<p>There are many different factors. One student may have had a bad interview at one of them and not the other, they may have wrote a subpar essay, one of the schools may have needed an oboe player and the other did not, etc.</p>
<p>But I think it has to do with that every school is looking for a different kind of kid. They also need a kid to full each “niche” at the school. If they already have all the math prodigies that they need, they aren’t going to want another, while the other school may need an extra.</p>
<p>Well exeter only gives out admissions to people they are certain they will accept the offer. They are very conscious about the acceptance rate and the yield. But the fact is if 8 people are accepted to both, statistically 7 go to andover and 1 goes to exeter.</p>
<p>“exeter only gives out admissions to people they are certain they will accept the offer.”
totally untrue…</p>
<p>and where in the world did you get the 7 to 1 statistic? out of the 3 people i know that got accepted to both schools, 2 of them went to exeter and 1 to andover…</p>
<p>Actually, mustang, if what you said were true, Exeter would have a higher yield than Andover. It does not. Plenty of people get into both a and e. It’s Exeter and sps that seem to rarely have cross-admits.</p>
<p>that exact same thing happened to me.
i didnt have a good a interview, essay
i really loved exeter and that showed through in my interview and essay</p>
<p>mustangs, you still seem a little bitter that you weren’t admitted to Exeter. I hope you’ll come to realize that, even for highly qualified candidates, there is often a good dose of luck involved too - sometimes good luck, sometimes not so good luck.</p>
<p>I know 3 students that were accepted at both Andover and Exeter, and all chose to go to Exeter. Of course, that is an absolutely meaningless statistic because the number is so small. However, I believe it is far more credible than the 7:1 ratio mentioned above.</p>
<p>Wow, I was not expecting this many responses! Thank you guys!
I read the post on the “Tufts Syndrome”. That was really interesting and answered a lot of my questions. I really want to go to both Andover and Exeter. I think both of them have their strengths and weaknesses. I guess I’ll just show both schools how much I love their school.
And yes, I heard that theses schools also look for someone to fill a “niche” in the school. I know a kid who went to MX because he was a really good soccer player. So again, thanks everyone!</p>
<p>the act of filling a “niche” is more significant than just a single soccer player.</p>
<p>example:
majority of a sports team graduates. Maybe the normal number of athletic PGs recruited yearly is enough to fill these empty spots, maybe not. In the case that it’s not, then additional recruiting must be done. Same can go for music, ethnicity (racial quotas), etc; a quota of sorts must be fulfilled for many non-academic aspects.</p>
<p>In the year I was accepted to Exeter a great number of students were accepted from Asia. From my home-country (China) there were ~12 in total, about half from hongkong + taiwan and the other half from mainland. This year there are 2 from mainland, 1 from hongkong. They accepted too much the year before and had to cut back this year to maintain aforementioned quota.</p>
<p>also I was waitlisted at E and A 1 year, then rejected at A and wl for E. Then got off the wl for E. make sense what you will.</p>
<p>if a quota has a fixed number attached to it then that info is confidential to the school. there are some numbers about % of students being color, % of students international, etc that should be available on the school’s website. these numbers generally shouldn’t change that much from year to year.</p>
<p>what I was trying to say is that the admissions office takes in people based on what they think will create a productive, diverse class. if they need musicians, they will definitely accept some. if they don’t, then they might not, but it is not guaranteed they won’t. </p>
<p>simply put, there is a bias in admissions that is affected by the characteristics of the current student population. the number/quota itself is not exactly fixed, only approximate. there are always special cases.</p>
<p>Exeter and Andover are completely different schools in terms of personality. My daughter was a better fit at Andover than Exeter and it was clear after the interviews and campus visits. Exeter was a decline, Andover liked her. She ultimately chose a different school, but a part of me would have loved to see her at Andover.</p>
<p>It’s not about Tufts effects, or anything else. It’s about several hundred years of vetting applications looking for kids who will fit the campus environment. Some kids can do both. But more often than not the schools are different enough for there to be a tangible explanation. Even the campuses are very different (Andover is just huge compared to Exeter).</p>
<p>So no mystery. But thanks for playing. The “stats” being thrown around crack me up.</p>
<p>This doesn’t make any sense. The current adcom has his/her own way of recruiting. The current adcom is not going to the old, retired adcoms to find out how they did it, ie no historical information is used. For all I know, the current adcoms may not even know the prior ones other than the one they are immediately replacing. This also makes the false assumption that the schools themselves haven’t changed over hundreds of years. The recruiting process won’t be anything more than the whims and fancies of the current adcom.</p>