@Data10 Your user name fits you. 
@Data10 - Iâd just point out that the Berkeley Hout report you linked to is from 2005 â whereas the more recent video you linked to included this written notation:
So while the Hout report is a good example of detailed reporting, I donât think it would be wise for anyone in 2018 to rely on its information for anything more than a historical perspective.
Thatâs simply not going to work with elite admissions â when you talk about quartiles you are focusing on test scores, which is only one factor among many â and those colleges arenât basing decisions on test scores. A student would have to have 1600 on the SAT to be top âquartileâ at Harvard.
So when it comes to elite admissions, all of those students who think they have amazing scores are pretty much right in the middle. Their chances are just not better than average.
You want better than average admission chances at a single-digit admission school? Then the student is going to need a better than average application across the board. Not top âquartileâ but top 5%. Top LORâs, top essays, top ECâs, top grades, top class rank, top high school curriculum. Even if you somehow could know where the application fits to make a decent guess at whether the student was in the top quartile, that leaves the best case scenario being an 80% chance of rejection.
Yes, I meant it as an example of the type of detailed reporting Iâd find helpful. You can find similar documents for more recent years. A summary of some of the available more recent documents is at http://â â â â â â â â â â â â /docs/2016FroshUpdate.pdf . They include both simple tables and more detailed reports and case study of specific applicants, why specific essays or LORs are rated well/poorly, etc.
35 pages in and I feel weâre right back at the beginning of this thread.
Exactly what I was about to write, @doschicos . If someone wants to quote ââŠpretty confidentâŠbased on her 36 ACT, u4.0, all 5s on AP exams, great ECs, #2 in graduating class,â you are circling back to where we started.
Calmom, for various reasons, some of us feel the number of kids reviewed in RD is far lower than 30k. Donât forget thereâs first cut, which can reduce the pool drastically. Gibby has guessed about 16k, I think from my own other experiences, that itâs more like 12k, if youâre lucky- and dropping. And then, Fitzsimmons is on record saying about 6k could be final contenders. That means after a filtering by various teams.
So, in theory, at least, those kids past first cut have a larger chance. BUT. Folks should remember, again, this is far more than stats and what one thinks, with their own limited experience, are great ECs or a great essay. Itâs simply not enough to go into this with âconfidence,â based on stats. Or quartiles, percents or whatever else that isnât qualitative. Thatâs why I contiue to say, know what yourâre applying to, what they look for.
Data, I donât believe anyone said adcoms are transparent. I believe it was a qualified statement or two, that more is available than many realize.
I have to quibble with this. You can be âprepared enoughâ but not at the top of prep, and still succeed. I find it offensive to assume that a highly capable student who excels at the SAT should be told to get to the back of the line at the local CC because they went to a less top-level HS.
My own kids went to a HS where the offerings were meager, and the schoolâs SATs averaged about 600 points (old style M/V) less than they scored. (1470, 1510 no prep, if anyone cares.) Their SAT 2s and APs were uneven because of the schoolâs uneven preparation. Somehow, despite the âhandicapâ of less âpreparationâ they managed to limp through, graduating from a top LAC (PBK), and an Ivy. Thankfully, no one thought their âlack of preparationâ should have relegated them to community college.
The post I was referencing with my âallâ comment stated the following. I agree that more information is available than most realize.
Bear in ind that the Guttentag letter dates back to 2014, at least, and that things can change very quickly in applicant pools and a collegeâs target wants and/or institutional needs. And remember that what he said is about Duke. Other schools donât necesarily do it just as they do.
Hereâs an iteresting link. https://admissionado.com/college/get-into-top-college-admissions-committee-duke/
Its value is in the perspective.
An interesting read @lookingforward. I wonder how a lopsided kid factors into all this. How would Duke or a similar school view the kid who excels in humanities and not in STEM. That kid might not have any science APs but have taken all the humanities APs offered. That kid might have an 800verbal but a 600math score. That kidâs total SAT score would bring the college average down, but he might be really well suited to excel in college in his chosen course of study.
I am also a bit skeptical when the school says they want to see students challenge themselves in high school. Will they really want the kid who challenged himself and got a B in an AP class?
Unfortunately, he points out, hardest classes you can do well in. Remember that CC and other sources talk about the competition for admits and can forget there can be a higher bar, once at those more selective colleges. You want the right fit, imo, in terms of the 4 years, that empowerment, not struggle.
Could a kid rise to the challenge? Sure. D1 got into a LAC above her stats. But it was the right match for her and them. I think calmom is making a similar point. In our own ways, I think we both looked st many factors.
Can a humanities kid get in without stem strengths? Yes. But if, eg, the app shows a future med interest, some colleges will want to see thatâs realistic. The more competitive, the more it matters. It can be about oneâs thinking. Itâs part of my point about some related ECs. And the more selective will have scores of applicants with the full picture, to choose among.
Ime, itâs not a concern about bringing their stats average down.
This thread is very focused on stats, but I start having a feeling it all boils down at the end to wildly varying ideas on which are âgreatâ ECs and essays, and which are run-of-the-mill.
The most selective colleges want to see the student who chose the hardest challenge and did the best possible (i.e. A in the hardest course offered).
The academic stats are most important generally across the range of college selectivity (not restricted to the most selective colleges that people on these forums seem to assume when not otherwise specified), but the subjective factors (essays, recommendations, etc.) can make a difference when the applicant is near the stats border range* at colleges that consider them. At the most selective colleges, the stats borderline is at the top end of the stats range, so the subjective factors essentially take over once the applicant is at the top end of the stats range.
*Colleges that use level of applicantâs interest may have an upper stats border range as well as a lower stats border range.
I have to express some reservations about the idea that the applicants who can write most compellingly about themselves (in alignment with the collegeâs priorities) are really the âbestâ applicants. As noted by ucbalumnus, the subjective factors tend to be dispositive for the most selective colleges, once the applicant is at the top of the range based on objective performance.
If I were reading admissions essays, I would like to see a primary focus on others, or on issues, or on discoveries, rather than an essay that makes me think about what a likeable person the applicant is, or about how well he/she will fit into the campus community.
Humor tends to be very welcome in application essays, provided that it is well done. Within a university community, strangely, humor can actually be a hindrance to communication. (I would not have thought so beforehand, but I have seen this happen.)
I remain uncomfortable with the idea that an applicant needs to make personal disclosures of values, attributes, and goals to admissions staffers he/she does not know and may never have metâand yet the applicant needs to understand that the decision is not personal. I find this especially uncomfortable when the subjective, personal factors essentially determine the decision.
I doubt that a large enough number of the top-school applicants who have top objective qualifications can be ruled out as âclueless,â to hold the admitted group to a manageable number. It seems very probable to me that distinctions still need to be made among applicants who are quite well clued in. I am sure that the âcluelessâ applicants can be annoying. I just donât think there are that many of them, all told.
Itâs show, not just tell. And it is not an academic essay.
And lots are clueless.
@QuantMech â and this is what makes admission to these colleges a âcrapshootâ for those students whose stats are at the top. The way you read the subjective parts determine your recommendation. Another reviewer could have a different set of criteria. The students donât have any control over who reads their application.
@gallentjill âChallengeâ can be more than just course choice. The Duke article was focused on course selection (âwhether the student has challenged himself within the context of whatâs possible at the school, and whatâs typical of the good students at that schoolâ) â and I honestly have no clue what Dukeâs overall admission policies are.
But my daughterâs âchallengeâ was in choosing to spend a semester as a foreign exchange student in Russia. That choice disrupted her schedule at her home school, meaning that she couldnât take many of the AP courses that she would have otherwise taken, and also resulted in weaknesses in math & science courses.
But she specifically wrote about that choice in the âanything elseâ section of her common app, saying specifically that she went abroad to challenge herself. Her main common app essay also addressed that, in a more indirect, showing rather than telling fashion.
And everything Iâve read is that colleges also like to see students who have challenged themselves outside the classroom, and gone beyond âwhatâs possible at the schoolâ. But when the outside challenge is a significant time commitment, then it can also result in a very lopsided candidate. So the question comes down to whether the outside challenge is also something that college is likely to value.
As to your comment about the SAT average â colleges donât report averages, they report median ranges. That means that my kid with her 27 on the ACT wasnât going to bring down any âaverageâ â she was going to simply occupy the bottom quartile along with 25% of the other students.
I do think college ARE concerned about maintaining those rangesâ but the point is that they have a large number of high scorers to choose from - and that gives them the flexibility to consider stand-out applicants whose scores on the lower end of the range. (Or athletes, or legacies, or whatever else the college feels represent added value).
For some applicants with superior stats, ECâs etc. there is the notion of a studentâ "attitudeâ. If such a student is rejected by a dozen or so top 20 schools and accepted at none the adcoms may have detected something in their essays that turned them off. a sense of entitlement perhaps or the student just comes off as obnoxious.
I think thatâs true to an extent â but there are also other objective but non-stats-based factors as well as subjective factors tied to objective college goals that all reviewers are going to be aware of. Those goals may change from year to year or may change within the course of a specific admissions season â for example, to fill gaps after ED decisons have been made. These internal priorities may not be obvious to applicants â but they are probably very real to people who who work in admissions. I would assume that there are internal communications throughout the admission season about what type of qualities should be prioritized-- and I think it would also shift over time So part of the magic may not be the particular admission reader but the time within the application cycle that the applicant was read. Late the season might be an optimum time for students who just happen to be filling whatever gap seems to still exist (for example, an applicant from Wyoming whose application is reviewed at the time when the ad com is realizing they are falling short of geographic diversity goals) â and of course worse for others who just happen to part of the then-overrepresented group.
I think thatâs where the search for âtransparencyâ simply isnât possible â the colleges objectives are stable, but what they need to do to fill those goals is going to depend on their applicant pool and is going to tend to shift from year-to-year as well as within a given year, along with the makeup of the applicant pool and other decisions being made.
Different schools can do this differently. But within a team, why assume no consistency? Why do we hear this endless certainty this is a whimsical process?
Students have control over the presentation they submit. It seems to me that the better strategy is to be on your toes. Why claim, in so many ways, that itâs beyond you, tainted?