<p>Re: post 6. There is only one val in each high school class. Do the simple in your head arithmetic, and it is easy to determine that the VAST majority of successful college students are NOT the class val. </p>
<p>Agree, it’s nice to be proud…but really, I can’t even remember who WAS the class val at my high school. Neither can either of my kids. It really doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things.</p>
<p>I remember the val of my class. A total grind. Someone who dropped down out of honors classes senior year to preserve their straight-A average. Went to one of HYP. So much for intellectual vitality. </p>
<p>Does every thread have to turn into an antiHYP/anti-elite school one? The truth is that top colleges can’t take all the best students but at the same time the reality is that in the admissions process there is a “pecking order” if you will. You can’t use isolated
individual cases to make generalizations, simple as that.</p>
<p>Benley, the point is…just because you are not the sal or val of your high school class does NOT mean you are doomed to failure. The vast majority of college students are NOT val or sal…at any college, including the elite schools. Many very successful folks were not the val or sal. Many did not go to elite schools. Sure some were and did…but that is not the complete recipe for success. There are lots of other ingredients.</p>
<p>My D2 certainly wasn’t the sal or val of her class (not totally sure she was even top 10%, her high school doesn’t rank and her GPA was a 3.7 UW). But she had that intellectual spark, and was able to show it in her ECs, apps, recommendations, and essays. @xiggi, as an aside, when she heard the mustard prompt (she was still in high school, not the year she applied), she IMMEDIATELY knew what she would do with it. She had been experimenting with making different kinds of batteries (including a bacteria in mud idea that sent her out mucking around in a nearby pond and bringing smelly buckets of mud into our laundry room…), and thought it would make a great ingredient in the electrolyte solution. That essay never got written, but I am guessing she could have done something interesting with it.</p>
<p>Thumper, if that’s the point then I agree, and I am glad I missed the point. :)</p>
<p>"That’s actually the point. People often think the kids who get into HYPSM are superior when really there is no difference other than luck. "</p>
<p>No, no one really thinks that kids who get into HYPSM are “superior,” other than dorky high schoolers with no perspective on things. </p>
<p>PG…some of their parents also think they are superior…but the rest of us know they are not.</p>
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<p>I totally understand that, but the story confirms my point about the purported “intellectualism” than it discredits it. Could the same essay have been written in answer to ANY prompt with slight adaptations. </p>
<p>The essay should reflect who a person is. Not whom they pretend to be to sound interesting, intelligent, or that intellectual again. A kid who find ideas in smelly buckets of mud clearly can be herself! </p>
<p>Is she the proud Mudder? A marriage in heaven! </p>
<p>FWIW, the local HS typically has 18-20 Vals (or kids with perfect GPAs) per class. It’s not one per class. I don’t think that it does them a whole lot of good to get the designation, but it’s not a one and only.</p>
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<p>Everything could be chalked to luck. Good genes, wealth, intelligence, the right parents, the right culture, inbred work ethics, and lots more. </p>
<p>The reality is that many fail to take advantage of their attributes. </p>
<p>“Does every thread have to turn into an antiHYP/anti-elite school one?” …it seems to be about half of the day to day traffic on here.</p>
<p>@xiggi, my original point was that admissions officers are not as good as detecting intellectual vitality as people think. They are able to detect a lot of it but there are also many times they miss it or are fooled by someone who plays the system.</p>
<p>This happens not only because of the background of admissions officers but also because in high school there is very little information that can really predict how a student will turn out in college. Michele Hernandez alludes to this in a chapter of her book. Sure, recommendations and essays help, but if a people do not know the recommender, how can they really put the recommendation in context? Also, high school is not always an intellectual environment, so a smart student who does well in class may not always interact with a teacher as well as they would interact with a college professor. I’m sure my grad school recommendations were much better than for undergrad since I connected a lot better with my college professors.</p>
<p>Essays obviously are a big help, but it’s still hard to tell how they used in comparison to stuff like ECs. A lot of the times intellectual vitality is hard to see because of this. I don’t think a lot of people understand that college admissions should also think about potential. Everyone talks about admitting students who have started businesses and high school but whatnot, but when I got to Penn, most of those students just blended into the student body whereas others you would not expect based on high school criteria like ECs rose to the top.</p>
<p>Also, many of my friends wanted to go to MIT because it would have been a good fit for them, not because of the ranking. They are very similar to the several students I know who went to MIT. The other ones I mentioned appealed to them for other reasons. Yes it turned out that Penn was great for them, but they didn’t have nearly as many options as you would have thought. People seem to think that an admissions officer picks up an essay and is automatically amazed by the sheer brilliance of a student. I don’t think it is always like that.</p>
<p>“Also, many of my friends wanted to go to MIT because it would have been a good fit for them, not because of the ranking.”</p>
<p>I’m sure 95% of the applicants to MIT think MIT would be a good fit for them. So what? That means nothing to the adcoms; they aren’t there to reward “who loves me the best.”</p>
<p>“People seem to think that an admissions officer picks up an essay and is automatically amazed by the sheer brilliance of a student. I don’t think it is always like that.”</p>
<p>No, of course not. They don’t want a college that is solely focused on sheer brilliant people who don’t interact with others.</p>
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<p>I think you are conflating many issues and probably making the role of admissions’ officer a lot bigger than it is. They are not tasked to evaluate the intelligence of students or even predict how individuals will fare at their schools. Their task is to recognize students who will fit in the school and, hopefully, answer to a number of institutional demands. </p>
<p>Of course, they can be fooled, but they have the advantage of the numbers and they can learn from their mistakes. Over time, they do recognize patterns and recognize what happens when students with overinflated resumes turn out to be non-contributors. </p>
<p>Like it or not, the process to turn an application into an admission is hardly an excercise in subtility. It is all about presenting yourself in the best light possible as well as staying true yo yourself. If you happen to be a super-intellectual (whatever that is) who is also a poor communicator … chances are that the “presentation” will not find many people interested in dissecting it to find signs of brilliance or intellectual vitality. Yep, it is that old “show but do not tell” cliché, but without telling there isn’t much showing! The best applications are the ones that leave little doubt about why a student is a good candidate for school XYZ. This is one of the hardest things for most high schoolers to do as they have been told to avoid talking about the I in them! </p>
<p>You seem convinced that the adcoms are prone to miss vital signs. I do not doubt that such is the case, but I also happen to think that this is a result of unclear and nebulous “packages” that fail to convey the message the schools are looking for. </p>
<p>We have all heard that most adcoms could accept twice as many competent and comparable candidates. But there is little evidence, beyond obscure anecdotes, that they end up making the wrong final choices for … their employer. And THAT is all what matters in this context. </p>
<p>Calling HYPS/etc admissions “luck” is THE most perpetuated falsehood on these forums. Cream rises to the top and schools have templates that find brilliant students that ALSO gel with the school’s character. They generally get it right. Examine your motives and stop clinging to the burnouts or underachievers they got “wrong” to push your agenda.</p>
<p>The second falsehood all over this board is that brilliant poor people can’t afford the elite schools. Yet the top 30 schools are the most generous with means aid.</p>
<p>For such a young guy, you seem to have it all figured out. Unfortunately, you completely miss the point. It’s not that these schools don’t “get it right”; it’s that they also have to turn away students that are just as qualified as the lucky (yes, lucky) ones who get in simply because there is not enough space for all of them. Think about it logically. Does it really seem to you that the pool of qualified students is finite? Even when more and more kids are starting earlier and earlier preparing themselves for outstanding ECs on their resumes, top test scores, and the most rigorous curriculum they can take? </p>
<p>I don’t know why you are hung up on people having an “agenda” just because they disagree with your worldview. </p>
<p>They aren’t “just as qualified” they lack something. It’s not darts at a dartboard. College sorts high achieving people where they ought to be. I can say for certain the friends of mine that are going to HYP are undeniably more brilliant than my friends going to Penn, NU and UMich.</p>
<p>Everybody at HYP is smart and accomplished but I find it hard to believe that all of your friends going there are “undeniably more brilliant” than kids going to other schools. </p>
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<p>Again, your lack of logic is showing. “College” is not a single entity “sorting” people. And there is no “ought to be.” What about the brilliant students who need to stay close to home in, say, Mississippi and don’t have the option of applying to far-away elite schools? What about the brilliant students who don’t particularly care for the vibe of HYPS or M? You have a very simplistic view of how it all works. I will cut you some slack because you are (I’m guessing) only a 17-year-old guy who hasn’t seen much of the world. But you might try to have a little respect for those of us who have.</p>