The range I have heard recently from professionals for this is 60% to 65%, but generally not more than this.
Yaleâs website claims 75 percent of its applicants are qualified for admittance.
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When you say qualified, do you mean they satisfy the bare minimum requirements like decent GPA or SAT or do they genuinely mean they can admit randomly from the 75 per cent and nobody would notice?
I think we live in an era where 4.0 gpas and SATS over 1500, superscored, are relatively common. There are some public schools in my state where 30 percent of the class has a 4.0.
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So I think you have to be careful with that sort of statement from highly selective colleges. I think when such colleges say that, they are often making room for various hooked applicants and their qualification distribution. But I think the actual percentage of unhooked applicants who have competitive academic profiles is lower.
We sort of know this from the Harvard litigation. Even back then, only about 40% of Harvard applicants scored an Academic 2. Hooked applicants could get in with a 3, which expanded the range. But it was rare for unhooked applicants to get in with less than a 2.
And Yale has recently said that since that era, they now have gotten many more not well qualified applications. So the percentage of unhooked applications they actually deem well qualified may be lower still these days.
So I think for highly selective colleges, not all 4.0s are considered equal. They have always said they also consider course rigor, and recently some AOs explained that even though they are nominally test optional, they are looking to AP and other test scores to supplement at least in cases where they think there is a lot of grade inflation. Dartmouth again is using a Big Data model with something like 64 variables to derive initial academic ratings.
So yes, there are a lot more 4.0s and such, but that doesnât mean these colleges are simply accepting all those as equal.
Unfortunately, Harvard doesnât offer âfull ridesâ outside of financial aid.
Per Amherstâs website: âNo, we offer no merit-based scholarships of any kind. Amherst has been committed to a strictly need-based financial aid program from the collegeâs beginnings early in the 19th century. Need is the only criterion for receiving financial aid from Amherst.â
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I am not asking about what is practically competitive for a top school. I was just asking when yale said 75% is qualified, what level of qualityfications were they referring to?
How could I possibly answer that unless I worked in the Yale admissions office?
That is the million dollar question. I donât like the term âqualifiedâ because I think the vast majority of students who apply to these schools could be successful there - just look at the stats of some recruited athletes (SATâs in the 1200s/good but not great gpaâs). Despite some (not all) athletes having much lower stats, almost all will do well and graduate successfully. A better term would be âcompetitiveâ - how many applicants (taking out those who are âhookedâ) are competitive for admission? We have no way of knowing since the schools arenât saying.
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Yeah, the Yale people discussing this issue in their podcast used a bunch of phrases somewhat synonymouslyâcompetitive/uncompetitive, qualified/unqualified, realistic/unrealistic, strong/not strong . . . .
But I agree competitive/uncompetitive is probably the least likely to cause undue confusion or conflict with statements in other contexts.
Itâs not that hard to excel at Yale if they are giving 80% As last year.
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So of course these colleges have worked hard to make sure they are not admitting people who cannot do at least reasonably well in their classes. But I think particularly for unhooked applicants, colleges like Williams or Yale or such are at least hoping to yield students who will do more than merely get OK grades in their classes. They hope a lot of those people will end up finding at least one or more academic areas in which they legitimately excel, while also contributing to the college community in all sorts of other non-academic ways.
A competitive unhooked applicant is therefore more than just qualified to do reasonably well.
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Related -
~2 years ago, in a webinar, Dartmouth shared that for that cycle
-71% of files were âacademically competitiveâ
-24% were recommended for admission by at least 1 reader (perhaps?? this means they made it to the committee room discussions stage of the process?? - clearly based on factors beyond academic record/stats or the 71% and 24% wouldnât be two different numbers)
-around 9% were ultimately offered admission that year
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Agree. With respect to unhooked kids, it all depends on how you define qualified. Having top grades and test scores, rigor, and good (but not outstanding) ECâs is one thing. Having a legitimate shot at actually getting accepted is something else. Most of the unhooked applicants to highly rejective schools like Williams are âqualifiedâ in the former sense, but not the latter.
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Were you deferred or rejected? I was deferred.
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i got rejected
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Yeah it was a long process that spanned over 5 months from school fairs to nationals
I was awarded the grand award at my country in the embedded system category and got to join 8 other teams to represent my country at Dallas Texas last may
Thatâs great, then. Being one of 8 teams in your country is a massive achievement, especially if your country is competitive at ISEF. One piece of advice would be to not just say, âI was selected to ISEF through national selections,â but to mention these specifics as much as possible.
You probably already know about this, but also make sure to submit an academic paper to schools that accept a research supplement if you think your research will impress them. Get a recommendation from the academicians youâve worked with as well, if there are any.
Harvard said that they deferred 83% (!) of applicants in this yearâs REA cycle. In light of the comments by Dartmouth, Yale and others that a large percentage of applicants are not even qualified enough to get through an initiative screen, this is an astounding number and completely flies in the face of those comments.
Seems bizarre to me that Harvard couldnât give a final disposition to a good portion of those 83%. Yet theyâre implying theyâre competitive enough to be considered along with the pool of regular decision applicants.
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