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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The math is pretty brutal, OP. Take the top 20 SLACs and the top 20 national universities -- back of the envelope guess, collectively these schools enroll about 40,000 kids each year. Assume the average yield rate for these top schools is 50%, and those schools are admitting 80,000 kids to fill their 40,000 places.

The DC region is chock full of affluent, educated families with high-performing kids. Each year, there are over a thousand DC area seniors with excellent grades and test scores applying to these top schools.

Almost all of them have stats that match those of kids who are accepted at these schools, but most of them will not get in. These schools also have many thousands of similar kids applying from NY, CA, and so on, and they try to have geographic diversity, school type diversity, gender balance, racial diversity, diversity of talent and interests and, in many cases, they admit many recruited athletes before the regular admissions season even begins for most kids.

The math is just brutal. I tell my kids that at any school with an acceptance rate below 25%, they're basically buying lottery tickets, and even the kids with perfect GPAs, perfect test scores, impressive ECs, strong essays and strong recommendations are also buying lottery tickets. A small percentage will get lucky. Most won't. But it really is pretty arbitrary.

Try to remind your kid of this. They didn't get the winning lottery number, but it's not a comment on their talent or worth as humans. It's just: too many great kids, too few seats.[/quote]
The top 20 LACs are not equal to the top 20 national universities. The US naval academy is not equal to UCLA. [/quote]

That was your take away?  [/quote]

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