<p>Oh well, I seem to be making progress. I no longer distort your statements but now simply insult Asians by providing direct quotes from the AUTHOR of the study most everyone relies on to claim DISCRIMINATION in selective college admissions and call for ending policies of Affirmative Action.
But that is a subject that should have been left out of this discussion. After all, enough pixels have been wasted on College Confidential. Not wasted because the subject is not important, but because there is simply no room for reconciliation of the divergent positions. People look at the same data and reach different conclusions, and prefer to elevate mere anecdotes to the level of evidence. </p>
<p>At the end, regardless of the reasons --be it to play admission roulette, be it to hunting trophies, be it to protect themselves from perceived threats-- it remains that people do apply to a great number of colleges. If this is smart or reasonable will always be in the eye of the beholder.</p>
<p>In simple terms, as the admissions at many of the fabulous favorites continue to dip into the single digits and the applicants answer with even more and more applications to ALL of the schools considered to form the elusive Shangri La of education and social climbing, the claims of disproportionate rejections will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, if there was ever one! </p>
<p>sooz, I did understand that your daughter was looking for a college where a hobby can be pursued in addition to primary factor being academics, sorry if this did not come across. I was referring to colleges basing their admissions on sports, a different matter.</p>
<p>Xiggi, it is interesting that Harvardâs admit rate of Asians went up after a federal investigation and Princetonâs after a recent lawsuit. What happened in Berkeley is interesting. The hard evidence on discrimination against Jews? Same is happening to Asians but no there is no hard evidence. And re your quote from The Author, that was not the only author I was referring to.</p>
<p>In any case, thanks for another ad hominem attack by reference to social climbing etc juxtaposed with my comment on disproportionate.</p>
<p>Right, it IS a different matter. I thought this thread was on number of applications and also in creating a college list and college selection and not admissions factors. </p>
<p>The Asian topic also speaks more to admissions factors than college selection and list building.</p>
<p>sooz, one twist though: because of the unpredictability of admissions, which is an admissions matter, the college list, which ought to be more properly based on the kind of fit you talked about, gets contaminated/distorted/whatever to take into account the admissions lottery. In sum, it was difficult, at least for us, to go purely by perfect fit, but to take into account likelihood of admission especially since the signaling value of rankings was also part of our decison making.</p>
<p>I think it is implied that when building a college list, one must take into account the odds of admission!! </p>
<p>As a college counselor myself, I deal with college list building and assessing odds at every school on the list on a regular basis. </p>
<p>Thus, a student needs to build a college list that is balanced in terms of the odds, and not where every school on the list accepts less than 18% of applicants, for example.</p>
<p>This has been an interesting thread so far. Personally I come down a little bit on both sides. I do like the lottery anology for the highly selective schools for the typical quailified but not drop-dead obvious applicant ⊠and this can naturally lead to quite a few reach applications for an applicant interested in attending a school for of very high achieving students ⊠I believe this is a valid desire and can easily lead to 12-15 applications (especially if FA is in the picture).</p>
<p>That said I canât see picking the top of the USNWR listing to pick the schools ⊠which a bunch of folks on CC do each year or pretty close. To me there about 60 top tier schools in the US if you count both research universities and LACs (schools that will serve a studentâs undergraduate experience and post-grad opportunities just fine) ⊠just picking the top of the lists to find the 10 highly selective schools one applies to just seems far to simplistic ⊠I can think of lots of other criteria which will (IMO) match students with schools much better among those 60 schools. </p>
<p>IMO at the core of disagreements on this topic is how accurate and how precise rankings are. Personally I think directionally the USNRW rankings are pretty good however they are certainly not dead on âcorrectâ (there can not be a âcorrectâ ranking of schools) and perhaps more importantly the signifigance of being ranked #5 versus #15 versus #25 is just as not as some folks believe ⊠this gets to the precision of ranking 3000 schools on some subjective factors and with subjective weightings and then giving relevance to to differences in rankings representing 0.03% of the total scale.</p>
<p>Iâve worked in a couple industries for which schools attended made a big difference (consulting and (with) brand marketing) so I get the draw to top schools ⊠but when I see a list that is something like Dartmouth, Brown, Amherst, Colgate Iâm buying the list ⊠when I see MIT, Columbia, Smith, and Middlebury Iâm having a much tougher time with the list ⊠somehow among the 60 schools are a subset of schools in which the student is most likely to thrive the most.</p>
<p>It is only natural that people have different understandings and interpretations for such a study, and there have been heated debates about these interpretations on CC and elsewhere. However, in your [previous</a> post](<a href=âhttp://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065490844-post135.html]previousâ>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065490844-post135.html), you made a criticism not of any interpretation of the study, but rather of the foundation of the study itself, i.e. the âdata poolâ used in the study. Would you kindly enlighten us the flaws you found in the âdata poolâ of this study?</p>
<p>Iâm applying to either three or four. Iâm far too picky to apply to a ton of schools. Plus, I donât want to apply anywhere that I know I wonât like if thatâs my only acceptance.</p>
<p>It does occur to me that we need to be a bit careful in tossing around the âadmissions lotteryâ concept. It is true that at the elite schools, since there are far more good candidates than slots, admissions results are difficult to predict. But, it is certainly far from pure chance. Itâs not the case that all candidates who just spread the net very wide will actually get in. Itâs not a pure roll of the dice.</p>
<p>NCL, rest assured I did not miss your first question in this post:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Since you quoted my post correctly, you should have no problem in recognizing that it contained a simple question posed to Ramaswami. That is a question for him to answer. </p>
<p>I know someone who applied to 16 schools. I also know someone who applied to 13 schools and got rejected from 12. She was accepted to her only safety.</p>
<p>So you donât have any issue with with the data pool used in the study of Espenshade et al., or do you? </p>
<p>My apology to you if I misunderstood your simple question to Ramaswami. So, is it alright for Ramaswami or anyone else who has read Espenshadeâs studies to be comfortable with the data pool?</p>
<p>And I am sorry to waste more time and energy on this Espenshade thing, a subject you first injected into this thread.</p>
<p>There truly are enough threads on CC to debate the Asian admissions issues. </p>
<p>nemom, your post 149 is an excellent point. The odds at the elite schools are slim, but they are not entirely random like a lottery. In my view, if you are a TRUE contender for the elites, you likely wonât get into all of them, but you wonât be entirely closed out, even if your college list is 8. </p>
<p>The example of the kid who applied to 13 and got into only one school, his/her safety, tells me he/she was reaching too high. </p>
<p>An appropriate list for each candidate is essential, as well as a balanced list.</p>
<p>As a personal example, I have a daughter who applied to BFA in Musical Theater programs. Each of these degree programs has single digit acceptance rates (worse than most Ivies). We knew how tough the odds would be. We believed she was an appropriate/competitive contender. We had no idea which schools or how many would accept her but felt pretty confident that she would not be closed out of attending such a program. She applied to 8 and had many choices, much better than ever imagined. But in any case, had she been shut out of all 8, it would have been fair to say she truly wasnât a contender for these highly competitive programs.</p>
<p>I continue to have a hard time following you on this. I have to wonder if you are related to Fabrizio because you seem to share his penchant to ascribe conclusions to others based on their lack of desire to debate something ad nauseam. </p>
<p>Obviously, you are confusing my unwillingness to start a discussion about what I think about the data pool with a blanket agreement that espouses this assumption of yours: âSo you donât have any issue with with the data pool used in the study of Espenshade et al., or do you?â</p>
<p>Fwiw, may I ask you why my views of the study matter to you in any shape or form? This is a discussion forum and not a peer-reviewed or refereed journal.</p>
<p>Do I care what you think? No. But here on this thread, you blasted another poster with statements like this: âShall we also assume that you actually read Prof. Espenshadeâs studies and were comfortable with his data pool?â My unsophisticated reading of your statement is that there must be something wrong with either the data pool itself or for being comfortable with the data pool. And my questions for you were very simple, what is wrong with the data pool? Or that I misunderstood you that there really isnât anything wrong for being comfortable with the data pool? No ascription at all.</p>
<p>On this forum, you seem to relish attacking other posters who disagree with you. But here, when challenged to substantiate your own statement, you are clearly unable or unwilling to defend it. Instead, all you came up with is childish stuff like âThis is a discussion forum and not a peer-reviewed or refereed journalâ and âwhy you care about what I think?â</p>
<p>Iâm going to apply to 8 this year. Boston College EA, then Carleton, Claremont Mckenna, Swarthmore, U Penn, Swarthmore, U Washington, and Western Washington. Pretty happy with my list it still seems a bit high though. I personally know one person who applied to 11, thatâs it (going to Stanford). Most people I know were in the 5-7 range. Nobody crazy like doing 15+.</p>
<p>The better a candidate you are, the more of an increase in chances there is from additional applications. Certainly if you have a 2% chance of getting into a school of a particular level, it is not worth applying to 10 as even with the increase due to additional applications, chance of getting in is still minimal. If you have a 40% chance of getting in, then you very significantly increase your chances by applying to 10 schools at that level. In any case much of the argument must reflect geographic differences. I donât know of any competetive applicant in our wealthy, college-focused, suburban area in metropolitan NY area who applied to fewer than 12 colleges. Literally not one.</p>