Parents of graduating seniors.....how "fair" did the admissions process seem to you?

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Parents of students who graduated high school in the last 5 years…how “fair” did the admissions process seem to you?

I was honestly very surprised at how consistent the process actually was. I was really not expecting this.

I sorted D26’s schools (she applied to 32) from high to low by their admit rate…D26 was reliably able to get into most schools with a 14% admit rate or higher. Below a 14% admit rate…she was reliably waitlisted or rejected. This was an iron demarcation line in the data.

I think that this was correct for her level of academic prowess and ECs.

Schools were amazingly consistent in how they did their admissions…at least in our case.

After analyzing Maia Learning data for our high school…what we expected would happen is what actually came to pass. I had an 80% success rate in predicting D26’s admit decisions. Usually, when I was wrong was when we got a WL instead of a rejection or vice versa.

The only 2 “negative surprises” were two schools that clearly “yield managed” (i.e., waitlisting or rejecting top candidates at our high school and then admitting the next tier down). However, looking at Maia data, we could see that these schools previously did this at our high school. D26 knew the risk, but liked the schools. So she sent the application anyway and then came up empty. But she knew the risks…

So…for the parents of the class of 2027…at least one parent from the class of 2026 thinks that the process is actually pretty consistent / fair so long as you do your homework and have realistic expectations.

Having said that…I am interested in what others think.

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Mine were fair, 5 college graduates, most were planning on staying in state or chased merit to go out, so maybe 2 rejections that were expected (my one daughter with a 3.95 34 act shot her shot at Princeton only because my dad was an alumni, she never thought she even had a chance). Even merit started to become a little predictable after a couple of kids, although one was pleasantly surprised (a popular school that according to naviance no one from our HS attended and only a handful applied).

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Both my S23 and S26 are attending the schools that they would currently say are their favorites among all the schools where they applied, so the process was “fair enough” for us! :slight_smile:

Comparing their results with peers at our high school, and given what the kids themselves thought about the strengths of their applications, I think admissions was pretty consistent and well calibrated in most cases… EXCEPT for the UCs. In both my S23’s and S26’s classes, many kids that were considered by everyone to be the strongest students (and who had strong results at other schools) did not necessarily have the best results with the UCs. And also, quite a few kids who DID get in to UCB and UCLA were not generally considered by the kids to be the strongest in the class and also didn’t have as strong results with other universities. So, there was a general feeling among the kids that these results were less consistent and predictable. Whether this means the results were more or less “fair” is not for me to say.

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Honestly, I not only felt the process was fair, but that schools that said they were holistic really were and looked properly at the application (have posted elsewhere about C26’s lopsided application w/ reasons). C26 didn’t apply to a lot of schools (I think it was 6 or 7, can’t remember exactly now) and the couple of surprises were to the upside, both with respect to admissions and merit.

I guess Maia worked pretty well for us as far as it went, but we had to dig a bit and some was kind of retroactively figuring out how Maia fit because of C26 being an outlier on all of the charts. Some schools were easier to predict (in terms of any application above x SAT had been admitted in prior years). (But we did see some surprising-in-context reds on C26’s schools after the outcomes were entered this year so I guess some people would say it wasn’t fair.)

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You probably have seen the San Francisco Chronicle’s interactive admissions chart that has admission results by California high school.

The data showed that the UCs did not like Catholic High Schools that much (more specifically, they did not like OUR high school). So we only applied to one UC (Davis) and D26 was waitlisted. Still, D26 applied to their Biology program (a big mistake) which has a very low admit rate. So I feel that our WL was legit.

The UCs are a slightly different beast that I still do not have a good understanding of.

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My D’s friend who will be attending MIT was WL at Davis. So your D is in good company. :slight_smile:

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Our experiences have been fair and consistent. D22 was a top student, graduated second in her class with a 36 ACT. Applied to 10 schools. She got into five – Rice, Emory, Wake Forest, UGA (I made her apply to one in-state public) and Furman. Waitlisted at four – Northwestern, WashU, Tulane and Davidson. Rejected from one – Brown.

We think Tulane was yield protection, which they are known for doing. Davidson’s holistic process worked well – it wasn’t really a fit, but she applied because she was nominated for a full-ride scholarship, and her lack of interest probably came across in her application.

In our view, Rice, Emory, Northwestern and WashU are more or less peer institutions, all reaches, so getting into two and being waitlisted at two seems like a good outcome. I don’t know their exact acceptance rates, but Rice was around 8 percent at the time. Obviously Brown is a long shot for anyone.

D26 applied to a carefully curated list of six schools that offered a niche major she was looking for – Georgia Tech, WPI, RIT, Pitt, Miami Ohio and UT Dallas. She got into all of them with great merit. She was also a top student with a 1560 SAT score and excellent ECs, but not in the top two of her class. None of these schools except Georgia Tech are reaches, however. And she had an advantage at GT with being female, in-state and applying to a brand-new major that they were presumably looking to populate.

Ironically, she was nominated for the same scholarship at Davidson as her sister so put in a last-minute application as a lark. She, too, was waitlisted. :slightly_smiling_face:

S25 only applied to three in-state public schools, but none were holistic, so we knew he’d get into all three. He picked the one he liked best after touring all of them. (ETA: wait, no, I’m remembering that wrong. We knew he would get in to all of them, but I think he only applied to the one he liked best.)

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As a quick aside…D26 was nominated for a Davidson scholarship (perhaps the same one–I forget its name). But we visited Davidson and were very unimpressed. So D26 didn’t even apply.

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We visited Davidson during D22’s very first college visit road trip during spring of her freshman year. We also saw UNC and Duke on that trip. She had no frame of reference at that point, and her takeaways were funny – she was unimpressed with Duke and didn’t like the two campuses (meanwhile I was blown away), and UNC was nixed immediately for being too big.

She thought Davidson was a little too small and didn’t care for the facilities, but she did like the honor code and the lack of Greek life (eating houses were deemed okay). They didn’t offer her major, so she wasn’t planning to apply – but the scholarship nomination came with a fun write-up on her school’s social media, so she figured an application wouldn’t kill her. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I think it was pretty fair for us. There were no big surprises in admissions, but a couple big surprises with $$. My son was pretty laid back about the process (I wasn’t!) & he will be attending the school he’d most hoped to attend. He was accepted at 7/9 and the 2 rejections were from schools that I thought would be a terrible fit ;), and both came after a waterfall of happy acceptances, so no one was particularly disappointed. He was homeschooled, which made the process seem like it might be less predictable, but on the whole it basically fell as predicted!

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We are out of state, and my 26 kid (#5 in big public school class, exceptional rigor, perfect test scores, good ECs) applied to 9 schools: admitted to 6 (including Berkeley/UCLA peers), waitlisted at 2 (including UCLA), rejected from 1 (Berkeley).

We were not surprised, nor did we think that result was in any way unfair. (I am of the “there are way more qualified applicants than spots, so lots of strong applicants won’t get in no matter what; it’s not personal” school of thought.) Everything I’ve heard indicates that the PIQs do really matter, and my kid said they did not put their all into them. So I would guess that was a factor.

I’m sure in-state it’s a much more fraught situation in terms of perceived fairness, given how desirable and affordable the UCs are.

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I generally don’t find outcomes THAT surprising in my day-to-day life, no.

Things are less “at a whim” than people believe IMO if you know the system. A lot of parents out there have no clue where their own kids sit in their HS class (or region/nationally) and really assume their kid has been slighted, I think, when rejected. I have a number of good friends, who really pay SO SO little attention to admission that they have their kids applying to places I know their kid has NO chance of, and others that are sure things, and they also have no clue of that. They are really just picking almost random schools their kid likes - and this is in a highly educated, high income area.

I do think picking WHICH selective school a top top kid gets in, is hard. However, the truly amazing candidates I know personally that want a super selective school, all end up at one. Guessing if they get in to Yale or Columbia? hard. If they are a “Yale/Columbia” caliber kid? not as hard… I do alum interviews for a <10% school…I see on local instagram where kids who don’t get in end up some times, and usually the ones I am very surprised did NOT get in, end up at equally good or better schools… I think that is “fair” myself -

I think the UCs are somewhat an outlier, as a couple people pointed out. They have different criteria to seem hard to predict (I also am in an area were people do not apply in droves…so less familiar).

My 25s naviance was quite accurate…I personally underestimated their odds based on reading too many internet boards that base everying off UW GPA. I 1) underestimated the rigor of their HS, I think, and how well their counselors/teachers probably set them up. 2) underestimated being full pay 3) they had cool, interesting, unusual ECs that really matched major

My 27 I am trying to not overestimate - lol.

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The UCs currently do not use SAT/ACT, and previously de-emphasized SAT/ACT relative to HS grades, and HS grade inflation has compressed HS GPAs at the top, so stats-based estimations may be less accurate for the typical estimations based more heavily on SAT/ACT. Additionally, the subjectively-graded PIQs (essays) are specific to UC and probably very different from that of most other colleges.

Adding to that is that public schools usually have little college counseling (the general counselors are overburdened as it is), and private schools’ college counseling may be aimed mostly at colleges with significantly different criteria (e.g. Catholic high schools may be focused on Catholic colleges, while non-religious academically elite high schools may be focused on highly selective private colleges).

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My kids graduated a long time ago- but my overall stance has not changed.

Love thy safety. It is the only way to guarantee a good outcome, whether or not the “fairness” factor comes into play, whether or not the reaches were too reachy or the matches too expensive.

We made the kids list something- one thing- anything- about every single school we visited. It was hard with some of them especially the ones where we’d drive up and the kid would grimace and say “do I have to get out of the car?”. But just one thing. The Ag school runs its own dairy and the ice cream is phenomenal. The sailing and crew teams run dragon boat races on a local river and the local community is invited-- with a big BBQ outside the boathouse afterwards. The Fine Arts department sponsors open competitions (you don’t have to be an arts major) for things like “best sports photography” and “best use of pasta in a work of art”.

Find something to love.

We have friends with kids a few years older than us and their experience really colored our approach. They are double legacies of an HYP; VERY involved alums, generous financially although not in a mega donor category from what I gather. Their kid was waitlisted and then denied-- and trudged off to hated safety school like it was four years in the federal penitentiary. It was quite sad. Great kid. The chips on the table were for “we’re involved alums and kid is a double legacy”, and NOT “Kid wants the following in a college and we’re going to make sure there is a balanced list”.

So we did the opposite. Nail down that safety. Don’t listen to the smug folks who say things like “At Joey’s level, there really aren’t any appropriate match colleges”. Hogwash. Or “How do you even look at a safety school for a National Merit/Physics Olympiad finalist?”

There are brilliant kids everywhere. And your special snowflake might be one of them if the “ride or die” college doesn’t come through. So engage in appropriate risk management upfront and it will all work out.

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We felt the admissions process was fair. The merit scholarship process, however, was very opaque and just plain weird. We were blown away at one school’s unexpected generosity, shocked by another’s somewhat pedestrian offer, and disappointed by the complete absence of any merit $ from other schools. The murky criteria and lack of feedback made it frustrating for our kids. I think there was some game theory at play by the schools but their assumptions were wrong.

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My kids graduated a while ago, and for the 2nd child he ED’ed at a great fit school that for him was likely close to a safety. We always did wonder if he would have gotten into Georgia Tech, but withdrew the application. I felt that he would have been deferred and then possibly accepted.

For my D, who was my first, she applied to 8 schools, got into 6, including what we felt was a slight reach dream school(where she attended). She was offered pathways at GT which was a complete surprise, and was rejected from a reach school, that she honestly applied on a whim. The biggest surprise was one target admit where she received no merit. They were basically saying that they would have her if she was full pay. Also to add context, this child was an A/B student without top rigor, decent test scores, but made it up in other areas.

What I do remember was how this one girl from her class got into MIT. Knowing this student (who was not Val/Sal , but top 10) since grade school, what I saw was someone special the whole time. It made me realize that the top schools can tell who these extraordinary kids are and that acceptance is not always just random.

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Our kids graduated undergrad a while ago (2007 and 2010). Both really vetted their application lists before submitting applications.

For kid 1, no surprises except UMD where his stats were significantly higher than their usual admits, and he did apply early. But he didn’t get accepted into their music studio so he would not have attended anyway. Outcomes for music performance majors are not really predictable…

Kid two initially applied to three colleges, including where she eventually matriculated. We asked her to apply to one localish college in case she changed her mind about going far away. She was accepted to all of these. She asked to add a reach and her choice away Davidson. She (and we) were very impressed when we visited. She also submitted an application for a specific music scholarship. She was not accepted there (she has muses since that if they had been test optional at that point, her chances would have been better…her SAT was her weaker link).

Our kids had no surprises really, and we all felt the process was very good.

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I think that this is a perfect summary of our results also. I think that in each case our daughters got accepted to and went to the university that was the best fit for them. For us this applied to both undergraduate admissions and graduate admissions. In one case a daughter only got one single acceptance to one graduate program, but it was exactly the right one for her. One daughter also had a surprising rejection, but it was a program that was not quite as good a fit for her so it was probably just as well.

Many years ago both me and my wife had similar experiences.

Looking from afar the admissions system seems random and unpredictable. However, I have no complaints at all about the actual results.

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Were there any identifiable traits for the group that was admitted to UCB and UCLA?

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Our school punches above its weight with UCB generally, and did well with UCLA this year. Almost every kid admitted to UCLA had a 4.0 GPA and I suspect the couple that weren’t, were the recruited athletes. I suspect our school - local-ish to Cal - has a good reputation there.