Today, if you get 30 or 35 applicants and a half-dozen highly qualified applicants you are doing well".
The ESA selected the crew from thousands of highly qualified applicants, and put them through a year of intensive training.
It turns away hundreds, if not thousands, of highly qualified applicants to the English BA course each year.
College selections require flexibility and reasoned discrimination on the part of admission officers, who are judging many highly qualified applicants.
On the demand side, China produces vast numbers of highly qualified applicants whose families can afford to pay American fees.
"Now, the good news is that there is some change; if you're deferred you're still in a pool of highly qualified applicants that schools are still interested in".
Peter Keisler, assistant attorney general for the civil division, complained to Mr. Elston after the rejection of several highly qualified applicants that the decisions were "either irrational or so irrational that they are motivated by politics," the report found.
In the first cut, the hopefuls (roughly 6,300 this round) are whittled down to around 400 "highly qualified" applicants and asked to obtain an Astronaut Selection Pre-Screening Medical History and Examination.
The most highly qualified applicants — specifically, those with credit scores of more than 680, low household debt and good income, and who take out credit lines of $100,000 or more — would qualify for an interest rate of half a percentage point over the prime rate, which is currently at 3.25 percent.
