What is the ranking for difficulty of being accepted to the Ivy League schools? I would imagine Harvard is #1, but I don’t know after that.
<p>yale and princeton usually come next, and then cornell and penn are considered the easiest, so I’ve heard, but really its a lottery with any of them.</p>
<p>There are two things normally said:</p>
<p>1) For every applicant who is accepted, there are four or five denied who are almost identical except for the name on the application.</p>
<p>2) If they threw out everyone they accepted or waitlisted and started over again with the remainder, the result would be statistically identical to what they got the first time.</p>
<p>The Ivies really don’t have much in common except for the prestige factor. I’m always amazed when someone says that all they care about is going to an Ivy. Try thinking about what you want in a school concerning large/small/midsize, university/LAC, urban/rural/suburban, public/private. Do you want Division 1 sports teams on campus? Do you want a certain political climate? Do you care about the effect of the frats/sororities on social life? </p>
<p>There are about 1.2 million graduating seniors each year. Because of brand consciousness, many are concentrated into a few school that can only accept about 50000 of them. Once you meet the qualifying standards, it really is a lottery more than a rational selection process.</p>
<p>Good points, dufus. And yet…and yet… Harvard still manages to pull in a class every year with a median family income of around $150,000. Hmm… I wonder if the family income of the remainder (the group they reject) would be “statistically identical” in this aspect, too.</p>
<p>Dufus, I understand what you are saying but for many of us, this is all a game. Do you think we (some of us) would be happy settling for second-tier colleges after sacrificing our lives for four years? Some of these people here have devoted their entire lives towards this one goal…</p>
<p>iwantfood: You can consider me an old man, and I can appreciate the irony of someone 17 years old saying that they have spent their entire lives working towards getting into an Ivy. However, I’m not stupid. I do understand how important this is to you and I’m trying to help. There are 1.2 million graduating seniors each year. Every valedictorian in every high school in the country thinks that they are going to Harvard. The parents, friends, and other people in the town can’t believe it when little Becky who had a 4.0 and 1450 on her SAT gets turned down. As long as you understand that it is a lottery even for the extremely well qualified, and that the odds are against you, and that there are at least a hundred colleges as wonderful as Harvard, and that you need to be thinking of schools in terms of their characteristics and not just their prestige factor, then I’m happy. </p>
<p>When you look back on this, you may realize that picking a husband/wife is more important than picking a school. Nobody evers tries this hard to get the right wife/husband. This has struck me whenever there is a discussion about the value of going to an Ivy. A lot of people seem to think that once you graduate from an Ivy, you life is complete and all you have to do is hang out for the rest of your life. Graduating from a top school with an undergrad degree will help you get your first job because the top companies recruit at the top colleges. After the first job though, success depends more on actual job performance. Except perhaps for lawyers, MD’s, prestigious MBA’s and other post-undergrad degrees, the idea of their being “connnections” is myth.</p>
<p>“Nobody evers tries this hard to get the right wife/husband.”
haha… never noticed that</p>
<p>“Do you think we (some of us) would be happy settling for second-tier colleges after sacrificing our lives for four years? Some of these people here have devoted their entire lives towards this one goal…”</p>
<p>And will you be happy once you’ve been accepted to an Ivy school?</p>
<p>Or . . . </p>
<p>Will you have to sacrifice your life for another 4 years to get into the right grad school?</p>
<p>And then will you have to sacrifice your life during grad school to get the right placement?</p>
<p>And then will you have to devote your entire life to making partner, CEO, or building a practice?</p>
<p>And it’s not like the Ivies make up one tier, after which every other college is automatically inferior to them. Believe it or not, you will be fine at so-called “second-tier” universities, which by the way, are not exactly easy to get into.</p>
<p>“Nobody evers tries this hard to get the right wife/husband.”
I wouldn’t say that. People certainly do, you’ll just never find them on CC, and they’re not generally the sort of people I think anyone on CC would know too well.</p>
<p>What schools are in what “tier” is written in stone, but it is definitely a pyramid. About 20-25 schools are first tier, then 50-75 schools are second tier, and then 250-300 are third tier. All three tiers put together account for about 10% of the total 4-year schools in the US.</p>
<p>i didn’t say you were stupid…i never hinted at it either</p>
<p>i just threw an idea out there…</p>
<p>Dufus, it is not a lottery to get into Harvard or any other good school. Being a valedictorian is just not as prestigious as it may seem. To get into Harvard you have to have something special. If your passion is math, they want to see you at the usamo training camp… etc.</p>
<p>Actually, part of it is a lottery. There are too many qualified students. With some exceptions, most admits to HYPSM owe at least part of their admission to luck. You get a much better perspective on this once you and people you know go through it together. Some of the admits and rejections just don’t make a lot of sense.</p>
<p>^^^^^^^^^^^
I agree. This is the exact reason why people are rejected from Harvard, but accepted at Yale (and vice versa).</p>
<p>While it may seem like a lottery, I think that acceptances to Ivies are done extremely well. </p>
<p>Each school has a certain personality. The admissions committee wants to continue that personality. So when someone gets into Harvard, but gets rejected from Columbia or Yale, it is because their personality may not have matched those schools. </p>
<p>Also, a more heartfelt and truthful application to a school one truly loves may also be grounds for admissions. If you spend a lot of time on one application, but do not spend nearly the same amount on another, one is more likely to get into the school they had spent time on. Admissions officers can see these things and know those students who truly want to attend their schools.</p>
<p>In reference to Confidential’s post about Harvard admissions, that is an absolute farse. You don’t have to be amazing to get into Harvard. While you do have to be a stellar student and have good scores, they (along with all other top schools) want to see a dedicated passion. A few EC’s that have been shown a lot of commitment are the best applications because the student has shown they are mature in knowing what they enjoy and do not enjoy. A friend from my school was acceptted EA to Harvard and while he is an extremely bright kid, there is nothing “special” about him. While he is not going to attend Harvard (he is going to Deep Springs College instead) his case shows how normal kids who are intelligent get in.</p>
<p>I applied ED to an Ivy and was accepted. A lot of kids apply to these schools because of the names. While most of those kids do not get in, the admissions committees can see who truly wants to go and who doesn’t. </p>
<p>That’s just my take.</p>
<p>
Yes, to you they dont. Everyone obviously wants to think they are very qualified/very good at what they do. But, most people, although they KNOW, dont fully understand the competition out there. For every activity you do (or say you do), probably 5000 other applicants do the same thing. Schools look for various things. They know why you were rejected. Just because you dont understand doesnt mean that it is a lottery. Most of this “college admissions is a crapshoot” is denial speaking. You can usually call them and ask why you were rejected (although sometimes they dont like to reveal). But seeing how I have know many people to be accepted to all their universities, a method is evident.</p>
<p>Sometimes the world is broken into people who believe that everything works and people who are cynical about how things work. I have read a dozen college guides at this point and every one of this with the exception of “A is for Admissions” that was published in 1997 refers to the current admissions situation at the extremely selective schools as being either a “crap shoot” or a “lottery”. Lets say that 18000 people apply to Harvard and they can accept about 1800. Some are going to be auto-admits and some are going to be auto-denies, but no matter how you look at it, you are going to have five completed qualified and indistinguishable applicants for every available slot. They may not actually roll dice, but the triffles that they will use to select one of the five are so insignificant that it must be regarded as a lottery. As to those people who must believe that the world is fair and everything works, nothing I or anyone else says will probably change your mind. I am not trying to convince anyone not to apply. I just think that you must understand the role that random chance plays in the process, and pick your targets, safeties and reaches accordingly. If you think that the system is non-random and then you get in, then you can feel all the better about yourself.</p>
<p>exactly… its mostly regarded as a lottery by people who don’t get in/cheer the ppl who didn’t get in. there is always subjectivitiy but at my school there are a few kids who apply to harvard(14 are going this year i believe) and i truly feel that those 14 kids stood out from the kids who got rejected from my school. for example, one was rsi/intel semifinalist… one was ranked #2 in math team… one was secretary general of our model un club(over 200 members and one of the best teams on east coast)</p>
<p>Some people are missing the point. I am not saying that the people who are accepted into the extremely selective schools are not the ones to deserve to get in. I am just saying that for everyone who gets in because they deserve to, there are about five other who are practically the same except for the the name on the application who don’t get in simply because there isn’t room. This means that random chance is a major factor.</p>
<p>Most guides make the point, but good books to read are “The Gatekeepers” by Jacques Steinberg about observing the adcom at Wellesley, “Admissions Confidential” by Rachel Toors who was on the adcom at Duke, and “Harvard Schmarvard” by Jay Mathews, a Wash Post reporter and Harvard grad, who presents findings from many colleges.</p>
<p>Anyway, how much do you think the adcoms can really distinguish between people based on looking at the app for about an hour. People are free to believe whatever they want, of course. I certainly have no personal stake in this. I have just done a lot of reading on the subject and I’m trying to help.</p>