Difficulty of Ivy League Admissions

dufus3709
Thu, 23 Jun 2005 22:53:13 +0000

There are two things normally said:

1) For every applicant who is accepted, there are four or five denied who are almost identical except for the name on the application.

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.

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?

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.