Hear! Hear! My older son did not kill himself to get into Harvard. He whizzed through his homework and then spent the rest of his time doing what he considered fun stuff - everything from working on a mod for the game Civ 4 that gaming magazine rated number 1, to freelance work, to contributing to the Linux kernel, to helping a couple of med school profs with programming projects. He didn’t do any of this to look good at colleges. All we did was give him computer access from a young age and buy him how-to manuals as requested. </p>
<p>My younger son also applied to Harvard (mostly to make Dad happy). He and we never thought he had the level of accomplishments (much less grades or scores) to make H anything but a very, very long shot. We were totally psyched when he got into Chicago and Tufts. He didn’t kill himself either, not even a little bit.</p>
<p>Every convocation I’ve been to and often the admissions sites boast about the quirky, interesting things their admittees have done. It’s pretty clear they consider these accomplishments worthy and predictive.</p>
<p>Mathmom … your kids sound great! One of my two big take aways from interviewing for Cornell was that there is a small set of high school students who “do it all” not by grinding away but because top notch level school work is not that time consuming for them and they are drawn into interesting things in their free time … what a joy to interview … and vitually no surprises in admissions outcomes either.</p>
<p>"Every convocation I’ve been to and often the admissions sites boast about the quirky, interesting things their admittees have done. It’s pretty clear they consider these accomplishments worthy and predictive. "</p>
<p>Are the quirky, interesting things or sob stories easy to fake on an application though?</p>
<p>This was very true of our situation - HYPSM never on the radar until late Junior year when we realized what our Ds had going for them. So our case proves your theory correct, at least for 2 admits.</p>
That could happen … but I think they typically are real … applications tend to hang together … for example, I’m willing to bet that the recommendations for soccer girl (who I mentioned earlier a couple of times) will reference the depth and breadth of her soccer activities and validate the info she provided on her own on her application.</p>
<p>Colleges get tax breaks and taxpayer money. Our taxes go to fund their overheads from grants. Their endowment income is tax exempt. All this is because they are EDUCATIONAL institutions. Nobody sees any problems when they discriminate against Asians or admit people with non-academic quirks like skills in goatherding? Who gave them the right to social engineer when they are building massive stadiums subsidized with taxpayer money?</p>
<p>3togo - I am not disputing that some quirky things/people are not real but I am suggesting that it is not hard to come up with fake accomplishments especially when we know Harvard admitted at least one student whose accomplishments existed only in his mind. Not only was he getting through Harvard, he was trying to be a Rhodes/Fulbright scholar.</p>
<p>I have been to a bunch of presentations where some students/parents raised the question about validation of information provided about awards, ECs etc and the response was “we expect you to be truthful on your application”. It is mindboggling when people say, ‘Oh but you don’t know how beautiful their essays were’ but who knows the applicant actually wrote them or if any part of that beauuuuutiful essay has a grain of truth since only the adcoms read it and making decisions using it?</p>
<p>I don’t know if any of you read the monday morning quarterback column by Peter King but the above rant goes into the section of the ‘Ten things I think I think’.</p>
<p>Anything can be faked. My older son’s stuff was corroborated by two outside recommendations and of course you could go look up the issue of Gaming Magazine if you really cared. My younger son’s activities didn’t really need corroboration, I think it was the way he wrote about his activities that showed his intellect, not what he did, which was not that earthshaking. But I’m sure his teachers also said he was a smart kid and a good writer.</p>
<p>Yes, that is disgusting. Why does the government not do something about it? </p>
<p>Did someone not propose to grab a share of Stanford’s riches to support the UC system? Did someone not advocate to push for an organized plundering of the rich schools in Boston. Oh, yes that shoud tell them a lesson. And yes, don’t they see that selective schools should solely be bastions of academic prowess for deserving white and asians? Seriously!</p>
<p>What’s up with those fancy stadiums and social engineering! With less social engineering, we won’t need them as few people would want to see sports with the best athletes. After all, it should cost a lot less to drop football and concentrate on cricket or badminton.</p>
No one said this. They should bastions of academic prowess for deserving STUDENTS. I’ve always wondered why Africans blow African-Americans out of the water when it comes to Academics.</p>
<p>I think it is getting harder to do this now, with the internet as a resource. Especially if an applicant is trying to fake something significant enough to make a difference in his/her admission, like a state, national or international award or ranking. I understand the UCs are now doing random requests for verification of ECs.</p>
<p>I do think essays are still suspect, but I imagine that the content of most essays will match up with an applicant’s ECs and background, and the form should match grades and scores in English.</p>
<p>I’d vote to have the application essays produced in a real time controlled environment - not scored as the SAT and ACT essays are scored but just submitted via the common application with proctoring present to insure the work is the kid’s and only the kid’s.</p>
<p>I would equip the kid with a copy of their resume and a dictionary. Period. And there would be three or four prompts not disclosed beforehand.</p>
<p>I personally think the whole application can be more the work of “the village” than the kid at this point - parents, teachers, hired consultants “give it a read” which inevitably means adult feedback, iterations toward perfection, etc. The kid with the best “village” is going to be very much advantaged.</p>
<p>It’s the voice that I think matters. Not so much what the kid says but how they express it, the general sensibility. </p>
<p>Right now the colleges are depending on easily gamed instruments – application essays and even interviews – to identify uniqueness, fresh perspective, quirky kid, etc.</p>
<p>mathmom - I am sure your kids did what you say they did and the question is not directed at your kids. </p>
<p>It is a question of checks and balances in the process and not much of that seems to be happening. When you read about 44 schools out 58 cheating their way through tests in Atlanta, how reliable are those recommendations from the same teachers (btw, recommendations can be faked too).</p>
<p>Bay - It would be hard for someone to lie about winning an Olympiad or Science fair prize etc but it is the other stuff that seems to tug at the adcom’s heart strings that I am concerned about. </p>
<p>I do kind of like sewhappy’s idea about writing essays in a controlled environment. It eliminates the ‘village’ from the equation.</p>
<p>Does anybody even remember the orignal question?
</p>
<p>I think early on, it became an article of faith that these acceptance rates, categorized by race, are a closely held secret by the colleges. Still, it’s interesting how the thread progressed from whether or not Asian acceptance rates are low compared to college acceptance rates as a whole (which no one knows for sure) to whether they are low compared to URMs (to which everyone assumes the answer is “yes”.)</p>
<p>I’m not so sure, however, it really answers the OP’s question because even assuming the colleges eliminated affirmative action, isn’t it safe to assume that Asian acceptance rates would still be low? And, wouldn’t that (using the OP’s premise) still be <em>prima facie</em> evidence of racism?</p>
<p>Of course, that is so obvious…except for the fact that, how many college administrators and Grutter US Supreme Ct justices are/were URM and would benefit from that advantage?</p>
<p>“isn’t it safe to assume that Asian acceptance rates would still be low?”
No, it’s not safe to assume that. Just look at the Asian acceptance rate at top UC and CalTech.</p>
<p>I feel bad for those inner city Atlanta kids. its not their fault they have incompetent parent/s and culture of counter-education. the only places that care about education in Dekalb County are in GA Tech and Emory.</p>
He didn’t kill himself either, not even a little bit.</p>