College admission unpredictable

Applying to College
41

Although a college BFA (musical theater in this case) is a bit different due to the audition and prescreen process, I’ll use it to illustrate the point many are making.

D is applying and will audition to 20 schools (the artistic equivalent to the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Vandy, Rice, U Chicago, Northwestern, CMU, etc. - yes she has some more realistic options too…) It is entirely possible (in fact likely from a pure statistics perspective) she’ll be shut out. However, my guess is she’ll get accepted to one or two. We have NO idea which ones ahead of auditions. WHo knows what they are looking for? Essentially they’re being cast for the next four yrs. Do they already have enough petite meso sopranos? If so, she’s out. If she was gunning for a particular school it would almost certainly lead to failure when they only take 20-30 out of 1000 kids. But, most kids get in somewhere. So expanding the circle should help provided she’d be happy at any of them.

Cast a wide net if you’re shooting for highly selective schools. Get comfortable with the idea of possibly being shut out. Have a great safety or two in the bag (that you’re kid would be happy at once the dust settles.)

42

“No one could have at the outset. College admissions at “holistic” colleges are simply predictably unpredictable.”

I recall that chance me post and the reason it was unpredictable was the gender and race of the applicant, ie Asian male for CS, the toughest to predict. If applicant was female or another race, I would have had no issue predicting the applicant would have been accepted everywhere.

My post from that thread was this “I thought you’d get into most of your colleges outside of Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, where I figured you’d get into one or two”

43

^He’s a Tahitian, not really an ORM.

44

Speculation over why you got rejected from a selective university is linear thinking and it doesn’t help anything or anyone. The simple fact is that they have more applicants than they can accommodate.

45

@1NJParent I for got about GoBears2023. He eventually did come off the wl for MIT. So he is the perfect example, as he got into every Ivy he applied to (except Cornell) and MIT and Stanford but didn’t get into a host of “lesser” schools.

46

I don’t read chance me threads. I also don’t think whether random people on the Internet are good at predicting admissions decisions has much relevance to whether admissions are unpredictable.

Skimming through the thread, I see that he was accepted to all 5 of HYPSM (M via waitlist). If the decisions were really random and unpredictable, we wouldn’t see that degree of correlation between admission to 5 of the most selective, lowest admit rate colleges in the United States. We could estimate ratings ranges in each of the Harvard admissions reading rating score categories mentioned in the lawsuits, and based on those ratings estimate range of chance of admission and standard deviation (accuracy) of that chance estimate. However, I see little point to go through this exercise, given that he was accepted, which seems to meet the expectation Similarly he was accepted to the other colleges that have been named in this thread (Stanford and MIT), so little point in discussing those cases in detail.

The more interesting cases would be the unexpected decisions. Why wasn’t he accepted everywhere? For example, why was he rejected by Cornell, which is often thought of as the least selective Ivy when he was accepted to HYPSM + Penn + Brown, which are all generally thought of as more selective.

I haven’t looked at Cornell admissions in detail, so I couldn’t tell you much about Cornell admission system besides what is listed in public information, such as their website and CDS. That said, one important factor is that Cornell has widely varying degrees of selectivity among different schools, and likely to a lesser extent majors; while most of HYPSM… do not. Cornell may be less selective as whole than HTPSM…, but the gap is likely much smaller among prospective CS majors. This is an important factor, but is not enough to fully explain or predict the decision in isolation.

Another possible factor is the interview. He says that his first “real interview” was with Brown, and the Cornell one was just for info. This might suggest a weaker interview with Cornell or lack of one. Perhaps with the lack of “real interview”, he was unable to show the non-academic criteria that Cornell emphasizes on the admission page of their website, such as character, involvement, and good reasons for choosing Cornell. Another possible factor is he applied early for Cornell, but not the other schools. Perhaps some of the impressive qualifications where not available at the time of his Cornell application, but were available for others. There are many possible explanations.

I very much doubt that Cornell admission officers are making largely random or whimsical decisions. Instead they most likely have laid out process with numerical ratings in specific categories (both academic and non-academic), like Harvard and Stanford. And admissions decisions can be largely predictable with sufficient knowledge of this process and sufficient information about the application…

47

Actually, GoBears2023’s outcome serves as a perfect example of predictability. Cornell ED acceptance would have required Cornell to offer him a full ride. He had a hook—being Tahitian, who can be counted as native/indigenous american—but Cornell wasn’t in a position to be as financially generous as HYPS (MIT is also not as rich as HYPS).

On this board, for whatever reason, people tend to downplay the significance of hooks by advising applicants to choose much less selective schools than they actually deserve.

In GoBears case, if he was full pay, given his super strong resume, he could have gotten in every school he applied to.

48

Unpredictability doesn’t imply randomness. Admissions could be methodical but still unpredictable.

The most selective Cornell school (CoE) is still less selective than HYPSM.

Cornell interview isn’t “evaluative”, according to its CDS. It’s only for information purpose.

Cornell, MIT or CMU SCS are all need-blind. FA isn’t a factor in admissions.

49

“Cornell, MIT or CMU SCS are all need-blind. FA isn’t a factor in admissions.”

That’s what so many schools advertise, but in reality not all of them are in a position to be truly need blind.

The AOs are fully aware how many full rides they can give out each admission cycle, especially during ED because its 100% yield rate. Cornell ED full ride may all go to RA and Questbridge etc.

50

^I don’t know what your claim is based on. CMU doesn’t have to meet applicant’s full need, so it doesn’t really matter to them. MIT and Cornell are both genuinely need blind by all accounts.

51

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
The thread is starting to get a little debate-y (and repetitive) and becoming a repository for anecdotes (the plural of which is not data).

But let’s not attempt to derail the thread with the millionth iteration of “is Need-blind real?”

52

Pacific Islander, I believe.

53

I thought my post was clear. Repeating my earlier statement, “admissions decisions can be largely predictable with sufficient knowledge of this process and sufficient information about the application.”

How do you know this? Among Cornell CoE class of 2022, male applicants had a 6% admit rate, which is on par with HYPS overall admit rates – lower than the overall Yale class of 2022 admit rate. Test score ranges for this CoE group were higher than the overall averages for some of HYPS, although I haven’t seen the latter program down my engineering vs non-engineering. I wouldn’t assume that Yale engineering is more selective than Cornell engineering, and I certainly wouldn’t assume that this Yale > Cornell selectivity applies to all subgroups of engineering students.

The CDS does not say interviews are “only for information purpose.” Instead the CDS says interviews are mandatory for some applicants – “Required of Some” for admission in section D5. Different Cornell sub-colleges use interviews differently. CoE does not have mandatory interviews. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t assume that CoE interviews have no influence on admissions.

54

^See this link: https://blogs.cornell.edu/admissions/2014/11/24/alumni-interviews/

Also this: https://caaan.admissions.cornell.edu/Guidelines&BestPractices.pdf

It should be clear that interviews are “informational”, not “evaluative”.

55

I generally agree with @Data10 that college admissions is very predictable when you peel back the onion and look at the data, there is a method to the madness. What we don’t see through data are the more subjective factors like the myriad ECs, personal essays/supplementals, letters of recommendation, and now popular 2 minute videos that are read and seen by humans who can be swayed by such additional information. We also don’t see the occasional mistakes, grammatical/punctuation errors, or bad choice of topic for the “Why” essay which could have been one of the reasons GoBears2023 was rejected by UW but accepted to Harvard and MIT? There is a logic behind acceptances, but we only see the end results, not how the result came to be.

Lastly, I think there is a tendency by parents on CC to rationalize why “little Suzy” didn’t get accepted to “selective college X” by suggesting that college admissions is just random, unpredictable, a lottery, etc. when in reality Suzy never really had a realistic chance and didn’t have the whole package to begin with to get an acceptance. I truly believe that adcoms know what they are doing and have a very thorough and logical process they follow to build their freshman class to have the right balance of students every year.

56

^I don’t think anyone claims (at least thus far) that college admissions are random. But that doesn’t mean they’re predictable. Lack of randomness and unpredictability aren’t mutually exclusive.

If college admissions are as predictive as some of you claim, perhaps you should be in the college admission counseling business. Lots of applicants and their families would love some certainty.

57

Its more of probabilities then it is of certainty or randomness, we know that higher scores/grades make it more probable to get accepted. Some applications are so strong that the probability would exceed a 95% threshold, some are so weak that they have less then a 1% chance. The best you can hope for is some probability of acceptance, not any certainty.

58

Maybe you haven’t read my thread I started last year where there are many posters that think it’s “dumb luck” : )

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2051934-is-getting-into-a-top-college-a-crap-shoot-or-dumb-luck.html#latest

59

The most competitive school at Cornell is now Dyson School with a 3% acceptance rate.

I think why so many feel college admission is unpredictable is because we don’t have access to the bigger picture. Schools are trying to balance their class geographically, by major, socioeconomically, by ECs, etc… Only the schools themselves have access to that information. That also means that the kids from over represented locations and for the most popular majors can’t predict if they are the ones that are going to balance out the class the way the college wants or if they will be disappointed in the Spring.

60

Having watched UMich admissions here on CC for a couple years, I just wanted to point out that roughly 40,000 kids apply EA to UMich. UMich accepts roughly 8,000, or half of the total admits, as EA applicants. They accept many high stat students and they defer many high stat students. I’m sure there’s a methodolgy, since like most schools, they’re building a diversified class.