I had originally written a long and meandering post on my college admissions journey and the lessons I learned along the way, but upon reflection most of it was too self-indulgent. So I’ll just summarize the key takeaways:
Strategy is key
College admissions is a high-stakes zero-sum game where the optimal strategy must anticipate the actions of all the other players (adcom and applicants). The key variables that most consider are 1) expected real value (which is actually pretty hard to judge at that stage and depends on individual educational and career preferences) and 2) prestige/selectivity. This is further complicated by 3) variance in adcom processes 4) (possible) foreign student quotas 5) financial aid competition 6) supposed early decision statistical advantages and finally, 7) uncertainty about all of the above. This requires a multivariate minimax strategy that is beyond the capacity of most prospectives to fully appreciate. The earlier you start thinking, the better your strategy is likely to be.
There is significant informational asymmetry
Much of the admissions processes described above are not transparent (and thus often highly uncertain), are subject to change, and are notoriously difficult to quantify. There is a lot of disinformation and misinformation out there, beyond the wealth of academic studies, rankings and advice available. Attending the more competitive JCs helps – the cultures there provide informational and signaling advantages (though they are not without their disadvantages).
There are many ways to bridge the knowledge gap: I read up on every admissions guide available and spent hours scouring the college confidential forums. I also became intimately familiar with the criteria used in popular ranking systems and how these are derived. If you are not completely disillusioned by the whole process, you don’t know enough.
However, there is nothing available in the public domain that specifically deals with SG – and this is a key asymmetry. Not much is known about the domain-specific, location-specific processes that guide how adcoms value candidates or understand local benchmarks of competence. My opinion is that there is a significant tradeoff between beating the local benchmarks (A-levels, CCAs leadership positions, government scholarships) and the real benchmarks of success, which leads many SG prospectives to pursue a suboptimal strategy. For example, the paper requirements for OMS were a key factor (among others) in my tragic decision to drop c-math for a second s-paper in economics, which effectively took me out of the race for my first choice school. Asymmetric information and bounded rationality meant that I did not fully appreciate the consequences of doing so at the time.
Diversify to minimize risk
There is a significant random element to the admissions game, since so many of the factors involved are outside your direct control. Success and failure could well depend on the efficiency of the postal service, the mood of the admissions officer reading your application, the internal politics of the adcom, or the animal spirits of Mr. Market. As such, to minimize the risk of failure, you should diversify your portfolio. This means 1) applying to a broad range of colleges, and 2) adjusting your application strategies according to individual conditions. This means not emotionally investing too much in the idea of any one particular college, as I did, and not limiting your applications to the top tier, as I did. Both are recipes for disappointment.
Be critical of consultants
Everyone has heard about the expensive admissions consultants like IvyWise and the Opal Mehta scandal. There are even similar consultants in SG. Though I did not hire a consultant (beyond my means and too late to be cost-effective anyway), I had considered it. Upon reflection, I am skeptical of 1) the degree of specialized knowledge they possess, which I suspect is dated or irrelevant – I suspect much of their ‘track record’ of placements is subject to survivorship bias and other aspects of bounded rationality (such as the mistaking of correlation for causation), and more importantly 2) the potential conflicts of interest that arise.
Simply put, without some degree of transparency, accountability, and competition, these consultants are not subject to market discipline, and do not have the right incentives to ensure you succeed, or at least are very expensive to incentivize and monitor properly. They will maximize their utility (maximum fees for minimum effort) and not yours (getting you into your first choice school). The real estate agent example in Freakonomics is a good analogy.
Financial aid affects strategy
There are many impacts that FA has on strategy but I will focus on just one that is particularly relevant to SG: Most prospective government scholars (OMS etc) tend to apply to a specific range of elite schools, because the state’s manpower projections (and their recognition of a limited set of colleges) determine who to offer scholarships to study at which colleges. In anticipation of government funding, and noting the disadvantages of requesting financial aid at need-sensitive colleges (and most of them are), most of them will not apply for aid. Though some will apply for aid as a hedge against taking up the scholarship offer, most will not jeopardize the chances, particularly the marginal candidates.
If there is a ‘diversity’ quota on foreign students (which limits the number of admits from one country to a fixed proportion), and if foreign applicants are primarily assessed within their pool (that is, relative to their countrymen and not against the applicant pool as a whole), and if the need for financial aid is a factor in assessing the value of a candidate, then ceteris paribus between two applicants from SG (holding quality constant), the one who requires aid will be crowded out by the one who is not, or at least will be at a significant disadvantage. The market for colleges is distorted towards government scholars (and the rich in general, but that’s a given in any market system). Therefore, non-scholars who require aid applying to the same schools should consider their options carefully, and may wish to apply to colleges that are ‘undervalued’ in SG perception, such as the smaller liberal arts colleges.
You got in, so what?
As much as strategy and effort played a part in success, much of it was due to external forces beyond your control. As much as you may think your success was objectively determined, much of it was the subjective assessment of boundedly rational agents. In my opinion, elite college admissions is only an efficient sorting mechanism in the aggregate (that is, admits to the top 10-20 schools combined on average). Between individual schools, it’s often a crapshoot. Getting in alone doesn’t say very much about your real value. This is also why consultants are hard to effectively assess. As a corollary, you shouldn’t think too highly of (most of) your peers who got in as well.
Independent effects vary
There is no consensus on the real value of attending an elite school on future success, some say it’s entirely self-selection and sorting, others say that it’s signaling or clustering effects (or possibly even a ‘better education’). My opinion is that it really depends on the individual – people who thrive in competitive environments benefit most by benchmarking up, but not everyone is like that.
The game doesn’t end here
In fact, it’s only just begun.
