In an older thread from a few years ago, I looked up how average admit rate of all 4 year colleges has changed over the past decade (at the time of post) in IPEDS. A quote is below. The average admit rate across all colleges increased slightly, and most US colleges admitted the vast majority of applicants. It was only a small handful of extremely selective colleges that have seen sharp decreases in admit rate, and most students do not apply to that small handful of colleges. I doubt this pattern has changed. Itâs a similar idea for other examples listed in the article, such as applying for an internship at Goldman Sachs.
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This is so helpful- thank you for the perspective.
Last week the WSJ published a column that basically said that the spring housing market is dead this year. Economic uncertainty, blah blah blah, youâve all read it ad nauseum over the last few weeks.
And yet a house on my street went for over asking last week (and apparently with a dozen back up bids just in case the lucky winner couldnât get financing or whatever). This does NOT mean that the WSJ is wrong. They might be- but a competitive bidding situation on a particular block for a specific house at a certain time does NOT mean a robust housing market.
Just like the fact that itâs harder to get into BU than it was in 1975 doesnât mean that âcollege admissionsâ is hopelessly competitive.
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Georgetown will launch a three year pilot program to allow applicants to use the common app in 2026.
Itâs acceptance rate have been around 12% for some time, and I am sure that will go down once common app is used.
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This sort of âgolden ticketâ theory was something I basically learned about when I first started looking seriously at college admissions for my S24. I was in fact surprised to see kids and sometimes parents online promoting this idea that once you got admitted to a HYPSM, an Ivy, an Ivy+, a T20, or whatever, then that was itâyou had won the game of life. Yeah, no. It is more like you had a couple good rolls at the start, but like 95% of the board is still ahead of you.
Which would not concern me so muchâagain, talk about first world problemsâbut it was clear to me that this notion was sometimes being used to justify kids having really unhealthy childhoods in the pursuit of this golden ticket. Like if you will be set for life if you get admitted to such a college, isnât it worth giving up on sleep and friends and authentic exploration of interests and so on for a few years? It will all be worth it when you are admitted to Harvard . . . .
And of course most such kids did not then get their golden ticket, meaning admission to one of their âdreamâ colleges where supposedly they would be set for life. Indeed, I could see many stories of kids experiencing some sort of avoidable crisis event that basically made that goal impossible.
But some did. And so I am not surprised that once they get to these colleges, and learn the Hunger Games are not in fact over, many just do it all again. What else do they know?
And I do not have some big solution to all this, but I agree with you and others that at least those of us in these discussions who have relevant experiences can do our best to share those experiences in ways that may help counter that attitude.
But as a final somewhat depressing thoughtâI think by the time that, say, a kid is a junior or senior in HS, it may be a particularly tough sell, because such a kid (and for that matter perhaps their family) may already have sacrificed so much on this theory of the golden ticket. And it is human nature to not lightly admit that all that sacrifice to date may have not been a good idea. And my experience is sometimes kids and parents can in fact get very defensive about suggestions to that effect.
Still, I have also experienced that sometimes kids and parents genuinely find it a relief to hear that they do not in fact have to buy into the golden ticket theory, because they understand that means they do not have to buy into the Hunger Games either, and they are happy to pivot to a different approach.
So just keep discussing, I guess, and those that are open to a different way of thinking will hopefully keep benefiting.
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This is true but itâs not just flyover states. Even on the coasts, many students who donât attend highly ranked high schools would be hard pressed to know half of the Ivy league schools. If you asked them, they would probably name HPY, add in the non-Ivy Stanford and then draw a blank. I heard about one student who didnât know how to pronounce Cornell (the student had read it initially as Cor - Neil) and when corrected didnât bat an eye as he had never heard of Cornell before. For those who are in these academic circles, they would likely be floored at how little their world matters to most of the world outside their bubble. I donât think the writer actually knows anyone outside that circle which is why that bit about middle schoolers being upset for being classified as not academic and wonât be able to compete in these continuous competitions ended up in there. If she did, she would realize that most of these students didnât even know a competition was apparently afoot to which they would probably have no interest in partaking just like most of us have no interest in running a 100 meter relay. Many kids outside the academic bubble donât care about how academic they are but, and this would probably shock this writer, even the ones who are academic often donât care about the prestige that the author and her ilk attribute to a school. Often their goal is to attend a school where they wonât accrue debt so their list of top schools would confuse this writer because schools like U Oklahoma, Tulsa, UT Dallas, Washington State and other schools that give high merit awards or just come in with a low price tag would be at the top of their lists. They would laugh at the idea of attending a school like Harvard - it wouldnât interest them at all.
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I wonder about this too. You often hear these schools say things like 75% of the applicants are qualified. To which I would respond but how many would be considered? A student with a 3.5 GPA might fall under the label qualified but would they ever be considered?
They often say that they could easily replace the incoming class several times over (I believe I have heard 5 times over specifically from somewhere but donât quote me). If that is the correct figure and there are ~2k accepted to schools like Harvard that would mean around 10k are actually qualified and 10k of ~50k apps would mean about 20% acceptance rate so I believe your estimate is probably around the real number.
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Yeah, another of my pet theories is when they say a large percentage of applicants are qualified, that is defined to include the hooked admits as well. Which is fine, I am not saying they are unqualified. But if you are UNhooked, you are not likely to be competitive for a good portion of that range.
And generally, Yale, for example, listed six necessary but not sufficient conditions you needed to satisfy to be considered competitive, and then further explained their new initial review phase was looking for those things. And one thing that was clear is you could have objectively good academic qualifications and ECs, but still lack some of what they were looking for at that stage.
So I am pretty sure the percentage of unhooked applicants making it past Yaleâs initial review is quite a bit lower than the percentage of applicants that would be academically qualified.
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Having done alumni interviewing for two decades for Cornell I feel confident in agreeing with the Ad Coms when they say that over 90%+ of students are well qualified. Most students brought CVs with them with GPA/test scores and it was impossible for me to predict who would be accepted and who wouldnât.
I think itâs important to remember that there are 26K+ high schools in the US. (Plus all the international schools). Each of those schools has a top 5-10% that are typically very strong students and there is a ton of overlap in where those high achievers are applying.
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I think I read somewhere that about 91% of all Yale admits were offered interviews. So, whether or not you consider it a âconditionâ, itâs certainly a step in the right direction.
Indeed, âacademically qualifiedâ may not be that high a bar at colleges other than super-rigorous ones like Caltech. But the bar for âcompetitive for admissionâ can be considerably higher than that for other super-selective colleges.
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Thatâs assuming that kids from all those schools apply but as I stated above there are whole classes of kids who donât apply to any of these schools while there are some classes where over half the class will apply to Ivies. I am also referring to schools where the kids are mostly heading to college as well but there are also high schools where many kids arenât applying to any college never mind top colleges.
I donât know how many you interviewed but the question for you would be of the ones you interviewed what was their rate of success? I know of some whose rate of success of their interviewees while low is still higher than the schoolâs admit rate. Perhaps they donât have interviewees bother with some of the applicants if it would be a waste of the interviewees time.
Almost 0% for non hooked students. Especially in the last 10 years that I interviewed.
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That is interesting and conflicts with the schoolâs admit rate which is far closer to 8% than 0%. Just by the odds for 12 kids you interview, about 1 should be getting in but beyond that we do know some students apply that are not academically qualified - the number that was floated around was over 75% are academically qualified which means some number north of 20% are not. I would think the school would value the interviewerâs and interviewees time enough that they wouldnât bother having interviewers interview the ~20% who are not academically qualified so I wouldnât expect they would even be in the pool you interview which should increase the number of students you interview that get in.
So why would your rate be substantially lower than the schoolâs admit rate? Does your region have a far lower rate of admission for Cornell than the norm? Perhaps there are far too many applicants in your region that apply to Cornell. I would think that might be the case with NY state but I also believe Cornell takes more students from the region. Do hooked candidates also end up in the same interview pool as unhooked candidates? I would have thought so but given your batting average I am wondering if some preferred candidates are getting selected to be interviewed by selected interviewers.
My guess is that itâs related to the phrase, ânon hooked studentsâ
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A colleague of mine, who served for many years as an alumni interviewer for an Ivy+ school and later worked in admissions while completing his PhD there, told me that the inside secret is interviews have almost no impact on admissions decisions. Theyâre primarily used to keep alumni engaged and to detect any red flags that might not be evident elsewhere in the application.
Iâve also heard from several other interviewers that there was no clear correlation between the candidates they recommended and those who were ultimately accepted. That aligns with what my colleague shared about the limited weight of alumni interviews.
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We tried to interview every applicant. We didnât see any information other than name, high school, and intended college/major prior to the interview.
My point was that the students who were accepted didnât look on paper any different than those that were not accepted. And I think thatâs what ad coms mean when they talk about the majority of applicants being qualified.
I think all parents should remind their kids that because highly rejectives are building a diverse class, there is much out of their control. And a rejection isnât a reflection of their hard work, nor their future success.
So, what do they mean when they say, âAn interview is not a required part of the application process. Because of limited interviewing capacity, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions prioritizes interviews for students for whom the Admissions Committee needs more information.â? (Emphasis added.)
Iâve heard it suggested that Yale uses the interview less as a judgement on the applicantâs academic qualifications than as a way to weed out potential âwackosâ. Thoughts?
I was only speaking of Cornell, which stopped doing interviews/meetings entirely this past cycle. I canât speak to what other schools are doing. And also my point was about qualified studentsâŠ
My bad. I lost track of the sub-string. I was probably still thinking of @NiceUnparticularMan at post #67.
Your points would still be true if the admit rate was closer to @NiceUnparticularMan suggestion of 15%-20% though and in fact your post suggests that there may very well be a pruning process before interviews are requested. Some students who apply are not qualified and wonât actually be considered - basically they are auto-rejects because they donât meet the academic threshold. Your friend would likely not be given the names of those who arenât qualified since the school wouldnât want to waste your friendâs time interviewing someone who doesnât meet the admission threshold. In fact, what your friend states that all the interviewees were qualified and there was no rhyme or reason to admission results suggests as much since there should have been a few your friend met during the interview process every year that would have raised some eyebrows as we all know of a kid applying to a school where they have absolutely no shot of getting in yet your friend wasnât meeting these kids during interviews or there would have been at least those kids where the rejection made complete sense. Thus, the ones your friend interviews seem to be from the pool of kids being considered. If there is a 15% admit rate, that means that for every 6 well qualified candidates interviewed, only 1 gets in. I donât imagine your friendâs interview would matter since theyâre all being considered except perhaps to suss out a red flag as you state. What I wonder is whether your friend had a higher rate of those interviewed getting in than the schoolâs admit rate. If so, that number might help determine what the actual admit rate is for qualified candidates. Of course there are some candidates that donât get interviewed who do get accepted so not suggesting that students not offered an interview would be in the auto-reject pile. Some students donât have any alums that can interview them in the given time frame.
Yes but did you get all applicants or did you get a list of applicants after a pre-screening that filtered out those who were not academically qualified? Based on the fact that you thought every interviewee was well qualified it sounds like the latter. Also, I donât imagine Cornell would waste your time interviewing applicants who havenât met the academic threshold for entry so wonât be admitted.
Right not suggesting otherwise. Even if it were a 15% admit rate for highly qualified individuals, that is still very low. The goa is to fill a class that meets institutional priorities and sometimes that means selecting a tuba player over the clarinet player.
Yes I think that makes sense too. I expect they have already filtered out the students that are not academically qualified so the ones who are interviewed are academically qualified and being considered - not necessarily equally as some fill institutional priorities more than others ie. recruited athletes. All interviewees are being considered and some non-interviewees are as well. For those interviewed, the school doesnât seem to rely on the interviews for selecting students as that comes from institutional needs etc but rather want to know about any possible red flags or as you suggest âweed out potential wackosâ.
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