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I'm fortunate enough to have been included in that 5.7% today. Nonetheless, the statistic is highly misleading and the entire college process is becoming increa

by rkaplan 14y ago

I'm fortunate enough to have been included in that 5.7% today. Nonetheless, the statistic is highly misleading and the entire college process is becoming increasingly arbitrary. With so many talented candidates, it is often simply a crapshoot for all but the very best applicants. Admission to an individual school in particular is extremely difficult to predict. I have friends who were just accepted to Harvard and rejected from Stanford, vice versa, accepted to Yale and neither Harvard nor Stanford, etc. It's similar to an earlier discussion today here on HN about the applicability of group statistics to an individual situation: even if you're an exceedingly qualified applicant, your essays just might not click with a particular school's screener. Or perhaps you're not fully qualified, but someone in the admissions committee really connects with your personal story. These kinds of things happen all of the time in college admissions; with such a competitive pool, getting into any particular school often comes down to chance. As for the acceptance rate itself, it's as much a measure of how good a school is at marketing as it is of its competitiveness. Harvard (and many others) sends pamphlets by the thousands trying to bait almost-certainly-hopeless students into sending an application, just to drive down their acceptance percentage. Many schools also reject candidates that are "too good," ("Tufts syndrome") because an admissions office will gamble that such candidates will matriculate at a better school. They would prefer to get their acceptance percentage lower than accept a student who probably wouldn't matriculate.

nnexx 14y ago
> I have friends who were just accepted to Harvard and rejected from Stanford, vice versa, accepted to Yale and neither Harvard nor Stanford, etc. There has always been speculation that the elite schools get together and do a little horse trading in regards to whom they will accept. Other than those truly exceptional students that they all want, they'll pretty much make sure people get into one or two but not all of the top universities. This is to keep them from wasting too many slots on the same people. They'll deny it of course, but it seems a little too coincidental given how often it happens.
- tanzam75 14y ago
  Unlikely, given the volumes of applications that they're now dealing with. It's simply much harder to get into two elite universities these days. At single-digit admit rates, we're well past the point of selecting for qualified students. Which means that a lot of students are selected based on essentially random factors. And when something is random, humans like to see patterns where none exist. You may be thinking of the fact that the elite colleges coordinate financial aid decisions for students who have already been admitted to multiple schools. Suppose Stanford costs $60k and offers a $40k aid package, while MIT costs $58k and offers a $45k aid package. In that case, both schools might agree to offer a $42k package, so that the $7k difference in out-of-pocket costs gets narrowed to $2k. Coordination of financial aid makes coordination of admissions unnecessary, as it prevents schools from "stealing" students from each other by offering higher aid packages.

by rkaplan 14y ago

nnexx 14y ago

> I have friends who were just accepted to Harvard and rejected from Stanford, vice versa, accepted to Yale and neither Harvard nor Stanford, etc. There has always been speculation that the elite schools get together and do a little horse trading in regards to whom they will accept. Other than those truly exceptional students that they all want, they'll pretty much make sure people get into one or two but not all of the top universities. This is to keep them from wasting too many slots on the same people. They'll deny it of course, but it seems a little too coincidental given how often it happens.

tanzam75 14y ago
Unlikely, given the volumes of applications that they're now dealing with. It's simply much harder to get into two elite universities these days. At single-digit admit rates, we're well past the point of selecting for qualified students. Which means that a lot of students are selected based on essentially random factors. And when something is random, humans like to see patterns where none exist. You may be thinking of the fact that the elite colleges coordinate financial aid decisions for students who have already been admitted to multiple schools. Suppose Stanford costs $60k and offers a $40k aid package, while MIT costs $58k and offers a $45k aid package. In that case, both schools might agree to offer a $42k package, so that the $7k difference in out-of-pocket costs gets narrowed to $2k. Coordination of financial aid makes coordination of admissions unnecessary, as it prevents schools from "stealing" students from each other by offering higher aid packages.