There are high stat in-state kids who meet the 6% rule and are getting rejected for these majors and are thrown into the liberal arts pool.
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Yes, there are limited spots in the business school, engineering and CS. Not everyone qualified will get in.
So, not rejected from the flagshipâŠjust not given exactly what they wanted.
So if my wife asked me whether I wanted to go to Restaurant A or B for dinner, and I pulled out some Nutrition Facts charts showing I could get the same calories and nutrients at either restaurant so we should just choose whatever was the absolute cheapest option, I am pretty sure she would send me to my room to think about what I had done.
I feel like that is the same sort of thing people are doing sometimes with colleges these days. Yes, if you only care about a certain limited range of ânutritionalâ things college can do for you, you might be pretty indifferent to everything but cost. But for some people there can be more to the experience than that, a lot more.
On the other hand, not everyone can afford the most expensive restaurants. But the really exciting thing to me is there are very often inexpensive meals you can make that are nonetheless quite delicious. And the same thing is often true for colleges, you can find experiences that you are particularly excited about but that are affordable.
So on the one hand, I agree with not assuming more expensive = more desirable. But on the other, I disagree every college is the same so everyone should just buy whatever is cheapest.
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No - you are missing the point.
If you need a sport coat to get in a restaurant and you donât own one, you canât eat there. But you still want to, so you try.
Let me make it clearer:
Too many kids are applying to - whatever that perceived great school is for them.
If they are marginal or no chance at Wisconsin, I can give you 100 others that could work and would be substitutional.
Many apply for schools - and canât even afford - and then get into debt - and then thatâs another issue.
The point is - there are countless choices at there that would work for many - admission and cost wise - but they see little value in them or that they are beneath them.
Or they have bought into the entire - if I donât go there, Iâll be a failure.
Some of it is peer pressure, others is marketing (ranking), and some is via the university brand building.
If you want to go to Wisconsin but you get rejected, why didnât you apply to - and Iâm just throwing out easier admits - Kansas, Iowa State, Arizona, Ole Miss, etc.
I didnât say cheapest.
You need an admission safety and an affordable school. Affordable means different things to different people. For some itâs $90K. For others itâs $5K, etc.
But some throw away affordability - and then often times their financial future - for a name.
And thatâs sad. IMHO.
For every school type, there are substitutes that may not have the cache but can get you to a similar place.
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SoâŠwhoâs everybody rooting for with the Super Bowl? 
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And then the restaurants give you a sport coat! And it doesnât fit, but it will do! 
I think weâre getting lost in analogies, but thatâs okay. For me, as a practitioner of education, itâs very practical. If you drop below a certain level in schools (Iâm going to switch to culinary school), people will say, âyou can only make McDs, and weâre not hiring you/letting you in to our steak-making program.â Then, you need a chef to have taken you back to their own kitchen and sourced ingredients from other kitchens (in my case, research university libraries), and taught you how to make a steak. Then, you might have a chance of jumping up to elite cooking. ANd now I must quit, because it is fun but silly. P.S. I had to edit this so it didnât say âsports coat,â because I havenât heard that phrase in several years.
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Yes - Iâm lost in analogies. Sorry.
Iâm simply saying - if you donât get into UNC, did you apply to a safety - which may be WVU or College or Charleston, etc.
If you donât get into Amherst, did you apply to Wooster, or Occidental or Kalamazoo.
If affordability an issue, there are subs too.
Itâs all Iâm trying to say.
We read some many - there was one the other day - if I donât get into UMD, Iâm going to appeal the heck out of it.
Or a kid turned down at UT has now decided they can appeal because theyâre in state but applied as an OOSâŠitâs the dream.
Those who continue to make excuses as to why they (or their kid) didnât get in and itâs so unpredictable - hmmmm - no. itâs not.
OK - we can move on.
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In fact that was very much the point. Not to make this all about Yale, but they were relatively open on the subject, and this next bit was also very interesting:
MARK : So Iâ
HANNAH: Right.
MARK: âstarted reading admissions files about 15 years ago. We had about 26,000 applications, just about half what we have now, and I donât think that this kind of Initial Review process would have worked in that stage.
HANNAH: Right.
MARK: I think there would just be so many more of the applicants who would be so competitive that it kind of wouldnât be worth your time to be adding this initial step because you just wouldnât wind up identifying that many students who werenât really competitive in the process. That has changed.
HANNAH: Right.
MARK: A lot more of our applicants, just as a percentage of the pool now, donât meet those kind of necessary criteria to really truly be competitive in our process. Most do.
HANNAH: Yep.
MARK: But a lot donât.
HANNAH: A lot donât, and we needed a way to more efficiently work our way through those files to make sure that weâre giving our area readers more time to focus on the strongest applicants.
When you think about all that carefully, this is really pretty nuanced! These are not just pretty good applications that donât quite make itâthey always had those, and those are not so much the issue. They are applications that in some way can be ruled out very quickly by a senior AO.
But at least for Yale it is not as simple as just a GPA and test score. As they explain earlier:
MARK: You need to have a very strong command of English. You need to have a strong and consistent academic record thatâs showing strength, especially in your most recent semesters. We need to see that you stepped up to the plate for the academic challenge, whatever is available in your context. You also need to have academic and personal integrity. We need to see that your academic interests align with the liberal arts approach that Yale is offering. And we need to see that you have the maturity, independence, and interpersonal skills needed to live on a college campus with lots of other people from really diverse backgrounds.
HANNAH: So if an initial reviewer looks at a file and sees that it doesnât meet these criteria or that itâs otherwise pretty clear that among the 50,000 applicants, this file is not going to be one thatâs going to be considered by the committee, the reviewer can go ahead and indicate that the file doesnât need a full review by the area admissions officer.
So . . . that sounds pretty complicated, and yet apparently a senior AO can make that assessment very quickly. As they explain, in part that is because if it is positive, they are not guaranteeing admission, it is just going to get normal review. But if negative, that is all but it for that application, and they feel like they can do that very quickly in enough cases these days to make it worth adding this phase.
So lots to ponder but at a high level, apparently spotting the un-competitive applications is both somewhat complex and yet also very fast.
So the question then is . . . is it getting that much more selective? More not-competitive people applying leads to lower reported admissions rates, and competitive applicants applying more places is introducing noise in terms of specific individual/college pairings. But generally, is what it takes to actually be competitive for highly selective colleges as a group a lot stricter now than pre-COVID?
This is a hard question because you would have to have some sort of valid measure of selectivity to track over time, and things like GPAs are too unstandardized for that. But at least if you look at things like standardized test scores for enrolled students as per the CDSâit hasnât been a really radical change. Indeed, the small changes we see are largely consistent just with test optional trimming off the low end of test scores, where people were getting admitted despite and not because of required test scores.
So I am not sure that once Yale and like trim out these new un-competitive applicants, the competition among those who remain is much different today than it was in 2019. Maybe a little, but not as much as I think some people seem to believe.
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Me too.
It sounds like they do go into longer and more difficult discussion in committee occasionally. But most cases, negative or positive, get a relatively quick read, quick discussion, quick vote, and then it is on to the next.
To be sure, the ânationalâ programs for certain specific majors have gotten way more popular in recent years to the point they have dramatically increased their de facto entrance requirements. I agree with other posters this doesnât mean ALL the programs for those majors are going to be similarly selective (CS, say, is now offered widely all over the place with many of those programs if anything begging for more students). But it is true that if you really want to go to a âtopâ program for those majors, that is now a lot harder than it used to be.
Itâs so much easier to apply to multiple schools now than it was in my time. Typing in grades and essays on the paper application on the old typewriter, praying you didnât make a mistake that you had to erase. Or having to start over on a fresh paper app! No one applied to very many schools that way. I think I applied to five. I had no idea how competitive or not any of the schools were. I had a book and read about all of the schools within my distance range. Picked some I like and sent in my application. Got into all except one waitlist. (Thanks UVa) Such a different time.
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My point is you can acknowledge there are many, many affordable and attainable alternatives to the few most famous colleges, and yet also acknowledge that you do not need to not reduce all colleges to commodities to realize that first thing. This is possible because there are 1000s of colleges!
The commodity is the degree.
A BA in psychology is a BA in psychology.
Whether you got it at URI or UNC, itâs still a BA in psychology.
You are arguing about experience - whether it be size, weather, campus type, resources - whatever it may be.
But that BA in Psychology is in fact that - and these folks acting as if the world is ended because they didnât get into UNC and they had stellar grades and the world has changed - well letâs hope you applied to a URI type etc. - and guess what, when itâs over - youâll have that BA in Psychology .
And yes, the degree, it is a commodity. The experience will be differentiated at each school.
Moving on.
The red team!
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I grew up in the Detroit area, so . . . what is this âsuper bowlâ you speak of?
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Personally, Iâm excited that NHLers can play in the Olympics again for 2026 and 2030.
Always the Red & Gold!
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What a cutie 
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Arenât both teams red? Iâd like it if SF won with Mr. (Not so) Irrelevant but hard to pick against the chiefs.
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