<p>Or 4) she needed significant FA.</p>
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<p>I can see why this vexes you, but wouldn’t it be simpler to chalk it up to “everything can’t be explained or predicted”? It seems unlikely that, in spite of the pages of commentary here, MIT is going to deem anyone an auto-admit. Suppose WE all stipulate to the likelihood that MIT makes a few questionable calls each season, what then? Is this a process in which no error is tolerable?</p>
<p>QM, I certainly understand your point. It’s just that, in a pool of exceptionally qualified applicants, subjected to a holistic review, opinions can legitimately vary as to which applicants constitute the top 5%…of the applicant pool, of the matriculated pool… </p>
<p>That is easily seen in the fact that not all the same applicants are accepted or rejected by all of the super elite schools—a lot of applicants get in to one or some, but not all of, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Duke,University of Chicago, etc—each of these schools with microscopic admissions rates does not measure the “best” applicants in an identical way.</p>
<p>It is quite possible that the supplements for specific schools were not as thought provoking as others too when you are filling out so many separate supplements. </p>
<p>My kid was in at two top 10 schools in EA, waitlisted at a third. USC early admission results came out late January and she was not admitted while someone considered more average from the school was admitted with a quarter scholarship. Essentially this meant the full scholarship at USC was off the table since only early admits were being qualified for the interviews. Kid walked in and freaked out saying my commonapp essay must be totally flawed and I am not getting anywhere else if USC did not think me worthy enough. Was in a foul mood for two weeks until a likely showed up from another top 10 school - universe was back in alignment and USC just did not know what they were doing right? What if USC just figured the kid was not worthy of a full scholarship consideration and hence did not need an early admit (prequalified for a half if admitted due to national merit). </p>
<p>One also has to remember there are different people at different schools reading the apps with their own idiosyncracies. If we put Quantmech, Pizzagirl, lookingforward and mythmom on a single admissions team, I would really be puzzled at how they will reach a consensus. :D</p>
<p>Everybody’s complaint is really concerning HYPSM, viewed as the holy grail. There are just not enough seats available for all the qualified students.</p>
<p>It’s always good to reflect on and question the process. Although these elite institutions are private, they hold a certain place in the educational establishment, and thus they have a profound influence on all educational institutions. What they do matters and impacts society as a whole.</p>
<p>Given that these are academic institutions, even those most firmly wedded to holistic admission would hope that academic achievement is privileged in the admissions process. In looking at least at the mid 50 percentile for most of these elite institutions, it sure does look like academic achievement is very important.</p>
<p>But I think that some here worry, not that it looks like academic achievement is not important, but that in some cases, it’s not holding the weight/privilege that it should. And so there is a question of how that impacts their primary mission. So you wrote a personal statement that fell flat to some members of the selection committee, but you are clearly one of the most academically talented applicants, and based on your recommendations and other achievements, have the potential to do fantastic work in your field. How much weight in the admissions process should that statement have in the final decision?</p>
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<p>Maybe we should get these four together to vote, pull some chance-me applicants and run a simulation on a separate thread? The debate could be truly interesting and might give us great insight into the real admissions process. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the very last round looks more like a horse-traders’ swapfest than a discussion at an elite British gentlemen’s club.</p>
<p>Sure. We all have our own biases. The assumption is - since it’s a group process - that it all comes out in the wash in the end. You’ve got an adcom who has a soft spot for underprivileged rural kids, you’ve got one who has a soft spot for varsity athletes, one who has a soft spot for angular kids, etc. Maybe I’m pollyanna-ish, but I think that most of these decisions are made in good faith.</p>
<p>Hmmm . . . an admissions team consisting of Pizzagirl, lookingforward, mythmom and me, and you’re looking for consensus? There might be some 3-1 votes with different team members in the minority each time, but I doubt that there would be much consensus.</p>
<p>I do think the decisions are made in good faith. I think even Marilee Jones was acting in good faith in terms of the admissions decisions she made. I just think that a number of the decisions were based on a deeply flawed philosophy. It didn’t affect a lot of the decisions, but it did affect some.</p>
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<p>Isn’t that self-correcting though? If they don’t admit enough academically-up-there students, their reputation will suffer and the value of their degrees will go down.</p>
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<p>In the business world, I’ve hired many times and had to build consensus when different interviewers held different opinions of a candidate. As with anything, I’m sure there are horse-trades going on, and that’s ok.</p>
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<p>I would actually be surprised if you did NOT reach a consensus more often than not. I think it is probably more obvious than we, on the outside, really think. I mean, I assume there are some tough calls, like LIpssum’s kid, who had a really challenging case to make in an unsupported situation, but probably there are more “knowns” than we “know.” I think the schools are going for something very specific, and I don’t think it is nearly as arbitrary as it seems from here. I say this as someone from an area where 98% of the kids go off to four year colleges and a larger than average number go to the top 25’s, and by christmas break, most kids, not all, obviously, but most are very happy with where they ended up.</p>
<p>^Despite the claim of full FA packages as needed, I wonder if some decisions involve FA considerations. Spreading the wealth truly makes sense for a college if they can admit 5 partial need kids over 1 full need when they don’t have enough to spare.</p>
<p>Yes, I suspect that does play a role, texaspg.</p>
<p>yes, I think that plays into it, no matter what is being said, but not for the reasons I would automatically assume. I think the schools want a certain number of kids from well connected families, for good reason, and that generally comes with a certain amount of financial good fortune, as well. I’m sure there is an approximate mix of “fates” being sought by all the committees, and they know the recipe. </p>
<p>That is not to say I believe that some kids aren’t edged out by the sheer volume of qualified apps from their area, or specialty, or socio-economic class or gender, or what have you. Clearly when you get into the single or low double digit acceptance percentages, you are talking luck: luck of geography, luck of good genes, luck of family, luck of talent. There is no way anyone makes it into these schools without a certain amount of good fortune.</p>
<p>But, I still think, with rare exception (and this kid would be a red flag kid, imho), the top students in the country will be accepted to at least one top 25. If not, something went wrong along the way, and the kid might be well served to do some community service for a year and reapply.</p>
<p>Beliavsky --</p>
<p>Will read the paper, but at Thomas Jefferson in NOVA, for example, each class has about 450 students and last year 20-plus (23 stated earlier on this board) were admitted to MIT alone. That does not sound like much of a disadvantage re attending a top school.</p>
<p>Thomas Jefferson in NoVa is beyond just being a top school. It is a STEM breeding ground.</p>
<p>^It depends on how many top students they take from other schools. TJ is a magnet school. If everybody there was the top 1 or 2 people at their home school, then it may be harder to get in through TJ. They had 6 USAMO qualifiers last year and their average SAT is slightly above 1400/1600 I believe.
When I went to a magnet school, I knew it would be more competitive, but the presumption is if you are an academic star there admission to top schools becomes much more probable. </p>
<p>With respect to TJ in particular, I’ve heard that the top students have trouble getting into MIT, according to someone on the Caltech board. I have no personal knowledge of this.</p>
<p>Beliavsky,</p>
<p>Thanks for posting the article from 2001. The study assumed SAT scores alone = merit. It also relied on Hernandez and the Ivy academic index, which other posters have assured me is not used by the Ivies anymore (although I think top schools use some variant at least as a cut-off for unhooked applicants), to make the point that because the AI places significant weight on class rank students not quite at the top are at a d/a coming from star HS’s. </p>
<p>Yet, Hernandez undercuts this claim of top HS students being d/a stating that *t is not harder to get accepted from a strong high school like Stuyvesant because even though Dartmouth receives over one hundred applications a year, it typically accepts 30 to 35 percent, since many are extremely qualified academically. Also, at the time of this study (and since then too) Stuyvesant did well at the Ivies – (quoting the article) “from its 700 graduates in 1997, 21 went on to Harvard, 20 went to Yale, 43 went to Columbia, and 103 went to Cornell” and so over 180/700 got into one of 4 Ivies (not including the 30 to 35% admitted to Dartmouth). </p>
<p>The study then somewhat simplistically concludes that “Nevertheless it is harder. The test scores of students who are admitted to Dartmouth (and to other Ivy League schools) from exam schools are substantially higher than the colleges norm”. </p>
<p>Assuming this is true, why isn’t it perfectly reasonable for a college looking at potential to compare more favorably the 1400 kid from rural SC or urban DC with the 1500 kid from Stuvyesant given the resource advantages favoring the latter? Although I know you are a strong advocate that SAT’s correlate with IQ, wouldn’t you also agree that at best it is an imperfect correlation and that resource and opportunity advantages (not to mention coaching) can elevate SAT scores unlike with IQ tests.</p>
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<p>And they don’t like packaging. But, I think a look over by lookingforward would be really helpful to the applicants. However, that would be unfair to heavily packaged applicants and to other colleges where many of the unpackaged kids ended up at. End result: where one goes to college isn’t that important.</p>
<p>The following is fitting to this thread.</p>
<p>“Genius” is a word thrown around pretty loosely and shouldn’t be, but if it applies to anybody, it applies to Steve Jobs. He actually wasn’t the smartest person in the digital revolution. Bill Gates had more conventional mental-processing power than Steve did in terms of analyzing information and data. But Steve Jobs had an intuitive genius, and that genius comes not just from being smart but from being imaginative and creative. And making leaps that come from thinking differently. … [We] don’t even know that Steve could do math. - Isaacson and Huey, latest Fortune.</p>
<p>Could Jobs make into a top college?</p>