Advice on How to Deal with Record-low Acceptance Rates, etc.

Answered

Thanks for your question. I think this is one of the important issues to address both for Americans, Canadians, and Int'l Students hoping to get into a great college.

College admissions is not a simple process that rewards the best students with the best outcomes. It's very complicated and nuanced and most high school students get caught in the red tide, sucked down, and don't make it out in the same spot on the shoreline they thought they would.

What is simple is the math problem that plagues the entire system. The absolute truth is that there are far too few seats/spots to accommodate the demand for applications which seems to be growing at T100 schools. This is not so much the case at T500 or T1000 schools. If you just want to go to college in America, most acceptance rates are 80-90%. So, it's like the supermarket problem, if you just need food in America, you can always find something to eat. It just might not be enjoyable, nutritious, or delicious.

Prepandemic, things were already tough if you wanted to get into T25 schools because the demand outnumbered the supply. And if you had great ECs, great essays, and test scores, you had a very good chance at getting in. Post-pandemic things are more confusing because 99% of colleges are test-optional so if you are not submitting a high test score, your course rigor and grades will be under the microscope and scrutinized.

So Ivys, Elite, and Top Liberal Arts colleges are getting flooded with applicants who have perfect GPAs, and graduated either 1st or 2nd in their class, with great test scores, amazing course rigor, fantastic ECs, and glowing recommendations. But there is just not enough room to take everyone who looks good on paper. So colleges have to reject and waitlist many qualified applicants based on their own shopping list of needs on how they wish to shape or build their incoming class of First Year Students.

So it's very important not to take rejection or waitlists personally because that college might have prioritized an Oboe player or a Lacross Forward or a theater kid over someone well-rounded who checked all the boxes. And furthermore, the college has other goals besides making sure all the roles are filled at the school. They may have internal pressure/goals to meet a certain diversity goal of accepting more Black or Brown or Native folk, more Queer Folk, more students from remote States like Arkansas or Montana, or more low-income first-generation kids. Besides this, top colleges also have certain expectations to admit legacies, VIPs, children of faculty, children of wealthy donors, and anyone earmarked by the dean of admission as a special case.

In summary, due to all the different kinds of students the college wants you can easily see from this math problem, that merit is often not the driver of filling these roles and positions. And this is why the wealthy Asian kids on social media all post their near-perfect stats (4.5 WGPA, 1590, 14 APs) including rare internships and impactful ECs, and the poor first gen POCs that get in often mistake their luck for merit, thinking that their 3.62 GPA and 1380 were perfectly good for Brown or Cornell and other kids shouldn't be dissuaded from applying because of low test scores. The truth is that college admissions are very messy and there are more qualified people that do not get in than get to go.

If colleges wanted to be more transparent, they would publish their shopping list and share with the rest of the world what positions will be open over the next few cycles. But they would rather hide the list and all hide behind the secretive process dubbed "holistic evaluation" instead. Why? Because they can't be held accountable for denying someone a spot at their school because, at the end of the day, they are not going to write on your acceptance that you got in because you are a poor Black athlete from Alabama. Instead, they mark your scorecard with numbers that only they can decipher the code to and keep everything under wraps.

So what's the takeaway then? The takeaway is that you have to accept the fact that you have not been given dominion over what your outcomes will be for any particular college admission cycle. This year, Harvard might take someone like you but during the next 4 cycles, they might have different priorities. You are however given some free reign or free will to tweak or change your narrative and this is a tricky thing.

Some kids think that doing 500 hours of volunteering is more impressive than getting a 1550 SAT or 35 ACT or having a "spike" narrative or impressive IV/IC activities. So these kids go on and do their thing and get a reality check when college decisions come out. Other kids are on a pre-destined path of success from the time they are born because they are 3rd or 4th generation legacies and their families know which preschool, grammar school, boarding school, and paid summer programs to enroll them into as soon as they take their first breath of air.

Most applicants find out 3 years too late what they should have been doing prior to applying to colleges during their senior year. And by that time, there is no runway to change your approach. You suck it up, roll the dice and accept the numbers as they land.

Regardless of whether you were born with a silver spoon or not, the most important piece of advice I can give is to make a list of schools that are a good fit for you. Find schools that want you, will help you achieve your goals, and help you thrive as a human being both socially, academically and personally (as in personal growth and well-being). Don't pick schools because of brand name, peer pressure, family pressure, or where you know you are going to struggle just to survive.

When 57000 people apply to Columbia, it's not all self-selecting. I would say that 3/4s of the people are just shooting their shot. They have no idea of how hard the core curriculum is and don't personally know anyone attending there currently whom they can talk to about the work ethic, social scene, imposter syndrome, or support mechanisms available. It's not like winning the Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. It's like entering an Olympic Training Facility where you have committed yourself to 4 years of challenges that will test you on every level and hopefully you will graduate on time and still be much of the same person you went in as.

Therefore, it's more important to take away as much anxiety, stress, and self-doubt from your life right now. Do not think you are in control, you are only a little in control if you are already on the right path with what you have done for the last 5 to 10 years. If you have big goals like being a doctor or lawyer or judge, then it really doesn't matter where you go for undergraduate school. You can join the US Military Academy and still get a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford for your Ph.D if you want. You can go to a State University and still get admitted into Yale or Stanford Law School. It's not that complicated. You will make things more complicated for yourself and your mental health if you think that you must attend an Ivy to be successful in life. This is a fallacy. The truth is that these schools do not make you great or a failure. So don't give them that much credit.

The most important thing is to curate a list of colleges that you have a high chance of getting accepted into where you can see yourself being happy for those 8 semesters which is like 5% of your entire life. The other 95% of your life is your own so you can't really think that any college is going to transform you into another person. It may challenge you to be your best person but a lot of places can do that. If you go into the college admissions cycle with a more realistic view of what you need to be happy, you will not be crushed or depressed that you failed the process. Rather, you will be in better spirits to graduate with your HS senior class and have a better summer before college starts.

Where I go to college, there have been some recent suicides from high-achieving students who had great credentials and resumes. But when you are placed in a new environment where no one gives you the handbook on how to thrive, survive and enjoy your time here, it can be very isolating and lonely. Keeping appearances and acting stoic in times of grief and depression is a miserable way to live your life. And if help doesn't arrive knocking at your door to pull you out of your funk, it can easily overwhelm your ability to navigate out of it. So why I'm sharing this is that nothing in your life is more important that your health and well-being. Ivy's, Elites, and Top LACs are not for everyone, and nor should they be. People might see them as the only chance they will have in life to change their trajectory and path for success but that is a fallacy. Whatever good you have already done has been on your own without the support and backing of a top college so what makes you think that attending such a place will change who you are? It won't. If you are a jerk, you will still be a jerk. If you are a poser, you will still be a poser. If you are a self-absorbed narcissist, you'll still be one. And if you are a genuinely kind human that is altruistic, you will be that person whether you go to Syracuse or Stanford.

We all get the opportunity to live long lives so look at this as a Chapter, not your life. Many things will happen to you regardless of where you go to college. Do not let this fate be derailed by overemphasizing the importance of the name of the college you will attend.

Good luck to you and whoever reads this.