In the face of uncertainty it only makes sense to apply broadly even if you’re at the top of academic measures. Our S applied to 15 colleges, was accepted to all (except that pesky GT deferral) - Stanford (REA), Cal, CMU, and so on. He wanted choice and did not take anyone’s spot. Of course this is driving application numbers, but what other real option is there?
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That’s unfortunate. I think it should be transparent throughout the process. All transparency is good - information is good. It enables effective decision making.
Well I took you literally. TBH it sounded a little entitled.
Well… I think a little entitlement is not necessarily a bad thing. 
In my “old country”, I was actually, legally entitled to an automatic admission to any university of my choice as a medalist of the national informatics olympiad with a perfect school record.
(I didn’t choose the most selective school, btw, staying in my home town to study with my mentor - long story I can’t share publicly:)
From everything that I have been able to glean from your posts your two kids are amazing and well deserving of their success.
The system is opaque, confusing, and frustrating but it doesn’t mean that it is nuts. Your S was plenty qualified to attend Rice but for some reason a tippy, tippy, tippy top mathematician wasn’t a key institutional priority that year at Rice. Or, maybe they were so confident that he would go somewhere else they decided to see if they would get a LOCI from him before committing.
It’s a numbers game in the end and schools should be able to craft their classes as they wish within the bounds of the law.
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Absolutely! And we all should be able to vent about it on anonymous forums. It’s a free country, ain’t it! 
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Perhaps your background is where that perception comes from. Most people are not “entitled” to anything, especially in the world of college admissions.
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My point is that they should be so entitled to a strong public u if they are a top student. It should not be a guessing game.
One of my friends won the Robertson scholarship at Duke. Not admitted, in state, to UVA. Ridiculous.
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Well, they did teach us in class that one can’t separate philosopher’s personhood from their philosophy. 
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PS. This part just reminded me of the infamous Abe Simpson’s tirade. 
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I suppose they correctly guessed that he would have turned them down for MIT even if (hypothetically) they had asked? 
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We are lucky they guessed correctly. It doesn’t always work out that way.
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Agree, but the problem is simply too many applicants. My safeties 30 years ago were all in the T20…
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This article came across my newsfeed recently and it was very eye opening.
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There is a long thread about that article started a few days ago. This thread was a spinoff from that other one.
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Thanks for letting me know.
I would bet it is actually more than 50% are hooked… (though definitely not all). This was true even 30 years ago at prep schools. And some had multiple hooks:) I went to HS with someone whose family had a named building, was a legacy, AND was an athletic recruit to an Ivy.
There are way more athletic recruits from prep schools than most people realize, because most people only think of football and basketball and forget about squash, and sailing and lacrosse and such.
More kids from prep school have the advanced planning / guidance (and money) to get an ED school sorted in advance, which helps a bit too in %s.
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Also (also from the Boston area), a lot of the kids in those prep schools were athletic recruits to begin with.
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So very true! they are recruited into HS for athletics and then to college as recruits too (with some re-classing in the middle there too, usually;)
As does the one to which I am alluding. The top kids apply to gazillions of schools and get in to one or two, plus the “top” colleges dip down to kids with less impressive academic records and scores to fulfill non-academic priorities. And they don’t just dip down a little. Some accept students with SAT scores, for example, hundreds of points below many rejected applicants.
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