<p>cobrat #1366: If it is large plastic pink flamingos instead of dodo birds, would that be a “hook”?</p>
<p>“I think a lot of ASD kids have trouble with the essay though in its current format. To do well with the essay requires Theory of Mind – the writer needs to be able to picture the reader and write to the reader and understand what the reader might and might not like to hear.”</p>
<p>Yes. I suppose that could be considered a weakness, the same way that being not-naturally-talented-in-math could be considered a weakness. It’s possible that elite colleges are looking for what you’re calling Theory of Mind (or more broadly speaking, ability to interact with others) and weighing that just as much as they are weighing proficiency in math, science, humanities, etc.</p>
<p>“I think that PG would be the perfect person for George Clooney, if she were not married already. I presume that her perception of “fit” is valid. I don’t think that George Clooney looks for women on the basis of “fit,” in the same sense that college admissions staff use “fit.” This is not really parsing words, it’s a deeper issue than that.”</p>
<p>Thank you for the kind words, but I suspect my own belief that I would be the perfect person for George Clooney is rather like the belief of most students that they would be the perfect fit for Harvard et al. It’s based on superficial observation of George - he’s handsome, rich, seems kind, and I can certainly imagine myself in a villa in Italy, and boy wouldn’t everyone drool with jealousy. In this hypothetical, George gets to do the choosing for his girlfriend among thousands of “applicants,” so he gets to determine his criteria. </p>
<p>What do you mean by “fit” in #1375, Hunt? I am interested (and not parsing words), because you say that the colleges have a great deal of data and observations on this point. QMP graduated from one of the single-letter colleges on CC, and I actually sort of doubt that any one there has more than surface data, let alone “observations.”</p>
<p>How many students do you think one person can know? I think that one person could probably have a good idea about the “fit” of the students at Deep Springs. But if there are more than 100 students there, I retract that statement.</p>
<p>How many people at any given college are compiling the data and making the observations?</p>
<p>At the kind of large, public research university where I work, there is very little of that–perhaps too little, in terms of trying to make sure that all of the students are having a good experience. (I will think more about this.) </p>
<p>You have too many trains of thought QM- </p>
<p>And, sorry, but get real. Most applicants are not matching themselves. They don’t know what their fit is, beyond “I want.” They are not informed. I don’t care what you think adcoms should do-- until you see what adcoms are truly dealing with. </p>
<p>This just isn’t an everyone gets a medal thing. </p>
<p>Why so much repeat empathy, such thread domination, with the few kids you fret over? Why do these threads always have to turn to that one small segment that QuantMech wants to talk about? What does it gain the rest of us or add to our knowledge? We know you are tenderhearted. k? </p>
<p>“I don’t think that one would have to be anywhere on the autism spectrum to be a bit awkward or highly academically focused, and I think that “preferences” often go against people with these characteristics.”</p>
<p>Don’t be so sure. I certainly observe there are plenty of socially awkward, highly academically focused people at elite schools. </p>
<p>“How many students do you think one person can know? I think that one person could probably have a good idea about the “fit” of the students at Deep Springs. But if there are more than 100 students there, I retract that statement.”</p>
<p>You’ve been making sweeping statements about what MIT wants based on WAYYY fewer than 100 students that you personally know who have applied / been rejected. </p>
<p>If I may go all Myers-Briggsy for a second here, your INFP is inconsistent – your NF enables you to feel a lot of compassion (it’s what you intuitively feel), but you’re acting more ST in how you’re approaching the problem of fit (isn’t there some scoring mechanism somewhere? where is it?). </p>
<p>“How many students do you think one person can know? I think that one person could probably have a good idea about the “fit” of the students at Deep Springs. But if there are more than 100 students there, I retract that statement.”</p>
<p>Let’s pose the question a different way. Do you think a current student (maybe not a freshman, an upperclassman, who’s been involved in campus life in whatever way) could fairly answer the question as to whether so-and-so might “fit” at the campus? (with the usual caveat that there is something for everyone and blah blah blah) If so, why couldn’t the adcom do the same? That’s kind of their job.</p>
<p>“I think that a student might be the best judge of how he/she “fits” in a particular college environment, especially if the student is reasonably well informed about it. That doesn’t mean that I think that the student should automatically be admitted. It means that I think that the admissions staff should de-emphasize the perceived “fit” of the student, and put more weight on other qualities.”</p>
<p>This is just factually wrong. I was an alumna interviewer for Brown for years, and the “reasonably well informed kids” i interviewed every year who tried to convince me why they were a perfect fit for Brown were legion. And incorrect. “Back in the day” Brown had a lot of press on the open curriculum, no distribution requirements, pass-fail, etc. And most of the HS kids I interviewed had read lots of lots of articles about Brown, and came to the interview telling me that they planned to go to Brown (since they were a perfect fit) and take full advantage of the open curriculum by doing X. (mostly “never taking another math or science class again”).</p>
<p>Brown had no interest (at the time, I no longer interview so can’t comment) on kids who were looking for an easy four year degree filled with the things they were good at. Despite the fact that in the brains of thousands of 17 year olds, that’s what made Brown the perfect fit for them- never having to take philosophy if they were “pre-med” (which Brown didn’t have and aggressively discouraged that construct); never having to take a foreign language if they were an electrical engineer; never taking a physical science if they were majoring in comp lit.</p>
<p>That wasn’t the point. That was counter to the point. And so lots of teenagers who look at a set of facts and draw one conclusion-- the obvious conclusion- were and continue to be sad that Brown rejects them even though they are a perfect fit.</p>
<p>Qmech- do you understand my point? All the robotics enthusiasts in America want to be at MIT or CalTech; there aren’t enough beds for all of them there, so they get spread out to Purdue and Cornell and CMU and RPI and Michigan and Georgia (depending on finances, geography, and the strength of their applications). Lots of the Political Scientists/future Supreme Court clerks/Senators want to be at Yale, but Yale doesn’t need to increase the size of its history department or poli sci department- it is investing in Science Hill and biotech and its new West Haven campus for interdisciplinary work in genetics and engineering. And the theater kids all want to be at NYU or Northwestern- and the Classics kids want to be at Chicago and Berkeley, and on and on.</p>
<p>Too many kids, not enough beds. So the admissions process seems to work pretty well at evening out the student bodies- good work. No single college becomes the “department of X” where there is only one academic offering, and no single kid has to pine away for one single admissions slot (since there are many fine and wonderful and robust choices).</p>
<p>OK? And this process works for the neurotypical, the spectrum- disordered, the Gay, the straight, the band geeks and the physics olympiad kids alike. No one school wants an entire student body of X studying Y (and no kid would WANT to be at that school anyway).</p>
<p>I am not really talking about the socially awkward students. If I may revert to write about QMC for a moment, I would like to add that QMC is decidedly the life of the party, but in a good way. No raiding.</p>
<p>Usually, I have good tracking and scheduling of my trains of thought, lf, but I may have lost it at this point. My posts on this thread that I have enjoyed most were those about women in STEM, as potential role models.</p>
<p>When I mentioned people on the autism spectrum, or the (n+1)st Asian-American USAMO winner who also played the piano exceptionally well and was all-state in tennis, I was trying to add clarity to my remarks about “preferences for others” vs. “actual bias against,” for blossom. To the best of my recollection, nothing before #1300 refers to either group.</p>
<p>What I have really been trying to get at lately (pre-1300 but after women in STEM) is: How does a college student write an essay for an unknown audience? The split of opinions and interpretation of posts on this thread (everyone’s posts, no focus on anyone in particular) seems to me to be evidence that this is actually a rather difficult task. It seems to me that this is most relevant to “getting in,” after an applicant has the grades, course rigor, ECs, letters of recommendation, and standardized test scores . . . unless the essays are not really needed as “tie-breakers” after that. </p>
<p>Also, are the admissions staffers at different schools in the HYPSM + C ++ group more like each other, or are they as varied in their views as the posters on this thread?</p>
<p>Reductio ad absurdam.</p>
<p>Preferences for kids who can fit, thrive, contribute, who have learned what the school is about and can articulate their place there, who show intellectual and other curiosities and who have (and have had) the energies to do more than be boxed hs kids.</p>
<p>Just like preferences for kids on the math team who can do math. No excuses that their families discouraged math or that they’re too shy to press the buzzer. </p>
<p>August 4. Page 5. Post #73. QM, that’s when this became “your” thread and stopped being interesting to 99.9% of the people out there. blossom’s last post above summarizes the whole thing (again–it had been summarized similarly hundreds of posts ago):</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I really don’t get why this is so difficult to grasp.</p>
<p>“I think one of the things the disconcerting things that can happen in admissions is that your awkward genius kid (let’s make him a CS kid) will think he should be a perfect fit for MIT, but what really happens is that MIT says he’s a dime a dozen and passes.”</p>
<p>I still don’t know why this is “disconcerting” at a school that has, what, a 5% or so acceptance rate. It would be EXPECTED that your kid wouldn’t get in because, well, they reject 95% of applicants, the vast majority of who are academically qualified.</p>
<p>I think there is an awful lot of arrogance on CC in thinking that one’s own odds at a top school are appreciably different than whatever the overall acceptance rate is. </p>
<p>Writing a college essay is not writing for an unknown audience. It’s not your grandmother looking for a laundry list of what you did last weekend. It’s not your gym teacher looking for the reasons you skipped track practice last week because you hurt your leg. It’s not a letter home from summer camp.</p>
<p>And frankly- you are over-thinking it to a significant degree if you are worried about the readers at HYPSM being the same or different.</p>
<p>Your D writes about collecting butterflies- one of her hobbies and a significant passion. The essay is well written and the reader puts the application in the “maybe” pile because the application also ticks the other boxes- scores and grades in line, solid recc’s.</p>
<p>But unbeknownst to you, there is a kid in your state- not in your town, but 500 miles away, who also collects butterflies. So the “system” means that the same person reads your D’s essay AND this kids essay. But this kid’s essay isn’t just well written- it’s hilariously funny in the Calvin Trilling mode of humor. So even though College of Hard Knocks has no “quota” on butterfly collectors (and frequently admits more than a dozen or so), the adcom reasons, “there are probably lots more butterfly collectors in the pile- some from California and some from Ohio and some from New York. So I’ll take one- the hilarious one- and that will leave some leeway for my colleagues to be admitting their favorite butterfly collector down the road”.</p>
<p>That’s how it works. Not a systemic bias against any one activity. Not a quota. Not a “the essay must be tailor made with me, the Adcom in mind”.</p>
<p>And frankly- not something you can control for. You can’t scope out who else from your region or state or town or HS is applying. You can only put your best foot forward, apply to more than one college, and assume that the same law of averages which says that there is more than one kid in America, age 17, applying to college this year, collects butterflies, will also yield at least one solid admission for your kid. Because one of those butterfly kids essay is WORSE than your kids, combined with lower scores and grades.</p>
<p>I think that admissions personnel can get a lot of information on what kind of kids thrive and do well at the college, just as they can get lots of information on what kind of kids the school is looking for. What they actually do to get this information, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they have data on grade performance of people with different stat profiles and the like. But even if they don’t have all that, they have some idea of what sorts of profiles they are looking for (probably multiple ones), and they see hundreds, if not thousands, each year.</p>
<p>Look, we could all probably fill in the following sentence: If I ran [selective college], I would accept a lot more [favored category] and a lot less [disfavored category], and as a result, the college would be much more [trait we like] than it is now. We would not necessarily be wrong about that, and we can try it out when we get control of a college.</p>
<p>I miss the old forum that let us see how many posts any one poster had in any given thread.</p>
<p>As for spectrum-y kids and/or kids with social issues, whether we like it or not, schools want students who can not only get in, but stay in, thrive, succeed, graduate and give back to the school in many ways. I just met today with a very bright, highly motivated student who had social issues that ultimately got in the way, and he made it through only 2 yrs at a good college. Now he is ready to try again, after a few gap years, as a transfer student. I am hopeful that we sill find the right schools that will accept his now mediocre GPA (affected by his social and ultimate adjustment issues) but he is aware he is in a challenging situation with potentially stiff competition. If adcomms can pick up social issues in an essay, that may be an extra data point that isn’t what the prospective student wants them to recognize. But it is an important data point. </p>
<p>There are students with social issues who can thrive and succeed in top schools, but there are those who cannot. Certainly there are many reasons students struggle in school, but this can, unfortunately, be one of them.</p>
<p>The whole freaking Inst Res dept is looking at what is, what isn’t, what works and what doesn’t. </p>
<p>And the whole freaking Academic Assessment dept is looking at every single major, degree, school, certificate, and credential to evaluate what set of characteristics must a student have to be “teachable” to a particular level, given the instructional capabilities of the institution. Which is why an “open enrollment” type college will be able to admit a kid who needs 11th grade math remediation or 10th grade language arts tutoring, and why Princeton will not. It doesn’t mean that Princeton’s professors can’t teach algebra, or won’t run a section of its Freshman Lit class on “To Kill a Mockingbird”. But they know what a student needs to have walking in the door in order to be able to graduate in four years with a Bachelor’s degree.</p>
<p>Data is not what they lack.</p>
<p>Inquiring minds want to to know if Clooney has an “open” engagement followed by an “open” marriage?</p>
<p>Btw, there are many men out there who also seem to think they are a perfect fit and if he gave them a chance, he would be perfectly happy with them. :D</p>
<p>"But unbeknownst to you, there is a kid in your state- not in your town, but 500 miles away, who also collects butterflies. So the “system” means that the same person reads your D’s essay AND this kids essay. But this kid’s essay isn’t just well written- it’s hilariously funny in the Calvin Trilling mode of humor. So even though College of Hard Knocks has no “quota” on butterfly collectors (and frequently admits more than a dozen or so), the adcom reasons, “there are probably lots more butterfly collectors in the pile- some from California and some from Ohio and some from New York. So I’ll take one- the hilarious one- and that will leave some leeway for my colleagues to be admitting their favorite butterfly collector down the road”.</p>
<p>That’s how it works. Not a systemic bias against any one activity. Not a quota. Not a “the essay must be tailor made with me, the Adcom in mind”."</p>
<p>Well said, blossom - and again, I don’t get why this is so difficult. This just seems like plain old common sense.</p>
<p>Or maybe your kid’s name is Bob and he’s an Eagle Scout and the adcom is subtly biased against Bobs who are Eagle Scouts because she used to know a Bob who was an Eagle Scout and he was a real jerk. Or whatever. This is how life works. There is a certain level of randomness in all the decisions we make, the jobs we accept, the people we choose to be friends with, etc. </p>
<p>It strikes me that people who are uncomfortable with the randomness and try to quantify and game everything can spend so much time trying to “explain” that they miss out on the bigger picture. </p>