from Hacker News

Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

by undefined1 on 4/16/21, 3:02 PM with 217 comments

• by endisneigh on 4/16/21, 3:28 PM

  It's a shame that we're here in 2021 and the best we can do is basically just "selection bias." Basically all universities have no statistical proof that they can educate people beyond this. This is not to say that the schools are bad, but most of the education is simply due to the types of peers you have, not really due to the school itself.

  Princeton and Harvard admit, for the most part, people who already excelled significantly in high school. Such excellence is already indicative of ability.

  Ideally our fixation would be on a hypothetical institution that admits people entirely at random, and through some means (whether authoritarian, or montessori, waldorf, immersion, etc.) shows that beyond a reasonable doubt the school itself has improved the persons educational prospects.

  You'd think by now, some sort of Google-like data driven school would've emerged by now for K-12 and higher ed.

• by happytoexplain on 4/16/21, 3:21 PM

  Context: It's because the students admitted last year requested to defer starting until this year due to COVID, limiting the available space for new applicants.

  Edit: Also exacerbated by more applicants this year, I suppose due to reduced entry requirements, again due to COVID.

• by supernova87a on 4/16/21, 3:51 PM

  First of all, a major issue here is that we don't have enough good universities to accept all the talented kids applying. That holds true for high schools, etc. wherever there is contentious debate over "equity" or merit-based admissions. Just increase the number of good schools (which has not been done in proportion to population growth) and many things are solved.

  Just like how you never hear people in countries with great broadband access complain about usage caps. That's a purely US (or other country) phenomenon when you have shitty supply of broadband. Increase the supply, competition, and problem solved.

  Secondly, a question for those who feel that colleges have a duty to "shape our future generation leaders who should look like the people they represent". Tell me, for all the mental contortions, evaluations, interviews, processes to make flawed judgement calls on whether people "contribute by their diversity" to the student body, how different an outcome does that achieve over just using an objective test, and then admitting everyone above a certain bar?

  These colleges receive enough applicants to admit 3-4 classes worth of valedictorians. Yet they seem to think their admissions scrutiny and processes make their classes a much better place than if they had a simpler process. Is that true? Judge people on skill and talent, for every type of academic program a university offers. Simple rules and processes allow people do creative things. Contorted rules and processes incentivize people to do stupid things. Like having 17 year olds compete in an essay contest to see who is the most disadvantaged and worthy therefore of admissions.

  I don't think they've tried serious alternatives, yet they believe these complicated admissions systems to be correct. And you look to other countries that have purely exam-based admissions, yet they are not producing classes full of socially inept, non-contributing, non-leaders.

  Maybe it's worth a rethink. Or some new kinds of institutions.

• by finexplained on 4/16/21, 4:46 PM

  It blows my mind that a record-low acceptance rate is held up as an achievement, and not a structural failure. Why is the metric not "we are able to educate X% of students who meet this well-defined bar"? There are some departments in institutions (think CS) who, in the face of exploding enrollments, have made every effort to scale their courses to accommodate as many students who are capable as possible. And they do that with substantially fewer resources than many of these Ivies. Why, as a society, do we tolerate universities selling "exclusivity" instead of education?

• by purple_ferret on 4/16/21, 3:37 PM

  Parsing through 37,601 (and accepting only 1500) applications without standardized testing sounds incredibly difficult.

  If I were a teenager trying to get into a top school these days, my anxiety would be through the roof. Can't imagine the extracurricular work you have to put in now.

• by jplr8922 on 4/16/21, 4:02 PM

  It brings in my mind Bryan Caplan research ;

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education

  basically, people educate themselves because it looks good, not because you learn usefull stuff. Thoughts?

• by ModernMech on 4/16/21, 3:35 PM

  When looking at acceptance rates of Ivies, it's good to remember that the concept of a "reach school" that counselors push on students means that almost every kid is applying to some school they are not really qualified to get into. These disproportionately end up being top schools like Princeton and Harvard. If you're going to reach, why not really reach? Is the chance of getting into Princeton 4%? No, if you're well qualified to get in, the chance is much higher. If you're not qualified to get in, the chance is 0%. Average it out and you get the 4%-8%.

  I think PG said something similar with respect to the chance of getting accepted to YC. Or maybe it wasn't PG and I'm thinking of this: https://medium.com/@robhunter/your-chances-of-getting-into-y...

• by jean-malo on 4/16/21, 4:50 PM

  I've always thought that the French model for top-tier engineering schools was cruel but it might have some merits.

  You essentially study for two years post high-school to take a competitive exam, your ranking in this exam determines where you can go (first place chooses, then the second place gets to pick etc.) You suffer for two years but at the end it's based mostly on merit.

  Obviously it's not entirely based on merit as privileged kids have a huge head start but you at least get a chance to catch up during those two years.

• by wkoury on 4/16/21, 4:16 PM

  Last year I made an app for a professor that tells you your chances of getting into Harvard based on your high school circumstances. The results are pretty crazy: https://wkoury.github.io/harvard-admissions/

• by OliverJones on 4/16/21, 4:14 PM

  As a long-ago grad of one of these fancy-schmancy schools with vast endowments and big revenue streams from application fees, I have this question, and complaint:

  Why haven't they expanded their number of students in proportion to population growth? Why shouldn't their product be available to more people? Yeah, small class size? BS. They've mastered the art of large lectures and small sections.

  They enjoy government subsidies: tax exemptions on endowment profits and revenue streams. That's because they're considered educational institutions serving the common good. Maybe those tax exemptions should be scaled back for institutions that don't scale up with population.

  So, Ivy League, make like Cal and other public universities: Make it your mission to educate lots of people. Quit bragging about your selectivity.

  </rant>

• by csa on 4/16/21, 3:34 PM

  In this particular year, the low number is due to the deferrals from last year and (most likely) reduced requirements in the admissions process.

  That said, over the long term, the number of Hail Mary applications is most likely the bulk of the gradual increase in applications. There are a very large number of applications to elite schools that effectively zero chance of being accepted, and that number seems to be increasing over time.

  To be fair, I do think that the overall quality of admitted student is increasing as well, but the improvements are largely seen in the marginal admits rather than the core admits.

• by dalbasal on 4/16/21, 3:58 PM

  Admission rates may or may not be a long term indicator of anything, but it doesn't take an indicator to know that elite-exclusive college has been getting more exclusive. That aside, a lot is covid related.

  On-campus education is a good that has been underproduced... this is excess demand. Maybe we'll be graduating fewer doctors, nurses, and such than expected over the coming decade

• by pratik661 on 4/16/21, 3:50 PM

  Scott Galloway once proposed taxing the endowments of universities that don’t expand their accepted admissions pool in accordance with population growth at a higher rate.

  The logic being that these universities are essentially providers of a “Veblen Good” (elite, exclusive status in society) and should be taxed as such.

• by jnwatson on 4/16/21, 4:25 PM

  I wonder how this impacts lower-tier schools. My n=1 data point: my child just received a rejection notice from a middle-tier out-of-state university. Top test scores, top of her class, International Baccalaureate (IB). Obviously not a lot of activities.

  I am curious what kind of students are getting accepted.

• by jean_tta on 4/16/21, 6:37 PM

  % of applicants admitted is not super informative.

  Two more interesting metrics would be:

  * how many applicants admitted actually enroll (and not go to some other college)

  * related, bu what is the "rank" of the last admitted applicant: how far do they need to reach to fill their spots?

• by azhenley on 4/16/21, 4:02 PM

  As a prof, I'm terrified of the exploding enrollment in CS. My 2021 enrollment for a juniors/seniors course is up 70% from recent years and still growing.

  Can't imagine what it'll look like in two or three years.

• by flowerlad on 4/16/21, 4:32 PM

  College admissions in the US are messed up. There is no way for a student to be in control of their destiny through hard work, because there are far too many variables and randomness in college admissions.

  Ideally what colleges should do is to use a standardized test and go strictly by the results of the standardized test. Standardized tests are not perfect, but if there are flaws in standardized tests then fix them, because it is better than the alternatives. The advantage for students would be predictability and being in control of their own destiny. Students would not have to apply to 12 to 15 colleges, instead the would apply to 2 to 3. The benefits for colleges would be better predictability as well. Today colleges use complex mathematical models to predict who is likely to accept their admission offers. Then they use "yield protection" to avoid admitting highly qualified students who are unlikely to accept admission offers. It is complicated.

  Colleges can use complex data analysis to guess which students are likely to accept but hapless students can’t run data analysis to determine which colleges are likely to accept. Colleges, especially public ones, ought to minimize the guesswork and use more objective criteria to admit students. Students need to be able to control their own destiny through hard work. That’s only possible if guesswork and data analytics and so on is minimized.

  Other countries such as UK use test scores for college admissions. At one time the US too used scores. But US colleges introduced subjective criteria ("holistic reviews") because far too many Jewish people were getting admitted when they used objective criteria. (Not kidding, see https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor... ).

  Even public universities perform complex gymnastics to decide which 4.0 GPA student to admit. Even when two students have taken the exact same courses (including AP courses) and have the same GPA, colleges do not consider them the same. (See here https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-12/covid-co... )

  Excerpts:

  UC admissions directors stressed that they evaluated students in the context of their own schools and communities to assess how much they challenged themselves and took advantage of available opportunities. A student who took all six AP classes offered at her school might be more impressive than the one who took six at a school that offered twice as many. A campus might admit a student with a 4.0 GPA who ranked at the top of an underserved school over one with a higher GPA but lower class rank at a more high-achieving school.

  So basically it is better to be a bright student in a dumb school than to be a bright student in a bright school. This is messed up. Students shouldn't have to do these calculations and move to areas with dumb schools to improve their chances. We need to bring back objectivity and predictability back to college admissions.

• by wnevets on 4/16/21, 3:53 PM

  Am I the only one who hates it when headlines use the phrase "X admits Y"? It always frames the story in a certain way regardless of the actually context.

• by 1cvmask on 4/16/21, 3:25 PM

  So when we remove the legacies and school fund donators (roughly half) - about 40 to 50 percent of the class, athletes (affirmative action for rich whites with relatively lower credentials and scores) - about 10-20 percent of the class, and regular affirmative action ( about 15 percent of the class and mainly affluent politically connected blacks and latinos). The remainder is the group based on traditional credentials.

  The academic reputation of these schools is disproportionately from that remainder group.

  The rest of the world just has an exam system. Interesting way of comparing the systems.