What's going on with the College Admission this year?

[Sawdust]

^I can't think of why all of a sudden this would happen in 2008 as opposed to 2007, but time will tell

[icy9ff8]

Regarding post #22. There is no indication that the student's GC read his applications. It is also unlikely that the GC did so as most are overworked during the admissions season reading transcripts & writing recommendations. Even at the most elite prep schools, applications are not read by the school (although there may be an exception). Post #30 is correct with respect to several elite universities as has been discussed repeatedly on CC. Speculation is that some elite universities are concerned with the discontinuance of ED admissions options at Princeton, Harvard & Virginia while seeing an increase in applications as well as an increase of number of applications/schools applied to by graduating high school students. Post #30 is absolutely correct, in my opinion.

[TheGFG]

"As for your second son? I wish I knew. For now, I am allowing my next child to take whatever classes she wants (satisfying graduation requirements, of course) and enjoy doing whatever she pleases. Let the chips fall where they may."

We're more or less doing the same with our second. Our eldest did fine with college admissions, but definitely not as well as people would have predicted. He's a personable URM (Hispanic) with good EC's (including 3-season varsity athlete), academic awards (in writing and social studies), high SAT's (NMF), he took the most advanced, honors and AP's possible at our hs (13 AP's in all including Calc BC, AP Chem, AP Bio, and Physics BC and scored 5's on all tests), etc. Hispanic students with stats like his are uncommon here, so teachers and peers alike were convinced he'd get into the top tier of the Ivies. He didn't. What stung for him was not so much that he didn't get in, but who from his high school did: a nerdy quiet Asian kid who was not well-rounded and did little besides study. The kid is nice and was my son's friend, but was the kind of boy who had to be hounded and bribed before he would consent to attend his best friend's surprise birthday party. You get the picture. My son generally did what he wanted without a thought to college admissions, but he did believe that having a life outside school was a very desirable trait that elite colleges want to see and that it's not enough to just have high test scores and a high GPA. To our surprise, Princeton liked the 2400 SAT score more than they cared about the fact that kid didn't do much of anything but study.

The lesson? There are no rules. Work hard, of course, but do what makes you happy.

[je_ne_sais_quoi]

Bingo, epiphany. Bad advice, overly safe advice, outdated advice. Take your pick.

[ellemenope]

>>I'm going out a limb here, but if the "top" college campuses are 100% Asian because their grades and scores warrant admission, I'm all for it.<<

The problem with this statement is that mere grades and scores do not warrant admission..for anyone...at super-selective top colleges.

[TheGFG]

except when they do.

And that's the point. My son could have cut out 3/4 of his EC's and relaxed or slept more, so long as he raised his SAT a few points and he'd have looked just like the kid who did get in.

[epiphany]

I'm sure that did sting, GFG, & I can understand why the conventional wisdom was what it was. However, you/your family & friends saw only the competing student's outward appearance -- what was known to you. Did not actually see the application, nor the recommendations. For example (not saying it was true in this case, but I've seen it), I've seen nerdy type students, including Asians, post on CC. Before results rounds they seem to indicate they're just "all stats." When the results come up & it's all fleshed out, it's quite obvious why they've been selected. The particular academic accomplishments, beyond those stats, are exceptional & consistently exceptional. At times they involve research, they involve academic initiatives, they involve academic programs outside the scope of the school that your family may not have known about.

What I'm impressed with in the postings of some of these results is the clear self-profiling that is occurring. Conclusion? Bet your bottom dollar that the application was probably at least as eloquent & clear. This is not a negative comparison to your own eldest, merely a guess that they might have been choosing, in your case, between fractionally different values to the school -- one in the other student's field, one in yours, or even both in the same field. Sometimes such decisions are just toss-ups, & honest reps will concede that such does happen.

[je_ne_sais_quoi]

I wish there was a way for objective, and only objective, measures to be used for college admissions. That seems the most fair. Maybe not the most enlighted, but the most fair. Any ideas? Harder entrance exams? I KNOW there will always be rich kids who can pay for tutors, etc., but this insanity seems to warrant some changes. Trying to make things more equal here makes it less equal there.

[je_ne_sais_quoi]

Sorry: enlightened.

[ellemenope]

TheGFG,

I wish we could have seen the application of the nerdy Asian kid, to see what it was that Princeton saw that led it to accept him. You portray him as one-dimensional. If so, perhaps he was passionately and deeply uni-dimensional.

If Albert Einstein applied to your school, you wouldn't turn him down just because he didn't play a sport.

But those kinds of kids are pretty rare.

[epiphany]

So glad am I that the measures are not 'only objective,' whatever that means. If it means scores, that's the very reason why we have acquired thousands of extremely capable Chinese & Indian students in our illustrious universities. Their best, their brilliance, was not good enough for their own countries, often.

[epiphany]

"perhaps he was passionately and deeply uni-dimensional. "

My point exactly, ellen. Thanks for re-phrasing. Such portraits are what I often see on CC, & therefore what we can expect was relayed in the application itself.

[geomom]

I guess we can all bandy about ideas on what makes a great student, or what admissions offices are looking for... but the thing I always wonder about is whether the admissions offices ever do some serious research. Do they go out on campus and identify the leaders, the academic stars, the solid contributors and then go back and look at the applications for those students and see if they could see their future success? Do they challenge their own assumptions by doing statistical analyses? Or are they just flying by the seat of the pants?

[epiphany]

One other thing, je_ne_sais_quoi:

It's not just that too many GC's (of even high-performing publics) are giving bad admissions advice & course strategy + e.c. advice, it's also that apparently public schools are failing to teach the craft of writing. I'll tell you that some of the rejects this year at my state's 2 best public colleges submitted underwhelming essays. I actually worked with one student extensively, trying to get him to re-state his thoughts in his admissions essay. To some extent he resisted, preferring less clear idiosyncratic expression. To another extent, he shrugged off the essay as window dressing & a minor factor. Sorry: with 5-digit volumes of applicants, every little aspect counts. He was unprepared to write brilliantly, by his public education, which was hardly underprivileged.

A second student I have been working with is 2 years younger, but with writing skills as bad or worse, and in the same school. Writing is not being taught well enough.

[epiphany]

Yes, geomom, they've done the tracking & have sometimes weighed in on this on CC.