had to attend great schools like Penn St, Ohio St, St. Johns because they didn’t have the strong academics. Your point is applicable to revenue sports like football. I specifically said non revenue sports.

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^Dangerous to make flat out statements based on personal anecdotes. Different sports have different AI targets at different Ivy League schools. We had academic threshold discussions with 3 Ivy League schools, 2 of which were HYP, for D’s non-revenue sport. The ACT target thrown out was at or below the 25th percentile based on the CDS. Also the targets set by the coaches may vary with the individual athlete since they have to manage their team AI average based on what the AD has set for them ( a super talented recruit may be given a lower target because the coach can likely find a high AI recruit(s) to balance it out. No question certain sports (the revenue sports) have lower team AI targets (and the band system practically guarantees this), but there is clearly leeway for non-revenue sports. The Harvard data that @Data10 cited is actual across a statistically significant number set.

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Its amusing how some posters have full faith in adcom’s ability, wisdom and fairness to pick best suited applicants.