Admit yield increases by 2 percent

This is probably right:

• Princeton’s yield (the percentage of admission offers accepted) has risen steadily over the last decade; it was 65.7 percent for the Class of 2001 and 68.9 percent for the Class of 2002. Princeton’s yield stands second only to Harvard’s.

• Academic 1’s and 2’s (the academically most qualified applicants) are the most rapidly growing part of Princeton’s applicant pool, and yields on Academic 1’s and 2’s have been increasing significantly. Academic 1’s and 2’s comprised 51.2 percent of the Class of 1993, 68 percent of the Class of 2001, and 72.2 percent of the Class of 2002.[^1]

Report of the Undergraduate Admission Study Group

that looks bad, doesn’t it

sorry

To me — not that I’m an expert — but to me it sounds like she’s in, and not because of a friendship or pull.

She’s being recruited.

I found an interesting page about MIT’s policy for homeschooled students (still don’t remember what the article by the mom was):

http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/homeschooled_applicants_helpful_tips/homeschooled_applicants.shtml

rightwingprof on May 2, 2007 at 3:20 pm said:

hardlyb on May 2, 2007 at 12:22 pm said:

I’m constantly reading articles about “brilliant kids” that can’t get into top colleges, and then I’m seeing this sort of thing almost as often.

The problem with those articles is that they confuse applications with applicants. Students today are applying to more schools than they used to. University admissions across the board are increasing as the number of applicants increases. The other problem is that every time I read one of those articles, there’s always some whiny applicant quoted who apparently believes he is entitled to get into Harvard. Well, he’s not. It’s supposed to be difficult to get into college. Nobody is entitled to admission.

I’m aware of the distinction. I was referring to articles like the one I saw on JoannE Jacobs’ site (from the NY Times) where some Harvard graduate who does admissions interviews says that he recommended kids far superior to himself at 18, and none gets accepted to Harvard. And then you comment that many kids that do get accepted to your college feel entitled to get A’s. Well, those kids can’t really be that impressive, so that means that either lots of kids that look impressive aren’t, or the pool of kids applying your school isn’t deep enough that they can accept only the really impressive ones (or the admissions people aren’t competent to tell the really impressive kids from the fakers).

hardlyb on May 2, 2007 at 12:22 pm said:

I’m constantly reading articles about “brilliant kids” that can’t get into top colleges, and then I’m seeing this sort of thing almost as often.

The problem with those articles is that they confuse applications with applicants. Students today are applying to more schools than they used to. University admissions across the board are increasing as the number of applicants increases. The other problem is that every time I read one of those articles, there’s always some whiny applicant quoted who apparently believes he is entitled to get into Harvard. Well, he’s not. It’s supposed to be difficult to get into college. Nobody is entitled to admission.

MIT is a school I’m hoping will accept her, both because they apparently like driven smart kids, and because we are friends with someone that does admission interviews. Apparently the people he recommends strongly almost always get accepted (he’s very smart and blunt in his assessments). He asked about a year ago if it would be all right with me if he tried to convince my daughter to go to MIT, since he thought it would be a very good fit (and I said he was welcome to try to convince her of almost anything, since her parents had lost that ability years ago, and it would be fun to watch him try).

Jason on May 2, 2007 at 1:17 pm said:

A problem with your argument is that the secondary school day is 8 hours long; therefore, the students are already spending 40 hours per week in school. Given your minimums, college students are (or should be) spending 36 hours on work. So the high school student is 4 hours up on the college kids, even without homework. (I remember discovering just how much *less* time college took than high school!) The real problem isn’t the number of hours either set is putting in but their ability to work without someone holding their hands.

I’ll try to find the article by the mom who had a child like yours — very intelligent and capable & also homeschooled — I think she described how they put together his college application.

I have a memory that he went to MIT, but don’t trust me at this point.

I think I’ve read enough about college admissions now to know that your daughter will get into a good college.

We’re in the midst of another boom, so applications are going to be tight for several years more, and the name-brand colleges are out of reach for most kids no matter how smart they are.

OK, just asked my husband, who does interviews for Princeton.

This year:

18,000 applicants
1750 accepted

10,000 of the applicants had SAT scores of 2100 or better (we don’t know how many of the 1750 had scores of 2100 or better)

So are these “brilliant kids” really brilliant, or are they just good at putting together a portfolio? Is the proportion of kids that are really smart the same, greater, or less than it was 35 years ago? And can college admissions people tell a really smart kid from someone with a padded resume?

The reason I worry about this is that I have a daughter who is much smarter than I am, but who is taking a very unconventional path through high school (she dropped out after 3 months and has been studying at home), and while she’s doing very well, she won’t have one of those resumes that intimidate me. She will, however, be able to do college (and even some graduate) level work independently, on time, and of very high quality. That is, if she can get into college someplace…

The answer is no.

Teacher Xeroxes stuff from books other than the textbook: good

Parents asks Teacher to Xerox answer key from books other than the textbook: bad

Teacher: good

Parent: bad

Twenty problems is about right for most kids (according to Wickelgren), but these problems each had 4 parts.

So: 80 problems.

And since nothing - and I mean nothing whatsoever - has been taught to mastery in this class, and since it is up to parents to find or write worksheets to provide their kids with distributed practice, each one of these 80 problems is laborious and time-consuming to do.

AND: the department is STILL refusing to provide answer keys!

(I’ve complained; other parents have complained; it’s a big-fat-hopeless wailing wall of answer-key complaint around here.)

So C. goes down to the basement to do his 80 problems along with his other homework.

He’s 12.

One hour later, he’s melting down.

He keeps coming up with the same answer (ordered pairs with the number ‘3′ in them) so he thinks he has to be getting them wrong, but since he has no answer key the only way to check whether he’s getting them wrong is to go back and start over again with problems 1 and work it again…..

This is not a math course.

It is a math obstacle course.

So I did all 80 problems - which I could do VERY rapidly since I’ve now had so much practice - and we checked his answers.

These days I have to do C’s homework every night, because the teacher is no longer using the book.

She’s sending home Xeroxes of other books & refuses to supply the answers.

She doesn’t correct homework; often enough she doesn’t go over every answer. (She says she does. She doesn’t.)

She certainly doesn’t ask kids to correct their work.

All of this falls to me.

So: 80 problems, no answer key, no teacher involvement.

I have to work the problems, check the problems, and have C. re-do.

boy

you are living in a different world

or, more accurately, we are

we’re living in the world of hours & hours of pointless project homework the kids AND the parents have to do

Good habits must start at the elementary level.