[jnwatson]

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.

[gnicholas]

I'd be curious to know more, since 'top' means different things to different folks. Is 'top' 1480 SAT or 1580? If your child is at the top of an IB high school, that is certainly impressive in its own right.

One thing I would note is that some schools 'manage' their acceptances in order to keep their yield numbers looking good. That is, they may have determined that your child was overqualified for their school and very unlikely to come. They'd rather reject/wait-list applicants like this because then their yield numbers (percent of accepted students who matriculate) look better.

[jnwatson]

1480. Good guess!

[el_benhameen]

Was just reading about how common that trend is this year. It seems that the n is much greater than 1: https://news.yahoo.com/uc-explains-admissions-decisions-reco...

I’m sorry about your kid’s rejection letter. Larger societal trends aside, that’s not a fun experience.

[jnwatson]

Thank you for that link. From the article, it seems there's also a longer-trend issue that is at play in my daughter's case. If more students are applying for the same 10 STEM majors, there's an additional selection bias against those.