Wayne Gretzky once said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Don’t see what the problem is if they have matches and safeties.
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According to the Harvard freshman survey ~16% of students are considered legacies in the admission process. The other legacies with more distant relatives in the article did not get an admission boost. This brings up an important distinction between a group being well represented because they have a lot of exceptional applicants and a group being well represented because they get a big admission boost. For example, ~35% of Harvard students came from families with $250k income, a far larger percentage than the general population. However, this does not mean Harvard gives a big boost for families with $250k+ income or Harvard reserves a percentage of its class for different income groups, and considers the groups separately in the admission process. Also note that among the groups you listed, only legacy and first gen are mutually exclusive, which may relate to why your 10-20% unhooked number is so much lower than all other sources I’ve seen.
“yeah, my DD was completely unhooked, New York public (“ok”) high school, very good scores, pretty good GPA but nowhere near Val (very rigorous, probably top at her school, schedule). She recently graduated from Yale. Who the heck knows.”
And you don’t know many people that were rejected from Yale at your daughter’s high school or neighboring ones? There are 10 local high schools around here where 1000 kids apply every year to Stanford, and about 50 get in, 950 don’t. For every one kid that gets into Stanford I know 19 that didn’t. I agree with the general sentiment in the thread that we shouldn’t judge anyone on where they apply and be supportive.
I never criticize anyone for playing the Powerball lottery either. As they say, “You Can’t Win If You Don’t Play”.
There is nothing wrong with trying!!! You 0 percent chance of getting in if you don’t apply. There is a global look at candidates, it’s not 100 percent GPA and SAT/ACT scores. The kid could have fantastic recommendations, wrote amazing essays, and have some good ECs. It also depends on the major. A kid trying to get into Pre Med will have a harder time getting accepted than someone in a liberal arts major.
It’s always worth a shot. My son was a double legacy at Penn though I can definitely say there has not been a big monetary donation from our family to the school. Penn only considers legacy for ED and my son had not hit their walk on times for cross country so he was unwilling to commit. So he applied RD where the chance of admission is infinitesimally less…and was rejected. He was disappointed…but got into his other top pick (McGill) where he is insanely happy. He said to me a couple of weeks ago that he thinks he ended up at the right school for him but he is glad he at least tried to get into Penn. So, give the super reach a shot…but make sure it isn’t the ONLY plan!
The point here is that kids need to have a sensible STRATEGY for college admissions: that generally means having reasonable reaches, matches, and safeties. Adding an unrealistic super-reach isn’t really part of the sensible strategy, but buying lottery tickets isn’t part of a sensible investment strategy, either. There’s nothing wrong with doing those things in addition to the sensible strategy–as long as the sensible strategy doesn’t suffer.