<p>I’m not saying that anyone should expect to be accepted anywhere, but most of us have more than one kid, and so part of the reason I’m curious about the acceptances at my son’s high school is because I have two more kids to put through the system. I wonder why in the sense of “given that it costs seventy dollars per application, perhaps in two years we won’t have our daughter do that one and save the money.” Not entitlement. Pragmatism. Also, frugality. Because cheap.</p>
<p>It is clear to me that PizzaGirl has never spent time on the Caltech campus, nor talked to people in their admissions office. Of the 7 Houses, one has the reputation as the jock house. Another has many students apply for leadership positions. There are dance groups, music groups, kids putting on their own plays. Not much difference from the MIT kids, even though Caltech will lose kids on X-admits (probably due to mindsets like PG’s, that brains are the top criteria for admissions).</p>
<p>I enjoy hearing about the futures of these Caltech kids. Similarly, I like reading the Wellesley alumni magazine. Any college that brings out the best in kids, helps them focus on career paths, supports them in finding internships and jobs, and maintains a healthy alumni network, has done a good job, IMHO.</p>
<p>Please, I do not wish anyone to interpret my post as these are the only colleges that are supportive of our snowflakes. I wish there were more posts about Carleton, Grinnell, Swathmore, Wesleyan, Harvey Mudd/Scripps/ etc. There are so many wonderful colleges out there.</p>
<p>On the subject of whether you lose out by not going to a name school, I am someone who fell in love with a rather obscure language during my undergraduate years and went on to make a profession out of it. Had I gone to a different school I might never have encountered this language and my future would have been quite different. I do think it’s a shame if your child has a particular talent which ends up not being nurtured in the environment where they wind up. I’m thinking of places like the SUNYs where they are apparently cutting language departments. It’s a shame if the kid who did so great in French in high school never has a chance to try German or Chinese because they end up at a school where it is not taught.</p>
<p>Calmom says: “And yes: it would undermine the school’s ability to function, because one year they’d end up with too many bio majors and no one interested in philosophy, and the next year there might be an imbalance between prospective English majors and students wanting to study Arabic.” </p>
<p>Why would that happen by taking race out of the equation? The colleges can still consider intended majors and academic interests. Taking race out of the admissions decision-making would also not keep out kids from Michele Obama’s neighborhood or any other underrepresented place, nor prevent schools from recruiting in underrepresented places. They can also still take into account academic context and opportunity when evaluating the student’s achievement, and they can still obtain diversity of geography without racial considerations. Socio-economic considerations, rather than race, would also be more efficient in compensating for historical injustices. As has been pointed out up-thread, recent African immigrants and their children seem to be disproportionately benefiting from race considerations as it stands now.</p>
<p>I dislike the underlying assumption creeping in on this forum that top students are less interesting than kids with lower grades. Some top students are boring, and some aren’t. Some average students are boring, and some aren’t. In general, though, wouldn’t you agree intelligence is correlated with being interested which produces interesting, more so than lower intelligence? And isn’t higher intelligence correlated with better grades? Kids with lower grades are either less intelligent and less able or less interested in working hard on academics. Some of you, like Harvard, seem to be implying that the non-straight A students are busy writing poetry instead of doing their homework. They could be, but they could also be watching TV or posting on Facebook instead. Lower grades don’t necessarily correlate with more interesting hobbies. Regardless, this is also irrelevant to race. Race is not a determinant of whether or not someone is boring anyway. </p>
<p>"It is clear to me that PizzaGirl has never spent time on the Caltech campus, nor talked to people in their admissions office. Of the 7 Houses, one has the reputation as the jock house. Another has many students apply for leadership positions. "</p>
<p>Let me reframe this since I really don’t want anyone taking away that I’m dissing Caltech, which is of course an excellent school. But let’s use it as the closest to the Platonic ideal of “admitting on pure brains” and not considering athletics, legacy, race, geography, blah blah blah, for the sake of argument.</p>
<p>What are the # of applicants per spot at Caltech versus HYPSM? Why isn’t Caltech hot-hot-hot on the list on the list of the people who are DYING DYING DYING to get their kids into HYPSM / the Ivies? After all, it’s the brainiest, right? </p>
<p>This suggests to me very strongly that it’s not really that those parents are seeking brainiest-of-the-brains. Otherwise they’d be pushing their kids to go to Caltech. I think these parents are seeking Ivies because they perceive social prestige and doors-opened that aren’t obtained elsewhere. Which is a different thing than brainiest-of-the-brains.</p>
<p>And, of course, if your criteria for your kid was finding brainiest-of-the-brains, and you felt those standards were being compromised by letting in (URM, legacy, athletes, etc.), you wouldn’t have your kid apply there. But that doesn’t seem to stop these people. </p>
<p>“Please, I do not wish anyone to interpret my post as these are the only colleges that are supportive of our snowflakes. I wish there were more posts about Carleton, Grinnell, Swathmore, Wesleyan, Harvey Mudd/Scripps/ etc. There are so many wonderful colleges out there.”</p>
<p>I guess I just don’t have a lot of patience for people who don’t see the obvious (and the fact that Carleton, Grinnell, Swat, etc. are wonderful colleges is about as obvious as can be). </p>
<p>TheGFG, you bring up many valid, thought-provoking points. I am not absolutely resolute in my opinions regarding race and admissions, as I find there are so many situations and permutations that proposing just one solution (e.g. removing race as a qualifier) is simplistic.</p>
<p>I can only offer our experience, and say that we honestly would not have known to apply to such high level schools. In our small, middle class, mostly white town the best most kids aspire to is the state flagship. My D’s guidance counselor was completely unaware of the policies and norms at most of her choices. To say that schools can solicit at underrepresented districts on their own leaves out many, many qualified students in mixed (and white) areas. </p>
<p>You have made me realize it is not just a racial inequity, but a largely socioeconomic and school district dependent variable. Culture, upbringing, schools - how to we reach out to them all to cull the most impressive of the bunch?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ah. I see. So snooping on other kids is not just OK but ESSENTIAL to giving your child an edge.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Momzie, you are assuming that there is only one trajectory to certain colleges and that everyone (especially the colleges themselves) agree on what it is. I don’t think that’s true.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The “name” schools do not have the lock on obscure subjects, especially languages. St. Olaf is well known for its Norwegian program. UW-Madison offers classes in dozens of modern and ancient/classical languages (Akan, Kazak, Quechua, Yucatec Maya, Yorubu, Zulu).
<a href=“http://www.languageinstitute.wisc.edu/content/languages_programs/languages_taught.htm”>http://www.languageinstitute.wisc.edu/content/languages_programs/languages_taught.htm</a></p>
<p>After the NCAA basketball semi-finals, when the winning coaches were interviewed, they said they were going to stay up all night and watch game tapes of their opponent to know how to prepare their teams for the final. Last night the Notre Dame women’s coach said that she has to go watch film. Assessing the competition is what you do if you want to succeed in athletics. When my D goes into an important race, she knows who is racing with her and how fast they can run. That helps her determine what her strategy needs to be to do her best. She won’t win just yet, or perhaps ever, but she wants to do her best. It’s part of excelling at your EC. If you are an artist, you may not approach your work with the “competition” in mind in quite the same way. But if you know that your fellow artist’s sculpture made of menstrual blood was a colossal failure or huge success, it may guide some of your artistic choices.</p>
<p>I am not sure how knowing about your child’s peers helps you do better academically, however. But I can suppose if the class has 5 research topics to choose from, and you just heard the best student in the class say he was choosing topic A, you might want to select a different one. Similarly, I can suppose if you happen to know that the likely Val of your top prep school is not applying to Princeton, then maybe you might think your own chances at P could be better? Again, snooping is not required.</p>
<p>So picktails, how did your D know to apply then? Mailings from the top schools?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree. They not only know how many APs other students took throughout their entire high school career, but how they did in them, how well they write, how interesting they are, whether they’re suited to both the colleges that accepted them and the career they aspire to, what ECs they were involved in and the relative merit of each, how much they may have done outside of school, prep courses and programs they’ve attended, career details post college, and whether their acceptance was actually deserved. Generally, these comments show up in posts of families complaining that a “less qualified” student was accepted to a college that rejected their child. Less qualified in whose mind? Obviously not the adcoms. </p>
<p>People would be happier if they quit assuming they know everything about every kid in their child’s senior class and quit trying to rank their classmates as if they actually do. Or understand that if you’re ranking, you have no business complaining that adcoms are also ranking, or that they don’t know what they’re doing, or that your kid would have made the cut if the “undeserving” kid wasn’t a URM, athlete, legacy, poor, full pay, got a sympathy vote, or whatever other excuse you can dream up. There are a lot of factors involved and I imagine to get into a school that has a single digit acceptance rate, most kids have to check off a LOT of boxes. Assuming you know which ones (or ONE) tipped the scale in their favor is unrealistic. You’d be better served focusing on your child’s app, your child’s choices, and your child’s life to figure out how your child can get from where he is to where he wants to be.</p>
<p>@picktails. I know this wasn’t your main point but I think you’ve hit on something important about college admissions: Like politics, on some level it is all “local.” Some high schools are well known and well regarded by particular colleges. Other high schools don’t have these sorts of relationships. I’m not talking about the obvious pipelines like top boarding schools, NYC private schools or urban magnets. But within the suburbs of a large city, say NY or Atlanta, you can have kids with very similar profiles (in terms of stats, ecs, race, economics) who will fare differently depending on their hs’s reputation at a particular college. So right there, the playing field isn’t level. Your daughter was so lucky to have a great result despite her high school’s “low profile.” Congrats to her!</p>
<p>I think Caltech loses out to MIT for two main reasons. It’s size - most high school students don’t want to attend such a small college, and its M/F ratio. (Which may be affected by its reputation for looking mostly at academics.) I’m less sure that is the case, given the Caltech supplement. (There was “The Box” a square you could fill with anything creative to represent you, and a question about an ethical dilemma you faced.) And bookworm as it right, there was at least as much variety of kids at Caltech as anywhere. I enjoyed seeing them in plays, seeing the stuff they put together for their amazing parties, and when I worked in an on campus library talking to them about their p</p>
<p>When I went to my older kid’s senior awards night I was just blown away. Kids who she had been to school with since kindergarten were recognized for things that I had no clue they did. One kid who we knew through sports and I thought of as being a marginal, middle of the road student (who I wasn’t that fond of personally) had much stronger academics than I imagined and was a wilderness EMT among other things. The list of things that kids were out there doing outside of school was impressive and eye opening. My kid had 2 activities that she was absolutely immersed in but we didn’t see the other stuff that was out of out scope. On the flip side, the extroverted, openly striving, always out in front girl who we had also know since kindergarten and I imagined would head off to some distant name brand school just because she wouldn’t take no for an answer, was heading to local flagship honors college. She was the one who ran for everything, started those “front” clubs to be president of and just did a lot of self promotion. She was one of those kids that cobrat referenced. I have no idea where she actually applied or what her stats were - she just projected as the kid who was going places. However, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The place where I have seen disproportionate “tippy-top” admissions success were on my son’s former crew team.</p>
<p>Many URMs are admitted because the school wants more URMs, not because they all have hidden achievements, fascinating essays, massive adversity to overcome, and less egocentric demeanor. The same record, including the same family socioeconomic status and education, that would earn a rejection for an ORM could quite easily get an acceptance for an URM. There is a legitimate difference of opinion as to whether the social good of visible diversity is worth the individual unfairness that is needed to generate it.</p>
<p>sorghum, how do you know what is in the phantom URM’s application and that of the equally phantom ORM application? </p>
<p>On a slightly and only slightly different note, I find it just amazing that this long, long thread still has people who are focused on high school grades and test stats as the grounds for admission. My kid who is going to a HYPS did not have a 2400 or a 4.0, close, but only close. Why? Because she had other, award-winning, time-consuming pursuits out of school and in school. I suspect most, if not all, students who win the lottery go beyond the normal high school curriculum. A kid hits all the nails, but that isn’t enough, no risks, rebellion, imagination, hunger, etc. </p>
<p>I see this in college freshmen all the time. They played by the high school rules and did well. Then they get to college where professors expect more, and they can’t take the next step because they’ve been coloring between the lines for years. Coloring between the lines doesn’t get you into Harvard.</p>
<p>Sorghum- because it is inherently “unfair” that a white kid has to attend CMU instead of MIT or Wesleyan instead of Williams. And Society should be working night and day to correct the obvious social injustice of it all.</p>
<p>TheGFG: There are two different issues here. One is whether race should be considered in admissions. The other is whether the top schools should accept the top students, defined as students with the highest SATs and GPAs. It is the second situation that could lead to “boring” students and lack of diversity. </p>
<p>Granted, these two issues intersect because not as many blacks and Hispanics have the top SATs. </p>
<p>What the schools argue is that students can succeed successfully with lower-than-the-top SATs. And one thing calmom would say is that tippy top SATs does not always equal “the smartest” students. There are lots of things SATs and GPAs don’t measure that lead to success – and her daughter is a prime example of that. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Pardon me, but your original point was</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The only consistency I see is your proclivity to call the good folks here, “fools”</p>