<p>It would help us understand the odds if colleges publish their datamore in details, not just overall. There may be fewer angry students and parents as well if they knew going in what to expect. I may be foolish enough to think 10% admit rate is doable but if I knew it is actually 1-2% in my group, I probably wouldn’t bother. It will be a great public service for minor efforts.</p>
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18+ years of donations is the argument. They do send a letter telling alumni that their kids may not get in–but that would have not had any impact on my willingness to donate more money if my kid had been rejected by my alma mater.</p>
<p>poetgrl, one kid applied in 2007 the other in 2010. One was accepted at Harvard double legacy, but rejected at MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and waitlisted at Harvey Mudd. He had stellar stats, but I wouldn’t say he had a perfect application - I had no problem with the rejections - well except MIT maybe and that had more to do with the person running admission at the time the infamous Marilee Jones and what seemed to me her somewhat misplaced priorities. Younger son was rejected by a bunch of super reaches including the double legacy school, but they were long shots so no harm no foul.</p>
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Then why did my financial-aid needing kids get accepted to so many colleges? Collectively they applied to 21 colleges, and I never saw a rejection letter until the very last day of the admissions cycle for my younger kid. That letter was from Brown. I honestly don’t think that Brown rejected my d. because of the money thing; I think it was the qualifications thing. </p>
<p>I have a feeling your daughter got into all colleges where she applied because (a) she used good judgment in selecting her colleges, and (b) she’s probably a wonderful student who submitted a strong and compelling application. She made a positive impression on everyone. You should be proud of your daughter, but unless you offered to fund buildings as the colleges where she was accepted, don’t sell her short by assuming your bank account was the part the colleges found attractive.</p>
<p>I do think your financial status gave your daughter many advantages – not least of which would have been the ability to apply to colleges that do not meet full need, which may have provided a wider array of choices. So no denying that money is an advantage. But the money thing was never a barrier to getting admitted for my kids. (However, the financial aid thing was often a barrier to attendance. My d’s top choice was NYU. They admitted her. I’m sure you can guess why she didn’t go.)</p>
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<p>Those factors change the statistical odds of the overall pool. The need-blind colleges couldn’t care less if any given applicant they accept needs aid – they do care about the overall percentage of aid-needing students they admit. If they need to have 50% of their class be full-pay, they structure their admission process, including marketing, to help ensure that they will end up, year after year, with the same overall statistical breakdown between full-pay students and aid-getting students.</p>
<p>They aren’t looking at the zip code when reviewing an individual application. They are looking at the zip code when they send out their marketing material, and there is a reason why they send their admission reps to visit private schools but not inner city high schools.</p>
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<p>Right. Which makes all the moaning and groaning about URM’s, by rich suburban families whose high schools MERIT visits from the top 20 (or however many) schools each year, even more annoying. Really now?</p>
<p>A lot of colleges do “outreach” in their own nearby city, which I think is great, and if that meant sacrificing my own upper middle class kid to The Horrorz of going to Brandeis or Macalester instead of Northwestern so that some diamond-in-the-rough in an inner city Chicago school can have a chance, oh well, so be it.</p>
<p>Well, yes, absolutely “so be it.” But, honestly, if you look at the link I posted, there aren’t a tremendous number of those inner city kids displacing those from upper incomes. fully a quarter of the accepted class have parents with income above 250,000 per year at NU and her peer institutions, and once you hit 60,000 per year, the percentage of accepted kids is smaller and smaller, and vanishingly small at the very lowest parental income range.</p>
<p>The real hidden issue, I think, is the wait lists. I think schools just have no idea who is going to matriculate. NU, for example, has underpredicted for several years now…</p>
<p>I think the whole thing is as tricky on the admissions side as it is on the application side, right now, for some reason. I’m just trying to figure out the reason.</p>
<p>I suppose it is as simple as an earlier poster noted, probably just the common app.</p>
<p>I’m not angry, but just generally confused by the entire college admission process. I got into Drexel’s Honor college with a nice merit scholarship and GWU with a nice merit scholarship (my number 2 and number 1 school, respectively), but I did not get into Penn State, my #3 school.</p>
<p>No big deal, since I got into the other two and wouldn’t fathom going to PSU, it is just a little shocking to not get into your safety, but get into your top choices. Weird!</p>
<p>Anyway, good luck!</p>
<p>^^^ Why would anyone pick a safety school that he/she “wouldn’t fathom” going to? The choice of a safety is about the most important part of the whole process. I guess Penn State was the smart one here…</p>
<p>Penn State probably was the smart one here. Because you know they look so hard into each application. Hahaha xD</p>
<p>This happened to my friend last year. He ended up applying to a state school in a neighboring state that was still accepting applications around this time, and now he’s attending that school. Haven’t touched base with him to see if he is planning on transferring to a school he likes more, or if he ended up really liking the school he ended up at, but the point is there are still options that you can take.</p>
<p>And like has previously been mentioned, you can still get off the waitlist!</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Penn State main campus is significantly more selective than Drexel or GWU. It doesn’t surprise me that a student would be accepted to the latter two and not the former. That doesn’t mean it’s better, by the way, but it’s very popular and can be picky about the students it accepts.</p></li>
<li><p>Several people here, over a number of years, have reported hearing Harvard admissions people say that their internal reviews have shown that Yale legacies and Princeton legacies – who are practically identical to Harvard legacies in terms of their stats and demography – are accepted at Harvard at approximately the same rate as Harvard legacies, notwithstanding that Harvard supposedly has a mild preference program for its own legacies, and does not consciously try to attract Y/P legacies.</p></li>
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<p>The point is that maybe legacies get admitted at a high rate because they are strong candidates with a realistic idea of what it takes to get accepted (i.e., weak legacies don’t apply unless they have some kind of negotiated guarantee).</p>
<p>In my son’s high school cohort, we knew seven legacies and maybe ten non-legacies who applied to Yale. One legacy and one non-legacy were accepted. Rejected legacies were accepted at places like Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Oxford, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Georgetown, so they weren’t exactly chopped liver. The accepted legacy – who was deferred EA – was accepted everywhere she applied RD.</p>
<p>Penn State has a 54% acceptance rate, while GWU is 33%, so that does surprise me.</p>
<p>Fortunately for me, my favorite school was pretty much a safety, but I still applied for reaches. Spend a lot of time looking at schools that statistically might be below your stats.</p>
<p>Given the alchemy of the admissions process, I, too, would not be surprised by a GWU acceptance and a PSU rejection, but PSU is not more selective.</p>
<p>GWU: 33% accepted, SAT ranges CR: 600-690, M: 610-690, W: 620-710
PSU (U Park): 54% accepted, SAT ranges CR: 530-630, M: 570-680, W: 520-630</p>
<p>GWU has become quite popular, and thus quite picky, over the last few years. Drexel’s admissions profile, on the other hand, is much closer to PSU’s.</p>
<p>MDdad2012: I also opted to do the summer program, which is supposed to increase your chance. ACT 31 and GPA 3.5/4.1 (uw/w). Not exactly sure what affected it, but it is water under the bridge now.</p>
<p>GW’s acceptance rate of 33% is deceptive. They accept a large number ED - I have heard the actual RD is closer to 20% or less (this was 3 years ago when D applied and talking to the director of admission at orientation).</p>
<p>To wmurphy - this year has seen many stories similar to your own. We have a good friend who was rejected to his safety after acceptances to prestigious LAC’s (along with a note to increase his academics and try for a transfer LOL!) It was obvious the school had no idea about his current high school’s top US academic ranking. </p>
<p>I also think a big part of the admissions this year is that counselors are trying factor in fit along with everything else. No longer about the stats. Truly a crazy year.
Congrats on your acceptances. If you have any GW questions, please feel free to pm me.</p>
<p>Using the most recent CDS, I calculated GWU’s ED admission rate to be about 36% and responsible for about 12% of its admits. RD rate was about 32.6% for 2011.</p>
<p>Agree with Hunt and JHS re: legacy preference. Just by example there was a recent thread on the Yale board about a disgruntled alum whose legacy kid with superb stats was rejected from Yale and accepted to Harvard. Rather than think the legacy status will get their kid in, those parents who interview and see everyone they interviewed rejected for years are likely to be much more realistic about their kid’s admissions chances. There are lots of reasons why the legacy applicants are stronger on paper but some of this is selection bias.</p>
<p>A friend of mine used to have fun with probabilities. Re: admissions, he’d say, you have a 50-50 chance. You either get in or you don’t.</p>