Anonymous wrote:“The record 11.8 percent admission rate for Harvard's class of 1999 is significantly lower than rates at other Ivy League schools, ...“

Has it ever been easy?

It’s never been easy for your typical kid. It’s always been significantly easier for connected kids.

I went to a NE boarding school. They told us that before about the 1990s, kids essentially signed up for HYP like you would an intramural softball team. It isn’t like that anymore, but my high school sends roughly 25% of its graduates each year to an Ivy League school. The process remains deeply unfair.

Anonymous wrote:I see these kinds of kids getting bounced, and then OTOH I see a lot of top 20 colleges (including my own alma mater) offering pre-calculus classes for incoming students to complete the calculus sequence in 3 or 4 semesters. I’ve come down to just convincing my own kids to not even shoot for a top 20 university. Just get the best grades you can, prep for the SAT/ACT a reasonable amount, and do ECs they actually enjoy without worrying about cultivating a compelling personal narrative. The chips will fall where they will. Life is too short, and where you go to college is not that important to the outcome of ones life.

+1

After doing alumni interviews for my Ivy alma mater for nearly 2 decades, this is how I'm going to approach college admissions for my own kids.

Is Ivy an acronym? Why is it capitalized in this thread?

Not the whole article, but here is the lede:

“ Kaitlyn Younger has been an academic standout since she started studying algebra in third grade.

She took her first advanced-placement course as a freshman, scored 1550 on her SATs as a junior at McKinney High School near Dallas and will graduate this spring with an unweighted 3.95 grade-point average and as the founder of the school’s accounting club. Along the way she performed in and directed about 30 plays, sang in the school choir, scored top marks on the tests she has so far taken for 11 advanced-placement classes, helped run a summer camp and held down a part-time job.

“She is extraordinary,” said Jeff Cranmore, her guidance counselor at McKinney High School.

Ms. Younger, 18 years old, was cautiously optimistic when she applied to top U.S. colleges last fall. Responses came this month: Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern all rejected her.

“I expected a bunch wouldn’t accept me,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be this bad.””

It says she’s going to Arizona State.

Anonymous wrote:I see these kinds of kids getting bounced, and then OTOH I see a lot of top 20 colleges (including my own alma mater) offering pre-calculus classes for incoming students to complete the calculus sequence in 3 or 4 semesters. I’ve come down to just convincing my own kids to not even shoot for a top 20 university. Just get the best grades you can, prep for the SAT/ACT a reasonable amount, and do ECs they actually enjoy without worrying about cultivating a compelling personal narrative. The chips will fall where they will. Life is too short, and where you go to college is not that important to the outcome of ones life.

Harvard has offered precalc for math years.

Can someone with access post the article text?

I see these kinds of kids getting bounced, and then OTOH I see a lot of top 20 colleges (including my own alma mater) offering pre-calculus classes for incoming students to complete the calculus sequence in 3 or 4 semesters. I’ve come down to just convincing my own kids to not even shoot for a top 20 university. Just get the best grades you can, prep for the SAT/ACT a reasonable amount, and do ECs they actually enjoy without worrying about cultivating a compelling personal narrative. The chips will fall where they will. Life is too short, and where you go to college is not that important to the outcome of ones life.

Interesting. Given WSJ’s ownership and op-Ed’s, I am inclined to believe they’re blaming affirmative action for this young woman’s rejections.

Anonymous wrote:No.

But it was in the 30% change range in the 1980's and the 40% change range in the 1950's.

It is absurd now.

Population growth, globalization and feminism have to account for a lot of the change.

How is this news?

Can't see the article. Paywall?

Anonymous wrote:No.

But it was in the 30% change range in the 1980's and the 40% change range in the 1950's.

It is absurd now.

How is it absurd? There are many more “acceptable schools” now than there were then. Very few colleges that were once considered decent have gotten “worse.”

No.

But it was in the 30% change range in the 1980's and the 40% change range in the 1950's.

It is absurd now.

“The record 11.8 percent admission rate for Harvard's class of 1999 is significantly lower than rates at other Ivy League schools, ...“

Has it ever been easy?

Here is an informative article to all the parents whose kids had stellar credentials but was not enough for an IVY admission. https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-get-into-the-ivy-league-extraordinary-isnt-always-enough-these-days-11650546000?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1