Holistic admissions is BS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Colleges want athletes, NMSFs and full pay. That's about it.

Delete NMSF. Mine got plenty of waitlists and a VT rejection.

[Anonymous]

Stop defining your identity and self-worth by some else's arbitrary choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - Restating the statement. I think holistic admissions is there and is fine but colleges should also say that, if you don't have a very high GPA (basically nothing less than A's), please dont apply. They would want you to think you have a chance, so they can show their selectiveness.

Colleges don't need to say anything. Your complain is that more straight-A students are choosing to apply on their own, despite knowing the low acceptance rate.

No, my complaint is that they make kids believe that if they don’t have perfect GPA, they sill have a chance through holistic admissions. I don’t think 56,000 duke applicants had perfect GPA. The non perfect thought they had a chance

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - Restating the statement. I think holistic admissions is there and is fine but colleges should also say that, if you don't have a very high GPA (basically nothing less than A's), please dont apply. They would want you to think you have a chance, so they can show their selectiveness.

That’s what they do at McGill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - Restating the statement. I think holistic admissions is there and is fine but colleges should also say that, if you don't have a very high GPA (basically nothing less than A's), please dont apply. They would want you to think you have a chance, so they can show their selectiveness.

GPA is part of holistic. If you bring something else to the table, GPA matters less. But it has to be something that can be spotted in 5 seconds, so something extremely unusual for the applicant pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First comes grades and then holistic admissions

That's how it works. The more selective the school, the more kids that have the basics (grades, rigor and SATs) so those schools use other soft factors to differentiate - ECs, recommendations, fuzzy/opaque criteria - and can get away with it given their 'pedigree'.

Most of DCUM prattles on about ECs, LOCs and Test Optional but for the vast majority of colleges grades, rigor and SAT matter way, way more than the noise levels here would indicate.

What do you mean by “get away with it”, as if it’s something sinister? Many of these schools get many more 4.0/1500+ applicants than they have seats. How would you have them differentiate? I’d personally favor a lottery and get rid of this pressure to curate kids’ lives from pre-K on, but that’s never happening.

I meant the opacity. A Harvard can afford to be as opaque as they can get away with and still be 10+ times oversubscribed (overapplied?). A Kentucky State on the other hand published the exact amount of merit you get if you get a certain GPA/SAT on their website. Heck, even a not-so-bad Indiana University guarantees admission to their flagship business school if you get a 3.8GPA. Lower the pedigree, lower the opacity. Higher the pedigree, the more opacity you can get away with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First comes grades and then holistic admissions

Right that’s how it works. Grades/transcript are the first and most important hoop to get through for consideration. If you make it through that step then the other components are all brought into the equation but what weighs most heavily will look different across applicant pool

Absolutely right.

If application is rejected, means that it didn't cross this step of grades / transcript / test score. If waitlisted, means it crossed this step and someone spent 10 15 min on the app.

This is not true at all. The most selective schools reject a ton of applicants who meet their academic criteria. If you were not admitted, you may have either not met their criteria or met it but didn't get picked.

Agree with this one otherwise my high stat, urm applying stem would not have been rejected based on grades and sat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First comes grades and then holistic admissions

That's how it works. The more selective the school, the more kids that have the basics (grades, rigor and SATs) so those schools use other soft factors to differentiate - ECs, recommendations, fuzzy/opaque criteria - and can get away with it given their 'pedigree'.

Most of DCUM prattles on about ECs, LOCs and Test Optional but for the vast majority of colleges grades, rigor and SAT matter way, way more than the noise levels here would indicate.

What do you mean by “get away with it”, as if it’s something sinister? Many of these schools get many more 4.0/1500+ applicants than they have seats. How would you have them differentiate? I’d personally favor a lottery and get rid of this pressure to curate kids’ lives from pre-K on, but that’s never happening.

I meant the opacity. A Harvard can afford to be as opaque as they can get away with and still be 10+ times oversubscribed (overapplied?). A Kentucky State on the other hand published the exact amount of merit you get if you get a certain GPA/SAT on their website. Heck, even a not-so-bad Indiana University guarantees admission to their flagship business school if you get a 3.8GPA. Lower the pedigree, lower the opacity. Higher the pedigree, the more opacity you can get away with.

^^ PP again.. And yes, opacity is a bad thing, especially in a process that's partially funded by the public (through tax subsidies) regardless of whether the college is private or public, hence my use of 'get away with it'.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First comes grades and then holistic admissions

That's how it works. The more selective the school, the more kids that have the basics (grades, rigor and SATs) so those schools use other soft factors to differentiate - ECs, recommendations, fuzzy/opaque criteria - and can get away with it given their 'pedigree'.

Most of DCUM prattles on about ECs, LOCs and Test Optional but for the vast majority of colleges grades, rigor and SAT matter way, way more than the noise levels here would indicate.

What do you mean by “get away with it”, as if it’s something sinister? Many of these schools get many more 4.0/1500+ applicants than they have seats. How would you have them differentiate? I’d personally favor a lottery and get rid of this pressure to curate kids’ lives from pre-K on, but that’s never happening.

Lottery would have been better instead of rejecting high stat kids and admitting others for no apparent reason. It is very hard to see friends with lower stat accepted while others get rejected even in the same school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - Restating the statement. I think holistic admissions is there and is fine but colleges should also say that, if you don't have a very high GPA (basically nothing less than A's), please dont apply. They would want you to think you have a chance, so they can show their selectiveness.

If colleges publicly stated minimum GPA or test scores, as many foreign schools do, their admissions rate would rise, and there’d be a 40-page thread on here asking why the school was suddenly bad. They could have standards higher than Oxbridge, it wouldn’t matter: DCUM cares about status, not education, and status is about what other people want but can’t have. Unpredictable, opaque admissions produces low admissions rates, which produce status, and that is what this page wants. We just also want to win.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - Restating the statement. I think holistic admissions is there and is fine but colleges should also say that, if you don't have a very high GPA (basically nothing less than A's), please dont apply. They would want you to think you have a chance, so they can show their selectiveness.

Colleges don't need to say anything. Your complain is that more straight-A students are choosing to apply on their own, despite knowing the low acceptance rate.

This is the problem they should say how they are selecting kids so you would know where to apply. how do you want kids to select colleges? Obviously it is not stat there is more to it, then why not disclose that so student would know where they stand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would agree that GPA is everything in today's test optional world. I'm not sure if I really think they read the supplements the kids spend so much time writing.

I don't think so then why would they rejected kids with GPA and SAT score

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - Restating the statement. I think holistic admissions is there and is fine but colleges should also say that, if you don't have a very high GPA (basically nothing less than A's), please dont apply. They would want you to think you have a chance, so they can show their selectiveness.

Colleges don't need to say anything. Your complain is that more straight-A students are choosing to apply on their own, despite knowing the low acceptance rate.

This is the problem they should say how they are selecting kids so you would know where to apply. how do you want kids to select colleges? Obviously it is not stat there is more to it, then why not disclose that so student would know where they stand.

Because they want the super low admissions rates. Look at them advertising it! They’d much rather have a 2% admissions rate than a class full of 1600/4.0uw. The low admissions rate is more prestigious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First comes grades and then holistic admissions

Read a newspaper or look through the internet. Race is increasingly all that matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - Restating the statement. I think holistic admissions is there and is fine but colleges should also say that, if you don't have a very high GPA (basically nothing less than A's), please dont apply. They would want you to think you have a chance, so they can show their selectiveness.

If colleges publicly stated minimum GPA or test scores, as many foreign schools do, their admissions rate would rise, and there’d be a 40-page thread on here asking why the school was suddenly bad. They could have standards higher than Oxbridge, it wouldn’t matter: DCUM cares about status, not education, and status is about what other people want but can’t have. Unpredictable, opaque admissions produces low admissions rates, which produce status, and that is what this page wants. We just also want to win.

Nailed it. DCUM conflates rejectiveness with quality. They need 90% of people to be barred from something for it to be valuable.