<p>@calmom - a friend who lived for many years in Berkeley on the edge of Oakland just happened to link me that article this evening. My general point was that if you read his bio he seems like a high achieving kid who would really succeed and both enrich and be enriched by the schools that he has earned acceptance to. However, with a 2100 SAT people might squawk that they are bending the academic rules in accepting him and lowering the bar for URM. </p>
<p>@Shrinkrap - I probably was not clear enough on that point. </p>
<p>Yes, I can tell from the posts because what I am talking about is not about paying for school, but about respecting their (students’ ) opinions. </p>
<p>I just do not get the feeling that the opinions of students who say they do not like the system and that they are negatively impacted for not fault of their own are being listened to. I trust this is clearer.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a lack of respect for the students. After all, the adults here are all parents of high school or college students. Kids we love and value and yearn to be able to protect. Rather, I think it’s a matter of having a long-term perspective. Parents here know
The school you attend will not determine your future
Life is not fair and no one gives you a rule book
You’re not as special or smart as you think. There are a whole lot of people you’ll come across in your life who are much more talented than you are.
What stings now will be forgotten in a few years or maybe even a few months.</p>
<p>A personal comment from me. Any kid who stews for more than a week or two over rejection from a school with a sub-10% admit rate had better watch out because at some point life is going to throw them a real curveball- the loss of their job, the death of a spouse or child, serious illness or disability. If you can’t handle your rejection from Princeton how are you gonna’ handle the really big stuff?</p>
<p>I see. And you are getting that from posts on CC? That is telling you something about what happens in most students homes? </p>
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<p>But what you don’t realize is that a lot of the posters who are here are not just parents (who probably have talked to their fair share of disappointed—and elated—friends of their own kids) but also educators who deal with students on a daily basis. There is something to be said for the perspective provided by talking and listening to people react to that first disappointment but also to the acceptance of reality, growing realization that life goes on, and eventual success despite initial “failure.” I’ve seen it with my son and his friends (many of whom have had life upheavals that make being rejected by an elite university look like a compliment). I’ve seen it with the kids I’ve worked with. And I’m sure I’ll see it with my daughter and her peers. Resiliency is an under-rated and underestimated tool for success. </p>
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<p>According to [the</a> article](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Oakland-senior-s-mark-of-success-top-college-5375015.php]the”>http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Oakland-senior-s-mark-of-success-top-college-5375015.php), he uses his SAT scores to silence some of the less complimentary comments:</p>
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<p>Yes, get out into the real world, even in private schools, and you find that 2100 on the SAT is not “low” like people on these forums seem to think it is.</p>
<p>And to be clear, I do feel sorry for kids who are disappointed in their options. I wish I could buy them all a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Raging and wallowing for a bit are perfectly normal reactions. I just don’t like the impulse to blame someone else for the fact that they weren’t among the lucky few.</p>
<p>He was waitlisted at Berkeley. My very white daughter was accepted at Berkeley with a 1930. Only on CC is 2100 seen as “low” – from a California perspective, it’s pretty good. My d. had a classmate from her high school who was accepted at Harvard, Yale, Columbia – Asian-american, top grades, math/verbal around ~1350. He was ridiculed on the chance threads on CC … but I just think that the Ivies know that the west coast public school kids don’t obsess over scores in the same way. The ad com is probably ecstatic to see any student coming out of Oakland Tech with a 2100. </p>
<p>The only people who “squawk” that 2100 SAT’s are “too low” for admissions are idiots who don’t understand the meaning of the word “median”. or “average”. Those words do not mean the same as “minimum”.</p>
<p>Look at the chart on this page: <a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2017”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/admissions.html</a> – notice all the blue dots under the 2100 line?
Those are all Harvard-admitted students. Yes, there are more blue dots above the line – but it seems to me that for a kid with a 5.0 GPA isn’t going to start seeing admission chances significantly deteriorate until SAT’s drop to around 1980 or below. You can play with the chart a little, it’s interactive – you want to move the cursor to see where the dots thin out – GPA obviously trumps test score and Harvard clearly likes really high GPA’s – so a kid with a 4.0 and a 2100 SAT clearly has better chances than a kid with a 2200 SAT / 3.8 GPA. </p>
<p>@Shrinkrap - I find it quite revealing what the students say on their threads. We can agree to disagree on that issue because there are larger issues at hand. </p>
<p>I do find the student threads rather instructive, as to what is happening in their homes. One thing about being anonymous is students talk rather freely about what they think, what their parents say, what their friends say etc.</p>
<p>OK, bedtime for me. </p>
<p>“rall. I am just reading and interpreting, not creating. I know no other way to interpret how many students now view themselves. It is sad and why more people do not find it sad as well is another question in itself.”</p>
<p>90% of the kids who apply to elite colleges are going to be disappointed in their results. There’s just no way around that. If you have one, let us know. </p>
<p>One could take the healthy approach of “oh well, their loss!” Or one could take the approach of assuming “their spot” was taken by a URM (funny how their spot was assigned a certain number and definitely got taken by a URM, not another white kid with lower scores). Choose to be the kind of person you want to be. </p>
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<p>And look at the other tables on the tab—SAT by ethnicity, income, gender, and school type. Yes, there are differences (although the significance levels of those differences are not indicated). But it doesn’t look like Harvard is accepting very many (probably not any) subpar students regardless of how you cut the demographic data. </p>
<p>^ What is par, and what is sub par? </p>
<p>" We can agree to disagree on that issue because there are larger issues at hand."</p>
<p>Agreed. </p>
<p>FWIW, I talk to students and families all day long, and as far as I can tell, none of them have even heard of college confidential.</p>
<p>Awc doesn’t really know and his golden resource, the CC hs kids- well, they haven’t even started their college experience yet. But we sure are revolving around his/her opinions, at this point. The notion we should rely so much on the reactions of a small, self selected group of limited-experience kids on a forum is hardly worth it.</p>
<p>Of course we care- but I daresay most of us tried to instill some resilience in our kids, expose them to some wins and some challenges, build some character. When my first hit her submit button, I said, now you’ve done your part, as best you can-- the rest is in their hands.</p>
<p>Empathy is one thing. Building a whole admissions position based on some kids being upset- that’s unusual.</p>
<p>I think there’s a big difference between the resentment a high school senior hoping for admission to or rejected from a top school may feel and the way a college freshman admitted to that top school will react to the people around him. While I believe there is pressure on URMs to “prove” themselves to classmates in a way that white and Asian students don’t have to, I don’t think race is as dominant an influence in students’ perceptions of each other as chance or decisions threads might indicate. Once you’re actually on campus, you don’t need a statistical analysis to figure out whether you think someone is an intelligent person or not. </p>
<p>I really don’t even get the point of awc’s posts. Colleges should change their admission policies to please disgruntled and self-absorbed high school students? What admission policy is going to satisfy kids who think they “deserve” a spot at a college that turns away 92% of its applicants? </p>
<p>There’s an attitude problem here. (Presumably – I really don’t read the stuff that awc is referring to so I am relying on his characterization). I think that in some ways the colleges add to that attitude problem with their marketing… but it really doesn’t change the fact that the types of kids who obsess over their own stats and look to blame external factors whenever they don’t get what they want are probably not the type of students that the elite colleges want anyway. They may have great academic stats but their grousing and whining doesn’t reflect well for qualities like strength of character and maturity.</p>
<p>I understand that rejection hurts and there is a place for venting, and CC is as good a place as any. But kids who can’t comfortably handle rejection really should look for colleges where their odds of admission are a lot better. </p>
<p>I looked at the chart and found the kid who got my kid’s spot! 
jk</p>
<p>“I really don’t even get the point of awc’s posts. Colleges should change their admission policies to please disgruntled and self-absorbed high school students? What admission policy is going to satisfy kids who think they “deserve” a spot at a college that turns away 92% of its applicants?”</p>
<p>Well, there is one admissions policy that would “satisfy” everyone in the sense of being understandable – rack-and-stack the SAT scores, and then Harvard (or whoever) takes all the 2400’s, 2390’s, etc. til they fill the beds. </p>
<p>Nothing prevents any elite college from firing their adcoms and instituting such a policy. But the class that would be created from that policy isn’t a class that any college wants. It’s an undesirable class. And it wouldn’t be balanced in terms of the other things that make a college vibrant. </p>
<p>“My concern has nothing at all to do with the school to which a student ends up attending; it is the reason they think they ended up there that is the issue. The potential damage is the same even if the student perceived he was preference-shafted out of Harvard and had to attend Yale.”</p>
<p>No. I’m not going to cry even one single tear for the poor dear who has to attend Yale instead of Harvard. It’s bad enough all the whining about having to “settle” for U Chicago or Vanderbilt or Grinnell or William & Mary. Just … no.</p>
<p>And I cannot believe you don’t see the glaring entitlement that someone was “owed” a spot at Harvard and got “knocked out of it” by someone else. That’s just entirely the wrong attitude. </p>
<p>I’m kind of disturbed by the use of the phrase “preference-shafted”. It’s just one more manifestation of the attitude of entitlement, that makes no sense at all in the context of competitive admissions.</p>
<p>NO ONE gets in without something EXTRA. That extra can be a lot of different things, and it isn’t always apparent-- but there is no such thing as any applicant being “shafted” by some sort of factor that benefited someone else. </p>
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The whiners would change their tune in a hurry if the rules were changed to allow require single-sitting scores, with students required to submit the score from their first SAT sitting. (No do-overs). </p>