Yet you’re so certain there are more. Based on? Gut?
@lookingforward: “URMs need to qualify, as well, when it comes to top colleges. It’s a bit dismissive to assume the colleges go after anyone just for being URM. They need to match, too.”
Gee, Margie. Where’ve you been all my life?
?
“It’d be one thing if the college claimed a 50% admit rate but the real rate was <20%. That would affect application strategy.”
It’s not really a college claiming anything, it’s just that ED in particular leads to inaccurate acceptance rates, but it’s tough to say whether a college is misleading students, GCs and parents. Take Dartmouth, for class of 2022, the ED rate was 25%, similar to other colleges that use ED, that sounds like a really good deal. Then Dartmouth says in a pr that the acceptance rate for class of 2022 is 9% (rounded). That doesn’t sound so good, especially when you take out the ED admits, the actual RD rate is 7%, which is pretty yucky. But 25% and 7% is not a rounding error, rejecting 75 students vs 93 is significant. Then people say, the athletes, the legacies, questbridge are all in ED, but most people don’t know that, I’m not even sure people the real RD rate. All they see is 25 and 9 and plan accordingly.
“Kids miss the recommended coursework, can’t write a Why Us, miss college curriculum info or actual majors or programs offered.”
You really think that the kids from bay area or CA did not write a good Why Us essay or did not follow the recommended coursework or don’t know the majors at Stanford? Many of these kids have taken the summer program done research with a professor, they can articulate why they’re a good fit for Stanford and vice versa. Doesn’t mean they’ll get in, but that’s not the reason. Or put it another way, they can write a good Why Us for Yale or MIT but not Stanford? No, at that level of applicant, the institutional needs - first-gen, athlete, legacy, urm win out and it’s not because the applicant forgot to take a fourth year of language.
“Rather like the cheating scandal, if Harvard and Yale are implicated, there is a good chance Princeton is too”
I’m not sure on that, the scandal needed universities that place emphasis on athletics and have coaches that can be bribed, maybe another ivy sure, but probably not a place like MIT or Cal Tech.
So, after there have been post after post complaining that Ivies purposefully inflate their acceptance rates and how bad that is, this thread comes along complaining that colleges deflate their acceptance rates, and how bad THAT is.
I can see that inflating may, kin some cases, cause somebody to submit an ED application which is really too far a shot, because while, as @theloniusmonk points out, 25% is reasonable chance for a reach, it isn’t worthwhile to “waste” one’s ED on a 12% acceptance rate.
However, I cannot see how college claiming that its acceptance rate is 19%, even though it’s really 23%, will have a negative impact on applicants.
Lookingforward, you keep insisting that prospects focus on what does ‘improve their chances.’ Some characteristics are fixed (GPA) some are not (essay). The fixed characteristics are extraordinarily strong predictors at one part of the distribution (usually the lower end) and often not at other parts (higher end). But the schools do not publish what that distribution looks like. (Naviance does on a limited basis and some other services try using self reports). That information is FAR more predictive than anything else and is more important for a prospect to make a solid decision on whether or not to apply, because they do not know if they are in the ‘my scores are highly predictive of my getting rejected’ part of the distribution or ‘i am in the ball park with my scores and so now other things matter.’ For many applicants, their fixed characteristics take them out of the game. The schools can provide this information if they wanted to, but they don’t. And, as a business, they are free to do that. But don’t suggest that significant numbers of students are not admitted because they didn’t bother to learn the more subtle things the schools are asking for in prospects. The numbers don’t support that at all.
It is clear from analysis (which is what I do for a living in higher ed) that for elite schools the majority of applicants had a near-zero chance of acceptance; the demarcation lines are very clear to someone like me with the actual data. Those who are ‘above the line’ create the real consideration pool. Within that pool your chance of acceptance is then related to many other factors, some within the control of the applicant, some not. The schools retain the power of access to this information, as is their right. But many students make bad decisions without the benefit of this info, and the schools know that, too. None of this shocks anyone who frequents CC.
Where does it end? Schools provide a plethora of data but there’s always a cry for more. How many matrices should publicly available admissions stats be broken down by?
Gender
Race
Age (too old or too young at some schools)
Financial need (none vs. a little FA needed vs. a lot of FA needed)
US or international
State or region of the US
In state vs. OOS (for public schools)
Legacy
Recruited athlete
Development Case
Faculty child
Dean’s list (e.g, child of a trustee)
Celebrity
Economic disadvantage
Other hardship (e.g, childhood illness or dying parent)
First gen to college
ED
EA
RD
Special talent (e.g. Olympic hopeful or published author)
Audition performance in schools requiring audition
Major academic awards won
Number of transferable credits
Timing of application (schools that run out of rolling admission spots)
Strength of EC’s
Strength of recommendations
Strength of essays (writing itself)
Essay topic
Disability
Affinity group
Language spoken in the home
Unweighted GPA
Weighted GPA
Course rigor
Courses taken (e.g., do you have 3 years of a language?)
Number of AP’s taken, and rigor of those courses
AP scores
National Merit Scholar status
Questbridge applicant
Dual enrollment grades
Valedictorian/ Salutatorian status
Top 5%, Top 10%, top quartile, top half
Type of high school (public, independent, religious, home school, specialized, etc.)
Overall strength of high school
Standardized test scores
Applying test optional or test flexible
Interview
Whether the applicant visited campus
Overall showing of interest
Character
Religion
Work or volunteer experience
Leadership
Intended major
Anything missing from the application
Willingness to be a January or special program admit
And of course all of these factors intersect. A white soccer playing first gen. full pay girl from a public school in Montana with a 3.6/1400 who wants to study CS does not have the same chances as a legacy Asian boy from Manhattan who plays the oboe at a high level, took DE classes at the local CC, has a 3.8/1300, wants to study classics and needs FA, but which will be privileged over the other will depend on the particular needs of the school to which they’re applying.
Cypresspat, ime, for an elite, the pool of applicants past first cut is nearly all strong(est) stats and (basic) rigor. In holistic, for the more competitive colleges, after ensuring the basics are there, it does lead to more attention to non stats aspects. My advice to kids is to learn what is under their control. It’s ultimately a qualitative process. No, they can’t control institutional needs. (And I’m frank about that.) But it’s also something that, for an applicant, can’t be predicted from numbers. An app, LoRs, possible interview stand in the way.
From my perspective, there are things an applicant can or should do, beyond stats, to have a better shot. I think that’s often missed on CC. Or argued against.
When you look at colleges that show admit rates by stats bands, yes, higher stats yield a highe rate. But don’t miss the number of top stats kids rejected. At P, almost 92%. That’s not all institutional shaping.
The recent focus, on several threads, is the Early admit rates. The fact more get an admit isn’t simply because they applied early or had the stats. Nor that the U revealed more data on sub categories. It still rests on passing this holistic muster. It rests on the actual full app pkg.
Harvard Westlake,a private LA high school, at one point at least, broke down their admissions into college by hooked compared to nonhooked. The difference was startling, and probably caused several to reassess their application strategy. At one Ivy, I recall 11 students were admitted in the prior 3 years from HW, but 9 of those were hooked in some way. Very helpful for applicants deciding where and whether to ED, etc.
HW isn’t just another private hs.
“From my perspective, there are things an applicant can or should do, beyond stats, to have a better shot. I think that’s often missed on CC. Or argued against.”
If we are talking about getting into elite schools, I don’t think anyone on CC would argue with this. In fact, I would go further and say there are things beyond stats that an applicant must do to have any shot of getting in. Some of these things are in the application itself (LOR’s and essays). Other things (unique EC’s, special talents etc …) are years in the making. Bottom line, there has to be something that separates you from the pack, and no amount of perfect stats will separate you from the pack.
So? Regardless where it comes from, the example just illustrates how numbers are misleading if they aren’t stratified by categories and given in the proper context.
I realize that, looking forward. And it still is important to those kids to know whether 11 of their friends like them got into the Ivy, or really only 2 friends like them did. Because even at HW, hooks matter a whole lot, and statistics can be very misleading.
These recent posts all feed into the idea that we should teach — rather groom — our kids at an early age to be focused on getting into a highly elite college. This is so unhealthy for kids who should be exploring. The obsession with having our kids focus on one sport is an example. We tell them that this will look good on their college application, and as a result, they forgo an activity that they are passionate about. We are signaling to them not to be authentic because we fear that who they actually are won’t get them into an elite college. So they work incredibly hard to check all the “right” boxes in the hope that they get the golden ticket. The irony is that these kids may get into an elite school but they may have lost their authentic selves in the process. And they may be spending many of their adult years figuring that out. Or more immediately, they may have imposter syndrome at their elite college. I told my D not to do an activity if the ONLY reason she would be doing it was to get into a good college. I don’t regret that because it enabled her to develop her passions. It is a fallacy to teach our kids that going to an elite college will be the golden ticket to a successful life. When they graduate from whatever college they chose, they will be a more intelligent and articulate version of themselves. And they will need to make their way in our complicated world and hopefully have the internal resilience and grace to meet life’s challenges. Giving them the constant message that they’re not enough — which I fear this competitive college process generates—may ironically limit their ability to have a meaningful and successful life.
@Curieuse, I don’t think anyone is doubting that. But it is still helpful to 17 year old seniors to accurately judge where and how to apply to colleges if they can rely in part on meaningful statistics. Even if they haven’t given a thought to college before then, come October, they need to decide whether to apply early decision or not, for example.
@roycroftmom Agree whole-heartedly (which is why I initiated the post). Colleges should explain the criteria used in their acceptance rates. An earlier post indicated that there isn’t a current legal requirement governing disclosure of this statistic. Perhaps there is no specific statute regulating colleges, but in California at least there are many statutes governing consumer protection and truth in marketing.
“whether 11 of their friends like them got into the Ivy, or really only 2 friends like them did,”
First reaction: yow.
HW does groom kids.
There’s belief out there that hs kids are too young to develop true and time tested “passions.” The attitude on CC is that whatever can be called a passion. But we’re talking about college apps. We are. And your app should be relevant to what the targets seek. Anyone look at the Duke link?
Just a thought: these type of analyses could be perfect for a unit in AP Stats. (‘Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics’.)
@curieuse I don’t think many people who have gone through the process would disagree with post #152. And while it is critical for parents to explain that where you go does not determine what you can do or who you will be, the elite privates feed into a lot of bad misperceptions. My parents and siblings with young kids can’t understand why my kids (99%tile scores, straight As, all-region+ athletes, elected government etc) aren’t at Stanford or Harvard. The lack of transparency for unhooked admissions slots is mind blowing once you face those numbers… (likely something like 40,000 kids applied for 400 unhooked slots at Harvard). Also, I can’t tell you how many white/asian upper middle class kids I’ve heard applied to Duke not being in the top 10% of the class, not even top 5% test scores thinking they had a chance since there were “holistic” admissions.
I’ve heard complaints from both sides. “Elite X gave my kid false hope. The nerve!” and “Elite X was snobby and told my kid they basically had no chance. The nerve!”
Honestly, I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have the stats that are available all be based on the same data, and no shenanigans with manipulating the numbers.
Even if colleges aren’t going to be transparent with every last variable, the admission rates should all be calculated the same way (or note the way in which it’s different.) The student’s SAT/ACT/GPA data should also be for the entire incoming class (no hiding some of the lower scores by having them start later, hello USC), and no inflating alumni giving to goose your ranking, etc. (https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/05/23/university-oklahoma-stripped-us-news-ranking-supplying-false)
Of course stats shouldn’t be the main factor when deciding a college list, but they do help make sure it’s a good mix. There is enough out there students have to research, on top taking standardized tests and doing their homework! Not everyone has a CC parent to parse all this stuff for them. The numbers they get from the schools themselves should be standard and as accurate as possible.