Why your superb student will likely not be admitted to Princeton

I wrote this essay for my daughter and her peers, to help them adjust to the rejection letter they are almost certain to receive from Princeton—or Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (collectively, HYSP). I hope it may help other parents too.

I write as a Dad. My responsibility is to convey the hard facts of life outside the bosom of the family. Most applicants to HYSP are deluded about their true chances. I run the numbers for you.

My daughter and her peers are 99th percentile students: they have SAT scores of 2150 to 2280, or ACT scores of 33 or 34; rank among the top dozen in their class of 550; took 10+ Advanced Placement courses, with test scores of 4 or 5; and have A grades in nearly every course, with maybe an isolated A-, or more rarely a B+.

On the other hand, superb students though they may be, none has a perfect SAT or ACT score, nor do they rank first in class at the nation’s most prestigious prep school or most rigorous magnet school, nor did they win the Intel science competition or any other national competition.

In terms of numbers, this year in the USA there are probably 50,000 students who are indistinguishable from my daughter: the 99th percentile more or less.

• I base this number on the 3.3 million high schools seniors in the US, combined with the existence of multiple tests claiming to distinguish the “top” scorers.  So, 33,000 X 1.5.

Say 99th percentile, and it sounds terrific. But also present in the applicant pool are students in the 99.9th percentile—the top 5000 students—and in the 99.99th percentile—the top 500 students. And one other thing: my daughter and her peers are mostly ordinary middle class children of moderately affluent parents. That’s important for what follows.

Now to answer the question in the title, let’s look at Princeton’s application & admit numbers from last year. (I use the Resources link at toptieradmissions.com. I only consider regular admission.)

For the class of 2019, about 1150 students were accepted into Princeton on regular decision, out of 23,500 applicants (an acceptance rate of ~5%). Let’s break down these acceptances according to probable student characteristics. All of what follows is speculative—I don’t have any insider knowledge. But I defy you to show where I erred, or that my error was material.*

	Estimated # accepted	Estimated # applied	Applicant Source
1	100	200	Billionaires, oligarchs, senators, foreign luminaries, Old Money and other members of the donor class
2	200	1000	Princeton alumni children with strong test scores and grades
3	100	1000	Foreign stars: best of Beijing, dominant in Delhi, leading in London, perfect in Paris, you get the idea
4	150	500	Paragons of perfection: perfect SAT scores, first in class at the country’s finest prep school, Intel science fair winner, yada yada
5	100	1000	Affirmative action: the very best minority candidates in the USA
6	200	500	Champion athletes, magnificent musicians, and other extra-curricular stars
	850	4200	TOTAL privileged admissions / applicants
	300	19,300	Remainder: Admissions slots available, relative to the number of ordinary middle class student applicants with superb academic records not falling into groups 1 – 6
	1 in 64		Odds of admission for the merely superb student

 

^* More exactly, where did I get these numbers?  Well, I taught Harvard cases to MBA students for 30 years.  I learned how to make reasonable, defensible, ballpark assumptions. Like these.

It follows that an applicant like my daughter—a 99th percentile student, with good extra- curricular activities (but no State championships), has less than a 1-in-60 chance of being admitted to a Princeton.

My specific numbers may be off, but here is my first point: if I were in charge of Princeton admissions, this is exactly how I would do it. This essay is not a complaint; it’s a hard-headed assessment of the world, the way it is, and how it has to be.

* Of course I would admit an academically capable child of a wealthy individual who might donate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to the betterment of my enterprise.
* Of course I would admit the academically accomplished alumni child over the dozens of non-alumni kids with exactly the same level of performance. And I would expect many Princeton alumni, by genetic inheritance and favorable social and cultural situation, to produce academically capable children.
* Of course I would admit many of the 500 individuals who scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT and who also had great essays, top grades, and noteworthy community service; and I would proceed similarly with other measures of extraordinary merit.
* And why not recognize the very strongest members of marginalized groups who overcame enormous obstacles to compile good academic records? It’s one of the ways I can feel good about admitting the billionaire’s privileged kid.
* Really, you want me to justify admitting champion athletes who also have strong academic records? Do you not understand how important winning sports teams are to maintaining alumni loyalty? Oh, not into football? Well then, do you want the orchestra to fall apart for lack of a cello player?

On the above analysis, it must be the case that the stated odds of admission—about 1 in 21 for Princeton—are severely understated in the case of superb students who don’t fall into any of the six privileged categories.

Nonetheless, on my analysis, 300 ordinary kids with merely superb academic records will get admitted to Princeton this year. The best conceptual frame: they won the lottery. Look at your child’s academic record—and recognize that there are at least ten thousand other Princeton applicants with about as good, or maybe slightly better a record. Nonetheless, the admissions committee has to decide, and they do; but for all intents and purposes, their decision is indistinguishable from a lottery, however they rationalize it post-hoc.

It’s not the essay that got your child admitted; rather, the night before reading it the admissions officer enjoyed a convivial gathering of old friends, as opposed to the next equally good essay, read after he spilled coffee on his new shirt.

HYSP aren’t the only distinguished and desirable universities out there

It is important to recognize how specific the numbers above are to Princeton and its ilk. As soon as we switch focus to the very, very good, but not tippity-top universities, your superb students’ odds improve dramatically. By very, very good universities, I mean the top 20 universities in the US News rankings, less the top 6-8. For my next example, I’ll use Cornell, recently ranked 14th. Check out the table, and peruse my explanation below.

	Estimated # accepted	Estimated # applied	Source
1	—	—	Cornell isn’t prestigious enough to attract billionaires or foreign luminaries, except as they are alumni, below
2	500	2000	Cornell alumni children with strong test scores and grades
3	100	500	There will still be some foreign stars; Cornell is part of the Ivy League
4	100	150	Fewer paragons of perfection will apply, but they will be more likely to get in.
5	200	2000	Affirmative action: strong minority candidates from across the USA
6	200	500	Champion athletes, magnificent musicians, and other extra-curricular stars
	1100	5,150	TOTAL privileged admissions / applicants
	3900	31,850	Remainder: Admissions slots available, relative to the number of ordinary middle class student applicants with strong academic records not falling into groups 1 – 6
	1 in 8		Odds of admission for the merely superb student

The Cornell analysis will apply to most other universities in the top 20 but outside the top 6-8, subject to the following proviso: Cornell has one of the highest total number of admits among leading private universities. That number is crucial. As soon as you switch focus to elsewhere in the “lesser Ivy League”—Brown and Penn, say—where the total of admits comes in somewhere between Princeton and Cornell, running about 2000 to 2500 respectively—the ratio for superb middle class students, applying the same assumptions as before, starts to blow out again toward 20 to 1 odds. That’s on the border between lottery and contest.

Let’s look at the moving parts that make Cornell and similar top ranked universities so different than HYSP. In summary: athletes are like a fixed cost; billionaires drift away outside the tippity top; more superstars, foreign and domestic, look elsewhere; and alumni and affirmative action applications and acceptances scale with the size of the entering class. Given these facts, and given that Cornell accepts 5 times as many students as Princeton, the situation facing the merely superb student is much, much more favorable. Odds of 1 in 8 are not a lottery—that’s a contest, and one that your superb child might win. Especially since Cornell and similar top ranked universities will draw a broader applicant pool (because these facts are known at some level to the population of applicants). At Cornell, your superb child is more likely to be competing with a very good student in the 97th or 94th percentile, and that’s a competition he or she can win on the merits of their record. At Princeton, most of the applicants will be well above the 97th percentile, hence the lottery.

On the same reasoning, if your superb student lives in a state with a flagship public university—University of California at Berkeley in my case—the sheer number of admits, 13,000 in the case of Berkeley, works for you. The true odds for the superb middle class kid will not differ much from the stated odds—about 1 in 6 for Berkeley.

Top ranked liberal arts colleges like Williams or Pomona present an intermediate case. If you know anything about colleges, you know that these LAC offer a terrific quality of education; but most people don’t know anything about the full college pantheon, they just know that HYSP are the most prestigious institutions on the planet. Hence, although the total of admits is small, no more than Princeton, because of the prestige gap, the number of applicants is much smaller too—about 1000 and 6000, respectively, for Williams. After allowing for alumni and athletes, the stated odds at Williams—1 in 6—don’t balloon out much past 1 in 12. And, like Cornell, the applicant pool will have a lower tail, since for the leading LACs, the 85th percentile student will enter the pool, because he or she can believably say, “I’ll make it up on essays and extra-curricular activities.” Your superb student has a fighting chance at a Williams or a Claremont McKenna. They can win that contest.

• Except, Williams and some others now admit so many applicants on early decision that on regular decision, the odds may very well balloon out to the Brown or Penn level

Best wishes; and when the inevitable rejection letters come, let me leave you with these thoughts.

* What would we say to the attractive young woman, who failed to win the local beauty contest, and wailed that her life was over?
* What we would say to the athletic young man, who sat on the bench all season, and lamented that he was a failure, as in four years he never once started as quarterback?
Most adults would say, “Get a grip.”

It’s the same with respect to acceptance at HYSP. Those crushing odds are driven by their prestige quotient. And winning the lottery for university prestige has the same moral value as winning a beauty contest or starting as quarterback.

Next, it is the job of parents to help their vulnerable children cope with the hard facts of life. Your child is a 99th percentile student. Great. Once we enter the HYSP world, your very strong student is competing with the very, very strong, and very, very, very strong students—from all over the world. Princeton is among the very, very, very best universities. There’s no reason to expect that your merely superb student has much of a chance there. It’s just math.

But again, the difference in experienced educational quality between a Princeton and a good LAC or flagship state university is small. It’s the difference in prestige that is huge. And seeking after prestige is not a life path with heart. That’s the message I want to convey to my daughter.

Next:

Grade inflation

A plan of action

Do not be cynical