If HYPSM reject, say, 65% of students w/ perfect GPAs and SAT/ACT scores, that means 35% get in. That's good odds, no?

[LostInTheShuffle]

@mtmind

As others have pointed out, even if the 35% in the headline is accurate, it includes a large portion of kids who not only have great grades and test scores, but also have some other significant boost. They are recruited athletes, artists, and/or academics, legacies, URMs, first generation college, major award winners, from an underrepresented state or demographic, etc. If you strip all that away, the boost for grades only is not nearly as significant as you estimate.

I agree that it’s not as high as the headline number would suggest for the purely unhooked applicants (principally white and Asian students) but I don’t think the number of perfect scoring hooked kids would be so large - that’s why people here and elsewhere feel it is such an uneven playing field because athletes and legacies, overall, get in to with lower stats. As for URMs, this forum gets so excited when a high GPA, 1500 SAT URM asks for a “chance me” (while a high GPA, 1550 SAT white or Asian applicant will get a “meh” and “good luck!”) so I don’t think there will be that many perfect scorer URMs (I would love to be proven wrong on this).

But say you’re right and the admission rate for perfect scoring unhooked applicants drops to 20% (from a headline of 35%), that’s still very good - a 1 in 5 chance is much better than 1 in 20/25.