Yes, hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs going to non-citizens.
Are they? Hiring is less transparent and more subjective than college admission, and lots of people have stories of mediocre employees being hired due to relationships with existing employees.
Indeed, many employers encourage referral /nepotism recruiting, probably on the theory that employees do not want to hurt their credibility by referring a poor employee, and the focus for many jobs is to avoid hiring a poor employee, rather than find the best employee.
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Nepotism/connections are always an issue ( in college admissions too), but my impression is companies need to ensure profitability by hiring those who can perform the job, regardless of whether they also play tuba or ran the drama club. Many use gpa minimums as hiring criteria.
Unless of course the hiring company is a drama or music one.
Agreed that hiring practices are not transparent.
In addition to your points, hiring in many places is holistic, where many factors beyond college GPA are considered. Applicants have little to no visibility to what factors are most important in the decision.
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The process may not scale up to the numbers of undergraduate applicants. But even if it did, the cost / FA differences add another variable that is largely not present in medical residency or QB matching (all potential offers are similar financially). Perhaps if colleges made conditional binding FA prereads before applicants list colleges, it may work.
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Thank you for the link, the article was interesting. And thereâs an internal link to a website that tracks how many students from each high school in the US get in to Harvard, Princeton and MIT. As someone whose kidsâ schools offers absolutely no info on where its graduates go, I found it fascinating!
This is not what I am seeing for the so-called elite universities and boarding schools. Many of the top students at the top boarding schools are male; in the top science and math classes, females are rare. (Truthfully, the top math classes are almost all Asian male.) It does seem like females have more success than males at earning acceptance to the Ivies; I suspect it is because they are generally more into social justice, an interest the Ivies like to see.
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The applicant pool for these schools in the mid 1980s was much smaller because of self selection, and I donât mean just self selecting only the best students. Most students just didnât see themselves attending elite colleges for a variety of reasons, and therefore didnât apply. I graduated around the same time you did, and most students at my HS did not apply to college at all. There were plenty of smart kids, but for the most part my classmates werenât members of the social class that attended college, much less elite colleges.
Thereâs an element of positive social change, IMHO, that students all over the US from all sorts of backgrounds can imagine attending schools like the ones you mentioned, and are willing to give the application process a try⊠even though it makes the process more chaotic.
Edited to add⊠I see @blossom made a similar (but not quite the same) reply above. I obviously didnât read all the replies before jumping in 
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Iâll only do this for one school, you can do the rest.
For Harvard Class of 2027, the acceptance rate for M and F was the same, 3.2% (section C1). Harvard received over 18% more apps from women. So, in the end the Class of 2027 is 55% women.
Overall, females are doing better than males in HS, and also going to college at a higher rate. (lots of data out there about that).
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In our area, one of my friendâs C24 with an excellent GPA, SAT, NMS, and stellar ECs got rejected for EA while someone with a lower GPA, SAT, and Great ECs with her sister at one of the schools got accepted EA at same school.
Even though everyone may do well in the long run as others on the forum have alluded to, the disappointment is still there for them
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Yes college enrollment has increased dramatically in the last 50 years, as no longer was a HS education seen as sufficient for many careers (never mind that many tradespeople now make more per hour than many other professions!). Not only were there more students graduating HS, but more were pursuing postsecondary educations. I also think we are seeing many more internationals come to the US for their education, so all combined has made the admission process very competitive. And it is sad that we are seeing so many small colleges close due to the rising costs of keeping these institutions open.
But I think that the alums from many of the private institutions , especially the top ones, would withhold large donations if the schools went to a lottery admissions system, and the schools simply cannot afford to take such a risk. We have already seen some impact on alumnae giving after the recent issues surrounding safety and free speech (no more will me said so as not to veer into politics) but the impact of school policy on alum giving is real at these schools, and the finance folks know that.
Disappointment is just a part of life. As parents we should encourage kids to work towards their goals while reminding them disappointment may be in the cards.
I, for one, am also OK with kids having a dream school (or schools) as long as they know that getting admitted is not guaranteed.
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A core tenet of systems thinking is that âevery system is perfectly designed to get the results it getsâŠâ
If you think admissions results are not right, then the system needs improvements. (broken is subjective).
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Ok, so they are disappointed. Seriously? Are you saying no one should ever be disappointed? Experiencing setbacks are universal, and figuring out how to deal with them, and learning that one will not only survive, but thrive, is crucial.
And lest anyone think I am heartless, I thought my life was over when Lafayette rejected me, and then was rejected from 5 other schools. I only got into one school (My family and I were clueless, we didnât group schools by safety/target/reach). But that one school was all I needed.
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When this happens, you also have to remember that while you know the person IRL, the AO is evaluating the application. We donât get to see the applications, and they often present the person in a different light.
That student you think is âlesserâ may come across as much more compelling.
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And if the system gets it âright enoughâ but causes unstress, money, etc? That just doesnt matter?
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In Texas, where they like things big, UT Austin is not big enough to take the top 10% of each Texas high school. It currently takes the top 6% to fill about 3/4 of its frosh space.
There is also the problem that relying on class rank determined by the high school encourages some ugly grade grubbing/ rank gaming competitive behavior within the high school, where classmates are seen as rivals.
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Yes, it does, but that competition occurs anyway at many schools. And most students know they are not in the competition, so look at other state schools-maybe they meet auto admit for Texas Tech, for example. Or top 10% for UT Dallas or Texas A& M. Or top 50% with certain scores at UTSA.
Actually, UT Austin isnt big enough for even the top 6% now. They count on lower yield. And have other paths like CAP.
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Heavy weighting? From what unweighted GPA and weighting bonuses did that 4.2 weighted GPA come from?
It was probably more true in the past, when the prep schools were more for the SES elite than the academic elite, and HYP-type colleges enrolled lots of âgentlemen Câ students from the prep schools plus enough actually academically elite students (often from schools other than the prep schools) to hold up their academic reputations.
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