<p>Looking at all the EA/ED admit threads, I have the impression that many rejected/deferred applicants were as good if not better than the admitted ones.
There is certainly some irrational part in this whole process. Say the admission officer in charge of your file just had a fight with her husband before reading your application…
I was wondering if a college had to reprocess the same pool of applicants, would they admit the same people ?</p>
<p>That’s tough to say…</p>
<p>What we think are “better” stats and EC’s might not be to Yale. They want a diverse freshman class, that’s why there are no cut-offs or specific things they’re looking for (like 500+ hrs of community service).</p>
<p>Also, we don’t know what those applicants’ essays looked like. We might know their topics, but we haven’t read them.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that there are definitely some tough decisions the adcoms have to make, but Yale has three officers look at your app if you went EA (correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve heard this a lot of times), so it’s not up to just how one person feels about you that one day.</p>
<p>I have faith in the system! ( :</p>
<p>OP: I think you know the answer already. What event in real life, if repeated, would yield exactly the same result? </p>
<p>What are the chances that if any basketball, football, baseball or any other game were to be played again with the same teams, it would yield exactly the same score?</p>
<p>Of course there is randomness. It is part of nature, and certainly a part of life.</p>
<p>Selective College admissions is very subjective. It’s an art, not a science.</p>
<p>papex: one day you might be reviewing resumes for a job posting you’ve listed. You’ll use a search engine and filter in only resumes from people with certain degrees or job titles. Then you’ll read the resumes and get a “feel” for the type of person who has worked well in the past. Then you’ll call in 5 people for interviews. Then you’ll winnow it down to one person (after background checks have cleared her). Then you’ll make an offer.</p>
<p>Imagine doing this with thousands upon thousands of HS applicants. Sound like an easy job?</p>
<p>If you’re looking for metrics only based admissions however, you don’t have far to look. A good eighty percent of US colleges admit students solely based on GPA and test scores. No fretting there. Formula formula formula.</p>
<p>Vicarious:Of course I do not expect the same people to be admitted 100%. My question was more intended to assess the random part of the process. There must be a common part in the admits if the process is repeated. Is it 50%? 70%? 90%? The higher this number the more faith one can have in the system (ocgirl)
T26E4:You gave an excellent comparison with the recruiting for an employment. I understand the difficulty of the job, but there must be some repeatability in the admission process, otherwise what would be the point of spending millions for this task if it is just a lottery ?
I am not looking into a metrics only based college: I am looking into getting admission to Yale!</p>
<p>Selective college admissions officers state consistently that the decision process is an art and not a science. The fact that while adhering to general policies, a large randomness is inherent in the process – and the schools are OK with that.</p>
<p>I heard that Yale once said that they could fill their incoming class 4 times over from their applicant pool and no-one would know the difference except for their parents. I would assume that could mean that admissions are very random, and that could possibly mean that if you tried twice with the same applicant pool, you’d be lucky to get a 50% overlap.</p>
<p>I also think that stats are weighted more heavily here on CC than they are in the Yale admissions office. I believe that once you are over a certain stats threshold the admissions conversation switches almost entirely over to things that are much harder to succinctly list on this web site. Many of those rejected or deferred may have higher “stats” than others when it comes to GPA/SAT/SATII/AP/Rank but I am guessing that they have lower stats than others when it comes to ECs/Essays/Counselors/Teachers.</p>
<p>I read somewhere (on here, presumably, though I don’t know exactly where) that of the applicant pool, 90% are capable of the workload, which gets narrowed down to the 20% of applicants who are serious contenders for admission. Of that 20%, they pick the single digit percent to get accepted. On the one hand, this portrays the admissions process as less random than we think it is (I think the “90% are qualified to handle to workload” is thrown around a lot, and it’s not that arbitrary). On the other hand, an entirely different 7% (or whatever) of people could have been accepted and an equally strong freshman class assembled.</p>