Why applicants overreach and are disappointed in April...

Parents Forum
181

@gallentjill (re legacy numbers) – I think that you need to keep in mind that many applicants have multiple attributes that make them more attractive applicants. The “legacy” status in particular may be highly prone to producing applicants who fit that definition – it’s not just legacy, but legacy plus. Because perhaps their Harvard-educated parent is also now a famous and influential VIP. Perhaps their Harvard-educated parent is a wealthy and generous donor. Perhaps as the offspring of Ivy-educated parents, that applicant has been essentially groomed since kindergarten to achieve, starting with the choice of elite schools have always been feeders for Ivies.

So yes, that is a very high number of legacies at Harvard. But that doesn’t mean that any particular student was admitted solely or even primarily because of legacy status. I’d note that the article you linked to was based on survey data from about half the incoming class – not hard numbers – so it might have been skewed, especially if legacy-students are for any reason more likely to answer surveys. But you can also drill down the data somewhat and see some patterns – see http://features.thecrimson.com/2017/freshman-survey/makeup/ http://features.thecrimson.com/2017/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

To start with, you see that they define “legacy” quite broadly – only about 18% had parents who went to Harvard – they get to the larger number by including siblings and extended family into the mix.

The legacies are also quite wealthy – and unfortunately the survey graphs do not give an overall picture of family wealth for Harvard students - but that certainly is a big chunk of full pay students with parental income over $500K.

Private vs public school? “58.7 percent of surveyed legacy students attended a private school, whereas 40 percent came from public school.” (Whereas overall, 60% of Harvard admits come from public schools – so that seems to extrapolate out to mean that among students who come from private high schools, about 30% are legacies, with only about 11% of those coming from public schools being legacies)

More: Of students who attended high schools that ranked, “73 percent were ranked in the top 2 percent of their class. 59 percent of students who had at least one parent attend Harvard and whose schools ranked, reported being in the top 2 percent of their class.”

And: “39.3 percent of first-generation students and 69 percent of legacy students were accepted into Harvard’s early admissions program.”

The legacy admit rate at Harvard historically was around 30% (based on a report from 2011 – at http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/ – it may have declined since then) — so yes, “legacy” students generally have bettter chances at admission than non-legacy – or at least rich legacy students who apply early are at a huge advantage, even more so if they attend a private high school and are in the top 2% of their class.

So bottom line: Harvard does not have a 30% legacy “bucket”. It does have admission policies that favor rich students who apply early, and a higher proportion of legacy admits come from that early applicant pool… but we don’t know if that stems from a preference or from a possiblity that a higher proportion of early applicants are also legacies.

182

@calmom - Whoa - I appreciate what you’re attempting to do here overall, but as anyone knows who’s spent time on the CC boards for acting or musical theatre, these statistics you provide are WILDLY off-base.

I’m jumping in to correct this in the interests of saving future students & their families tons of unnecessary heartbreak if they stumble upon your list and think that these are actually decent SAFETY schools for theater programs! Most audition-based programs admit a teeny tiny percentage of applicants, including many of those you name here. For example, something like 1,100 students submitted prescreen video applications to DePaul University this year. Of those, the school passed something like 300 of these to the next stage, inviting them to audition in person. After that, even more drastic cuts are made, resulting in a first-year acting class numbering (perhaps someone else can jump in with the actual number) something VERY small–I believe somewhere around 16 kids. Some theatre programs take as few as 12, and it’s not uncommon for them to want a class of 20.

Ithaca, Pace, DePaul, Elon are all extremely competitive for theater, and I believe many of the others are too.

@Atreuh, @actingdreams - maybe you can clarify the actual DePaul #s here.

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In other words, these programs are not only more selective than the overall admit rate, some of them are just as or more selective FOR THEATRE than Ivy League schools are for everyone else. So yes, please, pay attention to the caveat to do your research, everyone!

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Let’s say universities publish their expected numbers prior to the opening of applications - and after accounting for all the carve outs they then say what everyone, evidently, wants to hear “Hey that means we have 500 seats for all the rest of the unhooked masses”. What will change? Will students apply in any smaller numbers? No, the applications will still come streaming in. MIT, Harvard, Stanford and the other usual suspects will still be described as lottery schools. CC posts will continue to decry the quantity of hooked acceptances. Students will be continue to overreach and not do the research it takes to craft a list of schools to apply to that will maximize their chances of success - resulting in their disappointment. Then, instead of asking themselves if they could have done better, they will take to CC with their complaints. I wonder if the same thing happens later in life when they don’t get the job they want (or is it deserve). Is there a CC for that?

185

I think it’s great advice to think about applying outside your geographic region. I would like to add that there are many reasons why this may be difficult for a student and/or their family. It’s not just that students aren’t adventurous or that they write off areas of the country without a good reason. There are plenty of students with physical or mental health concerns who need proximity to the right doctor/clinic/hospital, and/or proximity to family in case the condition worsens. Or it could be that travel expenses add up over four years.

186

@katew529 – as I said in my original post, that was a starting point list requiring more research, and I noted that audition based programs might be much more selective. But a lot of schools are NOT audition based, particularly among LAC’s. And I also suggested that kids who were looking to use theater as a “hook” of some sort might do better to look at the schools that had weaker theater departments, or only offered a theater minor – indicating that they valued the program enough to maintain a department, but that their program wasn’t strong enough to maintain an audition-based major.

However, I know a kid who auditioned for dance at NYU Tisch and passed the dance part of the audition, but was rejected because his academics weren’t up to par – I am guessing that theater would be similar – so a list of less selective overall programs might be helpful for a student who is strong in theater but has weaker stats – for example, a B student with an ACT of 26.

I only focused on theater because that was the specific question posed to me. If the question had been posed in reference to a student with a different set of strengths or interests, I’d follow the same basic process. First, find schools that offer the major. If the interest is intended as a “hook” or distinguishing factors – look for schools with well-established but weaker departments and lower overall admit rates. If it is not meant as a hook – if the student wants high quality in their major then they have to do some more digging to ascertain which schools have stronger departments but more flexible admission rates-- and of course look at the specific admission rates for the departments they are applying to, especially for any school that has direct admission by major or type of major.

187

Stirring the pudding here, but I wonder how much this website contributes to the number of kids applying to top universities and the behavior of top students applying? Many of us came from a generation where the chance of getting accepted to a given university seemed more predictable and high test scores and GPAs were rare enough for schools to use them as useful benchmarks. Would fewer students be retaking the SAT and ACT 2,3 or more times if they didn’t get on websites like this and hear how it is so necessary? Would kids be as concerned with the perfect EC if we weren’t here to tell them how necessary it is? It is no secret that there ar far more high stat kids applying to many more (of the same) universities than there has been in the past. Would scores be more predictive if students weren’t coached, encouraged and almost required to take standardized test multiple times (I don’t think I knew anyone who did in my graduating class)? Would GPAs be more accurate if there was no weighting and colleges simply looked at the courses students used to prepare themselves for college and the grades made in those courses? I did not know this world existed until I found this site. I think it both educates and creates the very situations we discuss.

188

That’s a good question. I was unaware of this site until my daughter started her college search in earnest. I didn’t spend much time on here reading anything other than threads pertaining to her intended major. Everything worked out great but we made many, many mistakes. Reaches? Check Possibles? Check. Matches? Err? Safeties? Last minute addition, I’m ashamed to say.
The search will be very different with my younger kids.
But I would say yes this forum has a plays a part in the numbers applying to the elite schools. Chance Me threads anyone?

189

I as a long time CC poster, vote yes to eliminate the entire “what are my chances” sub forum.
They serve no purpose than to allow naive high school kids to tell other naive kids that they can easily get into X elite college.

And if could wave a really big magic wand I would also eliminate the Common App.
Making it too easy for students to submit college applications has done nothing but add fire to the college admissions rat race.

190

I have another answer to the theme of this thread: Many of the applicants who are applying to the very top colleges in the country are not over-reaching, actually. If they get into one or more of HYPSM+C+add your own very top favorites, then I would not say they were over-reaching at all. There will be some students who do not get into one or more of HYPSM+C+ . . . who are not over-reaching, either, but they could not be accommodated due to sheer issues of numbers. Yale has expanded its freshman class and I believe that Princeton either has already, or is about to do so. I think this is an indication that they had applicants they would like to accommodate, but just didn’t have space for. The applicants who were on the cusp–who would have been admitted to a slightly expanded class, but were not admitted in the year of their application–did not over-reach.

With regard to the applicants who actually do over-reach: A few are probably clueless, but many think–rightly or wrongly–that the very top colleges offer experiences they would like. And every so often, someone who is more-or-less just run-of-the-mill excellent gets in by striking the right chord. So why not? Investing oneself too heavily in the outcome is a mistake in these cases, but I understand how it happens.

Ivvcsf makes good points in #187, too. In the “olden” days, students in my school took the SAT or the ACT a single time, and many did not take both tests. I didn’t take both. In my year, I believe that 25 or fewer students nationally scored 1600 on the SAT in a single sitting. Now the number is much higher. The SAT was re-centered in the mid-1990’s, so if parents assess a score in light of the ranges they knew from their youth, they will be over-impressed by the current generation’s scores (generally speaking). Fewer schools had elaborate GPA weighting, so 4.0 averages were rarer. Grade inflation had probably started, but I don’t believe that it was as acute as today. (Obviously, some schools are exceptions.) In my school, grades depended very heavily on test scores. Homework and projects made very minor contributions to the grades–unlike the situation now in the local schools, where weak understanding of the material can be compensated by scores on homework and projects (some of dubious educational value). This means that more students have high-level objective qualifications, without necessarily having the intellectual qualities that tended to accompany those objective qualifications in the past–not meaning to be arrogant here, just drawing conclusions from a number of observations locally and at my university.

191

Many of the applicants who are applying to the very top colleges in the country are not over-reaching, actually. If they get into one or more of HYPSM+C+add your own very top favorites, then I would not say they were over-reaching at all. There will be some students who do not get into one or more of HYPSM+C+ . . . who are not over-reaching, either, but they could not be accommodated due to sheer issues of numbers

Said the same earlier but much less eloquently.

192

As long as we are waving our magic wands, I would like to change the USNWR rankings to exclude all categories that relate to exclusivity. Let them rank on factors that matter, educational quality, student teacher ratio, even reputation among peers. But there is no value in ranking by how much students the schools get to reject.

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@gallentjill: Why not use the Forbes rankings then?

Outcomes-based.

Acceptance rate doesn’t factor in anywhere.

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Some do. For example, these public universities show historical results, bucketed by major.

http://www.sjsu.edu/admissions/impaction/

https://www.csun.edu/admissions-records/impaction

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major

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@purpletitan I have looked at them and they are fascinating, but most people don’t. I believe that when people talk about the top XX colleges, they are always referring to USNWR

196

@ucbalumnus

Public universities, especially the ones in CA, publish more data and are more transparent, but they’re short of what’s needed. Colleges ask applicants for all their data in order to make acceptance decisions. So conversely, applicants should have all the data from the colleges on all the factors that are considered by the colleges for admission to properly determine suitability.

197

“You overall “hippyness”, marvelous though it might be, was not going to get you in coupled with a B+ GPA and 620/600 SAT scores.”

Agree, well said. I tried to post this as well that just because a selective college rejects 80% of people with perfect scores does not mean that they prefer the 1200 3.5, quirky, free thinker. Brown is an intellectual campus with an average of 1480-1500/32. There’s a lot of high scorers on that campus, as well as any other selective school.

198

Not sure how SJSU and CSUN in the examples above are lacking and information in what they publish, since they admit by pure stats within buckets by majors. Any admitted or rejected applicant can see where s/he stands against the threshold.

The UC transfer table is obviously not including the subjectively graded essays and such, but how should that be qualified in a way useful to prospective applicants?

199

“Let them rank on factors that matter, educational quality, student teacher ratio, even reputation among peers.”

Peer reputation is a factor, pretty big one, in fact the first few rankings were all based on reputation, which is why you had Berkeley at 7, UM at 8, and Wisconsin and Illinois in the top-14.

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@ucbalumnus You’re right. For these schools, the data are sufficient because these are what they use to make their acceptance decisions. I was thinking more generally, especially about the ones that use holistic admission standards.