<p>Even from this jaded NY mom- I can believe that to a school that gets 18,000 applications, after a while all these kids look alike and they go with the ones that “catch our eye”. Though each one of our Long Island kids look extremely special to each parent, their backgrounds may not seem as unique to the Admissions Board. The best thing my d did when she was in 9th grade was NOT to listen to my advice (she’s college soph now). I suggested she take the route of doing science research-math- debate club or join school newspaper. She firmly said it wasn’t going to happen as it took up too much time, she wasn’t that interested and wanted to spend more time doing her karate. We compromised, and she joined math “club”- met weekly and they had competitions- she joined science club and wrote for school science magazine (also met 1 hour a week) and continued with karate and got her black belt. My other “success story” (friend of friend) is the cheerleader. Also didn’t want to get too overly involved with time consuming activities such as Intel, debate etc. as alot of time was needed for cheerleading. Cheerleader wanted to go to Columbia which everyone said was a longshot. Well- Columbia has sports teams and needs cheerleaders. Thus her acceptance. Both girls were strong students but not stellar Ivy League credentials. Both got into their Ivy League school. I think too many kids take “cookie cutter activities” be it debate- newspaper editor, President of 3 clubs and to some colleges these kids really are indistinguishable from each other. Maybe the kid who chooses their own activity and does it not to impress anyone does stand out to the Adcom. I still think getting into your dream school is still a certain amount of luck especially if you are from the NE.<br>
I am glad it was me who went to these boards and not my kids- cause I think if my kids read all these threads on cc it would definitely give them added pressure. My youngest kid is graduating this June- I’m glad my days of college admissions is nearing an end. I’m getting too old for this.</p>
<p>Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today. “Who Got In To College?”</p>
<p>This year Swat wanted students that might major in the classics, German or Russian.</p>
<p>Penn need tuba players.</p>
<p>Brown wanted science and engineering students. </p>
<p>“I think we are all looking for kids who are committed to something, extracurricularly, intellectually, and hopefully both,” says Jim Miller, the new admssions dean at Brown.</p>
<p>Adcoms are questioning whether what they see in applications reflect reality. The adcoms are aware that students are being coached in the admission process. Some students come off looking artificially packaged. </p>
<p>A good high school guidance counselor can really help a student by being that student’s advocate with adcoms.</p>
<p>Factors that help are ED, legacy, donor, kid of an employee. “Offering racial,ethnic or geographic diversity or being a first-generation Amercian may also be a plus.”</p>
<p>“A student from Montana is more attractive than a student from NY”, says Mr. Fairbanks, a former associate dean of admissions at Wesleyan, “because schools like to boast they have students from all fifty states”.</p>
<p>Princeton took only 17% of the valedictorians that applied.</p>
<p>"—“we get 18000 apps from kids with identical statistics. they all look the same. we only choose the ones that catch our eyes.”</p>
<p>Look. The adreps are professionals, with years of experience, extensive training, and clear institutional priorities in front of them. They KNOW what they are doing. It is no different than a major corporation that has two openings, and 50 applicants. The fact that it is difficult to make the cut in no way makes the process random - if anything, just the opposite, as the personnel office is forced to hone its instruments.</p>
<p>Stats? Adreps are not dumb. They know that the three hour tests might simply represent what one ate for breakfast, they know (because the CollegeBoard told them) of the relationship between SAT scores and family incomes, they know the impacts of multiple test-taking, and expensive prep courses. They know all the games folks play to hike their GPAs. They know about counselors being paid $30k and up to “manage” the application process.</p>
<p>Knowing all of this, they might just decide that they use minimum stats as a kind of “pre-qualification”, and what they care about is very different from what the stats might reflect. They know they need athletes, happy alums, money from the developmental admits, not to overspend the financial budget, good relationships with their feeder schools, future Nobel Prize winners, wealthy future alumni contributors, “diverse” classes (primarily to benefit white students), engineering students (if they have an engineering school), offspring of famous people who can talk up the school, geographic diversity (to enhance national reputation), etc. None of this has anything to do with stats. Oh, and if they want to maintain or extend their prestige, they have a need to REJECT lots of students with high stats, because this signficantly enhances their cache.</p>
<p>None of this is random. It just means that the things we, as parents of applicants can get our heads around, are not foremost in their minds.</p>
<p>dstark can you provide a link tot he WSJ article?</p>
<p>
If you read material on hiring and human resources, you will realize that many people have no idea how to interview candidates, let alone pick the “best” one. Experts agree that the hiring process is, in fact, fairly random. No matter how well a candidate does on the interview, the interviewer has most likely made up their mind in the first 5-10 seconds of the interview based on the handshake, smile, and greetings done even before any questions were asked.</p>
<p><a href=“http://online.wsj.com/public/us[/url]”>http://online.wsj.com/public/us</a></p>
<p>You have to sign up with the wsj online to read the article. You could just look at it in a library.</p>
<p>It is in the Personal Journal section, April 13th, 2006.</p>
<p>A few things about this being a record year for applicants. Schools accepting fewer kids. Private school high school kids being more represented at the most competitive schools. Adcoms using a more critical eye than ever when looking at applications. </p>
<p>My summary was very accurate. :)</p>
<p>Maybe the kid who works 15 hours a week in the supermarket or drug store and needs/wants the money for college or to buy a car, looks more “real” than the kid who spends all the time doing research or being President of 3 clubs and student gov’t. As dstark said, lots of kids are coached and “look artificially packaged” to the Adcom’s. In all honesty- does anyone really know who writes the kids essays?? When there is no ranking and 1/3 of the graduating class have 4.0 , the only “true” academic measure the adcom has is an SAT score. And as far as interviewing, in most of the large schools, it was usually an alum who lived nearby who did a cursory interview. (that included Cornell-Georgetown and Rochester for my d) Somehow, I really don’t think the alum interviews have that much weight in college admission and alums aren’t deciding if the kid gets in or not. And I do think that most kids just need to pass the threshhold to get serious consideration for top schools. Be it great grades/1400 SAT etc. After you pass the threshold- it’s all the intangables. Again maybe its the kid who worked 15 hours a week with a 1430 on the SAT, looks better than the kid who was totally involved with research and school activities and got a 1560.</p>
<p>“If you read material on hiring and human resources, you will realize that many people have no idea how to interview candidates, let alone pick the “best” one.”</p>
<p>Ah, but the difference is that the adreps are picking hundreds (or even thousands) of applicants each year “for the same job”. So their experience of that, combined with the multiple years of experience of each staff member, each with his/her own training for dealing with this specific cohort and for this specific “job”, hones their expertise far beyond anything that is found even in large company HR departments. Couple that with known “slot” needs (football quarterbacks, engineering students, URMs, not overspending the financial aid budget, etc.), and it actually becomes much easier.</p>
<p>I have friends who are adreps. They don’t lose any sleep over perhaps picking the wrong candidate. They DO lose sleep over where the candidate they choose will actually attend.</p>
<p>thanks dstark :)</p>
<p>The growth in applications is astounding. The University of San Diego went from 7,000 applications last year to 10,000 apps this year.</p>
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<p>There should be a law against using this type of line in a news article without also pointing out that many high schools now have 17 valedictorians each year. Seems to me that the high schools and the colleges are conspiring in an Orwellian bit of “newspeak”.</p>
<p>Mini, I think you give the adcoms a little too much credit. I used to be a coach for a baseball team. It was really easy to pick the best kids and not pick the worst. The 60-80% in the middle? I just tried to pick the nicest kids. Or the kids that didn’t have parents who were pr****s. :)</p>
<p>Years later, very few kids are still playing baseball at even a high school level. Fewer at a college level. One kid has been signed to a pro baseball contract in the last 4 years. When I look back and see how involved the parents were in the baseball scene and how important it all seemed at the time, I have to laugh. Many of the kids I chose turned out to be busts. A few surprised on the upside. I didn’t always choose the right kids. The parents were always telling me how great their kids were, even though some of the kids were afraid of the ball and cried during the games. (These kids weren’t that little). </p>
<p>It reminds me of the college admission process. The adcoms don’t always get it right. Kids cry. Parents tell anyone who will listen, and those that don’t, how great their kids are. It didn’t and doesn’t really matter much. :)</p>
<p>“The adcoms don’t always get it right.”</p>
<p>Disagree. They ALWAYS get it right - and that’s because they are constructing a CLASS, not picking individual students. Where they can go wrong is in the yield department. That’s why they love ED. They can pick four football quarterbacks RD, and all four might go elsewhere, and they are left with my d. for QB (now THAT’s a problem.) Or all the rich applicants turn them down, and all the Pell grantees accept. THAT’S a problem.</p>
<p>And that’s why having more applicants does NOT make them more selective. In fact, the opposite might be the case. They may be more “selective” in the sense of turning down more applicants (which enhances prestige), but they may actually become less selective in terms of who actually ends up attending.</p>
<p>We’re probably arguing semantics. I always got it right too. I was picking a team just like the adcoms are picking a class. </p>
<p>We always ended up with enough players. :)</p>
<p>Did you win? And if you didn’t, was it because your prize recruits went elsewhere? ;)</p>
<p>The last year my son fired me as coach. So I watched from the stands as the team won the championship. It was better for both of us. :)</p>
<p>I’m not arguing as the schools get more and more applicants they get less selective. That’s an interesting point.</p>
<p>Being selective may not mean taking the highest GPA- SAT scores etc. If you want your kid to be in a truly all encompassing learning environment, you might want the campus to have a mix of kids from all around the country and world, with different backgrounds and experiences. Heaven help the valedictorian kid with 1560 SAT’s who has to room with the “not so desireable” roommate who is from rural Kansas, has to work in his spare time and only got a 1390 on his SAT’s. Hey- I am from Long Island. So many of our kids have been shut out because there are too many well qualified NY kids, but in all honesty I think that the college community is a better place when they take an array of well qualified students. I think a major problem here is when everyone takes the college admission process way too personal.
I was really saddened when I read posts by kids who didn’t get into their “dream” schools this year. I remember one in particular- she wanted into Barnard and Columbia and didn’t get in. She was upset cause she now had to pick i.e. Emory, Brandeis, or Tufts. Other kids would jump for joy if they had this decision to make. But she was upset by this. I gotta wonder- What is happening to our kids??? All this competitiveness and nitpicking comparing one school against the other makes me sad. And if I read one more thread on which is the worst Ivy, I am going to scream.</p>
<p>Today’s Wall Street Journal says one of the reasons for this “unusually competitive year” is the “pool of unprecedented strength.”</p>
<p>Where is this large pool of unprecedented high-achievers coming from?</p>
<p>We know many, many colleges – maybe the the vast majority – have had increased applications, particularly this year. (Are there a lot of schools that have had way fewer apps, but nobody is writing them up?)</p>
<p>If one looks back at a “Princeton Review Best Colleges” from four years ago, one will see the avg. SAT scores are generally 25-50 lower (out of 1600) than today’s scores. This seems to be across the board, at the top 300-or-so schools. (And top 300 is just about every school you’ve ever heard of.)</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the avg. SAT score, nationally, has been fairly stagnant the past decade.</p>
<p>Then how come so many colleges’ median SATs are on the rise?</p>
<p>Yes, there are more high school graduates, but that means there are a whole lot of low-achievers as well as high-achievers. </p>
<p>Maybe the low-achievers are going to schools that are not on the CC radar screen and are not listed in the Princeton Review Top 300.</p>
<p>And yet at the other end of the spectrum, this week’s TIME magazine cover says 30% of U.S. students are not even completing High school.</p>
<p>Inasmuch as my objectivity might be questioned, I found this article to be very interesting, as it opens a small window into the typically secretive ivory tower where admissions’ decisions are made. Some of the issues dsicussed in the article might give an insight about the growing challenges of a small LAC. </p>
<p>Obviously, this behind-the-scenes story will never stop the misguided and uneducated to prefer hurling epithets such “pompous professorial jackasses” than recognizing the depth of the difficulty to build a class of freshmen. </p>
<p>Here’s the introduction and a link to full PDF file: </p>
<p>With increasing interest in the process of applying to college, from soaring SATsnow including a required essayto the newly competitive arena of double-digit applications and specialized entrant coaches, we thought we’d take a look inside the process at CMC.</p>
<p>From suitcase time in the fall, with counselors fanning out across the globe, to long nights of application file reading, to shaping the class, the process counts on a dedicated cadre of admission professionals and alumni volunteers, led by Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Richard Vos.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.mckenna.edu/news/cmcmagazine/2006spring/Admission/Admission.pdf[/url]”>http://www.mckenna.edu/news/cmcmagazine/2006spring/Admission/Admission.pdf</a></p>