I strongly believe in holistic admissions tbh. I look at some high achiever kids at my school and some have no social skills, study non-stop, forced ECs, and studied for years for standardized tests. But day to day, often not that impressive.
I’m also a high achiever and have very good recs and ECs. But my stats are very good, but not amazing.
I want to believe that I will benefit from holistic admissions. But I’ve applied to a lot of moderate reaches and a few far reaches(just based on very low admissions rates). But I am sort of freaking out at this point and questioning whether schools really look holistically. From a rec letter or two and a EC list it is still pretty hard to discern who someone really is.
Hoping I get in 1-2 of my reaches. But I feel like much of it comes down to luck. Does holistic admissions really usually work out?
Yes it works out- if you mean do kids end up getting a solid college education even if they don’t have the “perfect” application.
Nobody can predict with any accuracy what any particular college is going to do about any specific applicant. If you have a couple of “sure bets” on your list which are affordable then just stop thinking about college for now. Nothing you can do at this point about your applications, GPA, etc, right? The cake is baked.
You will knock the cover off the ball wherever you end up so yes- holistic admissions comes through!!!
Probably we each have our own experiences. In our families experience at least so far it does generally work out, but not necessarily the way that you expect it to.
“Holistic admissions” can mean a lot of different things. In the good cases (which seem to be common in my experience) it means that the universities understand what sort of students do well in their program and accept students who will do well. Sometimes for example determination or creativity or relevant experience can be more important than a small difference in GPA. For health care professionals there is an advantage if the health care providers understand their patients, which implies that it can be valuable to have health care providers that come from a range of backgrounds.
Three things to be cautious about:
One thing is that “holistic” admissions does not necessarily mean that you will get into your “dream school”. As one example of this when applying to graduate programs I was turned down by my “dream school”, and instead attended my second choice. I LOVED IT. I eventually realized that my second choice had always been a way better fit for me. Admissions got it right (at both schools).
Also, reaches are just that, reaches. You cannot expect to be admitted to a university that would realistically be considered a reach for you (and MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and similar schools are a reach for everyone). You need to make sure that you apply to safeties that you would be happy attending.
Also, you need to take your budget into consideration. Recent university graduates will frequently be offered jobs that do not pay all that well, or that are in locations that are expensive to live in. Your very best opportunity after you get your bachelor’s degree might not be the best paying opportunity. It can be a big help if you can minimize or even avoid college debt. It is hard for an 18 year old to understand what debt does to a student. My belief is that the parents need to act like the adults in the room and put realistic restrictions into place. However, it is also best for the student to know to be careful about this. I have compared student debt to chainsaws – sometimes both are useful and appropriate, but use them with caution.
And as @blossom has correctly suggested a strong student can do well at any of a very wide range of universities. There will be strong professors, other strong students, and a lot of opportunities at any one of many hundreds of colleges and universities.
Your real question seems to be: will you be accepted at your dream school when you’re competing with other high achieving kids (whom you seem to hold in low regard)?
First, I’ll say - it’s very hard (and unfair) to try and judge the merits and authenticity of others’ achievements because you don’t have all the facts. You only have your perceptions, limited observations, and biases.
Now, regarding holistic admissions… they’re a way for selective schools to use a large variety of factors of their choosing to meet their institutional needs. As blossom said:
That’s because we don’t know what each of your dream schools is looking for this year, whether or not you meet those requirements, and how you stack up against all the other applicants (not just from your school).
In which case, let the process work. The best you can do is present the strongest application you can, and apply to a balanced list of schools. And then remind yourself that holistic admissions are all about what the colleges want, not what you desire, so it’s out of your control.
Holistic admissions for colleges and universities isn’t about rewarding students. It’s about schools filling institutional needs and hitting their bottom line. It generally works well for the schools. From year to year it is hard to know what schools are looking for. Schools are businesses.
As always have an academic and financial safety school that will work and see where the chips fall.
Even though schools will be comparing you to other applicants you should not be comparing yourself to others. Be the best you that you can be. If/when you get a rejection you’ll never know why you got rejected or just how close you were or weren’t to being accepted. Layer in if you know someone at your school that did get into someplace that you were rejected you can drive yourself crazy trying to understand why and ultimately it doesn’t matter.
If you’ve reasonably crafted your list of schools you’re applying to you’re sure to get some good offers and excel wherever you decide to go.
Yes, I truly think holistic admissions come through, but maybe not in the way you think it might - I kind of see it as a numbers game/gamble/game of chance. It is not so black and white because there is such a wide spectrum of applicants. My kiddos are not #1 in anything but are average excellent students and test takers but have really, really good ECs and letters and essays (I think so at least but they did not found any type of organization, raise ANY money, or publish anything, or place nationally or even state wide for anything at all). The trick is to stand out in some way AND to apply to a lot of schools because stats really do matter and there are many many high stats kids who ALSO have really, really good everything else - not like the kids you described. And so many of these kids will be rejected to the tippy top schools. In other words - they are similar to you WITH the factors that will benefit them as well in holistic admissions PLUS super high stats. My kids ended up in excellent schools (not ivies but top 25 for two of them so far the last one is applying this year - the other two applied 2023 and 2022 - we did not apply to Ivies) - so I truly believe holistic comes through but we also have to be realistic. I am convinced that this is all a game of chance because both of my kids who have already applied got into reaches but one was flat out rejected to a safety and the other waitlisted and then rejected from an easy target - I cannot explain that. Without holistic admissions I am not sure the reaches would have come through.
Like others, I don’t really see holistic review at a selective college as something likely to help someone who is unhooked (meaning they do not fall into one of the categories where the college has a specific formalized preference policy) and outside the normal range of academic qualifications for that college. In a few cases, maybe, but that is necessarily going to be a rare path (otherwise the normal range of academic qualifications would be broader, and then it would no longer be an exception anyway).
What holistic review more means for unhooked applicants is those colleges will not strictly order people academically and admit from the top down until they satisfy their enrollment target. So, someone at their 40th percentile for enrolled numbers might get admitted, while someone at their 60th might not be, that sort of thing.
As another poster explained, the only reliable statement we can make about who this will benefit is that the colleges will benefit. I don’t mean to be cynical, but the fact is their admissions policies are negotiated between different stakeholders in the college with different priorities, and in the end applicants are going to be admitted because the college identified them as a good bet to help satisfy one or more of those institutional priorities.
But that doesn’t mean I disagree with the people that suggest sometimes holistic review ends up meaning students end up at a better college for them. Because a lot of those things are going to be win-win. Like, faculty are stakeholders, and faculty want students who they will enjoy teaching. That is plausibly going to be a good thing for those students too. Administrators responsible for non-academic student life, including various valued activities, want students who will enthusiastically participate in various activities. Again, that is plausibly going to be a good thing for those students too.
I don’t think everything holistic review might encompass is necessarily like this, but some is. So if you end up on the wrong side of it with some colleges, but on the right side with some others, I don’t see that as an inherently bad thing, and it at least might be good.
There were 52,250 students who applied to Yale last year, and only 2,275 were accepted. So holistic admissions worked for fewer than 5% of those students.
That is the rule: holistic admissions works for the students who are accepted, but not for the students who are not accepted. Since there are far more qualified students than there are places for those students at the most popular colleges, we can say that, overall, holistic admissions does not work for most applicants.
That is, of course, only if you consider “working out” as “being accepted to your favorite low-admissions college”.
That being said, if you have great letters of recommendation, that is where holistic admissions are working for you far better than they are working for the vast majority of graduating high school students. Since you attend a small private high school, you have a far larger number of counselors who are dedicated to college admissions, and who will write personal letters that are tailored to you and to the college to which you are applying.
Those are far more effective than the standard LoRs that most applicants are getting from their GCs. At public schools, there is, on average, one GC per 408 students, which means that each has over 100 graduating seniors a year. At lower income high schools, the situation is far far worse. So the chances that the GC can even connect a name to a face is low, much less write a personal letter of recommendation.
It is also likely that many college AOs have a personal relationship with your high school’s counselors, and so the AOs will give more weight to your counselor’s letters than they will to similar letter from GCs at public high schools, who generally do not know the AOs at colleges with low admission rates.
There is also the fact that familiarity with a high school helps in admissions. College AOs, especially in the NE will be familiar with your private high school and will accept you over students with the similar profiles who attended high schools with which the college AOs are not familiar.
So holistic admissions are working for you pretty well.
In most colleges, including those which have “holistic admissions”, academics is the most important factor, and other factors are there to add on to that. A student with a 3.98 GPA who has taken the most rigorous classes that the high school has to offer is already a great candidate. Their ECs just need to demonstrate that they have other interests. A student with a 3.7 GPA with somewhat more serious ECs will not be considered a more attractive candidate, no matter how “holistic” admissions are at a college.
A high GPA will be especially impressive at a high school which admits based on academic achievement.
On the other hand, at a wealthy high school with lots of resources and with a student body from households that are upper middle class or wealthier, simply doing well at ECs is a lot less impressive.
So “studying non stop” and having a high GPA works very well even with holistic admissions.
I will also quote your father who, I may add, is a very wise man:
So it doesn’t really matter whether you get into any of your reaches.
I know the kids I admire most at my school. They have done well at Ivies. Better than the invisible kids with similar stats. I guess that is holistic at some level. But I wouldn’t say females at my school are having the best year.
Your response is a little condescending. Going to an ultra competitive school is not all privilege. It’s constant stress and hard work. We have access to some ECs, but not others. Public school, where I went before, was easier and less stressful and my GPA was an easy 4.0.
You attend a private NE prep school which means well-qualified teachers, good counselors, a name that is known by top colleges. But you seem to fear that’s not enough of an advantage for those colleges; you are worried because there are students at your HS that study more for class, study for the SAT and other such tests, perhaps have more ECs, so you post looking for reassurance that “holistic admissions” will pick the right student(s) from your school. Which turns out to mean kids just like you.
If ever the phrase was appropriate it seems to be here: “check your privilege”
I went to a hyper-competitive school. At the time, it was a top 5 (public) school in the US (I think it has slipped a bit since then, but is still top 20 last time I checked). It was crazy stressful, I get it, but it also was an amazing privilege. Yes, we had to work very, very hard just to keep our heads above water there, but we had amazing teachers (much better than the local district schools), classmates who constantly raised the bar (making everyone better than they would have been without the challenge), class discussions with true intellectual engagement, course material of greater depth than at the local schools, top notch counselors intimately familiar with college admissions, including T20 competitive admissions, who felt personally invested in the success of their students, much as the teachers did, too. And if that’s not privilege, I don’t know what is.
Just because you are asked to work hard, doesn’t mean you aren’t incredibly privileged. In fact, sometimes being asked to work hard is privilege in itself. It is not condescending to point that out: it is just acknowledgement of fact.
And, as I said, I see your judgmental attitudes towards your classmates to be far more problematic and, well, condescending.
But I realize you’re a teenager. You still have some growing up to do, and that’s OK. That’s normal. But a great way to do it would be to open your mind, listen to other views, and be willing to see things in a new way that challenges your previous assumptions. That would be a great perspective to gain before starting college. Good luck to you!