<p>To me, it seems like the third stage has a lot of randomness to it. Thinking about unhooked candidates and ignoring binding early admission and wait lists and other yield management tricks:</p>
<p>The first stage would be, does this student have the grades and test scores and rigor of course work we are looking for? </p>
<p>The second stage would be, does this student have additional factors that we like? Special talents or experiences? What’s in his resume? Did he write a good essay or two? Do his references say he’s great? Does he seem like someone who would be a good addition to our campus?</p>
<p>The third stage is where it seems random. The admissions committee looks at what the students put in their essays and and looks at their experiences - debated on a national level, played concert violin, saved the whales, fed the children in Appalachia/the inner city, juggled on a unicycle, published a novel, patented an invention, raised younger siblings while working two jobs, was elected mayor, didgeridoo’ed, programmed a great app, a combination of these - every top school says they could fill their freshman class several times over with highly qualified applicants. What makes an admissions committee choose the editor over the ballerina? There are differences between the admissions committees/students applying/students accepted at different colleges of course - think Dartmouth vs Brown - but I see randomness here, and because of this randomness, a student’s odds of admission to a top school of his choice are higher if he applies to eight top schools of his choice than if he applies to 2 top schools of his choice.</p>
<p>Hunt said it first:
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