<p>You can’t just swap essays either because stats are a factor.</p>
<p>Who’s more likely to get in? The kid with a great essay, 2050, 3.6 or the one with a very good essay, 2200, 3.95?</p>
<p>I don’t know. Do you?</p>
<p>If your job was working in admissions to make the decisions, you wouldn’t call it a “crapshoot”. You would know that you work very hard to make these decisions, but at the same time you would know that it is often a very hard choice to make, and that the others on the admissions staff do not always agree with you. But if you had worked at a particular college for a few years, and then went off to work as private college counselor – you’d also be able to assess “chances” of an applicant to that college in a much more discerning way. </p>
<p>There is an element of chance, but there are also a lot of factors that play into the decisions. </p>
<p>I think the missing piece for outsiders in a lot of cases are letters of recommendation. (The whole confidentiality thing means that even a large proportion of admitted students don’t know that their teachers and guidance counselors wrote about them.). For Ivy applications, there are some students who really stand out in terms of the type of qualities the ad coms are looking for, and school personnel do know how to telegraph that in the letters they right.</p>
<p>I do think that in a school where many students are applying to the same highly competitive schools, and where their is a history of acceptances, the school counselors probably routinely send the right signals so that the ad coms know who their picks are. That is, if you work at Ritzy Prep and 40 students apply to Ivy U each year, but Harvard usually accepts 8 or 10… then I think that when you write the recs, you let Harvard know which 10 you think it should be. Not overtly - its just that you put a whole lot of effort into singing the praises of those 10, and you write in more muted terms when describing the others. But the ad coms at Ivy U, who are reading dozens of LOR’s coming from the same school and signed by the same counselor, are going to see the difference.</p>
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<p>I suspect you’re right and you’ll never find out whether a teacher submarined you or not. A very sneaky and underhanded aspect of the process that really violates people FERPA rights.</p>
<p>Well, actually you don’t have to waive your rights to see the rec. letters. Neither of my kids did. (The lawyer in me wouldn’t allow them to do that. I am pretty averse to signing waivers, especially when you don’t have to). We saw exactly what the teachers submitted.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t characterize a less-than-amazing letter as being “submarined”. It is not the teachers’ job to lie to colleges and make it sound like each and every student who crosses their path is amazing and unique and remarkable. They do the best that they can, and if they are honest but the the student in question just doesn’t happen to be perfect – that’s not the fault of the teacher.</p>
<p>But having copies of the letters in hand does give the student some insight that may enhance chances. </p>
<p>I just have a very strong suspicion that a lot of the mystery about these students like the one who sparked this discussion would be cleared up if we could see those LOR’s and essays.</p>
<p>Sad that essays have so much impact. A kid works for four years and has a whole body of work to assess, yet let’s make this decision on two hours worth of work.</p>
<p>Makes zero sense, especially given that essays are easy to cheat, especially by people with deeper pockets.</p>
<p>You can’t fake a transcript, standardized test scores, EC accomplishments nor teacher recs.</p>
<p>pulliamjs</p>
<p>I think you are overestimating the importance of the essay. The four-year transcript is by far the most important part of an application, with significant weight also given to ECs, teacher recs and test scores. Essays are important and sometimes a “tie-breaker,” but it is very very rare that an essay would tip a kid from a deny to an accept decision.</p>
<p>i was responding to the post about the essay’s importance.</p>
<p>Based on that post and other things I’ve read, I do think the essay takes on too much importance.</p>
<p>I didn’t posit your strawman that it would tip a kid from deny to accept.</p>
<p>I think maybe ‘unpredictable’ might be a better word than “crapshoot” though in essence they are the same. We have no idea why the 3.6 2050 might get in while the 2300 3.95 gets rejected. Could it be a hook, or a compelling essay? Maybe the high scorer didn’t take as rigorous a course load as other students in his/her school with only 4 APs versus 10? We’re not in the room so we don’t know what catches the eye of the AdCom and what causes them to roll their eyeballs and " not another one like that".
If we approach the process with eyes wide open and a realistic expectation, it is less likely to be as devastating as it appears to have been for the young lady from Pittsburgh.
This is not “your father’s college application” process and hasn’t been for several years. When our youngest applied, we set up three levels of colleges, safeties (3, all with rolling admission), matches (4) and reaches (4). I told him point blank that he was likely to go 7-3-1 with seven acceptances, 3 rejections ( all Ivy) and one wait list. He went 7-3-1 though one school I had pegged as a reach accepted him and one I had as a match wait listed him. The more I dug into the wait list, I realized that I overestimated his chances. It wasn’t Tufts syndrome or yield protection but rather over the last six years, from the 2 high schools in our area, 70 students applied and 22 were accepted, none with a weighted GPA less than 4.36 at either school no matter how high your SAT score. It seems like that is the hard and fast rule for this Admissions department at that university. As a result when the acceptance and rejections were sent out, it was a “NBG”, no big deal to my son as he had already factored in his chances at most of the schools avoiding the shock experienced by Ms. Weiss…</p>
<p>Only a 4.5 and 2120? Maybe that is why. Many people with 4.0 and 2300 get rejected. I don’t get why they would send a letter to college admissions. If she wanted to get into those I would say go Early Decision, but she went all Regular so that is even worse.</p>
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<p>Funny - this is the defintion of 'crapshoot" on [Dictionary</a>, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary](<a href=“http://www.thefreedictionary.com%5DDictionary”>http://www.thefreedictionary.com)</p>
<p>Noun 1. crapshoot - a risky and uncertain venture; “getting admitted to the college of your choice has become a crapshoot”</p>
<p>Idk, I think essays weigh too much in admissions. I had solid stats and grades and EC’s, but still got rejected from all the ivies (besides Cornell). I was a bit surprised considering that I felt pretty qualified for ONE of the schools, but meh whatever. I’m going to a great school in the fall and I can’t complain, but I can’t say that the admissions results weren’t surprising</p>
<p>Essays are how a student defined themselves, I think they’re very important. They give an applicant an identity and really tells you so much more than grades or EC’s will.</p>
<p>And thousands of students have good stats and EC’s, so I don’t know why you say “but still” and bemoan that you only got into Cornell, a flippin amazing school. And the way to differentiate these good students is through the essay.</p>
<p>Only because it’s frustrating seeing 3.9/2200 people getting in over the 4.0/2350s, just because they happened to write about a topic that clicked better with a few admissions officers. I understand the system isn’t going to ever be totally fair, but still it doesn’t seem right in some aspects.</p>
<p>As PAGRok says, the essay is an opportunity to show the admissions committee who you are and what makes you tick.</p>
<p>In your case that might mean using the essay to differentiate yourself from the other thousands of Asian students from New England with strong academics, who play violin in the youth orchestra and excel in math competitions.</p>
<p>And furthermore, do you have any evidence that it was the essay that hurt you, not your interviews or recommendations? Every kid thinks their recs. are amazing, but at this level of competitive admissions one or two "excellent"s instead of "best in my career"s could make the difference.</p>
<p>Although I understand the necessity of standing out, it seems to me that having strong academics, playing the violin very well, and excelling in math competitions are actually all very much worth doing. If these are done to a high level, it doesn’t necessarily leave much time for doing other things. I think it would be interesting for a university to admit a large number of people whose paper lists look quite similar, and then find out how different they actually are, when they are on campus. I would guess that they would turn out to be quite different from each other, and not at all boring.</p>
<p>Of course they’d be different, but some might not be good students, might not have a passion. You can have two students who play violin, but one loves it and one hates it, the essay will tell you this. Or one of them wants to be a bio major, the other a prof. musician, but the school only offers bio degrees not music. Also, you’ll likely end up with a large group of students who all want to do one of the things they did before. </p>
<p>Admitting based on a list of accomplishments is like admitting simply based on test scores and GPA, it doesn’t actually tell you’re admitting the best applicants. If you admit according to GPA/scores you only get the best students in a high school setting. A students EC’s are also hugely affected by wealth, connections, random chance, and parent.</p>
<p>With essay topics selected/recommended and essays themselves worked over/edited by parents, English teachers, paid college counselors and heck, the next door neighbor who happens to be a professor, I don’t see how colleges can give an ounce of weight to them when compared with a four year record of accomplishments/interests. If an admissions officer can’t deduce “who you are and what makes you tick” from your grades, test scores, EC’s and community service, a few overworked paragraphs that may not even by your own work will hardly add anything to the picture. Essays were not part of the admissions process when I applied to colleges in the Dark Ages. Amazingly, schools managed to select appropriate candidates anyway.</p>
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The same could often be said of the college essays that are molded, shaped, edited and dare I say sometimes ghostwritten by ‘consultants’. Unless you have an essay done under supervised conditions, you don’t know if you’re getting the student’s work or that of the student with help. In my area, it’s not uncommon for a parent to spend $4000 for a list of prospective colleges and ‘help’ with the essays.</p>
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<p>Bah!</p>
<p>This whole idea of putting all this weight on essays seems way out of proportion to their real value and what insight they provide.</p>
<p>I loved her letter. if you read “the Gatekeepers” you’ll know she’s exactly spot on…and by the way it’s not just the Ivy’s. Any kid from middle to upper income is going to have a very tough time getting in to the best schools, with GPA’a and test scores that aren’t at the very top. Why? They’ll be beaten out by the diversity, and bogus essays to which Weiss refers.</p>