@gallentjill what you describe happening is not common at our school. This year the only kid to get into HYPS is Latin X and not ranked in top 20 in test scores or class rank. The kids talk and seem to know about each other’s business. However, all the kids know he got into Yale and is LatinX. this is much more common at our public high school than unhooked kids getting in over lower ranked/scored unhooked kids. As I mentioned the kids at high pressure publics somewhat know the deal as acceptances come in and easily put the “secret sauce” together, but only after the fact. One other kid got into a tippy top school but is apparently living with random foster care parents in a trailer and pell grant eligible and Quest Bridge. So yes he’s going to have a very compelling application and is much rarer than average excellent kids that may rank and score above him. Anyway, I think the graduating seniors understand it now, but I do feel bad for those average/excellent kids that applied to >15 schools buying 13 lottery tickets. And yes the kids seem to know a lot about each other. My point is not about why they put classes together as they do but how and they should be transparent about it.
Yes, most students aiming at super-selective colleges need to do the heavy lifting to earn exceptional merit (top end grades and test scores are necessary, but not sufficient) and present it in a form that admissions readers at super-selective colleges will be impressed with. They need to, because they will be competing with students who have many advantages over them, such as attending a privileged prep school with dedicated college counselors who can provide meaningful assistance with college selection and essay writing and teachers who are well coached in writing LoRs and do not ration them, or unearned advantages like legacy.
Apparently the groundswell may be occurring in Washington, too… given last year’s implementation of new regulations taxing the endowments of select colleges. That new endowment tax was very narrowly targeted to hit these exact same colleges we’re discussing in this thread and part of the impetus was the concern of elites hording the wealth and only benefiting themselves… not dissimilar to the issues with preferences in admissions.
Again, tax law changes based on public opinion and political change. If the public understood how few places were actually available to students who are not wealthy or connected, it’s reasonable to assume their opinion on whether these colleges are truly nonprofits deserving federal, state and local subsidy might change.
Btw, “compelling” isn’t life circumstances, per se. It’s what one does despite and the rest of match. It still has to be presented in the right ways. And despite chatting openly, no one kid or parent can know what the app actually presented.
Yes, where one lives and the particular hs will affect you in ways beyond your control. Eg, for elites, there’s a huge base of applicants from places like NYC and the close suburbs. Kids further out suffer, for various reasons. Some surprising parts of the country can have this problem.
The way we view these colleges needs to be taken apart and rebuilt. 1500 would be in range, if it’s 750/750. But then what? The transcript is usually a page or 1.5. Multiple other pages of info to convey. Or not. There are next to no trump cards (no wild cards that make up for other weaknesses.)
Yes, what’s happening with some state U’s and costs is a shame.
No, ucb, not because they’re competing with privileged kids. But because the overall competition is to a stupid level of fierce. The privileged kids have one advantage: the counselors help them aim at viable choices. Lil Johnny who’s not so stellar may be aimed, enthusiastically, at tier 3. Not groomed for tier 1.
It’s another misconception that LAX camp and sailing or fancy travel are some magic wand.
@anon145, one of the reasons Caltech has a much larger share of Asians than the Ivy league schools is that it is a school for scientists. Lets look at the proportions of population applying before we start praising Caltech. They don’t look at legacy and they don’t recruit athletes. But newsflash, Caltech is not for everyone. Some people would prefer to go to college where not every one is into STEM.
Actually Caltech does recruit athletes (my son’s friend flew there to talk to a coach), athletics just doesn’t have the same weight in admissions as it does in other places.
@RockySoil Interestingly MIT used to provide more data on their site than they do now. For example, one of the things they published back when my kid applied was not only the EA acceptance rate, but enough info so that you could calculate the acceptance rate for deferred students. (At the time IRC EA was about 15%, but those deferred to the regular round still had about a 25% acceptance rate.)
Regarding the uptick in Asian acceptance rate at Harvard, I think it is also possible that they did some soul-searching and realized that there may have been some unconscious bias at play, both among alumni interviewers and the admissions officers.
@yucca10 thanks for the correction! (I know Caltech pretty well, but DH was a grad student there, and it sure didn’t look like they were recruiting from what I saw on the website. 
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I suspect H just got more apps (or better quality) from more As-Am non-stem kids. It’ll be interesting to see if any breakdown comes out, one way or another.
Side note: we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Asian-Am kids as just high stats, violin and tennis. They can be motivated, grounded, can be engaged in depth and breadth, often reflect friendships and more. Many have a deep affection for their families and cultures.
@mathmom been a while but at one point I looked at the data and pretty much every Ivy had a common formula of between 15-20% URM, 10% international, and <20% asian even though some have little/no STEM strength (e.g. Dartmouth) while some had a lot more STEM strength e.g Princeton. if your hypothesis was completely correct the % Asians at Ivies should have varied a lot more than it did and had some correlation coefficient with number of kids in STEM vs non stem majors and applicants to them. But yes Caltech is likely more asian due to steminess but I disagree that is the sole reason. Caltech also has the highest scores. And Yes Caltech does recruit their brand new soccer coach has gone to showcase events and they contact players, but Caltech will have the absolutely lowest coaches pull anywhere.
@lookingforward am I hearing you correctly? Harvard’s one year jump in asians from 18 to 26% is due to a flood of 2023 asian humanities applicants? trolling A+
You’re quick to judge.
None of us know, at this point. But As-Am in humanities can have pull. Especially Southeast Asian.
According to the Inside Higher Ed link in another thread, last year was 22.7%. Roughly 454. 60 or so addl students, this year.
Looking over their shoulders is only one possible explanation. It behooves us to consider more- and consider it as speculation, when phrased that way.
It not simply a matter of somehow estimating a 2% chance vs 5% chance. A large portion of current Harvard applicants for all practical purposes have a 0% chance of admission. For example, in the Harvard lawsuit sample, the majority of otherwise unhooked African American applicants received a 4 or worse academic rating . Non-recruited athletes with a 4 academic rating only had a 0.07% admit rate. In half of the lawsuit years, nobody was admitted with a 5, including recruited athletes. The majority of African American applicants seem to be essentially throwing away their application fee, with stats that are practically an auto reject. If those applicants knew that they had essentially 0% chance of admission, I’d expect most would not apply and would instead focus their time and effort on colleges that were a more appropriate fit.
One could blame it on the student or GC, and say they should know better. However, it’s often not as obvious as it may appear. The lawsuit found that Harvard sent letters encouraging African African students to apply who had a PSAT equivalent of 1100+, which could encourage students some lower stat students to incorrectly think they have a shot. There is also essentially zero information on Harvard’s website or CDS about the degree of boost for African American applicants or other hooked groups. Hooked applicants might know they are far more likely to be admitted with lower stats than the published ranges for the overall class, but many have no idea what type of stat ranges are appropriate for their subgroup, so they have no idea whether they still have a reasonable shot, with their well below Harvard average stats.
We tend to focus more on unhooked students with high stats on this site, but more information about admit rate can still be helpful for this group. A good start would be listing admit rate by stat among unhooked (including not URM) RD and SCEA applicants. Even better would be explaining how admission decision is primarily not based on stats and going in to detail about the holistic criteria that is used in making admission decisions. This includes explain Harvard’s core ratings categories (academic, ECs, personal, and athletic) and how they are used during the admissions process. They might add a table or scattergam showing the degree of correlation between stats and academic rating (not admit rate), then show the admit rate for different combinations of academic, EC, personal, and athletic ratings among unhooked students. Some combinations would have a likely admission, while other combinations would have ~0% chance of admission. This would make it painfully obvious that even students who have perfect stats have a low admit rate, unless they also do well in the rest of the application. And would show what range of stats offer a acceptable shot, if an unhooked kid has other desired qualities beyond stats. We see these type of questions regularly on CC.
@Data10 There is a lot I agree with in your post. We have been focusing primarily on the high stat kids and I firmly believe that they have no reason to complain about being blindsided by rejection. I didn’t think about the potential harm to the lower stat kids who may be misled. My first gut reaction is that no one with an academic rating of 4 should expect to get into Harvard. But you are right about the possibly misleading marketing to kids who have almost no chance. Harvard may argue that because they are holistic, they need to cast a wide net to make sure they don’t miss that rare lower stat kid with special gifts. However, if they are going to do this, they should waive the application fees. I don’t know what their fee waiver policy is, but I have a lot of sympathy with families wrongly thinking they have a chance because of the glossy personalized brochures.
The website stat is misleading in that it does not mention that only 25% of matriculating students submitted rank. Of the 25% who submitted rank, 94% were in the top 10% of their class. One can only guess at the rank of the other 75% of matriculating students who did not submit rank. I’d expect that students attending selective HSs and others with a larger portion of class being excellent students would be less likely to submit rank, so I’d guess that a substantially larger portion of the other 75% who did not submit rank were not in the top 10%.
Neither CDS or website lists combinations of class rank and ACT score, so that’s also a guess. However, my guess would be that it depends on the specific ACT score, the context of the HS including whether they rank among other things, in addition to a large number of criteria beyond stats.
Would someone please define for me what the accepted standard is here for an “elite” school?
We’ll have to remain in disagreement as to what you guess. Your guesses simply do not coordinate with my experience as someone who has watched many of my students apply to Brown, most with higher scores than grades. Even my Questbridge student (one of two who was admitted out of several applicants over several years) was in the top decile of his class. In addition, there are other ways that colleges can identify high performers among those who “do not submit rank.” It’s called the LOR. Most people on CC, and most parents I deal with, hugely underestimate the power of an outstanding teacher rec for a private college application, particularly as that rec illustrates the student’s intellectual potential compared to other students in the same class.
@roycroftmom I couldn’t find anything that correlated race and scores and admissions in the UT Austin report, just the standard that almost everyone reports on how many they admitted by race or score or school, I assume the type of info your looking for would correlate all of those criteria.
Mostly because the LoR is not visible to outsiders, including the applicant. (Unlike GPA, rank, test scores, legacy, race/ethnicity that are visible to outsiders.) Obviously, ignoring it (and other less visible aspects like essays) means that many will overestimate the more visible and comparable aspects of applications.
But the LoR also injects the recommender quality into the process, which the student may not have much control or knowledge of (compared to his/her own achievements). LoR rationing, as has been discussed elsewhere, can also deny some students their best possible LoRs.
Yes, I know all about LOR rationing, @ucbalumnus
However, it is much more common, and more problematic, when students do not have a reasonably accurate view of where they stand within their own class. Let’s put it the other way: It’s been my experience that exceptional students --** the very kind most prized by elite colleges ** – tend to know where they stand in the class (at or near the top) and similarly know what kind of LOR they will receive from particular teachers who know well their abilities. These are the same students savvy enough to realize that for them, the Early Round is an excellent gamble.