Are College Acceptance Rates Truthful?

Applying to College
41

Lookingforward, applying to a school absolutely IS a purchase decision. Money exchanged hands. Time is spent by both parties. Chooses are made (which school do I apply to?).

And surely you are not suggesting that the numbers don’t matter (check most elite schools CDS for clarification on that). Naviance is a helpful tool as it shows clearly how varied the odds are based on test scores/GPA. I took my S20’s scores and the 10 schools he is currently targeting. I eliminated the 2 with an acceptance rate above 25%. Using easy and conservative statistical assumptions (standard deviation, etc.) to eliminate those applicants with virtually no chance of acceptance, the average acceptance rate of 14% (as published by the schools) almost tripled (to 40%). On the flip side, those below my statistical line had <1% acceptance rate. This group of applicants ranged from 30% to 55% of the applicants. Would they have applied had they known their chances of acceptance were almost zero and not the 11-21% stated by the schools? Maybe. Would other students with stronger stats (perhaps those without the benefit of a tool like Naviance or a solid GC?) have applied had they known their chances were actually higher than stated by the schools? Maybe. Probably.

The fact is that the acceptance rate, not broken down by the critically important scores bands, robs applicants of the chance to make the best decisions of choosing schools to apply to. Wealthier schools and districts minimize this impact with tools like Naviance and strong GC departments.

Simple probability is in play, but using the information supplied by schools does not allow accurate probability estimates. Therefore, the schools are not doing what they can to ensure a solid purchase decision by the potential applicants.

42

I’m pretty sure Liberty University’s published acceptance rate of 25% is a lie.

43

@cypresspat …

The assumption is not always accurate, as there are more and more schools that do not charge a fee, do not require any specialized documentation (ie essays), are “test optional” so there is no expense for scores, and are literally a few check-boxes on the common app. This isn’t just mid-tier schools, aspects of this are more common in top tier institutions.

44

Plenty of students get accepted to selective colleges every year, so somebody is able to figure out what the colleges want. It’s not like the colleges hide it from us. They have pages and pages of information on their websites. Why would they want people who need a recipe laid out for them when so many are figuring it out from what’s already out there? I think they expect students to put in some effort and make connections on their own. That sort of effort doesn’t just start when they hit campus. It has to come before.

Colleges aren’t wholly stats driven, so the not so subtle desire to see a rack and stack system or the rigid belief that numbers equal intelligence instead of college readiness is already an indication of a poor fit. I think it’s similar to looking for a job. Companies give a broad picture of what they want in an employee. It’s up to the applicant to research and figure out how they fit, what to show on the application, and what to ask in the interview. If you want to play in the big leagues you have to show some drive. Maybe this is the first hurdle. If we need each and every factor laid out for us in black and white, maybe we’ve already shown we’re not a fit for those schools.

45

@RichInPitt

This is faulty math:

You combine probabilities when there are multiple opportunities to “win”; therefore it is NOT hard to have an average higher than every individual proportion. (Two coin flips, I have a 50% chance of getting heads on the first flip, a 50% chance of getting heads on a second flip, and a 75% chance of getting a heads at least once across the two opportunities.) CMU’s data is exactly how it presents. For each individual school, there is a certain admission rate. For applicants overall (allowing some students an opportunity to apply to up to 2 schools), there was (in 2017) a 17.1% admission rate. Keeping in mind that not every student applies to 2 schools, and the combination of schools vary per applicant, so one can’t use simple combinatorics to determine the overall admission rate without a lot more data.

The way the admission rate by school works is transparent, but an example is helpful. Let’s say a student applies to Tepper business and to Dietrich Social science. Our hypothetical student was admitted into Tepper and was denied at Dietrich. That would count as a NOT ADMIT for Dietrich, and it would count as ADMIT for Dietrich. Nevertheless, that applicant would count as one of the 17.1% who was admitted to CMU that year.

46

So why do so many colleges feel a need to lie, @austinmshauri? Why all the fudging with spring admits and incomplete applications? Why not just release the information they are required to file with Moody’s for financial rating purposes-that data has the best chance of being accurate, since it carries criminal penalties for inaccuracy. Why one set of data for the financial regulators and other data for the rest of us?

47

I’d like to see the profile (e.g., 50% range of SAT/ACT) for applicants, admitted students, and actually enrolled students. It would be very revealing.

48

IIRC, some of the schools that lied with statistics (CMC, Emory to name a few) got caught and had to take the academic version of the walk of shame. Also, typically the stats released in the spring are the stats of the accepted/admitted class, whereas the stats published on their CDS in the fall are the entering class stats (enrolled students).

49

Hamilton provides these figures. You can see, for example, that it loses about 1/2 a composite ACT point and about 45 total SAT points from admitted applicants to enrolled students.

https://www.hamilton.edu/admission/apply/class-profile

50

@Empireapple , that can work both ways though. My daughter got an offer from a college that she tried unsuccessfully to withdraw an application from.

Apart from what counts as a complete application, there also seems to be inconsistencies with how various admits are considered. It appears that some colleges don’t count first semester or first year away as part of their fall admits - is this a fact or just assumption? Because I know at the college my daughter is going to, first year abroad students are definitely included in the fall admit number. ( I don’t know about spring admits, but most or all of their spring admits seem to come off the waitlist anyway.)

I’m also on the fence about the emphasis placed by applicants on this data. Is it useful to know because it helps your student figure out how many colleges they should attend/whether a particular college is a match, reach or safety? Yes. But so often I see people just using the data to brag about getting an admit at a selective college, and then I just roll my eyes.

51

No, they aren’t. And lots of them are doing what they can to gin up their application rates through heavy marketing to kids they have no intention of accepting.

I think that this is overstated. There are bands of acceptance rates, and variables within them (eg, legacy, ‘hooks’). And, the ‘holistic’ thing is not a complete sham: every year we see (both irl and on CC) students for whom the consensus is that there is no hope of their getting into X school/group of schools- and then they do, usually b/c of variables that we don’t see (an attention-getting essay, an LoR that rounds out the quantitative picture, etc).

Your points have some merit… at the tip-top end of the scale. Get past those with higher than (say) 35% acceptance rates and it becomes pretty easy to chance your student’s likelihood of acceptance. But of course, in the Groucho Marx vein of “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that wants me as a member”, many of us are dismissive of the ones that would be delighted to have us. We buy into the status symbol element, for which we are prepared to make wildly uneconomic choices, that there is something irreproducible and life-determining about the experience of the more famous name (despite many, many studies to the contrary) that our student has / “deserves” to have.

It is messy, and I absolutely understand (having been through it a fair few times now) how frustrating and painful and tough a process the messiness and uncertainty is. I have watched the sucker punch that a rejection from a match school can bring.

But I have also watched the college admissions system in other countries, where either pretty much everybody gets in and it’s Game of Thrones as to who stays in, or it is completely transparent and the only variable is how you score on specific test(s) on specific day(s), so that all of your secondary school work comes down to that exam. It is not messy, it is transparent, and it is completely “fair”. And In its own way, it is just as hard on the kids.

In the end, I have watched that sucker-punched kid pull themselves together, step up and grow up and take charge of the available choices- because the system, for all its faults, has choices. We have all seen students on CC do the same thing. Sometimes real life is messy and opaque and hard and the “best” decision is hard to figure out. As ever, the Princess Bride has an apt quote: “Anyone who tries to tell you different is trying to sell you something”.

Learning to navigate this semi-opaque, messy, hard system is for many of our beloved children part of their move into the adult world. Because that is where they are headed, no matter what their third level path.

52

@roycroftmom

They lie because you have admissions directors and departments who have performance metrics and personal compensation attached to the process.

No “high performing” admissions director wants fewer applications or lower yield. USNews built an industry around rankings, and the schools played the game.

Once the game was underway, technology propelled the insanity. The common app is to blame for much of the stupidity, as it enables almost no effort applications. The testing services like it, because they sell more results to schools.

In ancient times (the 1900’s), applications were a major effort. Nobody used to apply to all 8 Ivy schools, but now it’s a five hundred dollar gamble on a $250k investment…insignificant if you land one (or more). That ignores the reality that if you want to study something in particular (say engineering), you might be better off at a flagship. Everyone is crazy.

The bigger problem may be ahead…you have a generation who will soon be hiring employees based on the biases they held up as religion whey they applied to colleges. Try explaining to a late-20’s first-time manager that they would be better off with a 3.8 regional public U varsity athlete than the 2.6 philosophy major from their Ivy.

Why lie…because it plays into almost everyone’s narrative of performance, success, intelligence, and opportunity.

53

My question would be “What does it really matter?” Is a school a better school if they’re receiving more applications? No. Is your kid less likely to get into a school if they’re encouraging every kid with a 2.0 in the country to apply? No. If a school has a 35% or a 22% acceptance rate does that really change the odds of your particular kid getting in? It’s so much more complicated than that.

Look at the Common Data Set. Assume the stats of those who were admitted are slightly but not radically higher, than those who are attending. Know that there are some kids who will be privileged in admissions, such as recruited athletes and legacies and that it’s not fair. Life seldom is. If you have Naviance, use it. It will likely be more accurate for your kid than any general source on the internet. Learn about schools and what makes them tick. Find schools that are good matches for what your child has to offer. Don’t take every mailer as a sign that a school will find your kid admissible. Trust that there’s a great school for every kid; it might just not be the school you go into the process thinking it will be.

54

@merc81 - that’s a great example.

Hamilton will publish a 36% yield on their 21% acceptance rate, but half of the class is ED.

If you eliminated ED and the yield was the same, they would have to accept 2,190 students (at a yield of 21%) to get the 482 students enrolled. 2,190 would put the acceptance rate at 35%. I appreciate the ED kids are athletes and other hooks that would influence the math, but imagine if colleges didn’t have ED to build their sports programs? What if they had to offer admissions to everyone without guarantees?

One way to energize the game in favor of the schools is to inflate selectivity numbers.

55

@EyeVeee: I follow your math, but not your premises. ED simply represents a structured option for students for whom a college would be a first choice. If the structure were eliminated, the preference would remain for many of the applicants who would have applied ED.

56

@cypresspat It’s not all about stats, your son’s or your calculations. In holistic, the whole matters. It’s essential. He will be reviewed for his app, will compete with contenders, not those who are inadequate or whose apps are.

And if you don’t like something, don’t “purchase” the app fee. You/he make these choices, right. So don’t choose to apply.

In holistic, you can’t play off mathematical guesses (or, at least, no more than the vague, “maybe.”) You have to know what the college is about, to match him. And for kids who crapshoot, even with top stats, there is NO better shot. Adcom and readers can spsot the mis-match, a poor Why Us, and more.

And colleges like Stanford, Dart, Princeton, and Brown, probably more, have been offering acceptance rates by stats bands. Do you see in those how the vast majority of top stats kids do get rejected? Does that make you want to figure out what the issue might really be?

In the end, it is not “simple probability.” It’s a mistake to choose that way and forget “qualified” or “compelling” means much more.

Your decisions should not rest on stats. That’s what craphoot is.

Caveat Emptor is Buyer Beware.

57

This actually explains the numbers on some of the non-selective schools. My alma mater (and several even less selective schools) shows about 75% acceptance, but I think if you meet the published minimum requirements it is probably 100%. The 25% must be incomplete applications and kids who don’t take the required classes or take a flyer on getting in even if they have a 14 on the ACT.

58

Roycroftmom, why are YOU so inclined to call it “lying?”

Why do so many families spend their energy in the wrong directions? Why do so many kids think their chances rest on Naviance (not) or stats or hs glory? These colleges are building their own communities. You need to show how you fit those. Not stop at where you fall in the matriculated stats reports. Not take the simplistic view of, “Oh, Yale wants leaders and I founded the recycling effort.”

Posters need to stop promoting “just be you” and realize you apply for consideration and no value is “he only did what interested him.” Not in the least. Look at the number of chance threads where a kid emphasizes stats and some titles and other posters go gaga. “You’ll get in…” They fail to look further. Look at how many on CC say not to take classes because the college expects it. You get kids way off the rails.

We love our kids and believe in them, but there’s no auto admit in holistic. Adcoms review your app. Your app and what you did for 3.5 years represent choices, which reflect thinking. And effort. And match or not.

So how’s it help you to know why Johnny got rejected? The focus should be on your own kid’s match, how he knows the target, he has the goods and can show it, in every section of the app.

And not just what HE wants.

59

@lookingforward: “Do you understand the proof of match rests on the kid’s app and you’re free to walk if any part is unclear?”

Always among my favorite commenters, even when we are on different sides of that bullet, 'cause I always think twice and three times about what you’ve said, and how you’ve said it.

60

Some other colleges publish applicant/admit/enrolled numbers (including GPA as well as test scores):

UCLA: http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof18.htm
USC: http://admission.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/Freshman-Profile-2019.pdf