How selective is "most selective"?

See also: the problem with college admissions

Sometimes the selectiveness of the current admissions process is hard to grasp. Indeed, the competition has gone straight up even more in the past few years. Harvard had a 7% admit rate last year for their class of 2013, down from 13% a few years ago. That means that many students who graduated recently there would not have gotten in last year!

7%. Let's put this in a mathematical perspective. 1 in every 14 people (since 100/7=14.29) who apply to the big H get an acceptance letter. And, these applicants are self-selective to begin with - while there are those clowns who just throw in an application for fun, they usually make up less than 10% of the applying pool, partially because the application fee has gone up to $75. This makes the "7%" figure seem even more formidable.

So, pick a number from 1-14. Go to the bottom of the post and see if your number matches the one I selected. If it does, then congratulations, you would be admitted! Otherwise, best of luck with your other colleges... Now, of course the admissions process is not up to chance, but even if you're phenomenal throughout high school, how can you ever be sure that you'll be one of those top 7% of the bright students who apply (see the example candidates here to get an idea of how crazy everything is)?

2000 students get admittance, and I would bet that >90%, if not 100%, of the "top" students apply to Harvard. This means that if you get in, you are among the top 2000-2500 students - the top .2% of all graduating seniors in the US!! It's pretty ridiculous what the elite colleges expect of students these days.

Harvard is obviously not the only super-selective university - Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, UPenn, and Caltech, just to name a few, also have lottery-like chances. All of these places accept less than 1/5 of their applicants, meaning that 4 out of 5 people get denied or waitlisted. You would usually trust a drug if "4 out of 5" doctors recommend it!

Overall, the admits to these top universities represent a good portion of the top 1% of the high school students in the entire nation, so it must feel pretty good to get in, doesn't it? However, if you have a child or are a student wishing to go to an Ivy league, don't feel bad if you fall short; you just didn't play the admissions "game" quite well enough, and you don't have to be the top 1% to be successful. Chances are, if you are somewhere close to acceptance, you are probably better equipped for life than a lot of the admits, because the insensitive admissions criteria nowadays makes grave flaws in predicting the best students for the university's campus. Go to whatever school you think is wise in terms of finances, academics, and interests, and strive to achieve your maximum potential there.


The mystery number: 7. Now go back to where you were reading.