A new Jeff Selingo article on college admissions in NYMag

Parents Forum
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I am sure quality of teaching varies greatly among high schools and within high schools. My daughter, for example, took AP stats and got an A, then took an Intro to Stats course at BCC thinking it would be a breeze, and it was anything but. It was like an entirely new - and much more difficult - class. And that was BCC, not even UCB. It was way more rigorous than her high school AP stats class had been.

(Edited to add: by way of explanation for why she took stats at BCC: she hadn’t signed up for the AP stats exam by the time she had decided what college she would attend, then found out that an intro to stats class was, in fact, required for her major, so took it at BCC, thinking it would be the easiest way to quickly fulfill the requirement.)

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I’ve read some of Dan Willingham’s books on learning and he makes the case that memorization is underrated. He sees it as a necessary first step before you can apply critical thinking.

My example is MacGyver (dating myself) who I believe showed critical thinking. He had to have memorized A LOT of knowledge about a wide range of subjects before he could build his cool gadgets.

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103

Sure, as a first step. But I think the question then is how do you predict who will be able to go beyond the fist step into critical thinking? Who will be successful in applying memorized knowledge productively and creatively? Is there a tool to measure that, because those are the ones who will really succeed? Many people memorize facts, but clearly not everyone becomes a MacGyver. So how do you predict who will?

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104

For pre-meds that tool is typically organic chemistry. Many struggle in it because it is the first time you are really tested on abstract technical critical thinking in college.

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Does it make sense to try to measure adult level creativity or critical thinking in a high school student? Is a more “creative” high school student more likely to be a more creative adult or better critical thinker?

I ask the question because I honestly don’t know. I feel like it’s possible that great creative or critical thinkers may also arise from a population of students who were really good as youngsters at learning and practicing the material that was given to them. (I keep thinking about musicians. It’s hard to be a great musician if you are just creative but don’t put in the practice.)

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Probably this isn’t the answer you are looking for, but in my opinion “non-competitive” is a synonym for “doesn’t meet institutional priorities.” For the AOs, an “average excellent” student with nothing else to offer does not meet institutional priorities, and they can tell this very quickly into an application.

Our home district is an excellent public school with many high stats students (for example 30+ National Merit scholars per year.) But it doesn’t have much success in placing students into the highly rejective schools. The ones it does send are usually hooked–either recruited athletes, or legacy, or URM (and this category went away with the Supreme Court ruling, so who knows how that will shake out.) But a plain old upper middle class kid with a 4.0 and ACT 36 doesn’t have anything that Yale or Stanford or Duke needs. This is true even if they are class president or soccer captain or editor of the newspaper… and even if they are all 3.

In contrast, the feeder private day school nearby has much better luck at these top schools. Part of it is due to recruiting for sports. For example, they have crew, fencing and squash, whereas the publics don’t. They also have more legacies and even a few families capable of major donations (but who knows.) But even the unhooked kids at these schools have applications that just “read” way better than the applications of kids from the public school. For example somebody upthread mentioned that their kid and almost all of their kid’s friends at a top school had done at least 9 months of research mentored by a PhD. This is the sort of opportunity that most kids at the public just have no access to, but it’s the sort of thing that can bump an application up into the “competitive” range.

Keep in mind that this is NOT about whether your kid can do the work at these top schools. MANY students are capable of excelling at these top schools. The kids our local public does manage to send to the top schools do very well there, even the recruited athletes who go in with substandard stats.

Best wishes to the students at your school!

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107

Purchase what? The AP course audits are publicly available on the website and access to AP classroom is free. My kids are homeschooled; they’ve done a ton of APs without buying any AP specific curriculum. The actual exams cost money, but most/many schools pass that cost along to students.

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108

What do you think is the best way to prepare high school students for college writing? I’m genuinely curious. I have been pondering that question lately because in addition to S24 I have a homeschooled younger kid and am plotting her high school path.

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I just watched the Landscape video and I can’t help but feel that the rise of this tool will just increase intra-school competition among students.

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110

I’m curious about Landscape for urban schools that pull from an entire city’s worth of zip codes with condos going for several million down to families who rent in under-served neighborhoods. Do they look at the zip code where the school is located, or where the student lives? What about families who rent modest apartments abutting the million dollar zip codes? This is not my forte and beyond my comprehension, I’m feeling some odd panic that AI is going to be doing the first read sooner than we think…

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I don’t know the answer to your questions, but the video seems to focus on the school and not the specific student location. I sorta feel that AI or some algo is already part of a first read culling.

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After watching that I really really hope our remaining schools use landscape.

Edit to say- In all seriousness, this does seem like an evidenced based way to inform a school of an applicant’s economic and school resource situation that impacts his/her education and seems more informative than a school report.

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113

Landscape includes information for both:

  1. The student’s high school. This would include everyone who goes to the HS regardless of where they live.
  2. The census tract where the student lives.
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114

Sorry–I didn’t enunciate this terribly well.

Our school is a public school that has a very diverse student body. AP charges Roughly $100 for each test, I think about $45 this year if you qualify for F&R Lunch. The district costs of supporting the tests were more than you might expect, and we do not swim in funding. The parent-pay model brings up other issues in a economically mixed district.

And we offer IB as well–we felt this helped address where we wanted to go in education. Of course kids still Challenge for AP Scores, including my own.

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115

My kids go to a private school that offers no APs. My oldest considered taking some tests but opted not to and was placed in all the same classes anyhow. He was at a decided advantage in Spanish, as hs was full of oral exams and lots of conversation. Chemistry also was a breeze as hs went much broader in topics than AP, he thinks. The good underpinnings made for a very easy year of organic. For bio, hs was much more focused on just cell, molecular and genetics. But his lab know-how far exceeded his AP peers.

Seemed to be much more focus on functional skills and problem solving, and not much memorization. No doubt there are exceptional AP teachers who do it all, but I don’t think most have the time.

The hs is in a really cruddy part of town in a poverty filled city in a poverty stricken state. But still a private school. How does Landscape treat that? Our home zipcode is also quite mixed, but exceeds city averages and medians for income. But hugely low compared to other states.

Will lack of APs affect my younger kid in this age of weak data points? Probably. Add to that, her college counselor is retiring in two months. So we are visiting a lot of Safeties over Spring Break. Gotta love a good Safety, if we can figure out what that is anymore.

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I think it makes sense in the context of predicting college success and I believe it would be a better predictor of such success than, say, AP exams or similar. The bigger question of course is exactly how one would do this and I don’t know.

I think you can learn to play an instrument through practice, but it would be hard to a musician without some spark of creativity/inspiration/whatever you want to call it. And really, at its core, music is just math. But clearly there is a difference between algebra and Madama Butterfly.

You learn to write in three ways: by reading, by writing, and by editing. Of course, schools do a little of all of that, but I don’t feel they do it well. Many college students that I have encountered either: 1. Can’t develop a paper beyond the classic high school five paragraph essay or 2. Can’t even coherently write the classic high school five paragraph essay. The latter has become increasingly common and it really comes down to the basics: developing a solid thesis statement and organizing paragraph with a clear topic sentence, evidence, and analysis and, most troublesome to many students, staying ON TOPIC within the paragraph. Many jump back and forth in what reads more like a stream of consciousness. Logical order. Punctuation is also a “nice to have” but I’d settle for coherence. Staying on topic. Making sure your argument relates back to thesis statement. Taking out fluff. Being concise - the student tendency to try to use fancy words they think sound smart or awkward, wordy phrases. Being simple and direct in your language. All of these last things, of course, as part of an editing process. Realizing that good writing is really about good editing. Mercilessly removing off topic ideas and extraneous words that do not add meaning.

And you learn by doing it. Writing, then merciless editing.

And then you need to go further and learn how to integrate sources (while being careful not to plagiarize). Learn how sources can “dialog.” Learn how to handle contradictions in sources. Learn how to create an argument/thesis statement complex enough that you can maintain for, say, 10 pages without rambling.

That is something that bothered my about all of my daughter’s English classes. I don’t think she ever wrote a paper over 2 pages. How do you jump from that to a college paper, many of which start at 5 pages and can go as high as 20? That is a HUGE leap for a novice writer, but it still relies on the basics of thesis statement, well-organized paragraphs without off topic asides, source integration, and merciless editing.

(That was my own stream of consciousness :wink: ).

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117

This is a bit “old school” but I actually think it covers things fairly well and has exercises you can do for practice:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0872205738/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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118

Bard has a pathway to admissions that does this. Or tries to.

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I agree. I found most colleges to be transparent in what they’re looking for. I think kids/parents overlook this when applying to a large number of schools. Colleges are looking for kids who will fit in and contribute on campus…and want to be there. Also, I heard many admissions officers say when they review applications they read all kids from the same high school at the same time to allow for a fair comparison.

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This is an aside, but my kids actually learned to do this in their orchestra class! Each year they research a piece of music and write a fairly substantial paper about the composer, their life, the historical and artistic context, musical structure of composition itself, compare and contrast with another piece of music, etc. There is a structured process with drafts, revisions and soliciting feedback from other students. Then at the end of the year they put together slide presentations and present their research to each other.

I really enjoy this project each year because I learn a lot each time they write one :slight_smile:

I don’t know why they don’t do long papers in English or History; they seem to do only shorter pieces in those classes (they do write some things longer than 2 pages though).

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