<p>No worries, QM. Was just wanting to make sure I understood and wasn’t missing a reference.</p>
<p>Here, to me, is the crux of Vendler’s argument:
I think Harvard already does this–but they want really, really strong evidence that she really does surpass all her companions in that one subject, and that she’s strong enough in the other subjects to do reasonably well at Harvard. So if she really wants to be the next Wallace Stevens, she’d better have won a bunch of Scholastic awards, been to selective summer writing programs, have significant publications, etc.</p>
<p>Well, frankly, the maturity level of a seventeen year old poet is, well, the maturity level of a seventeen year old poet. Now, clearly, getting a chance to study with Jorie Graham will make any poet better, but not great. </p>
<p>Very few writers are doing their “best work” at seventeen, and very few who know how to structure an award winning, by nature, conventionally publishable story, at the age of seventeen, are actually very unconventional.</p>
<p>Identifying artistic and creative talents through contests is dubious, at best, particularly at the adolescent level, where the unconventionally brilliant are, by nature, undiscernable to those already established.</p>
<p>Eh…But if not contests and publishings, then what? Guesswork?</p>
<p>No, Philovitist, then it really doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>I honestly do not think this matters. As long as a poet or writer or artist receives some instruction in college, and in the case of a writer or poet, it might be better to receive that instruction in something OTHER than literature, which tends to reduce literature and poetry to things that have very little to do with creativity, like themes and semiotics and historical context, the student will be fine.</p>
<p>In fact, the truly unconventional creative might find themselves wrestling with all sorts of irrelevent information if they are identified too early and then “educated.” JMO</p>
<p>
Reviewing a portfolio has the same issues.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Absolutely.</p>
<p>Look, you can teach any writer to write “better” but not how to see things originally. There is value in knowing what has already been done, in order to be able to expand the boundaries or to not repeat the past unmindfully.</p>
<p>But, you can’t teach creative thinking so much as encourage it. And, you cannot know what will lead to great work, except that “education,” particularly in literature, really isn’t “it.”</p>
<p>Experience, a different way of seeing things, a unique perspective, certain generally incompatible internal characteristics, the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time… I mean, I suppose a curriculum could be built around this, but it wouldn’t be objectively measurable, and there is no way to know what will “matter” creatively in the moment in which you are judging the work of a seventeen year old artist.</p>
<p>YMMV</p>
<p>If the author is concerned about Harvard, she may have a valid criticism of Harvard’s admissions, but you can’t put all “elites” into one bucket. The Maya Lins and David Foster Wallaces managed to produce and flourish in their art in spite of their elite educations, at Yale and Amherst respectively.</p>
<p>Wasn’t there some thread awhile back that criticized Yale for being to “artsy” and not
admitting enough stem folks? There are schools for everyone. I doubt that the next Emily Dickinson even wants to go to Harvard. Why do schools have to be all things to all people?</p>
<p>exactly…</p>
<p>I wouldn’t confound the idea of “unconventionally brilliant” or creative with being a writer or an artist. Lots of young people may distinguish themselves in a “lopsided” and creative way in fields ranging from science to computer programming to math to civic engagement to entrepreneurship. Furthermore, not all those students choose to apply to a “comprehensive” liberal arts college or university, though many do.</p>
<p>My daughter took herself out of the competition for general admissions to selective colleges and went to art school (RISD), a college that recognized her special talents via her portfolio. She had the general math aptitude of the better applicants to liberal arts colleges and universities, though had no interest in getting lost in a large student body (or in sitting in college classes next to kids from her own high school).</p>
<p>My son’s achievements in extracurriculars in middle and high school showed that he had many skills beyond his test scores and grades – an ability to do independent research and make effective arguments (as a debater and a journalist), for example; a practical aptitude for statistics learned not simply through schoolwork but through extracurricular major hobbies from the age of 10. He wanted to enroll in a general liberal arts program; in addition to location (“major league city”) he wanted a diverse student body that didn’t look down on nerds! (Hence UChicago as a perfect fit; while MIT or Caltech [where he had a possible “in”] were too one-sided in their focus from his perspective.) Now the special skills and motivation that might have been just emerging at the time of college application, but that a competent adcom should recognize, have matured and flourished.</p>
<p>Harvard’s not perfect at identifying future top STEM researchers, either, notwithstanding the many metrics it has at its disposal for identifying them. That doesn’t mean it stops trying. </p>
<p>The biggest obstacle to Harvard graduating great poets is not so much that future great poets don’t apply, or that the admissions staff is incapable of identifying applicants who show promise as poets. It’s that once they get to Harvard they get swept up in options they never thought of before, as people they know get hired by consulting firms at crazy salaries, or go off to LA to write jokes for Conan.</p>
<p>Problem with Ivy-caliber college admissions is that the process begins as early as nursery school for many of the successful candidates, requiring participation in the “race to the top” academic contest for high achievement, outstanding ECs, and clear focus on the prize. (Legacies with family endowment dollars aside). I’d be curious to know how many “late bloomers” who were in regular-track 8th-grade math and english classes were subsequently enrolled in this year’s HYP freshman classes, who weren’t URLs.</p>
<p>I once looked askance at upper-income moms at our local middle-school pushing their “just average” children into higher-track classes in middle-school, repeatedly petitioning principal, and not accepting initial “no” due to ineligible achievement test scores, who then overrode high school placement test-defined class placements to demand honors classes instead, who hired tutors for several subjects, and diligently proof-read w/heavy editting (if not ghost-wrote) their children’s high school papers and application essays. If I had a dollar for every time a mom mentioned “we were up late last night writing a paper”, I’d have a steak dinner by now.</p>
<p>^^ Harvard just has to ask MIT to give them a list of the top 100 and cross admit to get the best STEM candidates. :p</p>
<p>MIT and Harvard do have a joint PhD program in HST. they should just expand it to undergrad.</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard-MIT_Division_of_Health_Sciences_and_Technology[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard-MIT_Division_of_Health_Sciences_and_Technology</a></p>
<p>How fitting that I’m reading this thread on Emily Dickinson’s 182nd birthday…</p>
<p>I saw this article differently. Helen Vendler actually seems more concerned with Harvard’s diminishing role in training emerging creative elites rather than with the missed opportunities of such potential elites to attend Harvard. She is eloquently mourning the decline of Harvard’s early 20th-century creative legacy. Someone interested in making a living as a writer nowadays would probably be better off going to Vassar or Wesleyan rather than Harvard.</p>
<p>Someone interested in making a living today as a writer would be better off changing their mind, actually. 
The average adult in the US reads 1.5 books a year. Given the number I read, and my family reads, the average adult in the US is not reading anything anymore.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that Harvard has a pretty distinguished history of producing poets, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell (who transferred to Kenyon), e.e. cummings, Adrienne Rich, Ogden Nash, as well as narrative writers like Norman Mailer, William Maxwell, and William Gaddis and filmmaker Terrence Malick.</p>
<p>I am not so sure someone interested in writing poetry would be better served at Vassar or Wesleyan. Harvard has a pretty terrific poetry faculty (including Vendler herself, whose close-reading methods would make her a great teacher for aspiring writers as well as readers).</p>
<p>Harvard may have a terrific poetry faculty but opportunities to actually take those classes are reportedly limited. [Many</a> Dissatisfied with Creative Writing | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/4/18/many-dissatisfied-creative-writing/]Many”>Many Dissatisfied with Creative Writing | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>Yes. You have to be a really good writer to get into a creative writing class at Harvard. That’s a shocker!</p>
<p>I have one of these kids. I can assure you that there are elite schools that appreciate quirky brilliance. While it’s quite possible for intelligent kids to write intelligent, well crafted essays, a budding writer speaks in a way that’s different and it does distinguish the student. The ECs and awards can also support a profile of a kid who stands out. We had some feedback on both points from several schools.</p>
<p>Having said that, I don’t think Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or the like go out of their way to sniff out this sort of talent. It doesn’t seem to be a priority. I’m sure there are exceptions but the experiences of kids like my D seem to reflect a rising need to perfect a resume, to jump through prescribed hoops to gain admission at these places. There is no Intel competition to win. I’m sure someone will suggest that the kid should have found a way to be published in order to gain attention. Maybe. But often these are kids who are students, often intellectuals and dreamers, not entrepreneurs. In any event, with one exception, the most talented would be writers we know did not seek out Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford. It seems to have worked out pretty well for them so far. :)</p>