But there are soft quotas at the regional level — even if the quotas are not for ED particularly
Twenty years ago S2 applied to Dartmouth ED. That year, four kids from his HS also applied – and all four were accepted. (Actually, it might have been that more than four applied; I don’t know. But four were accepted.) Don’t worry about it.
Right, the way Yale put it, for example, there was an overarching admissions committee that would review regional committees, and if they thought there were too many or too few prospective admits from a given region, the overarching committee would ask the relevant regional committees to make adjustments before finalizing the overall admit list. It may not work exactly like that procedurally at every college that has a policy like that, but it gives a general idea of the way such a policy is intended to work.
However, that would be unlikely to apply specifically to the OP’s hypothetical. Like even supposing their region had too many admits, and their regional committee was asked to trim some prospective admits, unless one of these two admits happened to be right on the margins, the regional committee would probably trim out someone else, not one of these two specifically.
And with ED specifically, the margin in question would likely be between admit and defer. So even if you had the bad luck to be at that margin in a region where they were told to cut back on the admits, you would likely then just become a deferral. And it still wouldn’t really have anything to do with who else did or did not apply ED from your specific HS.
So basically, while in general you can fairly be concerned about being a marginal applicant from a region which might be on the wrong end of a college’s geographic diversity goals, I don’t think someone else applying ED from your HS materially adds to that concern. Or, conversely, that no one else applying ED from your HS materially subtracts from that concern. It just is what it is.
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Yeah, the basic “proof” that these colleges don’t have such a policy is if they did, they would be constantly violating it at certain high schools.
To the extent people then observe that only zero or one applicant per year from a certain high school has recently been successful at a certain college, that is almost surely because that college has simply only found zero or one applicant it actually wanted to admit each of those recent years. Since the most common number for the most selective colleges at most high schools in any given year is zero, that isn’t such a big surprise as a pattern.
But if in a given year they happen to actually get two applicants they like from such a HS, or three or four or so on, they can and will take them. It just doesn’t happen very often, outside of a certain specific fraction of high schools.
Several have commented that elite colleges are very happy to take multiple kids from a given HS. Unless that school is an established feeder, I am not at all convinced.
Colleges actually DO like to brag about taking kids from (hypothetical example) 587 different high schools to fill their 802 person class as a way of showing how “egalitarian” they are. On our 30+ college visits…we heard this sort of statistic A LOT.
There was a time (not too long ago) when elite colleges were catching a lot of flak for taking many, many students from elite “feeder” high schools. While this practice still occurs…it is “camoflaged” by elite colleges taking a kid from many different high schools.
At D26’s high school…we saw 1 kid each go to Harvard, Duke, Penn, Vanderbilt, etc.. And this pattern has held up for 5 years. In most cases…there was another kid that was “statistically” right next to them who was not admitted.
I also note that even when colleges do not select a student at our HS in a given year…they often WL’d a kid or two perhaps to give hope to future high school classes.
The colleges do, after all, want to generate as many applications from that HS as possible. Appearing as a “closed off fortress” to kids at a given HS is a great way to dry up applications from that HS. Our high school had zero applications to Princeton this year, for example, in part because people can see the historical data and have given up on them.
Elite colleges would probably prefer 1 student each from 3 different suburban San Francisco high schools versus taking 3 kids from 1 San Francisco high school.
It isn’t so much a matter of formal policy, but rather of admissions strategy.
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I think it depends - your local state flagship and regional colleges will have tens, high tens depending on the class size whereas if you’re in NY, there might only be one applicant to a Pomona or a Carleton or even one applicant every three years. There might be 3 or 5 applicants to a Duke or an Ivy.
So I think a lot of those #s sort of happen on their own whereas there are private/elite high schools and boarding schools, etc. but those schools in the grand scheme of society, are a tiny fraction of the overall.
I used the word “elite” in my post a lot. To be clearer, I am actually referring to Ivies or near Ivies. Similar to Vandy (the OP’s target school) which is why I am focused on these types of schools even though they are not “representative.”
But you are absolutely correct, your local state flagship or a “national” flagship like Michigan, Berkeley or UVA can easily offer many students from a given HS. Their student populations are much, much larger and their yields lower.
And yes…LACs often get less attention. This was one (of many) reasons I wanted my D26 to go to a LAC. There is a massive admissions difference between Williams at 9% and Harvard at 3%–similar students & outcomes, but less competition.
I don’t think there are hard and fast rules. My kids’ HS is a large public, usually ranked one of the top publics in the state, but it’s not equivalent (in terms of elite college admissions) to the better-known privates or elite magnets. About 90% of kids go to 4-year colleges but it’s almost entirely large flagships and other publics. I would not call our school a “feeder school” (except for our in-state flagship), but it is known among AOs.
Anyhow, it’s not at all unusual to send 2+ kids, and sometimes more, to highly selective schools. A few years ago, about 4-5 went to Dartmouth. Typically, a couple each go to Cornell, Columbia, Stanford, and/or U of Chicago. Large highly selective schools like UCLA, Berkeley, and Northwestern typically get more than one from each graduating class (re: UCLA and Berkeley, we’re not in California). From last year’s graduating class, we sent 2 each to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Williams (though usually we send no more than one each to most LACs, because they’re not popular choices for our students). And of course we can’t know who got accepted to any of these schools and declined to attend.
So the HS might be well-regarded, but definitely short of a feeder, and AOs clearly aren’t gate-keeping to the point of only taking one student.
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No–I didn’t say that. I just said that all things being equal…they would prefer to spread their admissions to multiple high schools. In the same way that they would prefer to take kids from 48 states vs 46 states. Appearing egalitarian is very important to them after the “bad old days” of blatant elitism. It is why rural admissions and FG admissions are also so important these days.
Also…you say that your HS isn’t a feeder, but 4-5 kids to Dartmouth is impressive since Dartmouth is only matriculating 1100-1200 undergraduates a year. Clearly, your HS is very high performing and is, if not a feeder, outperforming the national average by a long shot. It sounds like you have a lot of very high performing students there and I don’t think your high school is the type that would be included for “egalitarian” reasons.
Well, the Dartmouth year was an anomaly – 4-5 students to a single highly selective school almost never happens. But 2-3 is not so unusual.
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What we don’t know is how many high schools are represented in the applicant pool. At overly selective colleges, it’s likely most high schools got zero in but that might be different year to year (i.e. 4 years in a row, Harvard admits no one and the 5th year they admit 1 or 2). It might also be only in year 1, 3, and 5, someone even applied. I suspect the other Ivies outside of Harvard/Princeton/Yale have less geographic disparity from their apps s they are not as well known.
Hopefully they are seeing the kids as they are - but when they look at rank and things like that, it will naturally limit how many they’ll even truly consider.
I personally don’t think there are hard and fast rules.
But truth is, none of us will ever know.
OP, don’t be deterred. A college will have no problem accepting multiple students from one school provided they are the best candidates. DS’ school had some very “clumpy” results - 4 in one year to MIT, 6 in another to Penn, and then years with none at those. Looking at the annual “t-shirt” pictures, there are multiples at Princeton, Columbia, Northwestern, etc in several years. And there are also years when there are none.
Colleges accept students, not schools.
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Yale in their podcast says a successful applicant needs 4 out of 5 votes in committee to get in. That’s a tough hurdle.
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Although it doesn’t seem as tough when we realize most of these applications have had two reads already.
I’ve posted this elsewhere, but colleges that have a process like Yale’s where most/all admitted applicants went to a committee evaluation are the exception. At many even highly rejective schools, app readers (whether full or part time admissions staff, or seasonal readers) can make admit/deny/defer/waitlist decisions after the first or second reads. Additionally, some schools do have a committee process that makes admissions decisions, but the ‘committee’ is one person.
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The dean of admissions at UChicago told us that they had a committee of 12 (a few years back), and that you needed 10 or 11 votes to get in. He said he knew of places where you need the full committee to agree.
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I don’t know Chicago’s current process, but don’t disagree with your points. Neither contradict my points.
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I note even at Yale, my understanding is that one senior AO can basically make a deny decision now, at their “initial review” stage they announced a couple cycles ago. The expressed purpose was to quickly offset the reported increase in uncompetitive applications, allowing the regular readers and committees to then focus only on the plausibly competitive applications.
And we don’t know for sure how many get screened out that way, but I suspect it might be quite a lot these days, including in SCEA (where Yale actually rejects a lot of applicants).
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Do you have Naviance or something similar that shows how you high school does with Vandy? If it’s something like only one or two admits, some waitlists, then the rest rejections, that info could be helpful.