Shelby Steele on Ivy League Admissions

oldfort · September 6, 2011, 10:03am

I will take the “obnoxious” description out, but the “self-centered” description stays. D1 was rejected by all of her top choices, she is not an obnoxious person, but many of her ECs may have been more “self-centered.” She was a dancer, danced 15 hours week, it didn´t leave her with a lot of time to do group activities or volunteer in a meaningful way.

There are a lot of top performing students who believe as long as they have top stats, win some math/science awards, it would almost guarantee admittance to those top tier schools. There is one student poster who comes to mind at the moment, according to him, he has the kind of stats which would get him admitted to Harvard, therefore he has very few matches or safeties. He is not looking at it as, “What do I have to offer to those schools?” He is thinking purely on his academic qualifications.

My apology if by using “obnoxious” offended people. We certainly lived through D1´s heart ache 5 years ago.

alh · September 6, 2011, 10:03am

Hunt, I don’t think there is anything negative about that goal. I don’t see there is ever anything negative about wanting HYPSM. But there are different reasons that might preclude apps to all.

QuantMech · September 6, 2011, 10:16am

oldfort, I agree that some of the applicants have EC’s that can be pursued more on an individual basis, rather than a team basis. Running is an example–probably helpful if a student is recruitable for the college track team. Also helpful if the student operated in some way that benefited the team as a whole, and the recommenders can point to that. Otherwise, it could come across as being a bit solitary, even though the student is on the track team.

Dance is another tricky one–very time consuming as you mention. Dancers do have to perform as a group (usually); so individual dancers have to put the interests of the entire group ahead of their own interests, though.

Bay · September 6, 2011, 10:18am

I have to believe there must be some political wrangling that goes on among admissions people that contributes to non-uniform decisions, as well. Like a new adcom or seasoned adcom being given some extra bargaining power, etc. Power plays occur in just about every job, so I don’t know why adcoms would be immune to that.

annasdad · September 6, 2011, 10:20am

And often when they do have “ECs which would give back to the community,” it would appear (at least from posts here) that those ECs are engaged in mainly to give them a competitive advantage in the college game rather than a genuine commitment to service.

The tragedy, IMO, is that in all too many cases, the kid WOULD be content if only the parent would be. There was a thread last week where a mother was bitterly lamenting the fact that her child did not get into any of the schools that had been the mother’s dream schools since the child had been born - even though the kid DID get into a top-notch LAC that 95% of the college applicants in the country would give their eye teeth to be qualified for. DD12 goes to a selective enrollment school with a lot of very high-achieving, driven kids; many of her classmates have told her that what drives them is that their parents will be ashamed of them if they don’t get into one of the handful of most prestigious schools in the country. How very, very sad.

Because, IMO, there is a misunderstanding of what “1-14” and “15” mean. At selective colleges, it’s not all about the stats. It’s about a ranking based on that college’s own selection criteria. It’s not “unfairness” to define merit on a basis other than GPA-cum-SAT. The criteria a school uses are not made public (except in the most general, CDS, sense), because as soon as a school said something like “we very highly value X,” then guess what - every applicant would suddenly become superior in X.

So what is a highly qualified student to do? Fall back on the traditional CC advice - find matches and safeties you love and apply to those, as well as to your reaches. And be content with wherever you get in, because at these levels of excellence, the only thing you really gain by going to a school with a more prestigious name is the fact that you went to a school with a more prestigious name.

SamuraiLandshark · September 6, 2011, 10:22am

It’s always sad to hear of the amazing kids who applied to HYPS and gets rejected from all of them. Or most of them.

It’s even more frustrating when they are stellar in multiple ways, but haven’t applied to schools slightly lower on the tier.

It stands to reason if the majority of the schools have less than a 10% accept rate, and you apply to all of them without any other match/safeties, you will end up with bad news in springtime. It’s simply the odds.

Yes, QuantMech, most of those students are fantastic and by all rights should have gotten a spot. But they didn’t. It happens every year. If they had been re-read on a different day, they might have gotten an admit.

I have also seen stellar students who rushed to get their applications completed along with a heavy pile of APs and extracurriculars who have made glaring errors on their applications before they clicked the submit button. Or written too long of an essay that should have been edited down to a few hundred words less, but resisted the urge to delete since there was no word limit.

And since nobody knows what is in the recommendations, you simply don’t know what the teacher has said - they simply may not be good at writing recs or know the right buzzwords to put in their letters. Their recs might sound good for a student at a smaller, less prestigious LAC, but not be good enough for a Harvard admissions committee. Or the student may come off in class in a way that annoys the teacher, even if they are a top student, particularly if they are seen as a grade grubber, trying to hold on to their place in the class rankings.

Some of it is luck. The kids who apply to these schools tend to be over the top excellent - but even they have bad days.

Several years ago, I reviewed one of the absolute brightest kid’s Common Application before submission and who had 27 typos throughout the essay and short answers. 27. He didn’t hit submit till I checked it over, thankfully. English was his first language, too. Rejected from Stanford. However, admitted to every place else he applied, including an Ivy League school and MIT.

You don’t know what’s in the applications unless you see them. Even the best students make an error here and there.

With so many amazing students out there for a limited number of spots for the HYPS schools, there will be thousands of rejections of kids who are valedictorians and have perfect scores on their SATs and ACTs. It’s simply a fact.

thumper1 · September 6, 2011, 10:44am

And in that mix…be sure there is at least one financial safety too.

Especially for those very high achievers who have competitive stats for very competive school admissions…there are MANY other colleges that would welcome these students. We know a student who applied to three Ivies (and we believe he had the stats/ECs to be accepted)…and was not admitted to any. He also applied to an OOS public university and that was where he went to college (luckily receiving some merit aid…as they really didn’t give need based to OOS students). It all had a happy ending…he loved his OOS public university. BUT we (the outsiders looking in) wondered why he hadn’t applied to SOMETHING in between those three Ivy League schools and that OOS public. I think he got really bad advising…but that’s me…and I never said a PEEP to his family about this…they didn’t ask…I didn’t offer.

QuantMech · September 6, 2011, 10:45am

There are about 37,000 high schools in the country, so there will be at least 37,000 valedictorians, even before one accounts for the practice of having co-valedictorians at some schools.

There were fewer than 400 students with perfect SAT I, single sitting, the last time tokenadult posted the number. I doubt that there are thousands of kids who have 2400 superscores. Many of the students who are capable of superscoring 2400 will take their first-try 2350+ and walk away. I believe that there have been even fewer than 400 students with 36 ACT scores, in the recent past. (Some of the states are now requiring all juniors to take the ACT, so that may change.) Some of the students who have 2400 SAT also have 36 ACT. So I don’t think that there actually are thousands of students with perfect scores.

Before CC, I had the impression that the students with 2400’s who were rejected by all of the top schools probably had weak curricula, not-so-hot GPA’s, lukewarm letters of recommendation, or dull personalities. Having read CC as long as I have, and having seen some of the experiences of QMP’s friends in the meantime, I no longer believe that. Too many counter-examples, some witnessed first-hand. I think the message to this year’s seniors is: sometimes it just happens that a truly excellent candidate is rejected by HYPMS (or the sub-set to which the student applies). It’s a good idea to identify other places that you would be happy to go.

Will say: As an undergrad, I attended a university that most top students on CC would not consider. Went to an excellent university for grad school, wound up at MIT as a post-doc, and had sabbaticals at Stanford. The limitations in my work now are my own, and in no way a consequence of my undergrad alma mater. There are opportunities at many non-top places.

Quick addendum: I chose the undergrad university on purpose–was admitted everywhere I applied, but chose it over some of the “top” schools.

bluebayou · September 6, 2011, 10:46am

I guess I have the wrong experience.

At our competitive California public, the acceptances for unhooked candidates nearly match the rankings straight up, and this at a HS which is more than 50% Asian and who comprise 80% of the top dozen gpa’s. The Val has been accepted to Harvard every year. One of the top 10 females is off to MIT or Olin. Cornell gets students in the range of 10-20. Stanford & Y & P also accept into the top ~6, but Stanford goes deeper for legacies. The other Ivies, MIT and top LACs generally snag numbers 5-15.

Of course not all go to the NE. Some will attend UC with a Regent’s Scholarship or another school with merit money.

texaspg · September 6, 2011, 10:49am

annasdad - you are referring to a post on this thread, many many pages back.

QuantMech · September 6, 2011, 10:51am

Interesting–New Trier is another public school where the top-ranked students with very high SAT scores seem to have excellent results. I think this may reflect both high school type and the prevailing philosophy of the local educators.

TutuTaxi · September 6, 2011, 12:07pm

I’d guess the LOR hold more weight than many students and their parents would like to believe.

For the past 4 years I have been over the committee that hires work-study students; pre-pharm, pre-nursing, pre-med, and pre-vet student volunteers; and pharm interns. The ONLY time we look at grades is during the app first pass – just to make sure the student is in good standing in the Univ. The application asks for 2 references. Any app that doesn’t list 2 references is immediately tossed. All of the final candidates are interviewed and I call the 2 references. You would be amazed at what I am told. Sometimes the person listed as a reference doesn’t exist or goes out of their way to not be available.

My conclusion – objective stats (test scores, GPA) are great for certain fields of study but in health care we want people who are compassionate and able to relate to patients and other care givers.

epiphany · September 6, 2011, 12:45pm

The underlying fallacy here is that the committee overlooked excellence, and that such supposed poor perception resulted in the student’s denial of admission. Rather, at least four other possible reasons for denial are highly likely:

(1) Standing alone, there was nothing wrong or off about the application package. It’s just that there was another (singular) or other (plural) applications which did a better job of communicating persuasively (and genuinely) the correlation of the student’s own “mission statement” <a href=“especially%20for%20this%20campus”>b</a>** with the university’s mission statement. It’s always a matter of comparison. Thus, the committee had less reason to deny Students Y and Z than it did Student X.

With the volume of applications (just as with the volume of job applicants in particularly overqualified and densely populated job markets), the reviewers of those applications are looking for reasons to deny.

(2) The objective criteria may have been equal to, possibly even better than, the objective criteria of other students – even from that school’s same class, let alone from that region of applicants. Yet subjectively the applicant did an insufficient job in differentiating himself in such a way that the committee could see, in a short period of reading time, the individual strengths of that student. The committee wants to have at least a flash of that applicant as a person distinct from the objective markers of achievement.

(3) The student may have done an excellent job of describing himself and his “mission,” and in that very description it may have become far more clear to the committee, with its deep awareness of that campus culture (not to mention the academic offerings there and those possibilities and limitations) that this campus is not a good fit for this student. This happens far more often than many realize. It also sometimes happens in reverse: the student may show incrementally throughout the app (and through teacher recs) that he or she would especially thrive at this campus, but not have the foreknowledge (naturally!) to appreciate that; yet the committee does. (And again, comparatively, Students Y and Z do fit well; Student X, equally capable as a student, does not. )

(4) It may not be at all a case of “ranking” of one student vs. another. That’s already been covered a million times on CC and off CC, at rep meetings, etc. An equally fine Student Y from the same region/locality as the supporters/acquaintances of Student X, is (a) economically disadvantaged; (b) has not a “better” extracurricular but one which that campus is promoting currently and wishes to see grow. You may know Student X; you have never met Student Y. Many decisions are horizontal, not vertical.

annasdad · September 6, 2011, 1:23pm

Another thing to keep in mind is that it’s dangerous to base an application strategy for this year on last year’s stats. At DD12’s school, historically the admittance rate for Northwestern had been 50%, University of Chicago about the same, and Case Western Reserve about 95%. A lot of the top students would apply to the HYPSM/Ivies/Duke/Rice level as reaches and Northwestern and UChicago matches, Case as safety, and then throw in UIUC just in case (85% of the class typically applies to UIUC and 96% of those typically get in). Well, 2011, the admit rate at NW, Chicago, and Case all plummeted, overall as well as at our school. That’s why this year UIUC’s yield from our school almost doubled.

sewhappy · September 6, 2011, 1:25pm

I think these are good observations. I think there’s a tendency on CC to refer to perfect or near perfect test scores as if they are really, really common. They aren’t. Especially not single sitting and yes, I know, the scores get super scored. I get it. But there is some real impact, imo, from reporting the single sitting 2400 and/or 36 on the common app.

TokenAdult, as I recall, did quite a study of the actual incidence of very high SAT scores and found that, in fact, there are not really that many more kids with >2300s than spots at the top schools. When you consider that many of those kids are headed straight to public U for merit, then the number shrinks. And then some will have spotty transcripts or off-key essays/LORs. So by the time you whittle it all down, having the really high scores plus grades, plus literate essays and good LOR puts you in a rather select group and likely to land one of the spots at the top schools.

There are tons and tons of anecdotes about the val with the 2400 getting turned down everywhere. I know there are posters on CC who report it happening to them. I just don’t buy that it’s that common.

We’ll see if I’m right but I kind of think that a really good SAT and transcript and some meaningful ECs and rave LOR are enough. That’s basically my second kid. If it isn’t enough then that’s good, too. Would love to not pay a quarter of a million dollars for her undergrad education. But will do it if she is accepted at a school on that level, not for the education, but because it opens up amazing opportunity – a whole different thread of discussion.

texaspg · September 6, 2011, 1:28pm

sewhappy - there are some good statistics from Brown. They do seem to reject 70% of perfect ACTs (cant compare SATs since they split them by section).

skrlvr · September 6, 2011, 1:35pm

Generally, in those communities where it matters whether or not you go to an Ivy League school, most go into the admissions process with their eyes open. I can’t see families who send their kids to Choate, Harker, Thomas Jefferson, New Trier, etc. being surprised that a legacy, or athlete, might have certain advantages in the admissions process. And I think these families are also well aware that many accomplished students wind up disappointed in April.

At the same time, I think for a lot of families, the belief is that the latter ‘won’t happen to us’, along with a rationalization for why admission is almost a certainty. In these cases, I think there tends to be a lot of disappointment, along with a rationalization that the process is basically unfair.

I think there is a belief that someone can create an application that reduces the chances of being rejected to basically nil. So the student will pile on the honors/AP courses, activities, leadership positions, research, community service, etc. in the belief that if ‘X is good enough (based on past experiences), then X+1 is even better’.

But I don’t think that there is such a thing as a ‘reject proof’ application.

sewhappy · September 6, 2011, 1:37pm

texaspg - do they reject the or do they just not have them matriculate? I remember reading this same line on a Stanford brochure a couple of years ago and then realized that the table was simply stating percentages of applicants with a perfect score and then percentage of matriculating kids with perfect scores.

I’m sure I’ll get a ton of criticism for voicing the view that the perfect or near perfect score can be a tipper. It is not the received wisdom on CC. I have personal history that just suggests otherwise.

Also, will note that there are, I believe, around 1,000 kids with a 36 most years and I believe around 260 with a 2400, the year my kid did it.

I’m not trying to say – just score a 2400 and you’re in! I don’t believe that. I am trying to say that, in fact, perfect or near perfect scores are noted and they are rare and the schools we are discussing are extremely fixated on their average scores.

Scoring 2100-2300 is great and coupled with athletic distinction or Intel or legacy could probably do it. Scoring >2300 and having great grades and a literate and pleasing application can also do it pretty handily.

But I’m no expert. And, in all honesty, will be relieved as much as disappointed if my second one strikes out at top schools. I don’t think she will care too much, either. She is fortunate to have a safety that she genuinely likes.

bovertine · September 6, 2011, 1:45pm

Brown-

[Brown</a> Admission: Facts & Figures](<a href=“Undergraduate Admission | Brown University”>Undergraduate Admission | Brown University)

A perfect score is very rare and a huge help. If it helps raise 8% chances to 45% or even 31% that’s huge. But I don’t think it raises the chances much above 50%.

annasdad · September 6, 2011, 1:47pm

It happens. Below is a snip from the Naviance plot for my daughter’s school, one of the HYPSMs, 2009-2011 data.

I would note that my daughter’s school typically gets a lot of kids into top schools (2011, 15 of 200 graduates are going to HYPSM). It’s just that at this particular HYPSM, they for some reason don’t value kids from this school.

<a href=“http://www.earlvillepost.com/post/navplot.jpg[/img]”>http://www.earlvillepost.com/post/navplot.jpg

</a>

Shelby Steele on Ivy League Admissions

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