@Corinthian , nice way of explaining it (and similar reasoning underpinned D19’s ED decision too).
As I read that something occurs to me - most colleges, or at least the ones we looked at, do give a profile with stats, gender, geographic origin, some form of describing URMs, pell grants etc. All sorts of stats to show you what’s in the bucket. One thing that is conspicuous by its absence on these profiles, given all the recent discussion, is the % of the class that are on college athletic teams.
Chiming in to ensure voices aren’t crowded out…or scared away. My very unhooked ORM twins were all too aware of the facts staring them right in the face when making application decisions very early in the process. As @Corinthian aptly points out, the buckets are what they are. Thus, applying EA became critical.
@SJ2727 , but you can get percentage of varsity athletes currently enrolled on Niche. When D19 decided she wanted to go club rather than varsity for her sport, we felt that shifted the odds at different schools. Her list ranged from 8% varsity athletes to 36%.
You don’t have to go looking for any of the other stats on niche, though.
And the buckets can get complicated: My D19 applied to engineering programs. Most of them were at schools that auto-admit by stats, but a few were at more “holistic” institutions—but most of them are female-majority. I kind of wonder if she had a better chance of admission as an engineering applicant (the female engineer bucket) than if she’d been planning on, say, English literature (the general female student bucket), even within the same institution. (And that’s just one extra layer—in actual fact, this has to be a multidimensional scale!)
The problem is that absent actually useful stats on admissions from colleges, we’re all flying blind on this sort of thing. My cynical self, though, thinks that that’s largely because that’s precisely the way (selective) colleges want it—it keeps their market and negotiating power strong.
@SJ2727 having # of athletes listed would be an interesting statistic to add to the common data set or have it added to the schools facts and figures page.
It’s not really that hard to figure out though. Go to the schools athletic page. Look at the rosters. Add up all of the numbers from both genders, and divide that # into total # of Students.
Where it gets tricky, is that it’s not the total number of athletes, it’s how many were awarded slots for their sport versus a walk on. At some selective D3 there are no scholarships and general not many slots given out, maybe a couple per team. The coach uses his couple of slots on kids he really wants and/or thinks it might help out gaining admission. The rest of his team is made up of walk-ons. But this is where it gets even more tricky. The team really needs more than a couple of kids each year to stay competitive. So the walk ons have to be pretty good, at least some of them. So how do those kids end up getting through admissions? Obviously they are good students, maybe a tuba player, is planning on joining the debate team, and is solid athlete who would like to play sports there but does not have support from the coach with a “slot”. Maybe these walk on kids have met with or talked with the coach before, but the coach was not willing to use a slot on them. Maybe the coach writes a note on behalf of the kid. Maybe they all write on their common apps their plans to continue playing in college and awards they may have won like team captains, league all start etc. I don’t know how it works, but every year there are plenty of DIII walk-ons, some sports this happens more frequently than others.
So, to break down the analysis even further, you can go into the roster lists and figure out how many freshman are on each team. Take that # and use it to figure out rough percentage of athletes per incoming class.
Thank you all for your kind words I truly appreciate them. It is tough because our other dog was not wanting to eat anything for several days and we have been worried about her. She seems to slowly be coming around though.
Today we are expecting to hear from 3 maybe 4 schools and that will be all of them. She has 2 admits so far. We are all pretty anxious.
@letsshare ,late commiserations. We lost our cat of 12 years (that immigrated with us) last year to kidney disease in the week my daughter wrote final exams. It was heartbreaking enough without the added stress so I can fully empathize with you. Hoping you get good news today.
@letsshare Wishing good decisions for your kiddo!!
@letsshare. I’m sure your other doggy is grieving. When my father in law died last year, their dog laid at the bottom of his bed for a few months all day long unless she was pulled outside for a walk. She also didn’t eat much the first week. She’s ok now. It’s hard on the whole family including the doggy friends.
Good luck with the rest of the decisions 
@letsshare, I’m so very sorry. Such a tough, emotional thing to deal with at ANY time, but this is a particularly awful time–and hope the other doggo perks up soon. Good luck with the remaining decisions. Hoping for some happy news for you. 
My fingers and toes are crossed for everyone who’s getting decisions today and soon. I’m generally a fairly laid back person, but I was literally shaking while waiting for D19’s decision (not proud of that since I knew logically that she would eventually be ok either way, but it felt so big). She has a friend who hasn’t had good news yet, so we are especially hoping for her in 45 min.
Big day for California kids today. UCLA, UCSD, UCI(?), USC (?) decisions come out this afternoon.
D is waiting for UCSD, UCLA. Already accepted to SDSU, UCSB, UC Riverside (she did not apply to this one).
I also think about it as ‘buckets’ and many different types of ‘hooks’. But so rarely is the biggest ‘hook’, wealth, mentioned. But looking at numbers at ‘elite’ schools, there is big advantage of being in the 5-10% band ($114-150k), even more for 1-5% ($150-300K). And huge advantage for >1% (300k and up); that includes the donor class.
To me, there is only one obvious explanation for the 1-5% band being so much more over-represented than the 5-10% band in the schools listed below. Admissions is taking full-pay into account. But that’s not emphasized as a hook on CC, while URM, low-income, or first-gen are.
Seems to me that some ‘hooks’ are bullied, while the biggest hook in the room is never made to feel bad or unworthy or having ‘stolen’ someone else’s spot. FWIW, my kids have the wealth hook. Alas not the 1%; which would make the upcoming tuition bills much less painful…
From the Equality of Opportunity Project
All these schools have approximately the same percentages
Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Williams, Bowdoin, Pomona, Cornell (little poorer), NYU (little poorer), Amherst (little poorer but more 1%-ers)
Upper 1% of income --17% of students 17x more than expected
1-5% income band – 25% 5x more than expected
5-10% income band – 12% 2x more than expected
Upper 20% income – 69%
bottom 20% income – 4%
In contrast, here is UC Berkeley
Upper 1% --3% 3x more than expected
1-5 19% – 4x more than expected
5-10 15% – 3x more than expected
Upper 20 54%
bottom 20 7%
@liska21 those are interesting numbers. I did know that the wealthy are over represented but didn’t know how much. I assume this is more because those kids have so many advantages - money for expensive ECs, good schools, tutoring for standardized tests. I’ve heard some people say that, even for need-blind schools, admissions can assume some full pay families by their zip codes. I don’t know how true that is though. I’m sure our zip code looks like a place where most would be full pay. But that’s not the whole story. Many families we know here would say they are in the donut hole and I know at least a few who didn’t do the leg work and their kids got accepted to schools where the FA packages just won’t work. I don’t know if the schools accepted them thinking they would be full pay but now they won’t matriculate at those schools.
It is unclear to me how need blind can really work since many of those schools have 50 percent of families who are full pay. How does it just work out that way without admissions knowing? We were told that percentage at Colby and at Davidson when we visited.
@homedog I’m sure there are many ways they can make a good guess if you are full-pay. They don’t have to guess 100% right. I posted the UC Berkeley #s to try to get at the wealth=more academic advantages issue. If it’s just that, then 1% and 1-5% bands should have similar advantage. But those income bands seems to get an extra boost at ‘elite’ schools. Could be legacy, lacrosse/sailing/etc, prep school pipeline effect, but it’s seems like an unusually big advantage.
I am not sure about the $ cut-off for the bands. What I posted above is from here which is inflation adjusted
5-10% band ($114-150k), 1-5% ($150-300K). >1% (300k and up);
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
But this one from same group is not inflation adjusted and has different higher #s. 1-5% band here is definitely full-pay.
https://dqydj.com/united-states-household-income-brackets-percentiles/
5-10% band ($178-236k), 1-5% ($236-434K), >1% (434k and up);
The Equality of Opportunity #s are from here (pay-walled alas)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/
Good luck @coolweather !
We’re waiting on UCI and UCSD tonight, although D already received a call from UCSD saying she’s in…waiting to see if there is any merit. Highly unlikely, we’re OOS.
Just found out she’s been waitlisted at UMiami (which I told her is a huge compliment, Miami is TOUGH this year)
Well, this is the week for waitlists!! DD just got waitlisted OOS at UNC. Gah!
@momcatof4 UNC OOS is such a hard admit so maybe waitlist is good? You’ll have to do some looking and see how many kids get off!
@homerdog Thank you! We will!!