<p>^ Xig, I may add a new line to my repertory: “Is it disdain or is it scorn?” Ie, whatever it comes from, not good. </p>
<p>Again, the background topic is admissions and we were talking those with fierce competition, which can cherry pick. Any one person’s proclamations or anecdotes are just that.</p>
<p>QM: you are very welcome. However, just to be very clear, my intent isn’t to compliment or flatter or defend … just to try and move the discussion on a bit quicker because I have a limited number of years left to devote to the MIT threads. Probably only 40 at most.</p>
<p>Well -with regard to the main topic of admissions, assuming this is the main topic ; ), and the side topic of admissions essays, it’s just interesting to me that various readers read something very different in the same post. I’m not hopeful for QMC. : ( </p>
<p>“And I’m the type who has no issues ignoring the peanut galleries in my life…”</p>
<p>Oh please! Your posts are replete with “here’s what my friends / high school classmates / their parents / college classmates / professors / coworkers all think about Topic XYZ.” You certainly seem to spend a lot of time figuring out what groups of other people collectively think about all kinds of topics. Of course you care. The worst insult to you would be if someone mistook you for someone who was part of the bourgeoisie. It’s critically important to you to have the right “cred” in front of a particular group of peers, and you’re extremely acutely aware of (what you believe) they value and don’t value. </p>
<p>QMC needs to be who she is and let the chips fall where they may. </p>
<p>Or QMC needs to be open, as scientists should be, to some solid guidance.<br>
Of course there is hope. Just less of it for hs kids who think their way is the only way or that “being oneself” means warts and all, when you are asking for a highly selective prize.</p>
<p>Again - I don’t see any “warts” in QM’s posts. Basically I find them a laugh out loud hoot. Is there no one like me reading admissions essays? Cause I’m admitting her on the spot. I don’t even care if she was USAMO, whatever. The essay is so funny she gets an auto-admit.</p>
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<p>I agree with you up to the point where you say cobrat cares. He writes as if he’s observing these people like an anthropologist visiting a foreign land. He cares enough to carefully study people’s opinions, but doesn’t seem to have any emotion attached to what those opinions might be. </p>
<p>It’s not all about QuantMech, alh. </p>
<p>I agree with PG. An incessant string of second or third hand tales from umpteen degrees of separation as some relevant proofs, lessons to bestow, some sort of learning opp for the rest of us. Not an anthropologist, professionally neutral. And often, not current perspective.</p>
<p>Apologies, alh, but what are you admitting her to? ALHU? Because one of the points of contention, historically, is that things don’t work as some wish they would. “We” don’t get to tell admissions folks what “we” value. And then the talk turns back to…how “we” think it should be. And why, and numbers, and saving the world and feelings or discouragement or fairness or conformity or inauthentic, etc. </p>
<p>It is what it is and the wise try to learn what the expectations are. This isn’t back in “our day.” Or even 5-10 years ago. It’s now.</p>
<p>If they want to see engagement, recognize it. Same as, if they want to see rigor, either choose it or modify your expectations. It’s a huge funnel and only a small % will make it through. Mind your apps.</p>
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<p>PG,</p>
<p>Sometimes, you seem to have a remarkable capacity to conflate someone relaying something he/she’s observed versus something he/she actually believes/does. </p>
<p>Out of curiosity, are you the type of person to conflate what messengers/report relay to you with what they actually believe/how they act? </p>
<p>Are you the type to metaphorically “shoot the messenger” if the message/ideas/observations doesn’t accord with your own worldview? </p>
<p>LF: If I were a reader of admissions essays, (LOL) would the team boss give me some sort of formula or rubric to grade them on, or would it just be my personal response? How much freedom do I have here?</p>
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<p>I didn’t say they were salient points, just that cobrat does not seem to have a real emotional investment in them, unlike most of the people here.</p>
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<p>I am reminded of Dead Poets Society, where they calculated a poem’s greatness by plotting Importance on the y-axis and how “artful” the poem is on the x-axis, and then taking the area. What was it, the Pritchard scale?</p>
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<p>@poeme - None of this still tells me where the Penn adcoms went wrong though. They are admitting 17 year olds based on their potential to make a difference. A few people who choose the wrong career for themselves they are not suited for on the long run and go onto to do other things does not reflect poorly on Penn admissions officers judgement.</p>
<p>Seems to me, Poeme has admitted to a nice evolution and will continue to evolve. Can we just look at that? Her comments gave me something to chew on, when we look at some kids.</p>
<p>When you’re in the trenches, in college, it can seem like some others set poorly thought out directions. My D1 used to tell me what she thought was wrong with peer thinking. I never called her out on it, just tried to ensure she also have some perspective and let others be. </p>
<p>Many kids do seem to have the wrong goals-- but we adults know most usually work it out. Some of the bluster and huff/puff during college is just that. Just as hs juniors are different from hs seniors.</p>
<p>The most interesting guy I met (not the Dos Equis guy in commercals or the Tres Equis guy on SNL) in the last year was an alum of a college at a college presentation. If you just looked at his resume, you might think he has no clue what to do with his life at 50 since he changed his career over 6 times in 30 years after college graduation but the types of stuff he did during that time frame is mindblowing. What struck me most was that he had an MBA from a top 5 business school and decided to join the navy and go around in submarines for the next 10 years or so when the first gulf war started. He had an economics degree with Computer Science background, worked some, got an MBA, worked for the Government, joined the navy, worked elsewhere after leaving Navy, got a law degree, changed several industries along the way…</p>
<p>I wonder what his college essay said in 1981.</p>
<p>Boy, I don’t know how many variations on a theme (original poster’s)…let alone permutations from the variations this thread has gone through…onward…let the stream of consciousness continue! :)) </p>
<p>I am so tired after a 12 hour drive that I will have to defer my response to cobrat’s comments on my post other than to say that yes, I absolutely believe you also have GREAT difficulty letting go of the MANY, MANY resentments of every possible color which go way back to elementary, middle school, and high school. You are certainly determined to not let go of any of them, so I can only say “suit yourself” to anyone who is carrying long term resentments over every conceivable slight from decades past. </p>
<p>I had a friend several years back who was a college career counselor and she carried out a study looking for a correlation between which professions the actors in the top TV show depicted, and what her students were interested in studying. THis was a long time ago, mind you, but she referred to it as the “LA law effect.” In essence, if you’re a student who is a bit lost and you don’t know what to do with your life, you are likely to be heavily influenced by whatever the top TV show is at the time, and the professions depicted in the show – SHe actually showed that when a show like Grey’s Anatomy is popular, med school applications go up, and when a show about lawyers is popular, med school applications go down and law school applications go up.
She personally found the results horrifying – and always used the data to suggest to students that they do some serious research about careers beyond simply thinking it would be fun to be a doctor because the docs on Grey’s Anatomy appear to be having so much fun. (I always ruin that show for my kids by suggesting that if this were a real hospital, they wouldn’t be kissing after they get off work because they’d want to take a shower first to get rid of all the stinky hospital smells, etc.) I guess my point is that a lot of people are probably asked in interviews why they want to be a doctor, and though they will never admit it, it may have something to do with their favorite TV shows and what they were exposed to. (Working in a hospital is so glamorous – being surrounded by all those sexy doctors, etc. LOL)</p>
<p>In #1309, apprentice prof commented that an essay could show “this is a really reflective, sensitive person whose essay demonstrates maturity, compassion, and self-awareness.”</p>
<p>QMC looks at this list and thinks, “Those are qualities to which I aspire! I can’t claim to have those qualities any more than any other 17-year-old, but I would certainly like to go to a college that will help me develop them.” Do you have suggestions of specific colleges that would be good for QMC?</p>
<p>QMC really, really likes the suggestion of ALHU (!!), but cannot seem to find it in the Alphabetical List of Colleges in this site.</p>
<p>QMC is very much into striving for excellence, but “fierce competition” does not sound attractive. QMC realizes that this rules out a number of options. It is not that QMC lacks steely resolve, but that QMC has been known to step back and let another person win, when it really matters to the other person–on a limited number of occasions, of course.</p>
<p>“QMC looks at this list and thinks, “Those are qualities to which I aspire! I can’t claim to have those qualities any more than any other 17-year-old, but I would certainly like to go to a college that will help me develop them.” Do you have suggestions of specific colleges that would be good for QMC?”</p>
<p>If QMC were my daughter (and a lovely daughter she’d be!), I might suggest to her that no <em>college</em> helps one develop maturity, compassion and self-awareness – that’s just part of life and growing up. (Though a good therapist can help in the self-awareness dimension). I might also suggest that QMC is ahead of the curve on the compassion level due to her INFP character</p>