And, following on from this excellent analysis, the high achieving kid with a 20% chance of being admitted to Harvard (to use the example above) – if Harvard rejects them, it is ok!!! The kid will be fine! They may land at Middlebury, or Northeastern, or The University of Rochester, where they will get an excellent education!
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Absolutely!
Like these days some hyperselective colleges are not deferring too many of their ED/REA/SCEA applicants. So for those colleges, I tend to think being deferred means you clearly made it into that competitive pool.
And I think it would be cool if someone really could study this systematically, but just anecdotally–I can’t think of a case like that I am personally familiar with where the kid did not end up getting offers from other very selective colleges, and/or very competitive merit/honors offers. Maybe it was ED2, maybe EA from very selective OOS programs, often it was just multiple RD offers. But they all did well.
So I understand kids like this will not all get into their first choice, or indeed first tier of choices if they think that way. But what you might call the standard advice here involving picking a well-considered list of Likelies, Targets, and Reaches is almost surely going to work out very well for such kids in some really desirable ways.
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One of the “elite” firms that I worked for has certainly opened up its recruiting. They have gone from “top 6” to “top 60” over the last 20 years.
While this is certainly because there are great grads in the T60, there was also significant frustration with their T6.
The move to TO muddied one of their favorite “pre-screens.” Many of their T6 are now going back to being test required/recommended again.
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I have heard many similar stories. What I have not heard much is they would be looking top 7-60, 11-60, 21-60, or so on. Meaning the list of possible origin schools has expanded, but the old schools are not being dropped so much as new schools are being added.
In part this is explainable just with simple math. At least up through 2010 or so, the US domestic college-bound pool was rapidly expanding. But the old “top” colleges largely were not, or not much. So, assuming “top” colleges mostly means the colleges where “top” students go, and assuming more “top” students, but not more slots slots at the old “top” colleges, more and more “top” students would need to go to different colleges–thereby expanding the list of “top” colleges.
Since 2010 the overall US domestic pool plateaued, but not so much the applicant pool for the “top” national/international colleges. Part of what is happening is an ongoing trend of more US domestic students being interested in going to college outside their home locality/state/region–an effect which is particularly large among higher-numbers kids. And then another part of what is happening is the International pool not only is growing in numbers, but more and more Internationals have good US-style academic qualifications.
So the pool of “top” students seeking to attend national/international privates and OOS public programs has continued to expand since 2010, and therefore logically the list of “top” colleges has needed to keep expanding as well.
All that said, for sure another part of all this is cost-related. It was always the case that some “top” students would choose their in-state flagship-level colleges for a variety of reasons, including cost. But up through around 2016 or so, both the full pay AND the average net cost was increasing at most “top” privates, faster than general inflation at least.
Some of the most popular OOS public programs basically just cashed in on this by also rapidly increasing their costs. However, some OOS public programs adopted various ways of becoming at least relatively more competitive on cost or cost:benefit ratios–slower cost increases, more merit, perks like honors, and that sort of thing. And I think particularly for “top” students who did not want to pay what an old “top” private would cost them, but also did not love their in-state option, this led to a wider variety of public competitors.
And then that dragged along a lot of not-quite-top privates too. Like, if you really look at their merit policies and such, it is clear a lot of privates more or less plan to compete aggressively at around the OOS tuition level. Of course if they can get away at just competing at the Cal OOS level, good for them. But most need to dig deeper than that, and I think these effects led to “top” students also having more competitive options at those sorts of privates.
Then after 2016 or so, it appears the plateauing of the domestic pool really caught up with the US undergrad system. Most full pay costs stopped increasing so rapidly. In many cases, average net costs started coming down, particularly if you adjusted for inflation. And all this started BEFORE inflation spiked during COVID.
Of course it remains to be seen if the old “top” colleges can use their often massive wealth to compete more effectively on price. Many are certainly trying–we see new headlines constantly as some old-school “top” college announces it has gone to no loan offers, or need blind for Internationals, or will be free for families up to $XXX,XXX, or similar.
But anyway, point is as one might expect, when the lack of expansion of the old “top” colleges created market share opportunities, some colleges competed for those opportunities including through heightened price competition, and that also undoubtedly contributed to the wider dispersion of “top” students and expansion of the list of “top” colleges.
To come full circle, though, part of the point of all this is that just because that list is expanding, doesn’t mean any of the old “top” colleges have to be dropping off. Indeed, every indication is they are getting more applications from “top” students than ever, and of course employers and such are still including them on their recruitment tours and such.
But yes, some of those employers and such may be looking elsewhere IN ADDITION, albeit not instead. And more so than they would have decades or even just years ago.
Kind of surprised not to see explicitly mentioned what I consider common knowledge. CCs at elite private and public HSs guide admissions officers to one acceptance per student. Those top right students all got into somewhere they preferred, got rejected/waitlisted everywhere else. CCs exchange yield management for a few more accepts each year.
Forgive me, but this is utterly and completely wrong.
Kids from elite high schools are accepted to multiple colleges, and their guidance counselors do not pick which one student out of multiple applicants a college admits.
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Totally correct @cinnamon1212
I have no idea where @JES_96 got that idea. I believe that maybe 60 years ago, for Andover and Exeter, there was talk of “picking” H or Y or P for each of a selection of students. That’s the only similar story I can imagine.
At any rate, my DS16 and DS20 had multiple such acceptances each.
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[Deleted, interesting but ultimately off-topic]
Deleted, since the post I was replying to was deleted.
Why would an employer hiring college graduates think that a high school SAT or ACT is relevant?
It quickly identifies the development cases…an SAT score in the bottom ten percent is a signal that the kid may have been admitted for reasons other than academic chops. These employers use a holistic review so it cuts both ways…I’ve hired young employees from an obscure 800 person college that nobody could find on a map … but high SAT scores can push that kid onto the interview schedule and knock out the 580/600 kid from fancy shmancy college.
Story time… 
I don’t know how well you know the MBB consulting firms. They often ask for this information.
I was stunned when they asked for my high school test scores after I finished my MBA. The scores were 10 years old at this point.
Admittedly, this was a long time ago.
Strange but true.
But…generally they LOVE test data and did not like the TO movement. They want to recruit Yale undergrads KNOWING that they passed the standardized test bar.
And now some of Ivies are going back to test required. Some prominent “customers” will be happy.
Of course, employer use of high school SAT and ACT scores means increased pressure on high school students to get the highest possible SAT or ACT scores, since the scores matter far beyond frosh admission to college. I.e. “You are your SAT or ACT scores” for some employers’ initial screening.
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I believe you, but why is this relevant if the student performed well in college? The SAT/ACT tests aren’t aptitude tests.
And of course employers requiring SAT or ACT scores of a certain level give another advantage to already advantaged students.
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One other issue with use of SAT scores for employment is that use without adjusting for the 1995 recentering and the 2016 revision could result in backdoor age discrimination (whether intended or not).
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SAT literally stands for Scholastic Aptitude Test
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Until 1993.
At that time, the SAT became the SAT I, and the Achievement Tests became the SAT II Subject Tests. The entire set was called Scholastic Assessment Test.
Then, in 1997, the I and II were dropped, and “SAT” no longer meant anything like “Scholastic A___ Test”.
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Interesting, someone should tell Google AI. So it used to test aptitude but it doesn’t now. So what does it test/measure?
“Here at the Princeton Review we’ve long said that the SAT only tests your ability on mastering the SAT.”
Sorry for the joke answer, I may spend too much time on YouTube. 
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Strictly speaking, as the above quote from the Princeton Review test-prep company says, a test measures the skill at taking the test.
Of course, the test is intended to be a proxy measure of something, but how well it actually measures the intended thing, how much its measure is influenced by things other than the thing intended to be measured, and how much test-specific preparation can raise one’s test score without improving the thing intended to be measured, can all be matters of controversy. Additionally, both the intended measure and what it actually measures may not necessarily be a perfect fit for the user of the test (i.e. college admission), though they may accept a mediocre fit as being better than the absence of it in some cases.