A conceptual issue on admissions probability

interesteddad
Sat, 26 May 2007 14:48:29 +0000

Harvard’s kind of an outlier because there’s no group of schools that it loses yield battles to and because it gets a significant number of “no prayer” applications (regardless of stats). I see hundreds examples here on CC every year, where I read the “what are my chances?” post and wonder why in the world the student would waste $60 applying to Harvard…whether it’s class rank, or just nothing that stands out on the application besides high SAT scores.

At any normal highly selective college, the stats of the accepted students are slightly higher than the enrolled students, which are slightly higher than the applicant pool. But, we are talking fairly small differences…surprisingly small.

The problem is that just having median stats isn’t enough for an unhooked white applicant. A white applicant from a popular region really needs to be at or near the 75th percentile stats to have decent chances. At super selective schools, you would need that PLUS something interesting about the application.

You can’t always predict what a given college will consider “interesting”, but you can separate out a lot of “interesting” applications from cookie-cutter applications. A lot of it has to do with how a special interest is communicated and highlighted. The key is to really think about, “what would make me stand out from the other applicants?”

BTW, an “interesting” application doesn’t have to mean national awards. It can be something on a local level; it just has to be something that makes an adcom say, “wow, I’d really like to have lunch with this kid; he/she sounds like in interesting young adult”. They just get so many cookie-cutter apps that they go numb. For example, I know a kid whose “interesting” thing was that she refused to take the mandatory state high school testing in the 10th grade, organized a protest of the testing at the state legislature, and was denied a high school diploma for her refusal. That’s not the kind of thing many CCers would envision as a “standout EC”, but it demonstrated a degree of spunk that colleges might find interesting.