<p>Judging by the data posted in chance me threads, there are oodles of kids nationwide who are killing themselves to show academic and EC excellence across multiple fields. Some of these kids are veritable superstars and talented multi-taskers. My guess is that the majority, though, are exhausted and mentally scattered. So again I ask why an academic institution college should necessarily choose the brilliant science kid who also plays the tuba and runs track, over the brilliant science kid who just does science. Don’t we need people who are hyper-focused and undistracted to work on solving some of our really tough problems? Yet the elite colleges select for competence and leadership in multiple areas of endeavor. Sure, well-roundedness might have lost some luster in admissions in favor of focused passion in one or two areas, but all the same the students who are admitted to the best schools seem to be the bright kids who are also talented musicians, and athletes and artists, and community leaders and all of that all at once.</p>
<p>So then they get to HYPS et. al. and continue to try to do it all, or most of it all, only on even less sleep. Is this really what we want? I recall the mother of an athlete on D’s college team who commented to the other parents that she was worried about how her D would be able to continue with her art and music on top of her university studies and the Div. 1 sport. She said the D was used to doing it all in high school and would be unhappy if she couldn’t continue. Hmm. Girl didn’t last on the team or at the school; transferred back home to the state school. Perhaps she could still “do it all” there? But what if this really talented girl had picked just 2 of those activities to focus on at the better school, like her studies and art, or her studies and her sport. I think the results would have been preferable. In fact, one of the coaches who recruited D says she prefers to take athletes who in high school didn’t do a million other activities because they tend to adapt to the demands of a Div 1 team much better.</p>
<p>What seems absurd to me is the idea that anyone would believe an admission committee’s decision is the definitive word on whether a particular student possesses “character, passion, drive, initiative, potential, personality, likeability …” It is an admission officer’s job to determine whether a particular candidate “fits” at a given school, just as it is a hiring officer’s job to determine that in a workplace setting, as Pizzagirl points out. They all work with the information they have. Sometimes they make mistakes. No admissions committee’s ruling defines how worthy a person is in the larger scheme of things. It seems ridiculous to have to point that out, but it doesn’t go without saying around here.</p>
<p>I think the ideal is somewhere between the hyper-focused kid and the one who does everything. Yes, we might need a few hyper-focused people to solve certain problems, but we also need those who are somewhat focused, but well-rounded to implement their solutions, because those problems don’t exist in a vacuum. </p>
<p>That swimmer might have been better served if she could put the art and music on the back burner - not completely aside, but with less priority, she might have been better off at the D1 school. She may have been the type that is better served at a D3 school precisely because her sport won’t require the same priority there. She may have been used to “doing it all” but I bet the swimming wasn’t being “done” at the same level.</p>
<p>I faced similar isssues in high school. I loved music and was an accomplished musician, but was unwilling to give up everything else for a career in music. I also found I didn’t enjoy Engineering as much as I expected - because I had to give up much of my music. Perhaps the adcoms are doing some of these students a favor, because they can read into the applications and see that there are other passions/abilities that make the student a shoe-in at their schools. Yes, they misread a few, who would indeed be best off at an MIT or CalTech, but there are other who go to Harvard and never look back. And maybe the reason they never look back is because they are in fact happy at Harvard - happier than they would have been at MIT. Think of the young women who attend Wellesley, and take classes at MIT - for many MIT would not have been a good fit socially, but they still have access to those classes and resources at MIT, plus Wellesley’s own resources.</p>
Some kids just do well on the SAT because they are good at that sort of test, not because they are conformist.</p>
<p>Both my kids got into “top” colleges without being energizer bunnies. My older son, in particular, managed to have all his ECs be science and usually computer science related.</p>
<p>I worked for many years as an administrator in a science graduate program at a HYPSM university. Even the most science-challenged would recognize some of the names of the faculty in my department. What I found separated the merely brilliant from the truly influential was the ability to communicate clearly.</p>
<p>I remember sitting in a graduate admissions meeting marveling at the contrast between two of the most influential faculty members. One was sitting quietly upright in his chair, dressed in a full suit and bow tie. The other was slouched in his chair dressed in a ragged sweater and looking for all the world as if he were asleep. When the conversation reached a turning point, however, both men jumped into the discussion with just the contribution needed to change the way the committee saw the issue under consideration.</p>
<p>Both of these men had huge labs with extensive NSF funding, a result of being able to convince people other than their immediate colleagues that the work they were doing was worthy of pursuit. This in turn led to the ability to take on more graduate students. I don’t know if these two men were the highest scorers on the SAT. I do know that one of them had little use for standardized test scores and pretty much ignored them in the admissions process.</p>
<p>I think we can’t assume that we know enough about other people’s children, and the international pool of applicants, to be able to gauge a particular applicant’s chances. Unless you’re an admissions officer at an elite college, you don’t see all the applications. At 20,000+ applications, it’s likely no single admissions officer has time to read all the applications. </p>
<p>So much gossip at the school level is unreliable. It’s possible the student everyone thought had his heart set on MIT really wanted to go to Harvard (or vice versa). A savvy admissions reader may be better able to tell from the application that the student who’s really smart and strong in STEM is likely to end up majoring in the liberal arts.</p>
<p>The holistic approach to admissions is uniquely powerful. I can remember a time (in the Dark Ages), when a student admitted to Harvard and MIT would automatically turn down MIT for Harvard. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I also remember that Brown and Duke were once seen as back-up schools to the rest of the Ivy League. That’s not the case anymore.</p>
<p>I would like to emphasize that there is a big difference between a student being flawed and an application being flawed. And a flaw to one college might mean nothing to another college, or even be a positive.</p>
<p>And let’s be realistic–MIT isn’t rejecting somebody who is one of a handful of true, obvious superstars in order to get another tuba player. Either MIT has a different idea about who the superstars are, or there was something about that kid’s application that MIT didn’t like.</p>
<p>Babcock and Marks found in the 2010 paper “Leisure College, USA” that students are spending much less time on their studies than 40 years ago, while average college grades have risen. Underemphasis on academics in the college admissons process is followed by a similar underemphasis when students arrive on campus, aided by grade inflation.</p>
<p>Mine don’t fit this profile. They aren’t doing super-human deeds or not getting sleep. They never won any awards (either academically or EC-wise), aren’t super-duper-geniuses,and still got in - because they presented a point of view as to who they were.</p>
<p>Why then are some of these “top 100” students not among them?
They may be among the admitted. The CDS shows matriculated. </p>
<p>*right away there’s the assumption my techie musician is flawed. *
Nope. You said: very smart, techie kid, but spent hours upon hours alone, composing music–really good music. But he wasn’t interested in showing it off. I said IF he decided not to engage. You didn’t provide addl info-
VERY good example of the issue here.</p>
<p>Limited info = limited picture of the kid. Mind what comes through in the app. This is a frequent problem in too many apps- they list a few assets, skip other details.</p>
<p>A talented player has to be seen, has to play some games so the judgers or evaluators can appreciate him.</p>
<h1>1634 Collegealum: great post - this makes it really easy for me to understand. We don’t expect to see all that many athletes like Lebron James in any age group, do we?</h1>
<p>QM wrote:
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<p>I am pretty interested in what this number turns out to be. I think we will all be surprised when we’ve been thinking there just aren’t enough seats.
…</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem likely to me there are very many of these “future scholars” already demonstrating * scholarly work that confirms their strong academic credentials* and maybe only a few of those will be the Lebron James level scholars at the undergraduate, graduate and professorial level. I doubt they could ever make up a huge percentage of the entering class at the most competitive schools. IMHO they don’t make up a huge percentage of the research scientists and professors currently working… just like every team isn’t full of players who equal Lebron. I also believe they are the students most likely to benefit from the academic resources at these schools.</p>
<p>It is a lot easier to identify the potential future world game changers in sports and math/science than in some other fields because there are all these “contests” early on that help identify them. Aren’t these also areas of endeavor where if early ability isn’t really nurtured the individual may be unlikely to reach full potential? Don’t they need those 10,000 hours or whatever to put into it?</p>
<p>I think these world changers exist in all fields but it gets impossible to discuss it if we can’t even agree they exist in math/science.</p>
<p>If both students achieve at the same level in the classroom, the student who has time and energy to pursue outside interests demonstrates more capacity to work harder in future. Perhaps the homework takes her half as long to complete as everyone else, giving her more time. </p>
<p>This is partly a problem of grade inflation, and the recentering of the SAT. I agree it is brutal for the students who are trying to compete with the true superstars. I don’t know how to reign in the madness, though.</p>
<p>"There are millions of high school seniors out there, how can anyone say with confidence that one student is absolutely the best unless they have actually seen the credentials of the million? Maybe they have had contact with a few thousand? "</p>
<p>Genius is inherent to a few people. It comes out eventually and the number of them around are probably 50 or so each year. Rest are hard workers, plodders, high IQ folks and whatever else you want to call them. </p>
<p>It is hard to keep down genius unless they have been raised in a tribe without human contact.</p>
<p>limabeans01: If you look at my join date, you’ll see that I have been around here for a while. The particular student I mentioned, who was admitted to MIT from the waitlist, graduated a while ago. Since our families are friends, I know of his record at MIT, not only in his classes, but in undergraduate research, internships, and extracurricular leadership (I mean, at MIT). I know what he is doing now. When he was 18 and I said that he was “brilliant,” this judgment appears to have been amply borne out by his subsequent track record. I will keep you posted if things unexpectedly change.</p>
<p>While I agree that admission committees are thougtful, considerate and knowledgeable, there is some measure of subjectivity in the process, especially in the model of holistic admissions.</p>
<p>I was struck by the posts on this board several years ago regarding the NPR piece about admissions at Amherst. The reporter sat in on an admissions committee in session. One kid wrote an essay about his hospitalization for surgery (maybe an appendectomy IIRC). His doctor asked him how he was feeling after the surgery, and his response was, “Chicken McNuggets.” The room full of adcoms erupted in laughter.</p>
<p>I thought it was humorous, not hilarious, but subjectively I felt that his essay added to his “likeability.” There was a vigorous debate on this board about his essay being immature, silly and trite. I was amazed that a number of people on this board, hearing the same essay, reacted so differently.</p>
<p>There is a measure of subjectivity which is beyond the control of the applicant. The Chicken McNuggets kid got an acceptance at Amherst. What if the committee felt, as some on this board did, that his essay was immature?</p>
<p>I think the subjective nature of holistic admissions offends some parent’s/applicant’s sense of fairness and objectivity. I personally have no problem with the subjectivity. I think sometimes a decision is made based on an impression rather than a reasoned, rational choice. That’s a byproduct of the holistic review.</p>
<p>And thanks, collegealum314, you made the point better than I did in #1634.
limabeans01: I am not saying that the people I have known are the very top students at Harvard, MIT, Caltech, etc. It is possible to know enough about the student ranges to be very confident that there are not 1500 students from the “sticks” who are better, any more than there were 1500 basketball players better than LeBron James in his year.</p>
<p>(Still mad at LeBron for leaving the Cavaliers gracelessly)</p>
<p>I think Caltech has the best selection process in the nation. Their applicants are reviewed by adcoms, FACULTY and STUDENTS to see if the student will fit in.</p>
<p>Well ,texaspg, Even Caltech lets their athletic coaches get into it. At least they did back in 2005. They “ran some numbers” on my kid and sent him a letter suggesting he consider playing for them . They were so miserable in basketball that they actually wanted to find some kids that had actually played before. It was so funny to get this letter as he had no interest in places like Caltech or MIT. Just not a good fit for him socially.</p>
<p>Subjectivity doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that the structure of college applications can promote a certain superficiality and gamemanship that doesn’t benefit the student or society. As a result, kids choose what’s good over what’s best. Reading books won’t necessarily directly result in something quantifiable, whereas volunteering for the equivalent period of time will give a student the community service hours he needs for NHS membership. So there’s pressure to do the latter when perhaps the student is the type of kid who’d be better served by the former. As another example, the word has gotten out to our town’s large immigrant community that colleges like athletes. In the last 5 years there has been a huge rise in the numbers of kids from these groups joining the school teams, regardless of whether they are athletic or not, interested in the sport or not, and competitive or not. I hear the parents saying they’re doing it for college apps. Also, around here I see more and more of the Amy Chua attitude that dictates you should reject the role of 4th villager in the school play in favor of spending that time on some other EC that will bring you more honor or look better on the application.</p>