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<p>Touché. I’ll only add that many, if not most, colleges are looking for similar qualities, and an indictment of the admissions policies of Princeton et al. is an indictment of American higher education, with the possible exception of certain two-year colleges and state schools.</p>
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Isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.</p>
<p>Do things in k - 12 for the sake of being accepted at certain place is to live a boring life. One should just do a homework to insure grades so that he/she have choices and pursue absolutely every dream that a kid has, I am talking about real things, like sports, music, arts, writing, making friends, whatever else, I am not talking about dream of being accepted to Ivy or Elite. However, if this is the DREAM, then go for it, but be prepared to be misearble when all others around having fun and memories for the rest of their lives. </p>
<p>Adcoms are very well able to determine intellectual vitality. And the other attributes they want and need. Sorry, but it’s hs kids who have trouble with that. They are so used to the k-12 scheme that they assume it’s about who does well in their papers and tests, who got elected to what. </p>
<p>Introverts can present them selves well. The problem is often kids who suffer overconfidence, the ‘hs forum-like’ certainty you know what they seek because, after all, you have experienced high school and how the high school and your peers rate you. Nope. Now it’s the leap to college.</p>
<p>There can be many vals, btw.</p>
<p>Because I feel like writing this:</p>
<ol>
<li> Its not the intellec vitality you or someone else claims/tells.<br></li>
<li>Yes, they are looking for well-rounded individuals. Not some wacky sets of outliers.</li>
<li> No, the supp essays are not to suggest your unique offerings or blow their minds. In many cases, they legitimately ask to see if you know “Why Us?” And if they don’t ask, they will be combing your other answers, to see if you do get what that college values, seeks and offers. But yes, they don’t want generic “you have good professors.”</li>
<li>Major? if you are smart, you did pursue appropriate side activities. But, along with #2, its a risk to make yourself an outlier or go for a theme that makes you seem unable to venture out of your box.<br></li>
<li>The faculty I know who get a chance (and there is zero certainty yours will get to faculty) will review same as adcoms- ie. for the school, based on the frame of what that school tends to want and need. The diff is that faculty will have a more specific courses and classrooms perspective.</li>
</ol>
<p>This stuff is high stakes. Never assume. </p>
<p>“if you are smart, you did pursue appropriate side activities.”
<p>@lookingforward, since you’re an adcom, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this: <a href=“Experiences and Thoughts Through the Transfer Process - Transfer Students - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/transfer-students/1669552-experiences-and-thoughts-through-the-transfer-process.html</a></p>
<p>But most smart ones will still have a set just for fun.
Exactly.</p>
<p>I am not an adcom, but am involved. I don’t speak for the college. If you ever see real life adcom on CC, you know they hold back. I speak for my own experiences and observations.</p>
<p>Darn you, WasatchWriter! You beat me to it. </p>
<p>@Pizzagirl First thing that popped into your head, right? lol</p>
<p>Me too! Well played @wasatchwriter, well played.</p>
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<p>I disagree. An example would be the current crop of U of Chicago students. I think the admissions officers at U of C are having a hard time now separating the intellectuals from the strivers/grinders since they opened up to the Common App. My kid was pretty appalled at the type of student she met at accepted student days there last year, and her dorm hosts as well. Hard partying and obnoxious seemed to be the norm, unfortunately. She talked to older U of C students she knew there, and they confirmed that the incoming students are not for the most part very intellectual, and they lament the change. Students aiming for top colleges have learned a lot of tricks to look intellectual (and their parents help this along where possible). There are a lot of posers out there, and ad coms don’t seem to be able to tell the difference in a lot of cases.</p>
<p>It’s not “looking intellectual,” which I agree hs kids can master. Bottom line is she’s happy at Mudd, right? Clearly they put together a good group, could identify their type, including that vitality, curiosity, follow-through and more. And, lasso those kids in. </p>
<p>Sure… I am just saying that U of C used to be the ideal spot for that kid. But the admissions office has lost the touch (or, heaven forbid, I suppose maybe the desire? can’t actually bear to contemplate that…) to pull that kid in.</p>
<p>lookingforward, I really think that your experience is biasing your view of things. I do not think that admissions committees at the place(s) that tout “intellectual vitality” are necessarily able to identify it in practice.</p>
<p>You ended post #63 above with the advice “Never assume.” I think that is good advice. I suppose that you might be deluged with high school students who think that “great” means “outstanding in the context of their [small] school/environment.” So I am happy to grant you some leeway on that issue. However, there are posters on CC who “aren’t so much green as cabbagey-looking,” to borrow a phrase from the BBC’s Inspector Lewis series. A number of the posters who counter your viewpoint have experience that extends well beyond their local schools.</p>
<p>Schools are different, GCs are different, individual teachers are different. Some of them observably have a hard time figuring out what intellectual vitality is, themselves. </p>
<p>Some of the local GCs considered it to be their responsibility to advocate for their students, while others considered it to be their job to judge the students. I do not believe that the admissions committee members can keep tabs on the personal outlooks of 50,000+ GCs (perhaps 100,000+), with turnover on top of that. And how much more impossible to know whether the limitations reflected in a teacher’s letter are those of the student or the writer, given the number of high-school teachers in the U.S. </p>
<p>Asking adcoms to be able to tell the difference between looking intellectual and thinking intellectually may be too much. If you look at my link, it seems likely that they can’t tell the difference between someone who’s really achieved and someone flat-out lying.</p>
<p>Matthew Martoma got in to Duke & Harvard Law . . . then Stanford GSB <em>after</em> he was kicked out of Harvard Law for falsifying his transcript.</p>
<p>^^ Post #73… squee…Inspector Lewis… my favorite (totally an aside, I heard they are shooting a few new episodes!)</p>
<p>I think mudd hasn’t suffered as much as U of C not because their ad coms cam tell apart grinders and “intellects” better, but rather because very few grinders wound like to go to Harvey mudd. </p>
<p>Omg, QM. You cant see it in some of your students? Are you talking about others (high school GCs and teachers?) who “tell” that the kid has intellectual vitality or what comes through in the app itself? Are we meaning a kid, such as PT points to, who comes on CC with some suspect tale? Maybe we need to cover what we each think this intellectual vitality is.</p>
<p>It’s our old argument, QM.<br>
I think xiggi made some very good points here. </p>
<p>And, I agreed with intparent’s early comment: “I think that this “intellectual vitality” component was her #1 selling point to schools. Schools are aching to find genuinely intellectually curious students within the mountain of applications from strivers and grinders.” And poseurs.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for her girl, but this is where “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” While most kids are looking at the parts. I don’t think intparent’s D’s results were the luck of throwing her dart at some dartboard. I think it’s obvious adcoms at some pretty great schools did spot it.</p>
<p>I’m sure they miss some kids with great potential, waiting to catch fire, know they admit some for their consistency, not their spark. I know they have to let some go in the final fine tuning and don’t get others to matriculate. That’s different than saying they can’t spot it.</p>
<p>@lookingforward:
“Suspect tale”? Why suspect?</p>
<p>In any case, I think that adcoms can read essays and recs well. They can tell if an intellectual spark is displayed there (though in the case of transfers, there are evidently no recs?) However, essays can be forged by someone who simply writes well. Recs are tougher, but some teachers are impressed by grinders.</p>