Wanting To Get Into That Top School? Read This

[ZapperZ]

I forgot about this article that I read a while back, and finally remembered it today.

We often get questions on here on how to get into MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc... etc... all those highly competitive schools. People seem to think that there is a "recipe" or criteria, that if they have stellar grades, graduate top of their class, etc., then they can get an admission into such schools.

Unfortunately, as this article points out, merit along does not get you into such schools. It is written by Natasha Warikoo of Harvard. While this is an opinion piece by her, and she's not representing any of these schools, her experience and analysis of many of the reports and sources she links to led me to believe that she knows a lot more than many of us here on the reality of admission to these schools.

Separately, Harvard undergraduates have recently begun to take advantage of their right to view their own admissions files, often only to become frustrated in their efforts to pinpoint exactly why they got admitted.

The inquiries of the Department of Justice and the curious Harvard students have something in common: Both are unlikely to turn up any evidence of why some applicants make the cut and others don’t. That’s because both inquiries rest on the faulty assumption that admissions decisions are driven by an objective, measurable process that will yield the same results over and over again. As a Harvard professor who has studied and written a book about college admissions and their impact on students, I can tell you that’s just not how it works. I am not speaking officially for Harvard and I am not involved in undergraduate admissions.

I can't think of anything better to answer the frequent question of: "Hi, can I get admission into... ?"

Zz.

 

[opus]

"Harvard rejects 1 in 4 students with perfect SAT scores. The University of Pennsylvania and Duke University reject three out of five high school valedictorians."
And interesting but unsuprising chunk here as well.

 

[StoneTemplePython]

That 'article' is decidedly not about schools like MIT and Caltech. It is about Ivies and their ilk.

The valedicatorian bit seems like a red herring -- why would you expect that many valedictorians to be admitted when you don't control for school size (e.g. 10 schools of 400 kids vs 1 school of 4,000 and perhaps the top 10 students at said school) or SAT scores which are standardized.

It was also curiously quiet on the role of legacy admissions and having well connected parents.

for example:

But legacy admissions, which give preferential treatment to family members of alumni, exacerbate the imbalance. Of Harvard’s most recently admitted class, 27% of students had a relative who also attended. There’s evidence that this system favours the already wealthy. MIT and the California Institute of Technology, two elite schools with no legacy preferences, have much fewer students who hail from the ranks of the super-rich.

https://www.economist.com/news/unit...emains-unsettlingly-hereditary-skipping-class

(Unfortunately The Economist article is a touch sloppy in loosely equating 1 percent with super rich... a more numerate take would look at 1 percent of 1 percent -- or 1 basis point-- but I digress.)

 

[ZapperZ]

That 'article' is decidedly not about schools like MIT and Caltech. It is about Ivies and their ilk.

Do you expect the situation at MIT, Caltech, Stanford, etc. to be significantly different? I do not see how.

Zz.

 

[StoneTemplePython]

Do you expect the situation at MIT, Caltech, Stanford, etc. to be significantly different? I do not see how.

Zz.

Significantly different at MIT and Caltech, absolutely. Not any easier.

As indicated in the quote I dropped in, you do have a different admissions criteria at MIT and Caltech. They are blind merit based admissions -- and you can see very different demographics of students getting in. Brutally difficult to get into MIT and Caltech -- but the filter is a different kind of brutal.

(I lump Stanford in with Harvard)

 

[symbolipoint]

So like 40 wonderful geniuses, and only 3 slots open...

Eenie Meenie Minee Mo...

 

[StatGuy2000]

Here is a question I want to pose to all of you. In the US context, what would be considered a "top school" for undergraduate studies?

It is generally agreed that Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc., as well as certain other schools like MIT or Stanford are considered "top schools". But what about some of the highly-regarded public schools (e.g. UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, etc.) or schools like Purdue or NYU? What about a school like Harvey Mudd College?

 

[opus]

I think the context here is "ivy league", which doesn't necessarily mean better than some state schools. Some state schools, such as UCLA, UC Berkley, UC Boulder, University of Washington, University of Michigan, are held in high regard for different STEM departments and would absolutely be considered "top schools" to myself or anyone I know of.

 

[clope023]

Here is a question I want to pose to all of you. In the US context, what would be considered a "top school" for undergraduate studies?

It is generally agreed that Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc., as well as certain other schools like MIT or Stanford are considered "top schools". But what about some of the highly-regarded public schools (e.g. UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, etc.) or schools like Purdue or NYU? What about a school like Harvey Mudd College?

If the Harvards, Yales, Princetons, Stanfords, MITs, CalTechs and the like could be graded on a 10 point scale to be 9's and 10's, the schools you mentioned would probably be somewhere between a 6 and an 8; this is me being simplistic though.