@cue123 Current Senators undergraduate college: Harvard (5 ) Ben Sasse (Neb), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Pat Toomey (Pa), Charles Schumer (NY), Richard Blumenthal (Conn): Yale(2 ) Sherrod Brown (OH), Amy Klochbar (Mn); Stanford (6 ) Dianne Feinstein (Ca)),Jeff Merley (Oregon), Ron Wyden (Oregon) Tina Smith( Minnesota), Cory Baker (NJ, Josh Hawley (M0)
Actually Yale should be credited with 3. I missed Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island
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So I guess some of us are saying there is no difference, so just shotgun the apps out and donât worry about fit, it just doesnât matter. 
No, thatâs not what folks are saying.
Donât discuss your love of Latin and Greco-Roman architecture in an essay to a school which does not offer a Classics major. Donât declare an intention to major in German literature at a college which discontinued its German program 4 years ago and allowed the tenured professors to take early retirement. Donât write an essay about how much you want a broad liberal arts education at a technical/engineering program. Donât carry on during your interview about how much you want to co-op at a college which doesnât have a co-op program. And donât tell your MIT interviewer that you love computers but hate math (this happens-- more frequently than you would think. A friend who interviews for MIT leaves these meetings wondering if the kid has even glanced at the course catalog and the heavy math requirements for ALL students- even ones majoring in a humanities or social science).
You think the Harvard Adcomâs want to read about your plan to join the Supreme Court or get elected to the Senate? No they do not.
Adcoms love to say they are looking for a well rounded class. But would Harvard Adcoms exchange their Freshman class for the one at Duke? Stanford? I think those same Adcoms would be horrified at this concept, because of course their chosen class is unique. Which means it is not well rounded after all.
I guess I am agreeing with the OP - these schools do want their incoming class to be uniquely suited to the school, which means they must be looking for something in particular. No idea what it is for any of these schools, though. Unless we are talking Cal Tech or MIT, where it is much more obvious:).
Colleges know what theyâre looking for, but they donât just look for one type of students. They want to achieve certain balance with their available resources (faculty, facilities, etc.). No college has infinite adaptability with unlimited resources.
I think UChicago is very clear. Just watch any of their YouTube videos. It will not take long before they start talking about how they take an interdisciplinary approach. It is in their core values. It is The Core.
For example, If you are a prospective math major and you demonstrate in your application that you love math and only math. You may have different results applying to UChicago vs Oxbridge. They are looking for different things.
I donât get the point of this exercise. Youâre looking at one slice and, I think, ignoring the rest.
This is NOT about career choices. Some 17 year old whoâs heard of a handful of job types or fields and claims one as his direction.
Step back. They want personal characteristics, evidence of those, not some proclamations on what you âwant to be when you grow up.â Top adcoms are looking at the 4 year experience, your ability to influence and be influenced, your openness, flexibility, and more. A more mature level of thinking, experience, and processing than a job type.
That comes in various forms, academic, personal, and social. Show, not just tell. Strengths, including awareness of the right opps and how to go for it, follow through, an understanding of whatâs a challenge vs same old, in the box thinking. Real substance, not dreams. And so on.
Kids with the core traits will explore, stretch, and find their way.
If a college, say, Georgetown, happens to produce a lot of govt-involved grads, donât you think it has to do with the quality of those programs? And location?
Where this idea comes that Brown favors artsy makes no sense. It feels terribly outdated. And misses a main point of what Brown does ask for. Or that Stanford isnât just as interested in leadership potential in non tech fields.
Donât settle for a superficial look or gut reactions.
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It is interesting to look at where colleges send their non-athlete likely letters.
Yale, known for its strength in humanities, sends them to STEM students. Stanford, known for its strength in STEM, seems to send them to humanities students. In both cases they are looking to balance strengths across the class.
As for âa rounded class,â it doesnât mean a wild, unlimited variety of extremes. It starts with well rounded individuals.
When a highly competitive college wants kids who bring multiple assets, thatâs not limiting yourself to unilateral or the misunderstood notions of spike. Not only what you think interests you. They want kids open to various pursuits, various sorts of others as peers, willing to try something new, that may have little to do with your major.
Only way to show that is by doing. And then, as the class is formed, you find this range of talents that balances as a class. Not the other way around.
And guess what? Personal rounding, done right, is a lot better CYA than all your eggs in one basket.
Where is this from? Iâm genuinely interested, not challenging you.
Yale sends out roughly 100 likely letters to strong STEM kids in late January or early February, and invites just these 100 kids to Yale Engineering and Science Weekend (YES-W) in April to recruit them to join Yale. That weekend is followed by Bulldog Days, which is open to all accepted freshmen prospects.
The information about Stanfordâs likely letters is anecdotal, but I have heard that a few places, which is why I used the word âseemsâ.
Interesting, and your thoughts on Stanfordâs likely letters are reasonable.
The college may have a different idea of what it wants than what students know the college for. For example, if HYP attract too many applicants who want to go into finance and consulting, they may give admission preference to others, while still admitting many finance and consulting aspirant applicants. The same may go for artsy applicants to Brown, CS major applicants to MIT and Stanford, pre-meds at JHU, etc⊠At colleges that admit by major or division, the preference for less popular majors is more obvious (e.g. CS at CMU and business at Penn are harder to get admitted to). Note: major is not the only dimension here, but the easiest to give examples for.
Of course, some aspects that some colleges look for are not changeable by the student (e.g. legacy or parent donations).
The type of people they want are rich people. Private universities are a breeding ground for cronyism. Itâs not about grades and accomplishments. Grades and SAT scores can get you in, but the real screening is in the tuition bill. Sure some will meet full need, but those are rare exceptions, and usually you have to be very low income. No rational organization can afford to write-off $250,000 for every student that canât afford to go there, otherwise theyâd go bankrupt in a single afternoon. Big donors come with strings attachedâŠlike Junior getting accepted.
@blossom 's reply #43 basically says âdonât be an obvious mismatchâ based on publicly announced information. But avoiding being an obvious mismatch does not mean that the applicant will be able to determine how well s/he matches the collegeâs wants, including those not publicly announced.
Schools may have an idea what they want, but the OP reduced it down past a reasonable point to comic over-simplicity. Reed and High Point and Bard and Texas A&M and Notre Dame and pick five more have very pronounced cultures that schools have to work with. In some cases they want to mold the class to work against it (ie draw more women to my engineering school) and in others they want everyone on board (broad inclusion at Oberlin.) Everyone wants the popular smart and talented kids, but with a limited number of spots you have to choose the ones that build a complete community.
The finance balances work out when the bulk of highly qualified applicants are high income students, which is the case for typical highly selective private colleges in the United States. This is especially true for colleges with an extremely large endowment and related legislative pressure about endowment spending.
For example, according to Harvardâs NPC, Harvard has $0 estimated cost to parents for typical asset families who roughly have less than the US median income. Harvard has ~$0 cost to parents for ~half of families in the United States. According to the Harvard internal report at http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-112-May-1-2013-Memorandum.pdf and lawsuit analyses, Harvard gives this large group of US families for which Harvard would have a ~$0 cost to parents a significant preference in admissions. Harvard also has generous FA for families with incomes of under ~$200k. For example, the calc suggests a $15k cost to parents for typical families with a ~$150k income, which is less than many publics. Harvard claims that they are less expensive than publics for >90% of families in the United States. Harvard has generous FA for the fast majority of families in the United States.
Harvard is able to maintain this generous FA system because only 12% of applicants were in the near $0 cost to parents group during the lawsuit sample period, and a large portion of applicants are in the high income full pay group. The NPC suggests significant FA for typical families with up to ~$250k income, yet ~half of entering students are still full pay (significant portion are hooked). If you have ~half of families paying $75k per year, you can give significant discounts to the other half while still maintaining a notable average net cost and total revenue generated from tuition. Harvardâs $40 billion endowment can also help offset costs to families, and help reduce legislative pressure to spend a larger portion of endowment, even when the net effect on endowment would be the same as a flat rate tuition for all.
The generous FA system with near $0 cost to parents for ~half of US families is a ârationalâ choice for highly selective colleges that have a large portion of admitted students in the full pay group, a small portion of qualified applicants in the near $0 cost group, and a very large endowment.
One of the main ways to make sure that the bulk of highly qualified applicants are wealthy is to use qualifications which directly correlated to wealth. Using standardized tests, class rigor, and high quality ECs +awards all provide an advantage for wealthy students. Iâm not even talking about playing expensive sports and legacy status, or about the fact that grade inflation is much higher at wealthier schools.
âEliteâ colleges cannot financially afford to admit by merit alone, so they set up a system in which they can choose the most accomplished kids, without controlling for wealth. This increases the difficulty in achieving this status as a familyâs income drops. So a kid from the top 5% by income has to put more effort into matching this status than does a kid from the top 0.1%. A kid from the top 20% is required to work harder to have the âright qualificationsâ than does a kid from the top 5%. There is a slight bump for the kids from the bottom 20%, but it is still far more difficult for them than it is for kids from the top 20% and higher.
For a kid with the exact same traits, the more money they have, the easier it is for them to be âqualifiedâ. This means, that the higher a kidâs SES, the less âexceptionalâ they need to be in order to have the qualifications required by âeliteâ colleges. That is how you build a class which has 20% from the top 1% by income.
Between admissions qualifications that benefit the wealthy and an application process that does the same, âeliteâ colleges are able to build a class that has enough kids from wealthy and very wealthy families to maintain the status and character of that particular college (through tuition and donations).
Of course, part of the increased cost of these colleges is that they need to spend more to provide the services that keep the wealthy families sending their kids to that colleges, which, in turn, increases the need to attract kids from wealthy families to pay for those services.
Ironically, the main reasons that so many people want to make admissions to these colleges more equitable and fair is because of what these colleges can provide by way of services and extras, all which are the result of the fact that the present admissions system favors the wealthy.
Harvard cannot make their admissions more economically equitable and still be the Harvard that that people want more low SES kids to attend.
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MWolf- while I agree with much of what you write, you are ignoring the fact that the âarms raceâ is actually going on at a much lower tier than the Harvardâs of the world.
There are dorms at Yale which are referred to as âthe sophomore slumsâ and that is not an exaggeration. The physical plant at many of the ivies is rustic and charming from the outside (imagine- a building built before the Civil War! All that Georgian brick and slopey floors- so pretty and authentic) but pretty horrendous if you actually have to live in it. Many of the colleges have used their infrastructure funds on technology upgrades (which of course is a necessity) and making sure the buildings are in compliance with ADA and other regulatory issues (fire codes, etc.) Which means the niceties-- in many dorms and other buildings-- have been ignored.
I think this is an important point to make alongside your point about âthese colleges provide services and extrasâ. I am not aware of an Ivy League college with a âlazy riverâ type recreation center; many of the dorms are shabby and old (and un-air conditioned, which for many students who donât know how to plug in a fan and open a window is a deal-breaker) and the food is often not competitive with other colleges. A single room at Columbia can be smaller than the restroom stalls at a college like High Point.
So the arms race on amenities is not a game you can pin on Harvard. The increased costs can be seen at places like GW (a well known case study on raising tuition in order to raise the perception of quality) which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy- you charge more to increase the reputation, but then your students expect more- better food, nicer dorms, more amenities at the gym even for non-athletes) so your costs keep going up up up. I think the same could be said about BU, NYU, Northeastern, Rice, Vanderbilt- charge more, but then lock yourself into a higher cost platform on an ongoing basis-- quite a trap.
In my mind, the question is not why and how does Harvard charge so much, but why and how do colleges like Pace and Stonehill and University of New Haven and Seton Hall and Farleigh Dickinson charge so much.
Iâd rather see the good minds of CC tackle THAT question, then bother with the admittedly sexier problem of why does Harvard cost so much.
Why does Hofstra cost so much?
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