Anybody who really thinks that’s how math works isn’t ready for high school.
@socaldad2002 I did alumni interviewing for Cornell for nearly two decades. Cornell says over 95% of applicants are academically well qualified to attend. I only interviewed one student over all those years that I felt had no business applying. Kids who aren’t in the ballpark and applying are exceptions. Your friend’s daughter was fortunate to get all those acceptances. My daughter’s classmate with similar stats and NMF was rejected at all the Ivies.
Some colleges don’t even publish aggregate data (UChicago, for example). No college publishes detailed data breakdowns in different buckets so a particular applicant could determine his/her own idiosyncratic odds of acceptance. Data breakdowns must be along all the factors the college considers, rather than a simple one-dimensional number along a single factor (say, SAT/ACT), for the data to be useful and meaningful.
“It’s pretty clear these schools were matches for this applicant or at the very least had greater odds than the acceptance rate listed.”
@socaldad2002,
your mistake is you are trying to come up with your own definition of “match” that is not applicable beyond one particular student or data point.
ANY college that has an acceptance rate of 5% is NOT a " match" for ANYONE. Stay on CC long enough and you will learn that.
A match means students have a 40% or greater chance of acceptance
Furthermore, you have no way of knowing the qualifications of others who applied. There are thousands of exceptionally bright students in the world.
So for those of you stuck on high grades and high SAT/ACT scores are entitled to admission at top schools…riddle me this: Princeton had 14,000 4.0 students apply…and they were going to accept (across all applications) less than 2000 students. So which of the 14000 should be admitted? Or is it everyone of them because they had perfect GPAs?
A couple of years ago, Harvard accepted a kid from our high school who was definitely not a 4.0…more like a 3.8. BUT he won both the Siemens and Intel science awards (nationally). Should his lack of perfect grades excluded him from Harvard?
It’s not as simple as you make it seem.
“Some colleges don’t even publish aggregate data (UChicago, for example).”
@1NJParent
Chicago DOES make available ALL common data material.
. It can be found on this link.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=University+fo+Chicago&s=IL&id=144050#admsns
I wish a huge chunk of apps could be avoided. But more than that, I wish kids and families could get a better and more rational understanding from info that is available. I’ve pointed this out to kids who’ve pm’d me and the brightest ones get it. The lightbulb goes on, they get an idea how to present (or how to make the best of their last year(s) in hs.)
But plenty actually argue, it’s too hard, too opaque, no one ever gets in from their hs or lower qualified kids got in, so why should they make a concerted effort? (Or some blog says…lol.)
Meanwhile, a lot of colleges care about how you match in more ways than stats, some titles, 4000 hours volunteering or whatever. They want to see your interest reflected in what you learned about them, how you matched yourself, that you think and take care about the process. That’s A vital part of “demonstrated interest.”
Of course, in the end, these are institutional decisions. Maybe you want a popular major or come from an area saturated with apps, or something or other makes you less competitive. But that savvy effort can go a long way, maybe put you in what I think of as the 50-50 odds, you get in or not.
And yeah, I know what it takes where I work. But you can learn a lot about a host of colleges, if you clear your mind and dig in. A set of posters on CC has done this. Sometimes we disagree, but I respect the direct knowledge they share, the balanced way they view. It sure beats quoting the media, some book, some hs kids or angry parents or what your neighbor’s cousin thinks.
@lookingforward I don’t see how any unhooked student can increase their odds to 50/50 at an elite school no matter how well they research the school and show their “fit.” Really, after the spots for legacy, URM, First Gen and Athletes are subtracted, how many spots are actually left for the average excellent student? It must be a tiny fraction. This isn’t really a rhetorical question. I think people should know how many spots are actually available when you remove the above hooks.
What effect do you think that would have?
@rivet2000 It would help people assess their chances, have more realistic expectations and build better college lists. Crude example here but, lets say an elite college posts a 10% acceptance rate. A student figures that if you apply to 10 such colleges, you have about a 65% chance of getting into one of them. Not so bad. But if the unhooked student’s real chance is closer to 5%, applying to the same 10 schools gives them only a 40% chance of getting in to one school. I know, that this is simplistic and admissions don’t really work like coin tosses. However, if a student knew they had a 60% chance of being rejected by all 10 of the elite schools to which they applied, it would at least prompt them to make more reasonable lists. It would also prevent all the angst accompanying the shock of being rejected.
Maybe I say 50-50 because I’ve seen the too large percentage of kids who are top performers in hs but don’t try these extra steps. Don’t so focus on unhooked, number of spots, that you miss what match is.
That is one of the common misconception. There is not a clear threshold that higher scores do not improve the chance. Holistic review process is not a check list. It is a rather dynamic process. For competitive schools, a holistic review usually means no weakness in any part of the application.
“I think people should know how many spots are actually available when you remove the above hooks.”
This wouldn’t be that hard to get, it could take time because you’d have to research it for each college, for Stanford e.g., first gen is 17%, URM, 21%, international is 10%, those are from their profiles. The athletes you have to do work, because you need to know how many div 1 players they gave schollies or partial schollies to. They claim 900 athletes so divide by 4, to get 225 for freshman, so figure 10% goes to athletes. That’s 58% w/o legacy so may 60% with legacy, but note there’s going to be overlap in those numbers, esp urm and athletes. Maybe 50% is reasonable for unhooked candidates meaning about 2% acceptance rate.
@gallentjill, we xposted. How do you even begin to “assess chances” if you don’t know what the college values, looks for, wants and expects? You could apply to 40 colleges and never have a decent shot if you’re applying in the dark, if you have no idea what match is, other than top quartile in stats. And x seats available.
Colleges, especially those that market themselves heavily to potential applicants, should disclose more data so an applicant can determine if a college is a fit or a match, before spending days or weeks on the application (and the application fee). AOs don’t even know all admitted are matches with all the information they have on applicants, how could an applicant know if a college is a match if it holds back all the relevant information the applicant needs to make the determination?
I believe intended major is also a big factor. When my friend’s D applied, she is a non-STEM (polical science/government) major with ECs. I don’t believe she happened to win the lottery with only 2,700 test takes get a perfect 36 on the ACT. She did it on first sitting. Didn’t even bother to take the SAT. You combine that with all of the other factors u4.0, all 5’s on AP exam, ECs in line with major, fantastic LORs, #2 in graduating class. Only reason wasn’t #1 she wanted to take band all 4 years and that somehow effected the ranking slightly?
Clearly 3 ivies, Duke, and 2 CA public flagships recognized this student as a match and wanted her. While there are no guarantees, this kid knew she had a pretty good shot at at least one of the tippy top schools, even being unhooked.
@theloniusmonk Interesting numbers. Are you assigning only 2% to legacy? I’m not sure how you would get there considering that 29% of the incoming class of Harvard were legacies (2017). I would think it would be far greater.
“For competitive schools, a holistic review usually means no weakness in any part of the application.”
It’s been shown that athletes do not go through this holistic review, and neither do requests for admission from the development office.
Or… all students can assume that the marketing material has nothing to do with a student’s odds of being accepted.
I just used 2% and round it to 60, too early in the morning for tougher math! And Stanford is not into legacies as Harvard is for sure. But you could say 10% at Stanford if you wanted to be conservative. Given that Stanford goes for first gens as a priority it obviously wants students whose parents didn’t go to college vs Harvard who loves parents that attended their college, if not at least an ivy. As I’ve posted before, ivies love wealth.