Holistic does not mean random. But when you are applying to almost ALL reach schools (which this remaining list is for international students), there is no way to predict if you will be accepted or not. And if you do or don’t get accepted, you will not know why.
This is subtle but I would say it is more difficult to predict than random. The colleges have internal policies, consistency checks, institutional priorities, and so on that lead to their decisions. But most of that is confidential or only vaguely discussed in public.
For practical purposes then you have to account for this uncertainty, but a truly random model isn’t quite right either. And that explains why, say, 3-6 well chosen reaches might be a better idea than 20 reaches picked off a generic ranking.
So if you picked your reaches with care and wrote your best applications you have done what you can.
No, not random. It was conceived of, in the 1920s, as a way of limiting the number of Jews admitted, who were outscoring WASPs on the admissions tests for Ivies (sound familiar?) More recently, it has been used to justify the admission of certain groups of students with lower standardized test scores and lower GPAs over certain other students, with higher academic stats. Overall, it justifies the admission of students with lower stats over those with higher stats, so that the school can assemble a class that reflects the school’s desired class composition.
Holistic admissions helps selective colleges identify highly qualified students, of whom there are many more than available spots, so it can assemble a talented and varied class. This includes talented musicians, for example, as much as it may include athletes, debaters, artists, actors, social activists, etc.
I would not say random, though it can feel that way. There is always something that causes a decision to be the way it is. One of the biggest is institutional priorities. For example, they might want more first gen students or less students from a certain state or county. That can make it feel random when comparing people with similar stats and everything. For that reason, it can make it difficult to chance me’s because no one outside of admissions knows them.That being said, I think you have a very well balanced list, although I recommend just waiting to see at this point. You can’t really change anything now, so it’s not worth it to get your hopes up just a few days before you know for sure. But I get it, the wait is brutal! Good luck to you.
Of course if you define simply ranking people by raw non-contextual academic “stats” as the baseline admissions policy, then any admissions policy that considers other factors will necessarily mean sometimes people with “lower stats” will get admitted over people with “higher stats”.
By way of analogy, if you thought the baseline for the NBA draft should be height, then any other factor teams considered would lead to some shorter players being drafted over taller players. And that very much happens.
But of course few people would argue height is the only reasonable factor in NBA draft decisions. And at least many people would agree that raw non-contextual academic stats are not the only reasonable factor in US college admissions.
Why would holistic admissions mean it’s “random”? This is just a clickbait thread title. Do you have an actual question about the review processes at the schools?