My two cents is you are really both talking about the same thing. As a general rule with publics you have to understand what type of applicant you are, including residency status and whether you are applying to a restricted school or major. And it is possible they will also be contextual as well, so ideally you would really have access to a robust data set from your specific high school.
But, for example, I looked up Ohio State, a fairly popular option at our HS, and it looked to me like at around a 3.49+ with a high enough test score, you had really good odds of being admitted to Ohio State. And below that, they were much lower. Test scores were trickier because there were not a lot of higher GPA/lower score applicants, but Iâd say at least below 1300 you were at best 50/50 even if you were 3.5+.
OK, so then our overall acceptance rate was 55%, but that was largely just because right about half of the applicants were in the good box, and then a few more (but not many) got admitted outside the good box. And I am pretty sure if more people in the good box applied, that percentage would go up, and if more people outside the good box, the percentage would go down, all without Ohio State changing its admissions policies at all.
I have done a little college counseling in the upper midwest and have been watching local publics in particular UW Madison closely probably for the last 6-7 years. I am on their counselor email list. I also have a kid that was accepted EA OOS and recently graduated from Wisconsin. My other kid was accepted EA last year (but chose a different school which I was a little sad about briefly lol). Just a few things I have observed
I do agree that especially applicants in state and adjacent may be pretty well self selected especially if they have decent in school counseling. In our metro, I know there are a hand full of good suburban public schools that consistently do well with UW admissions. I do think program you are applying to can make a difference.
But that said, I think these big admissions offices have some good ways to estimate the odds of students chosing to attend likely based on a variety of factors. So it doesnât suprprise me at all an east coast public that successfully launches a lot of students to college might do well if that school has a history of launching students to UW. GPAs are looked at in context with a school profile and I am sure they run that through some sort of algorithm too.
And that doesnât mean uniformly high stat students get the ax just for having high stats. My oldest kid had stats to apply anywhere and was accepted EA into a humanities program. Added a CS degree when he showed up to register (graduated double degree, that truly wasnât planned ahead of time lol). I just think if admission thinks you are not likely to attend, they may not take a gamble on you. But they certainly also have some sort of academic threshold that may not be the same for every college/program.
When I help students I tell them to be very specific to a campus when writing that âwhy UWâ essay. That is the one piece you can control to demonstrate specific interest. It was a big deal when Stanley Zhong (Bay Area, rejected 16/18 schools, working at google with dad) didnât get into UW last year. A lot of people picked UW out specifically as âwhy?â. They likely have a lot of CS applicants from the Bay Area and it would have been interesting to read his âWhy UWâ essay. I suspect he scored low on a likely to attend scale and admissions offices donât admit students to be a checkbox in your collection of admissions but to fill institutional needs and build a class. And they werenât wrong - he had 2 excellent, highly competitive admissions at out of state public universities and isnât attending either one. There was also a great video I watched by a college counselor somewhere that went through why grade inflation can hurt students and how this particular schoolâs inflated grading scale meant he really wasnât at the top of his class. So though his academics obviously are very strong, they may have scored lower in view of his school profile. I consider this studentâs plight more an issue with CA public universities.
In general, I recommend people donât label another stateâs popular flagship as their safety. Especially if you are applying RD. The admissions rate may not apply to your situation - that is just an averaging of many figures and. The landscape has changed significantly every year for admissions. If another stateâs flagship has a 50% admission rate, your odds are likely 50-50 at best and may be considerably lower (if you are CS interested, engineering, business, itâs tougher odds for sure possibly others). Again, that doesnât mean you donât get in. But I have seen gnashing of teeth on this topic every spring for the last many years on UW related boards and from local parents and students. Have a rolling admission, get some of these popular schools applications in EA if you are really interested and approach their application like you ARE actually interested and not because everyone else around you is applying. I think that is just understanding the statistics, how they have changed over time and not really related to rankings. I got an email that said UW got over 65000 applications this year. In 2021 they got like 53K which was up 17% over the previous year. Itâs just changed a lot and is hard to predict.
Of course, there are other reasons why an applicantâs essay might have resulted in a downgrade by an admission reader.
Regarding Stanley Zhong, piecing together bits from various articles indicates that he had a 3.98 unweighted HS GPA and 4.42 weighted HS GPA (calculated on grades 10-12), and his high school gives +1 for all honors and AP courses for weighting. This suggests that he took fewer than half of his courses as honors or AP. Considering the high school, it would not be surprising if this were on the lower end of the rigor scale for students at the top end of unweighted GPA.
I am aware UW Madison does not track interest in ways some other schools might. I would just say I think there is a reason they still use a âWhy this schoolâ essay. That is all I mean by that. As someone who has read a lot of these types of essays from many students, I have been handed sloppy versions of this essay that could be applied to almost any campus. And having 2 kids through the process recently, I definitely know what those later essays can start to sound like.
If they have such an essay, it would appear that their common data set is not accurate, since the whole point of a âwhy this schoolâ essay is to determine level of interest.
I actually spent a few minutes to see if I could find common definition of terms in the common data set on âdemonstrated interestâ but didnât come up with anything. I always assumed âdemonstrated interestâ consideration was tracking of things outside your application like showing up on campus, contacting admissions, opening emails, etc.
The why UW essay is relatively LONG as well (600 words). I think it is a very intentional choice by admissions
The common data set uses âlevel of applicantâs interestâ as the term in section C7. But that term is not defined in the common data set definitions either.
I assume they would say something like they were not measuring level of interest per se, but trying to assess the basis of the applicantâs interest and whether that made the applicant a good fit for their college.
Like this may sound trivial, but I have heard AOs use the example of people saying they were really interested in a major that the college doesnât actually offer. This an example of how they applicant may well be very interested, but for the wrong reasons.
Other schools certainly say they donât track demonstrated interest. But have calls for school specific essays in their application processes. For example, I just confirmed Yale has a âWhat is it about Yale that has led you to apply?â but says they donât track demonstrated interest in their common data set. I am sure that Yale also likes to see that students demonstrate some level of famililarity and have at least put a little thought to how they might fit in on a campus.
I think the CDS arenât the âbe allâ - itâs a great tool I use - but U of Arizona says the level of applicants interest is important (#2 level) but thatâs a farce because they admit automatically (and award merit this way as well).
So I think some of the CDS arenât accurateâŠand that could swing both ways - a top tier like WUSTL or Emory donât track but yet they have ED - which is exactly them tracking.
U of A says this:
âYes. You may be assured admission to University of Arizona if you are applying as a first-year student, you attended a regionally accredited high school, rank in the top 25% of your graduating class, and have no coursework deficiencies as prescribed by the Arizona Board of Regents or earn an unweighted GPA of 3.0 or higher in your core coursework.â
So then tell my where âImportantâ for DI comes in.
No - you apply - you get in - over 90% who most of which likely never expressed any interest.
I think âtracking demonstrated interestâ is a different thing from making a case in your application that the school is a fit.
My understanding is that tracking demonstrated interest would refer to tracking additional ways that the student has interacted with the school, other than the application itself.
In fact the Yale Admissions Podcast specifically addresses this. From Episode 6:
[Mark] All right, so a deceptively simple questionâ this kind of question probably appears on just about every college application. This is the, howâd you get here? Why are you applying here? I want to start off with a warning about this question. This is not designed as an exercise to simply profess your love for Yale or for whatever institution you are applying to and the same rules apply here that apply in other parts that we were discussingâ particularly, show, donât tell. I think this is a question that we get a lot of telling. Particularly, people go and they research obscure faculty members or find something that appeared in the student newspaper four years ago, and theyâre justâ
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] âtelling us, Iâve done my homework here, and I want to tell you that Iâve done that already.
[Hannah] Right. We are not looking for facts about Yale here. We already know those. You donât need to tell us. We are looking specifically for why you want to come here. What specific experiences have you had that led you to deciding that Yale would be a good place for you? You donât need to talk about prestige or rankings. Those arenât good reasons to apply to a school. You donât need to be just listing the facts. Weâre looking as always for a little bit of reflection here.
[Mark] Mm-hmm. And I want to draw your attention to the fact that the question is phrased in the past tense. It is, what has led you to apply? I find that really good responses to this point to specific experiences in a studentâs pastâ hopefully their recent pastâ that led them to decide, yeah, I want to apply here. Weaker responses, in my experienceâ they tend to launch right into the future tense and they say, I want to go to Yale because Iâm going to do this, and Iâm going to do this, and I want to tell you all about how wildly successful Iâm going to be here and thatâs all interesting as a sort of thought exercise, but it actually doesnât tell me a whole lot about how you got to this place right now. Keep that in the past tense.
To build on this a bit, I think it is sometimes easy for students to forget that every part of the application is another piece of being able to tell the school/AO more about YOU, THE STUDENT.
When a school asks âwhy us?â or similar question, they are actually asking for the student to be able to give more information about themselves and how that information matches the school. With every student Iâve worked with on essays, I say, âYale (or whatever school) doesnât need a fluffer. They know they are awesome. They also donât need a recitation of their admission marketing - they created it. What can you tell them about you that makes the school a match?â
Great applications (imo) are ones that tell a clear, cohesive story about the student applying. Essays compliment (not reiterate) the transcript, ECs, LoRs and give deeper color to/understanding of the student.
This requires a level of self reflection and self-awareness that is difficult for most people, let alone a 17 or 18 year old.
So, basically you are not writing this to demonstrate that you are Yaleâs biggest fan, obsessed with everything Yale, and fantasizing about what youâll do when you are there.
Instead, you should describe your thought process about choosing to apply to Yale, keeping the spotlight on who you are as a person, while sneaking in subtle messages about how this also makes you a perfect Yale student.
I agree, that is the point I was trying to make. I also agree CDS arenât necessarily accurate and schools can use terms in different ways. I just donât think UW Madison is unique in having a âWhy usâ essay but saying they donât consider demonstrated interest. Having an essay like that in an application speaks for itself. You can call that âevaluating fitâ or whatever. But in my experience, if they are in an application, they are there for a reason and Iâve seen some pretty specific examples where I suspect this may have affected a kidâs application both ways.
ED is absolutely a form of demonstrated interest (and financial ability) available at many schools that say they donât do demonstrated interest. Great example.
The Yale podcast is interesting. And confirms a lot Iâve seen overall. At the end of the day, a school like UW canât be as picky as Yale. Iâm sure they would love to see show not tell in UWâs acceptance letters always speak to the âWisconsin Ideaâ - that education extends beyond the classroom. So that is another recommendation I make to students. To discuss how you will be an active engaged member of a campus community and giving back.
But to be honest⊠isnât it at least kinda sorta about the rankings? I know that every place is unique in certain ways. But Yale is a pretty close substitute for Harvard. Same with UMich versus Penn State.
People want to go to these places because they are highly ranked. And they are highly ranked because people want to go to them. Itâs a powerful feedback loop. If âI want to go here because I want to study with Professor Aâ is a bad answer, and âbecause I plan to do X, Y and Z when Iâm hereâ is a bad answer, and talking about facets of the school that interest you is a bad answer⊠whatâs left?
In reality, they get 40-50 applicants for every kid they let in. Most of them are âqualified.â I can see why these cryptic answers drive kids nuts. Itâs mostly arbitrary, a lot comes down to chance, and which reader you get on which day.
I donât know, I wouldnât want to go to Harvard (I did take a class there once), but I wouldnât mind going to Yale. They are differentâŠ
My honest reasons (not necessarily the reasons Iâd put in an app though ) would be that Iâve met a lot of people from Yale who were great conversationalists, I feel happier on the Yale campus than the Harvard campus, and the students in that one Harvard class I took were sort of annoying. Those arenât the greatest reasons, but I havenât spent a lot of time thinking about it⊠I do feel that the two schools have different flavor, though.
This is all exactly right from what I have seen AOs explain. The Yale Admissions Podcast actually has many discussions across various episodes which are basically in some way about what Yale thinks are good or bad reasons for wanting to go to Yale. And in this essay you are basically supposed to tell a story about yourself that ends up showing why you have a good reason for wanting to go to Yale, which will then make Yale more inclined to want you back. And while that is just Yale, I am quite confident the vast majority of very selective holistic review colleges more or less see this the same way.
By the way, Yale is among the colleges that these days prioritizes only some people for interviews, and if you look at everything they say about that, it is basically that they see these people as competitive in terms of their qualifications but are not yet sure they are a good fit for Yale. And it is pretty easy to imagine part of the issue could be they wrote this essay in a way that was a little too much in that âYaleâs biggest fanâ/âfantasizing about what I will doâ direction, and not as reflective and personally illuminating as they were hoping, such that it would make sense to see if a live discussion could get out a better sense of the individual and what really drew them to Yale.
Point being once you understand this is a big concern for colleges like Yaleâto be blunt, too many people wanting to attend for reasons Yale does not loveâa lot of these things start to make sense. And again likely for many other colleges too.
Interestingly I think Wisconsin likely has fewer well-qualified people applying, at least percentage-wise, for âbadâ reasons than colleges like Yale. But it probably still has some applicants like that, and I think it is probably just as interested in trying to focus its admissions on the well-qualified people who have good reasons for applying to Wisconsin.
So again your advice seems exactly right to me. You obviously still have to be well-qualified for Wisconsin, but you also want to give them assurances you understand and share their values and are applying to Wisconsin for good reasons. And I think you are further right that any âresidentialâ four-year college where the whole experience is valued would ideally want to see something about how you would benefit from and contribute to that experience beyond just classes and labs.
So you may consider this naive, but Yale does not want applicants who see things that way. Dartmouthâs Dean of Admissions has explained the same thing, as have various other AOs from highly selective colleges. From their perspective, generic rankings fail to capture the important distinctions between their respective colleges and their different relative strengths and focuses when you consider the whole range of possible preference factors, academic and non-academic. And their ideal applicant has not just marched down some generic ranking, they have thought carefully about what really matters to them and selected the specific colleges that are the best fit for them, which likely means excluding some with similar generic rankings but including some with different generic rankings.
There is in fact more evidence of this in the Admissions Podcast, by the way. For example, in a later episode they are discussing whether people should even apply, and it is a very interesting episode because they are basically discouraging people from applying if they do not meet each part of a six-part test. The fifth part is about understanding and valuing Yaleâs specific academic traditions, and they say in that context:
MARK: I know that every year Iâve read some really accomplished and very impressive applications from students who have just done amazing things and theyâre going to do great things in college, but they are just a terrible academic pick for Yale.
And it seems that theyâve applied to Yale less because theyâre actually interested in the four year experience of learning here and more just because it has an impressive sounding and prestigious name. And sometimes theyâre confused like how did I get denied? Iâm so accomplished. And we say, well, did you know what you were signing up for?
HANNAH: Right. Right. We want to set you up for success. We want to admit students who are really going to thrive in that interdisciplinary approach.
My two cents is at least some of the highly-qualified people who do not get admitted to colleges like Yale and who conclude it was just random may actually more fall into categories like the ones being described here, meaning they wrote essays which they thought should impress Yale but it actually caused Yale to think they were not a good fit.
So obviously part of the point is there is no universal formula, but they do road map this a bit. What they want is something like, âIn the past, I experienced A, from which I learned B, which has caused me to value C, and Yale really values C too, so that is how A led to B which led to Yale.â There is one part of that which is about Yale, namely the premise that Yale values C, so you have to get that part right. But that is not the interesting part to Yale, the interesting part is when you describe your experience A and how it helped you learn B, leading you to C. Because that is a story about you, not Yale.
To be a little blunt, then, there are at least three different things Yale is testing for here. One is just that you do understand Yaleâs actual institutional values. Another is that you are interested in and capable of reflection, a word they use over and over in the Podcast in reference to what they are looking for in essays. And the last is that your story seems credible, that you really do have more than just generic reasons for applying to Yale.
And I am sure they get fooled anyway, that some people really are just marching down the rankings, and they are clever enough to give Yale an essay which creates a different impression. But Yale has made it relatively hard to fool them with the way they have structured this essay to be backward-looking and reflective.
Yeah, my S24 was pretty judicious about choosing colleges for his application list. Yale was his only âHYPSMâ application as the others were not as appealing to him for various specific reasons. He also picked out Brown and Penn, but not many others considered among their generic rankings peers, and so on. And a lot of that was in fact based on him reflecting about what sorts of experiences had really been most meaningful for him in high school, and what he wanted next in college.
And I do think it helped him write their essays, because he had actually been thinking seriously about all this all along. Of course we are a couple days away from knowing whether it worked with any of those three in particular. But he has been doing pretty well with some other colleges where I think he wrote legitimately good fit essaysâand not so well with colleges that did not have such essays! Which I think is indicative of how this approach might have helped him when it was available.
) would be that Iâve met a lot of people from Yale who were great conversationalists, I feel happier on the Yale campus than the Harvard campus, and the students in that one Harvard class I took were sort of annoying. Those arenât the greatest reasons, but I havenât spent a lot of time thinking about it⊠I do feel that the two schools have different flavor, though.