<p>Even a well rounded class needs some well rounded kids in the mix and most of the pointy kids are very good at everything and just extra good at some things. I used to say my oldest was a closet well rounded kid - after all his highest SAT score was in CR, and he got a 5 on APUSH, but he was a 100% computer nerd and he made no secret of it in his application - not much self editing went on - we were just grateful he finally spit out a few essays! Some schools liked that, some didn’t. I think his attitude was that if they don’t like me the way I am, I probably don’t want to be there. </p>
<p>Younger son, who is a more adaptable type, was more savvy about really thinking about how to present himself. In his case, I think he was a kid with huge potential, but not too many accomplishments. He’s the ultimate well rounded kid - his school EC’s were orchestra, literary magazine, and Science Olympiad - and the one he had the most success at was SO, even though he was clearly not a STEM kid. I’m pretty sure his letters of recommendation were more interesting that older son’s. His APUSH teacher asked for a copy of the research paper they were most proud of, so that he could reference it in his recommendation if he wanted to. That teacher also asked them to write a paragraph about what their favorite textbook in the course was - they had several. There was a real chance for the teacher to write about his “intellectual vitality” in a field where there aren’t that many opportunities for a high schooler to shine. (He also did some optional essays which showed how history was his strong suit.)</p>
<p>I didn’t interpret her comment as saying that all kids who wanted an elite school education were entitled prestige-seekers. I interpreted her comment as saying that there are adults who do well without an elite education and don’t necessarily get why they “need” to pay for an elite school.</p>
<p>And of course, this all gets back to experience. <em>I</em> believe that there are intangibles in an elite school experience that <em>I</em> think are worth paying a premium for (and am putting my money where my mouth is). That is not to say that elite schools are “necessary” (as in: food, shelter, clothing) but if you can afford them, I think they’re great. If someone can’t, they can’t and that’s how life goes at times. There are plenty of other things in life where I don’t see a difference between plain and fancy and other people do. And so it goes.</p>
<p>I thought long and hard about sending my kids to private elite high schools. Since both I and my husband had attended good prep schools we knew what they were missing out on, but we also could see that their big high school offered many things the private high schools did not. In the end, the kids preferred to stay with their friends and we felt most of their high school teachers were every bit as good as private school teachers, though because of larger class sizes and other impediments they weren’t always able to offer as much as a teacher with fewer students would have. </p>
<p>It’s not always about the prestige or getting into college down the line, though that may be a piece of the equation. There’s always going to be a difference when class sizes are 10 to 15 vs closer to 30.</p>
<p>Could not agree more with the last sentence. For the first part, the schools do indeed do a pretty good job of identifying the students they want, according to their established criteria and their own definition of what represents intellectual vitality, which remains a vague concept.</p>
<p>It is also easy to understand that students who did not do well in the HYPS rounds might find faults with the criteria used or with the outcomes. With single digit admissions, it would be hard to have a different set of reaction, and with the numbers of the disappointed being 18 to 19 times larger, it is normal the critics dwarf the “lucky” ones. </p>
<p>@JHS I honestly don’t think there’s a place at UChicago to hide a “phony” applicant. It’s very sink or swim. The college is more or less a nonstop grind and students are always positioning themselves for prestigious internships and research. Would you agree? I think older students really liked that their school was low key, as in only the savvy “got it” but now it’s a target for prestige obsessed helicopter parents. I think that’s due to a combo of: common app (which UChicago emailed me to say they left this year), Obama, US News top 5, and the college spending a lot of money to market itself to high school students. Either way, I trust that admissions has a template to detect UChicago students, while preserving the UChicago vibe.</p>
<p>All of that said, I think the general population still has no freaking idea what kind of school UChicago is. People that don’t follow US News or work in academia have no idea it’s one of the most rigorous and prestigious college in the nation. Most people assume it’s a small regional school when they hear “University of Chicago.”</p>
<p>Great! You should ask the advisor to let all of us know how to approach Stanford’s roommate essay. It has puzzled generations of CCers who dream about Stanford! </p>
<p>Then at last, we might have something original instead of the five “secrets” we have been dissecting for days! </p>
<p>There are often more than one val at a school. Our school names 10. I guess because 10 out of 850 graduates is still pretty impressive. I know of one local school that has let anyone with a 4.0 make claim to being valedictorian. </p>
<p>Are you really serious? Chicago might not have a football team anymore than creates the “knowledge” of schools every Saturday afternoon in the Fall, but it is hardly unknown. After all, Chicago is not Williams or Reed! And as a bonus, most people will know the city where Chicago is located! </p>
<p>Do you really believe that the general population has not heard about the Obama connection? Or that they never heard Bush and Kerry went to Yale? And if the general population is typically oblivious to the inner workings of higher education, most families with kids in school are debating schools, and often from the top down. </p>
<p>The roommate essay is a test. Every question for a highly selective is. I liked NYU’s old supp questions with the radical character count-- you can either distinguish between NYU and NYC or not. </p>
<p>Gull, how do you know so much about UChi and others? May be time to tell us.</p>
<p>@GullLake older son went to Carnegie Mellon (got into Harvard, but was a comp sci kid so felt CMU was a better fit.) Younger son went to Tufts - majored in IR. He’s told me he really appreciates his high school experiences compared to his more sheltered friends at Tufts. </p>
<p>Oh my Stanford’s roommate essay, older son flunked that one!</p>
<p>Tufts used to have a 50 word “Why Tufts” essay. It was challenging to do something so short.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan @xiggi Well, the average person doesn’t follow politics, period, let alone enough to know Obama lectured at UChicago’s law school, or that some of his inner circle hails from UC. That said, those connections certainly broadened the college’s exposure.</p>
<p>And even the people that have heard of UChicago, most have zero concept of its academic chops or culture. Even bright kids who obsess over the US News list often gloss over UChicago. Ditto for MIT, although MIT is a more established brand. It’s a college… in Chicago… likely very nerdy. Nobel laureates, or Becker and Friedman are not things of interest to 99.99% of the population. And wonky David Brooks, currently the college’s most prominent voice, certainly doesn’t make the school sound like some huge party. Parents who follow his column are likely to characterize that the school is for wonky nerds.</p>
<p>Is there a point and a bottom line in the discussion about Chicago? Does it make any difference if 200,000,000 Americans know about the University of Chicago or 2,000,000 … if all the 2,000,000 are high school students. And are those 2,000,000 really relevant if Chicago is “well” known to the 100,000 or 200,000 who have an interest in learning more about the school. </p>
<p>This is all about admissions and chances are that the students know just as much about Chicago as they do about Harvard of Stanford. And a cynic might add that the “as much” does not amount to a huge ball of wax! If some get obsessive about the minute differences in curriculum or selectivity, most students start with a wide net based on parents, relatives, friends, counselors, and publications, and often without much method. </p>
<p>Chicago has been in the news for a long time and has garnered sufficient publicity to have a sizeable number of people who “know” the school well enough to formulate an opinion about the admissions. They probably would not know the differences between Ted O’Neill and Milton Friedman or might think that Morton Kaplan writes pretty good SAT books, but they will know enough for the purposes of college selection. </p>
<p>After all, the world of selective college applications is a lot smaller than one thinks! </p>
<p>The UChicago banter came about because a poster two pages ago inferred that their admissions department is asleep at the wheel. I think they’re probably getting an influx of prestige gunners applying, but they’re by no means “phonies”. And I think the academic culture is pretty obvious to anyone who spends more than a night on campus. It wouldn’t surprise me if that accepted day was doing its best to HIDE the intensity of the atmosphere. I don’t know anyone coasting at UChicago. They’re always stressed out and storming through book after book.</p>
<p>I think that a poseur who was admitted to the University of Chicago by mistake and went there would probably regret it. Soon. There was only limited faculty turnover when the Common App was adopted, and probably none of the turnover was due to the adoption of the Common App.</p>
<p>My daughter was accepted into the top public university in the country, UC Berkeley (Cal). She came from a very small town and although Cal was her first choice she knew she didn’t have a chance. I am a single mom and so she had no financial means to get into college except loans. However after Cal received her application and essay they asked HER if she would accept plane tickets to come view the campus. The rest is history as they say. She got a Cal Grant, Pell Grant and Berkeley scholarships. She just graduated with honors with a BS degree in Molecular Plant Genetics/Biology/Forestry. Got a job right out of college working as an intern in her field and is in the process of applying to grad schools. So all that said, what got her into Berkeley? Yes her 4.7 GPA out of high school helped, along with 3 passing grades for AP classes but she didn’t do well on her overall SATs It was her essay and her well rounded life style that impressed Cal. She did tons of volunteer work, was in ballet since she was 4, worked as a peer counselor for younger kids and convinced them that by entering into a STEM field she could help our planet stay healthy which is the most important thing all of us should be doing. I am not saying it wasn’t a tough road for her, because even though she was her high school class valedictorian, when she got to Berkeley she soon found out that ALL her fellow students were valedictorians, but she made it and I am one proud mom. </p>