Insider Perspectives from a Highly Selective Admissions Office

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Higher Ed admin here: if I were your supervisor and caught you doing this, I might actually fire you.

LOL. Having gone through the highly selective admissions process last year, this is what's wrong with it in a nutshell. Why does everything have to be shrouded behind some curtain of mystery? I'm very impressed with both UVA and William & Mary for their admissions blogs, which share as much information as they can, as quickly as possible. The better informed applicants and their parents are, the better they can manage their search process. In particular, I wish highly selective schools were far more forthright with extremely detailed information (e.g., "Only 3% of non-URM applicants with SATs below 2100 were accepted and they were all recruited athletes"), instead of this "holistic" stuff, which just inspires kids with no hopes of being accepted to apply.

What do URM admit rates have to do with other a non-URM's search process?

because there is roughly fixed # of slots for top schools - as urm admit rates increase, conversely there are less spots for unhooked non-urms.

knowing a school's URM policy is very beneficial. it's why they will never willingly share it publically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Higher Ed admin here: if I were your supervisor and caught you doing this, I might actually fire you.

LOL. Having gone through the highly selective admissions process last year, this is what's wrong with it in a nutshell. Why does everything have to be shrouded behind some curtain of mystery? I'm very impressed with both UVA and William & Mary for their admissions blogs, which share as much information as they can, as quickly as possible. The better informed applicants and their parents are, the better they can manage their search process. In particular, I wish highly selective schools were far more forthright with extremely detailed information (e.g., "Only 3% of non-URM applicants with SATs below 2100 were accepted and they were all recruited athletes"), instead of this "holistic" stuff, which just inspires kids with no hopes of being accepted to apply.

What do URM admit rates have to do with other a non-URM's search process?

LOL. This says literally NOTHING about URM acceptance rates. It says what the acceptance rates is for non-URMs.

Fine, even better would be a chart that showed admit rates by ethnicity, based on test scores and GPA. That way, regardless of your background, you would know the real odds for acceptance.

[Anonymous]

To the above pps saying that colleges want bright, motivated kids from mediocre or low income areas over typical affluent generic white kids - while I agree with you that such kids are admirable and full of grit and perseverance, I doubt colleges take many from this category. My nephew just started at a highly ranked ivy this year and said he is amazed at the level of affluence of most of the kids. Not just upper middle class but seriously wealthy. Don't colleges still want the vast majority of students to be wealthy as that is where the money comes from. Also, while some wealth in this country is newly acquired, a large % of it is family wealth is passed down through generations. Makes sense that colleges and universities want to keep that spigot flowing. Unless you are talking about Amherst or Middlebury, most of the slots go to the top grade performers of private schools and well off suburban white schools.

[Anonymous]

Higher Ed admin here: if I were your supervisor and caught you doing this, I might actually fire you.

As a colleague, I think you are being way too harsh. If you really are in our field, then where OP works is obvious and you also know that his office can be archaic and isolated. I wouldn't fault a staff member there for reaching out to try to have meaningful conversations with parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the above pps saying that colleges want bright, motivated kids from mediocre or low income areas over typical affluent generic white kids - while I agree with you that such kids are admirable and full of grit and perseverance, I doubt colleges take many from this category. My nephew just started at a highly ranked ivy this year and said he is amazed at the level of affluence of most of the kids. Not just upper middle class but seriously wealthy. Don't colleges still want the vast majority of students to be wealthy as that is where the money comes from. Also, while some wealth in this country is newly acquired, a large % of it is family wealth is passed down through generations. Makes sense that colleges and universities want to keep that spigot flowing. Unless you are talking about Amherst or Middlebury, most of the slots go to the top grade performers of private schools and well off suburban white schools.

PP who recently posted. That's actually not the point. We can completely fill our classes with perfect scores and grades. These are almost entirely from wealthy area, so your son has a point.

But we do make an effort to have economic diversity and to seek applicants who have achieved past adversity. And we look for people to fill specific roles on our campus. That applicant pool for some reason is much, much smaller.

I was trying to explain why so many high stat applicants do not get in. I don't think I made my point clear, but I am trying to explain that it isn't race. I see these threads and I just think...well...maybe I can give some clarity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the above pps saying that colleges want bright, motivated kids from mediocre or low income areas over typical affluent generic white kids - while I agree with you that such kids are admirable and full of grit and perseverance, I doubt colleges take many from this category. My nephew just started at a highly ranked ivy this year and said he is amazed at the level of affluence of most of the kids. Not just upper middle class but seriously wealthy. Don't colleges still want the vast majority of students to be wealthy as that is where the money comes from. Also, while some wealth in this country is newly acquired, a large % of it is family wealth is passed down through generations. Makes sense that colleges and universities want to keep that spigot flowing. Unless you are talking about Amherst or Middlebury, most of the slots go to the top grade performers of private schools and well off suburban white schools.

PP who recently posted. That's actually not the point. We can completely fill our classes with perfect scores and grades. These are almost entirely from wealthy area, so your son has a point.

But we do make an effort to have economic diversity and to seek applicants who have achieved past adversity. And we look for people to fill specific roles on our campus. That applicant pool for some reason is much, much smaller.

I was trying to explain why so many high stat applicants do not get in. I don't think I made my point clear, but I am trying to explain that it isn't race.[b] I see these threads and I just think...well...maybe I can give some clarity.

How are you so sure it isn't race unless you come from a school where that is not allowed to be a factor. If your school allows for certain races easier entry then it must at least partly due to race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Higher Ed admin here: if I were your supervisor and caught you doing this, I might actually fire you.

As a colleague, I think you are being way too harsh. If you really are in our field, then where OP works is obvious and you also know that his office can be archaic and isolated. I wouldn't fault a staff member there for reaching out to try to have meaningful conversations with parents.

What school is this? I'm curious to know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Higher Ed admin here: if I were your supervisor and caught you doing this, I might actually fire you.

As a colleague, I think you are being way too harsh. If you really are in our field, then where OP works is obvious and you also know that his office can be archaic and isolated. I wouldn't fault a staff member there for reaching out to try to have meaningful conversations with parents.

What school is this? I'm curious to know.

It's Georgetown. It is the only school in the area that is supposedly need blind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Higher Ed admin here: if I were your supervisor and caught you doing this, I might actually fire you.

As a colleague, I think you are being way too harsh. If you really are in our field, then where OP works is obvious and you also know that his office can be archaic and isolated. I wouldn't fault a staff member there for reaching out to try to have meaningful conversations with parents.

What school is this? I'm curious to know.

It's Georgetown. It is the only school in the area that is supposedly need blind.

Interesting. I didn't consider Georgetown, because it doesn't have an admit rate of below 15%. Though it's really close. The only schools that did for last year were (prior to waitlist):

Universities: Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, U'Chicago, Duke, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley
LACs: Pomona, CMC, HMC, Pitzer, Swarthmore, Amherst, Bowdoin

[Anonymous]

OP, thanks for posting this! It was a really enjoyable read.

You mentioned that you can see "subtle/explicit things in the application" re: income -- how do you tell what those are and what are some examples?

[Anonymous]

No college admissions offices notify high school's of admissions results--specifically, which of their students have been accepted, denied, waitlisted?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Higher Ed admin here: if I were your supervisor and caught you doing this, I might actually fire you.

LOL. Having gone through the highly selective admissions process last year, this is what's wrong with it in a nutshell. Why does everything have to be shrouded behind some curtain of mystery? I'm very impressed with both UVA and William & Mary for their admissions blogs, which share as much information as they can, as quickly as possible. The better informed applicants and their parents are, the better they can manage their search process. In particular, I wish highly selective schools were far more forthright with extremely detailed information (e.g., "Only 3% of non-URM applicants with SATs below 2100 were accepted and they were all recruited athletes"), instead of this "holistic" stuff, which just inspires kids with no hopes of being accepted to apply.

What do URM admit rates have to do with other a non-URM's search process?

LOL. This says literally NOTHING about URM acceptance rates. It says what the acceptance rates is for non-URMs.

Fine, even better would be a chart that showed admit rates by ethnicity, based on test scores and GPA. That way, regardless of your background, you would know the real odds for acceptance.

They did a study like this for UVA, W&M and NCST. Obviously not in the same class as the university's discussed here but informative. https://www.nas.org/images/documents/report_affirmative_action_at_three_universities.pdf

At UVA, blacks with SAT scores between 950-1050 slightly more than 50% were accepted. Whites with SAT scores between 1350-1450 were accepted at a rate slightly higher than 40%. The odds ratio calculations show that blacks are about 100 times more likely to be accepted at UVA as whites when they have similar credentials. The ratio at W&M was even worse (267 times as likely)

[Anonymous]

"because there is roughly fixed # of slots for top schools - as urm admit rates increase, conversely there are less spots for unhooked non-urms."

This is just not true.

It is NOT the URM admit rate that has anything to do with the number of unhooked spots. It is the actual number of URM admitted that matters.

The URM admit rate is completely controlled by the number of UNQUALIFIED URM students that apply. The number/quality of URM that are going to get in is similar from year to year.

The reason the unhooked admit rate is so low is because LOTS of DCUM Tiger parents force their kids to apply and get rejected. Again admit rate is controlled by the UNQUALIFIED part of the ratio.

The point of this entire thread is to get the DCUM Tiger parents more information to cut down on the number of unqualified applicants and improve admissions rates.

This is why a real admissions dean might not like this thread if they only care about how selective their school looks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the above pps saying that colleges want bright, motivated kids from mediocre or low income areas over typical affluent generic white kids - while I agree with you that such kids are admirable and full of grit and perseverance, I doubt colleges take many from this category. My nephew just started at a highly ranked ivy this year and said he is amazed at the level of affluence of most of the kids. Not just upper middle class but seriously wealthy. Don't colleges still want the vast majority of students to be wealthy as that is where the money comes from. Also, while some wealth in this country is newly acquired, a large % of it is family wealth is passed down through generations. Makes sense that colleges and universities want to keep that spigot flowing. Unless you are talking about Amherst or Middlebury, most of the slots go to the top grade performers of private schools and well off suburban white schools.

PP who recently posted. That's actually not the point. We can completely fill our classes with perfect scores and grades. These are almost entirely from wealthy area, so your son has a point.

But we do make an effort to have economic diversity and to seek applicants who have achieved past adversity. And we look for people to fill specific roles on our campus. That applicant pool for some reason is much, much smaller.

I was trying to explain why so many high stat applicants do not get in. I don't think I made my point clear, but I am trying to explain that it isn't race.[b] I see these threads and I just think...well...maybe I can give some clarity.

How are you so sure it isn't race unless you come from a school where that is not allowed to be a factor. If your school allows for certain races easier entry then it must at least partly due to race.

+1M

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No college admissions offices notify high school's of admissions results--specifically, which of their students have been accepted, denied, waitlisted?

Does anyone know the answer to this question? Do colleges give the results to the high schools or do they only find out as students self-report?