I earlier shared a link from MIT admissions, which I will also include below. But in part:
This year, 11,883 students applied Early Action to the MIT Class of 2030, and as of checks watch right now , we have offered admission to 655.
That’s a 5.5% acceptance rate! From personal knowledge, and from looking at other sites, a lot of qualified people, including recruited athletes, did not get an acceptance. I’m saving my money to wager on Powerball - better odds.
I don’t.
One of my kids was also valedictorian, high scores, ECs etc. She did not apply to HPYSM (no interest). She applied to a wide range of schools and had great results, but none of us were able to predict all of them ahead of time.
If she chose to apply to HPYSM I would just assume a rejection.
Years ago Vanderbilt accepted kids like her…with one of their huge scholarships. Fast forward a few years and she was waitlisted. EDs were accepted (and continue to be).
She did not attend the highest ranking school that accepted her, but it was right for a variety of reasons.
What is “Harvard-worthy?”
Most applicants that are “Harvard-worthy” are not accepted.
Just an idea, but I’m under the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that Oxford/Cambridge are more stats dependent. There’s still an interview, so some subjectivity, but the high test scores, GPA, etc. might make this a more “assured” college admit for the high-stats student.
They are definitely more stats dependent, but there is still much more demand for places than places available (though not to the same extent as the US, partly because of how UCAS limits applications). Of course, the degrees are much more focused than in the US too.
The interviews can definitely make a difference, but they are also a very different type of interview to what US students may be thinking of. It’s probably less “subjective” than you think it is. Across many subjects, a key issue is how students approach problems or areas they haven’t faced academically before - and they are doing this in real time, face to face.
Which, unlike in the US, is not an insignificant part of the process, since the interview is held with the prospective tutor who will be evaluating problem solving skills in addition to determining fit
And the fact that one can only apply to Cambridge or Oxford, but not both
Yep. One example I know of which the tutor shared (applicant was anonymous to us of course) was a guy interviewing for maths, and he just shut down when faced with a new problem and kept saying “but I haven’t learnt this before”,and completely ignoring the hints/guidance he was given that were meant to lead him into figuring out how to approach it. This applicant had apparently looked absolutely stellar on paper, but he wasn’t offered a place. So, yes entirely possible that a top stats applicant is rejected. (…as happens in the US too albeit for different reasons).
Very few schools have enough of a reputation in engineering that they let ABET accreditation lapse. Also, for majors that benefit from PE licensing (most obviously civil), they keep ABET accreditation if they have those majors.
Not for everyone. My daughter loved the structure that D2 sports brought to her academics. Because she was a varsity athlete, she got a few benefits that my other daughter and niece, who both played club sports, didn’t get and had to work it out with professors if they had to travel for taking tests early, paying for travel, fundraising for uniforms, etc.
Intramurals weren’t offered as there weren’t enough students interested in those sports at their schools to form a league.
And think how boring these schools would be if they only accepted the vals and sals (so you are washed up as a 10th graders if you got a B and wouldn’t be Val?). They don’t want just the highest scoring, but do want Eagle scouts and the robotics award winner who might not be that great at social studies, the violinist who loves to debate so couldn’t take that 7th AP class. They may want the Val from a small rural school of 75 kids whose test scores are much lower than the Val from a school with a graduating class of 1000 (and that Val may want to go to big State U anyway).
The schools don’t want to only take the highest scores, highest gpa, highest rank. They want to consider other things. That’s why they have a long application with lots of other questions about your background on it.
Recall back a few posts… kid toured a bunch of colleges and came away with Stanford, Yale, Johns Hopkins & Case Western as their favorites. Fantastic tours. Loved the programs, tour guides, campus, etc etc Maybe some of it was luck - the Stanford tour guide happened to be a music double major which struck a chord. Happened to get rave reviews about Yale from fellow attendees at a music festival. The Case Western tour guide was really impressive. Previous grad from their high school loves JHU.
Indeed - deferred from MIT EA. For reference, since we discussed earlier, they spent much of their summer as a camp counselor
i know - but we keep talking about - the tippy top and the last 4 vals and all that.
My D26 was deferred, but her friend was admitted… they are two kids with similar profiles in many ways (they both got the idea together to apply to MIT, and ended up reading each other’s apps after submitting them), different ECs but nothing obviously stronger about one over the other. And some other kids in their class with arguably stronger profiles were deferred. I do not think this is so easy to predict! My D is very happy for her friend. 
For reference, my D spent her summer at SIMR, while her friend had a regular job!
Are you suggesting that the deferral was due to spending summers as a camp counselor?
Both of my kids worked at camp. They also worked before/after care for working parents, and were bus counselors at different points in time. One of my kids was chosen to plan and organize a whole camp event.
They learned how to handle food allergies, how to communicate/work with adults (some who were difficult), how to work with children who have various challenges, etc. There were many transferable skills learned.
MIT has a 5% acceptance rate, and there is not a checklist/ order of selected activities that will increase the odds of a typical candidate (ie not famous, etc)
I believe it’s the whole package and how it is authentically presented, and I just cannot imagine that having a summer job would be a disservice.
I also continue to be confused by a student not caring about prestige, yet keeps visiting highly ranked schools (we have not heard about any others).
That explains it. If only they had had a productive job, or a research internship, or a prestigious highly selective summer STEM program, then they would certainly have been admitted. 
Curing cancer in 8 weeks is a solid hook, amirite?
Your school community picked out 4 Harvard-worthy students correctly. What’d they do that enabled a 100% correct chanceme?
I have interviewed some amazing candidates, especially after Yale went to selective interviews. All of them would have been great additions, but at the end of the day, the admit rate of my small sample size was less than 20%. Even if I had access to their full files, no way I could have confidently made any call. You have no idea about institutional priorities or how this applicant compares to “like” applicants. Prior to selective interviews, the admit rate may have been 1 in 15 to 20, with a fair share of duds.
Good luck to your D26 in RD.
Are SIMR folks sharing results amongst each other as they come in? Any trends?