Last night I was talking to a dad whose daughter got into Columbia, Berkley, Duke, UWSL, Johns Hopkins. But she didn’t get into Harvard or Stanford.
Ivy League Admissions counselors have said that they could fill an equally good freshman class 3X over with qualified applicants they didn’t admit.
It seems to me that the healthy way to approach Ivy League admissions is to accept it is one big lottery. Buy your ticket (submit an application), cross your fingers and hope for the best. Of course you can make sure you get more chances than everyone else by having setllar grades, high SAT scores, exceptional ECs. However, in the end, it is one big game of chance.
If parents and kids had this mentality, I belive, it would be so much healthier. They could focus on applying to schools that are matches for them, pick an Ivy lottery chance as well, and move on.
I think this is the tact we will take in our family.
“Buy your ticket (submit an application), cross your fingers and hope for the best.”
^that’s exactly what I did! I think it’s the best attitude to have. People with perfect stats get rejected and people with less-than-stellar ones get in; there’s no magic formula to get into any top schools, so worrying about it too much isn’t going to help any. If they want you, they want you; if they don’t, they don’t!
Though maybe I can only say that because I was lucky. Harvard was never my dream school and I never in a million years thought I’d be going there, so it was very easy for me to just “hope for the best” and focus on other things during the waiting period instead of stressing about it. For other kids, who really, really want to go to Harvard (or any other top school) and who worked super hard just to get there, that mindset is probably a lot harder to adopt.
And then there’s the kids (legacies, student athletes, etc. etc.) who may have a bit of an upper hand…
I somewhat agree with the @CValle and @JustOneDad as it is both. I do think that for the average “super” student who isn’t hooked, it is a bit of a lottery, and as applicant numbers continue to increase, it becomes more so each year. I also believe that as application numbers increase, that it isn’t humanly possible to do a thorough and in some cases fair review of all applications (contrary to what admissions offices seem to profess), and many awesome students will actually be overlooked.
@It seems to me that the healthy way to approach Ivy League admissions is to accept it is one big lottery. Buy your ticket (submit an application), cross your fingers and hope for the best. "
What other way to approach it is there? That’s all one can ever do. The alternative is to act entitled to a slot and bitter afterwards
Lottery implies a random pick.
Elite admissions are far from random.
There’s a whole app to fill out, usually plus a supp, and what you present can advance you or get that ho-hum, “another kid with ‘stellar grades, high SAT scores, exceptional ECs’” response.
I think the healthy way of looking at college admission, Ivy or not, is to not “fall in love” with any one school while waiting for results. It is best to apply to a range of schools one maybe happy and succeed at.
D1 thought there was only one school for her, which lead to a lot of heartache. We encouraged D2 to look at schools more objectively. It wasn’t until she was admitted to her ED that she allowed herself to love the school.
If your kid like Dartmouth, he/she probably would be happy at Colgate, Hamilton and other LACs. If Brown is the school, maybe Oberlin would be a good choice too.
Strange as it may seem, it probably helped that son had not seen most colleges he applied to, as he applied last minute as a junior. So, he had no favorites and no expectations of admission into more than one elite college.
Like Oldfort said, if someone is interested in Caltech/MIT, then H Mudd! Rose Hullman, CMU, Ga Tech, Rice, etc.
If one likes the residential system of Houses, then one can generate another list.
@lookingforward It’s not a lottery for the colleges, agree 100%. The OP was talking about adopting a healthier attitude from the perspective of the applicants and their families. I think everyone would agree that if all applicants to schools with less than 20% admit rate, were to underestimate their true chances (vs. overestimating or being emotionally tied to a YES decision) – then there’d be less room for devastating disappointment afterward.
Looking forward, we all know it’s not a lottery for the colleges. I think the premise was - how should a student think about it. And once you’ve done your best and submitted your app, it is best to think of it as a lottery. Rather than a Reflection Upon Your Self-Worth as a Human or The Only Fitting Reward for Your Hard Work or as Your Just Due in Life That Shan’t be Given to Anyone With a Lower SAT Score, all of which are sentiments found on cc.
I know, T2 and PG. I’m just ringing the same bell I often do. There are other words than lottery.
I think my most dispassionate view is that once you submit your best app, “it’s out of your hands.” I like to think kids who have considered what good app really is, can be satisfied they tried their best. Not the ego desperation and no later blaming the schools or dismissing other applicants who did get in.
The acceptance rates for these schools is under 10%. In addition, I believe the OP is an expat, which means his application will be reviewed with others from the region in which he resides.
Honestly 90% of applicants…or more…do NOT get accepted to some of these schools. Your kid could be one who gets accepted, but really there are no sure things (unless you happen to be the child of a head of state someplace).
Yes, apply. But have a varied list of schools on your application lost that includes some safer admission and financial bets.
Agree with Pizzagirl. Lots of students (and their parents) have a hard time with the idea that although they were outstanding candidates, just as good as those accepted academically and in terms of accomplishments, there still wasn’t a place for them in Highly Selective U. If they went into the process knowing that could happen, they would feel less hurt when the rejection arrives. It really isn’t personal.
We could have trained our kids’ focus on Ivy’s but toward what end? It wouldn’t have been worth the diversion or focusing of effort given the probable payoffs: 1) likelihood of success in admissions, 2) the alternatives – colleges they attended – were just as good or better for them and their careers. One of them did put one ap to an Ivy among his list of 7 colleges, but as someone who is sophisticated in statistics he didn’t think it was worth devoting undue effort to that one. And his subsequent career proves him right.
I think of Ivy adcoms as shoe shoppers with unlimited budget but limited shoe closet space.
If your app is the shoe that gets picked, yay, but there are thousands of other shoes just as nice that did not get picked.
It’s clearly an overstatement to say that Ivy League admissions is a lottery. There are certain qualities that all of the colleges are looking for, and others that may be unique to one or two colleges, and students’ applications differentiate them according to those qualities. Some applicants are doubtless “more equal” than others, often in ways that aren’t captured by their obvious stats or a list of their extracurricular activities. I have participated in exercises where people looked at full applications, and there was a lot of consensus about which applicants were best.
That said, I also think that for all but a handful of admittees, you could probably go back into the pool or waitlisted or rejected applicants and find someone who was indistinguishable from the admitted applicant, or even maybe superior. There is an element of luck involved: reading order, who does the first reads, whether the orchestra is looking for harpists or oboists that year. If Kid A is accepted and Kid B rejected from a particular college, that is not a clear sign of Kid A’s superior worth. If Kid A is accepted everywhere (or almost everywhere), and Kid B rejected everywhere, that really is a pretty clear sign that Kid A’s application was stronger than Kid B’s.
I also think sometimes people way overestimate the number of unqualified applicants each college draws. At least in my corner of the world, kids don’t love being rejected enough to apply to colleges where they really have no chance and obviously don’t belong.
I’d repeat the old saying that “college is a match to be made, not a prize to be won.” If your child’s college research is done conscientiously and creatively, the uber-selective schools may not even make the list. There is no sense in applying to Yale just because it’s Yale, when you have identified the schools that are actual fits.
If you can in fact increase your chances of getting into an Ivy by getting top grades, top test scores, terrific recs, having interesting ECs, writing a compelling essay, being a URM, and being the the child of an alumnus or a political figure or a celebrity, then that’s the exact opposite of a lottery. Since none of those things will increase your chances of winning a lottery.
The main and perhaps only thing that Ivy admissions has in common is that they are both long shots, although winning the lottery is a much longer shot.