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I'm guessing there's some set of highly qualified kids who get rejected from all schools they applied to. I'm going to use some completely imaginary but plausible probabilities to demonstrate this.
Let's say that you're poor and don't have the funds for more than three application fees, and you're too prideful to ask for fee waivers. I know this happens because this was my situation when I was in high school. I didn't became aware that I could use my poverty to my advantage until I was already in college, and even then I was too prideful for it.
There's some chance that you'll not be selected for a top school like Harvard even though you have grades and scores that would put you in the 90th percentile of kids they do admit. Let's say that if you're Asian and have these qualifications you only have a 1% chance of admission. You apply anyway.
Let's say that you also apply to a top state school that you're pretty confident will admit you, but there's no guarantee. Say this is a 95% chance.
And then you apply to a safety school, which is still not a guarantee, but a 99% chance.
The probability of getting rejected by all three schools would be .99 * .05 * .01 = .00049. Roughly 5 in 10,000 people in this situation would find themselves with no acceptance letter. Are there 10,000 such people applying each year? According to Wikipedia there were 2.9 million college freshman in the United States in 2019. That seems plausible.
With such a huge population you're going to find very unlikely outcomes hiding in the tails. Especially with illegible admission criteria, it's not possible to know with any certainty that you'll be admitted unless you go through some assured admission program.
Seems like it did happen.
https://www.wsj.com/story/she-scored-1550-on-her-sats-top-us-colleges-still-rejected-her-68767071
False. Did not get rejected everywhere. Going to Arizona state. Not a great school, but I predict that founding a brand new private school better than Arizona state will be harder than we think it is.
I didn't say anything about the difficulty of creating an alternate education system. Even though I don't think its as onerously difficult as you claim it is, nor do I think its as easy as many others think it is.
It's not too difficult to imagine an alternate reality where this girl did not Apply to ASU or Rice. And did infact get rejected from all the colleges she applied to despite being very accomplished. Ofcourse that can happen to anyone who doesn't choose a safety school, but its more than likely that this time around AA has something to do with it.
In the comment I replied to you said
Now you're saying it hypothetically could have happened in an alternate reality where an obvious gunner didn't do basic best practices, like applying to safety schools.
The standard when I was a kid was seven, two reach two safety three target. That number just keeps getting bigger, I advise kids I know to apply everywhere, if the application isn't free send a letter to the dean asking for a free application and they'll give it to you 90% of the time, you never know who might give you money and money from one school you don't really want to go to can be leveraged against a school you do want to go to. Among kids gunning for ivies, they're going to be following best practices, the average among my AP friends was around 12 undergrads applied to in high school.
Fwiw, AA obviously plays a role in every marginal candidate's fate, but can never really be pointed to as playing a decisive role. Until you're applying your fate is always in your hands, you could always just be better.
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