What kind of applicant do colleges prefer?
Isn’t the answer something like:
Of course, such students are super-rare, even in the context of the application pools of the most elite admissions universities.
In terms of your #1 and #2 applicants, for the elite private universities, they probably want some of both, but probably three to eight times #1 as #2, since #2 usually comes with higher financial aid costs and admitting too many #2 would dilute the high SES student environment. (Note that some admits are not super-achievers or super-potential-achievers from low opportunity backgrounds, since some are admitted due to attributes like legacy.)
Other universities may have different priorities.
“probably three to eight times #1 as #2”
Presumably the more resources the college has, the more likely it is that this figure will be towards the bottom end of this range, because aid requirements are less of a concern.
However, the applicant pool for those elite schools probably contains at least 10 times more of #1 compared to #2, so the rate of admission for #1 is very likely to be lower than for #2.
“However, the applicant pool for those elite schools probably contains at least 10 times more of #1 compared to #2, so the rate of admission for #1 is very likely to be lower than for #2.”
Not sure I agree with this. From what I’ve seen there are plenty of examples of student #2, but the colleges don’t tend to value or recognize the methods in which they demonstrate their potential. Or… the colleges do understand and recognize those demonstrations but also are realistic enough to understand that the college budget only allows for a certain $ limit on financial aid.
It depends on the college. Caltech, and to some MIT, is close to stats only. At the Ivies, maybe a quarter of the students are there because they fill the genius bucket. The rest are there because they meet some other institutional want: athletes, legacies, donor kids, etc.
MIT is distinctly not stats only. At Ivies, similar. Only Harvard reserves some spots for more purely academic achievement, but still in the holistic context. Few kids, across the country are genius level.
But OP didn’t ask about stats, started with “brilliant.”
And she did ask about MITand Stanford in other threads, so:
My answer is: very strong academically (in all ways,) energized and activated, accomplished, in relevant ways. That’s not awards; lots of admits won’t have them. Nor is it just “potential,” you need the record. And you still need to nail any Why Us.
roethlisburger, Nope MIT isn’t about stats. Read this great blog (See https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways/)
The author is on this site quite a bit. And https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/college-admissions-in-the-public-interest
Typical US high school stats (including test scores and HS GPA) have ceilings too low to sort out applicants to super-selective schools purely based on academic ability, so a super-selective school that heavily focuses on finding and admitting the top academic ability still needs some subjective evaluation of applicant credentials among the large number of applicants showing top end typical US high school stats.
This is a myth. From memory, somewhere between 300-600 kids get a perfect SAT score. Harvard admits about 2000 kids a year. Harvard, and most other elite schools, couldn’t admit a freshman class of perfect SAT scores if they wanted to. Caltech might come the closest, but with a total undergrad enrollment of less than a thousand students, they have one of the smallest class size to fill.
To the OP, take a look at the Harvard lawsuit documents. The statistical regressions should answer your question.
roethlisburger, you are so far off with everything you write. In terms of perfect scores, while only 300 might get a perfect score at each sitting, there are about 7 different sittings for the SATs. Students tend to start taking the tests in 10th or early in 11th. So there are at least the number of admits to Harvard who have perfect SATs. Then there are the ACTs. A certain percent of those taking them have 36s. Then there are grades. There are twice as many valedictorians in the US than there are slots in all the 1st year class of all the ivy league schools combined. These schools are not looking for walking perfect scores. They are looking for students/people who will be an asset to the campus while attending and who have potential to do amazing things once they graduate.
A 1600 vs 1580 SAT or 36 vs 35 ACT is not a good basis for discriminating between brilliant (say top <0.1%) and very good but not brilliant applicants, especially given how teachable those tests are. You need a much longer tail test than that, something like the AIME or equivalent. Or at the very least you’d need to administer a single sitting SAT with no prep that was recentered to lower scores (which is much closer to how the SAT testing was done 30 years ago). The alternative would be an Oxbridge-style academic interview of qualified candidates, but that’s not what US interviews are designed to accomplish (or in general the aim of the US admissions process, as others have noted).
The SAT, ACT, SAT subject and AP tests for math have ceilings that are too low for Caltech. Perhaps not in the scoring (where a minor mistake can reduce the score from 800 to 780 or whatever), but in the content and difficulty of the problems.
Why is this thread now talking test scores? None of it is really that simplistic. And brilliant doesn’t give any tip without the rest of the story. I doubt OP even meant brilliant in the sense we life-experienced adults use the term.
I meant less than 600 perfect SAT scores a year, from all sittings combined.
Well, at the Ivies+, about 60% of the students are from the top 20% by income, and only about 5% are from the bottom 20% by income. So I guess that they aren’t really interested in poor kids who only have potential. I would guess that most of those 5% are kids who got into magnet schools, have at least as many achievements as the most accomplished of the rich kids, and have managed to secure a scholarship so that they can pay the $20,000 or so a year in residential costs, etc, that Ivies still require from even the poorest students.
What Ivies REALLY prefer are:
3. Legacies who have relatively high stats (top 15% in GPA and SAT/ACT, moderate ECs, no awards)
4. Athletes who have relatively high stats (top 15% in GPA and SAT/ACT, moderate ECs, athletic awards)
I would guess that there about twice as many of each of these as there are poor kids with high stats and amazing accomplishments. I would be surprised if there were more than a handful of poor students with potential in any given Ivy+.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Please knock off the bickering. Two posts deleted.
Mwolf the same could be said for most schools including LACs such as Middlebury:
“The median family income of a student from Middlebury is $244,300, and 76% come from the top 20 percent. About 1.3% of students at Middlebury came from a poor family but became a rich adult.”
I dont think you can generalize about the Ivies. If anything the LACs are just as dependent on finding full pay kids and supporting their alumni.
When you say:
“What Ivies REALLY prefer are:
3. Legacies who have relatively high stats (top 15% in GPA and SAT/ACT, moderate ECs, no awards)
4. Athletes who have relatively high stats (top 15% in GPA and SAT/ACT, moderate ECs, athletic awards)”
I think it is an over simplification and generalization that is hardly unique to Ivies.
The few things that can be gleaned from **enrollment ** details don’t include who was admitted and chose not to matriculate. That will include any SES.
To get back to OP, it’s not merely brilliance and privilege. Not is it “promise” that hasn’t been demonstrated. Adcoms don’t guess. Any applicant needs to show what the U needs to see.
@Nocreativity1 You’re correct that it’s not unique to Ivies. Ivies simply have the strongest effects of legacy. Of course places like Georgetown, Notre Dame, etc. all have legacy preferences. Weirdly, it seems that top LACs give a higher boost to athletes than to legacies. Probably because they’re smaller and their legacy pool is smaller, and do not have large graduates schools as an extra sources of legacies, as do Ivies or other selective research universities.
Still, Ivies have the strongest legacy preferences, even among the rest, since the entire legacy preference idea started in Dartmouth, and then was adopted by Princeton, and later by the other Ivies, as a way to reduce the entry of Jews, who were entering the Ivies in large numbers in the 1960s, much to the dismay of most of these universities.