Unpredictability of admission decisions

[Anonymous]

I hear or read of seemingly random admission decisions for applicants from schools (e.g. decisions not correlated to published selectivity of schools). Personally, when DC applied last year, the results were consistent with selectivity: wl or rejected at far reach schools with lowest admission rates, admitted at reach, target, and likely. What are peoples’ experiences? We are starting with second DC to think of college list.

[Anonymous]

My DD had pretty unpredictable results this year. Rejected or waitlisted from top 10 schools, 3 acceptances from top 25 schools, 1 acceptance 5 waitlist from her target schools, basically schools between 25-50 range, accepted to all 3 of her likely schools. She was surprised by being waitlisted from so many target schools. But she is happy with the results.

[Anonymous]

Unpredictable here too: accepted at all safetys, including UMD, accepted at 1 target (rejected from 1, deferred and eventually rejected from 1), WL at HYP (declined to remain on WL)

[Anonymous]

Do you think the process is more predictable if you adjust or partition the individual students by race or ethnicity and SES / suburban factors? Ie Asian suburban umc kid need sat>x and APs>y for admission probability of >75% to T30-T50 school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD had pretty unpredictable results this year. Rejected or waitlisted from top 10 schools, 3 acceptances from top 25 schools, 1 acceptance 5 waitlist from her target schools, basically schools between 25-50 range, accepted to all 3 of her likely schools. She was surprised by being waitlisted from so many target schools. But she is happy with the results.

Congrats to your DD! May I ask if your DD is at a private? The privates we are considering are limiting applications to 8-10 schools - one allowing only 2 applications to schools that have a less than 20% acceptance rate (which includes a LOT of schools). So your outcome of choices would simply not be remotely possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD had pretty unpredictable results this year. Rejected or waitlisted from top 10 schools, 3 acceptances from top 25 schools, 1 acceptance 5 waitlist from her target schools, basically schools between 25-50 range, accepted to all 3 of her likely schools. She was surprised by being waitlisted from so many target schools. But she is happy with the results.

Congrats to your DD! May I ask if your DD is at a private? The privates we are considering are limiting applications to 8-10 schools - one allowing only 2 applications to schools that have a less than 20% acceptance rate (which includes a LOT of schools). So your outcome of choices would simply not be remotely possible.

Her private encourages the kids to limit applications to 15, but they can apply to all the UCs as 1. She got into 2 UCs and waitlisted at 3.

[Anonymous]

Pretty predictable for my kid this year.

Big 3. 3.8+ unweighted. Just under 1500 SAT

I looked at CDS data and used adjusted acceptance rate for kid gender (male usually slightly higher acceptance rate but not always) and for one of the OOS flagships, used acceptance rate they publish for kids with less than 5 AP because our school dropped AP courses and honors don’t count.

Accepted at
54%
48%
34% will likely attend
30% state flagship OOS < 5 AP

WL at
44% seemed like a yield protect to me
20.8% state flagship OOS < 5AP
17.3%
14.2%
12% legacy

Rejected at
26%
11.5%
4.8% state flagship OOS no AP rate
4.3% state flagship OOS no AP rate
4.2%
4% legacy
2.9% state flagship OOS no AP rate

I haven’t yet put kid GPA into the Harvard-westlake data but I’m guessing would be also similar.

I wish I had done more of this when list was being formed.

Our school doesn’t give scattergrams to kids or parents and generally shuns data driven list formation. They make it all about kid “feels”

I would have had kid do more in the 30-60 percent weighted accordance range for kid gender based on CDS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unpredictable here too: accepted at all safetys, including UMD, accepted at 1 target (rejected from 1, deferred and eventually rejected from 1), WL at HYP (declined to remain on WL)

I'm not sure what's so unpredictable about this. It would have been surprising to be rejected at safeties or accepted at HYP (since that's such a lottery). Targets aren't guaranteed, so 1 of 3 is pretty expected.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, but what is CDS data?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but what is CDS data?

Common Data Set. Data every college releases that breaks down ED acceptance rate, gender specific acceptance rate. Issued once a year in the fall

Generally viewed as most accurate ground truth

There is also IPEDS data but haven’t dug into that.

Of course there’s a limit to what acceptance rate tells us since as we all know, institutional priorities change.

The CDS data is found by googling college name and CDS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD had pretty unpredictable results this year. Rejected or waitlisted from top 10 schools, 3 acceptances from top 25 schools, 1 acceptance 5 waitlist from her target schools, basically schools between 25-50 range, accepted to all 3 of her likely schools. She was surprised by being waitlisted from so many target schools. But she is happy with the results.

How is that unpredictable? Didn't get into the reaches, batted 50% at targets (4/8) and got into all safeties. Good job!

[Anonymous]

It feels like a lottery and I say that as a parent whose kid was accepted everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unpredictable here too: accepted at all safetys, including UMD, accepted at 1 target (rejected from 1, deferred and eventually rejected from 1), WL at HYP (declined to remain on WL)

I'm not sure what's so unpredictable about this. It would have been surprising to be rejected at safeties or accepted at HYP (since that's such a lottery). Targets aren't guaranteed, so 1 of 3 is pretty expected.

+1000
Especially if the targets have acceptance rates around 25%, as opposed to 40-50%.

[Anonymous]

Same as yours, OP.

Despite all the complaints and exceptions, this is largely what students experience. The test-optional process and the associated increase in applications to selective colleges does make it harder for colleges to gauge academic merit, but if you work hard on your college list, and write essays that make it easy for admission officers to understand how your profile fits their school, I think the outcome will be what our kids experienced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but what is CDS data?

Common data set. Almost every school provides this on their website. Sometimes in spreadsheet format.

Just google: [school name] CDS