[kccqzy]

> The opaqueness of the whole process is what I find most objectionable.

I also find that objectionable. However, recalling my own college admission process, I think we have collectively determined that this opaqueness is basically working as intended. We are now treating it as a rite passage that qualified high school students can be mysteriously rejected.

I applied to 6 colleges (not counting those outside the United States), which would be considered an extremely low number today. I have colleagues who have kids applying to colleges right now so I know. Everyone is applying to more colleges just to counteract these seemingly random rejections.

[lateforwork]

The opaqueness is unique to USA and is thanks to "holistic reviews", which is a highly questionable practice.

Elite-College Admissions Were Built to Protect Privilege https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...

The new holistic admissions policy worked as intended, successfully suppressing Jewish admissions. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...

The 'holistic' admissions lie - The Daily Californian https://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/01/the-holistic-admissions-...

The False Promise of 'Holistic' College Admissions - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-fa...

Lifting the Veil on the Holistic Process at the University of California, Berkeley https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/lifting-...

[rsync]

For you and your parent:

There is a special term to denote "amount which something is opaque" and that term is opacity.

[kelipso]

Opaqueness is in the dictionary, so that’s good enough. Opacity sounds like it should be in a physics textbook.

[Aurornis]

It’s an arms race. Now that students are encourage to apply to huge numbers of universities for safety, the universities are forced to accept a smaller percentage of applicants to avoid overcommitting.

So student, parents, and counselors see this and tell everyone to apply to even more colleges and the cycle continues.

[cherryteastain]

UK caps applications to 5 to combat this exact problem.

[kelipso]

When you have this problem of universities rejecting applicants based on arbitrary criteria, limiting that becomes an issue too.

[blindriver]

Every school has increased tuition without substantially increasing the number of students. What you are seeing is that schools are getting thousands of students that are exactly the same which is why admissions is turning into a lottery system. It's basically like a CPU maxed out at 100%. There's nothing you can do except build more schools and increase the number of students otherwise it will continue to be a lottery.

[sokoloff]

> We are now treating it as a rite passage that qualified high school students can be mysteriously rejected.

How could it realistically work any other way? Each year, Harvard gets nearly 50K applications for 2K acceptances and 1.6K enrollments.

It’s not hard to see that tens of thousands of qualified high school students will unavoidably be rejected from just this one university.

[kccqzy]

> How could it realistically work any other way?

Well for one, what if universities like Harvard publish clear and transparent criteria for their students? For example it could say that the minimum required SAT score is 1580, and students with a lower score will simply not bother to apply, instead of sending in their application in the hope that other parts of their application will stand out enough.

For two, university admissions officers have internal adjustment algorithms to adjust the GPA from different high schools. They could publish that together with a minimum adjusted GPA.

The 50k application problem only exists because under the holistic process, everyone thinks they have a chance.