Chicago
WUSTL
Vanderbilt
NYU
USC
Vassar
Midd
Bowdoin
All of those schools are holistic as they are all top tier schools
?
@porcupine98 yes…?
Just trying to figure out what the question is. Holistic admissions? Holistic experience? How would one rank?
@porcupinie98 sorry, i meant holistic admissions
The most holistic schools will be the smaller, highly selective liberal arts colleges where the admissions staff to admitted student ratio is low. On your list Middlebury, vassar and bowdoin fit this criteria. Why would anyone really attempt to quantify this anyway?
Most holistic: Bowdoin (test optional)
NYU
Midd
Vassar
Chicago
USC
Vanderbilt
Least holistic: WUSTL
I gave WUSTL the edge over Vanderbilt because Vandy has a lower admit rate, so they can afford to have higher scores than WUSTL; but they don’t. Given that the applicant pools are likely nearly identical, this (to me) means that WUSTL is very slightly less holistic than Vandy.
(this is for giggles, obviously – all of these schools are holistic in their own ways, under different circumstances, and at differing levels. So many variables are involved in each admission decision that… in many cases, high-scoring kids *might have been admitted due to qualitative reasons. But they scored high, so we might assume that the school cares most about test scores. So – take it with a grain of salt. We won’t really know this answer until we can reach into the minds of Adcoms…
@prezbucky just out of curiousity, where do you get this kind of info from?
In looking at your other post, don’t overestimate holistic admissions to make up for below average grades and test scores. The benefit is you versus another applicant.
Also, even if you have an average chance at those schools, it is still very low.
Common data sets will give you average test scores.
Just now I did a quick search online and quickly found that, for instance, Vandy and WUSTL test scores are essentially identical and they are quite high respective to both schools’ rep/rank.
Bowdoin is quite holistic almost by default, due to being test-optional.
The rest I based on (judging LACs vs. LACs and U’s vs. U’s) test scores, rank/rep, and selectivity.
For the purposes of this question I figured that, very generally:
The more selective you are, generally the higher the test scores you could accept.
And the lower your ranking/rep, the lower the test scores you should have.
So if your test scores are lower than they could be, you are more holistic.
And if your test scores are higher than they should be, you are less holistic.
I may be wrong. Like I said, though, it’s just for fun – primarily because we can’t get inside the minds of the Adcoms; we’ll never know why exactly they choose to admit whom they admit.
If you have access to Naviance, I’d guess schools with more scatter are likely to be more holistic. But most selective schools have a threshold of scores and grades and after that it will be everything else about your application that they care about.
“Holistic” is not a synonymous w automatically giving u a pass for lame-o stats
Totally agree. Holistic means that apart from strong stats, strong activities, essays, rec letters are needed to be accepted.