<p>Agree that he could have used/gotten better college guidance. According to the article, his parents are educators. It is unfortunate the system didnt provide him with better guidance.</p>
<p>Also interesting is the fact that this got no attention in the local Atlanta paper. Perhaps if he’d chosen Ga Tech or one of the Atlanta HBCU’s it might have, but regardless, he is a bright kid who hit the college /scholarship jackpot and sounds like a great kid. I am surprised it got no attention. I have a friend who is an education reporter for one of the local TV stations. I wonder if she has seen the press on him? I might forward it on.</p>
I believe what xiggi was trying to say (and correct me if I’m wrong) was that nobody needed to know this kid’s entire application/acceptance history. If he wanted to maintain his privacy he should have kept that information private, because no matter what information you release somebody will always have some comment/criticism about it.</p>
<p>What is there to be gained from sharing such private details? Look at the 45 admissions … was that printed to elicit admiring ohs and ahs from readers? </p>
<p>Obviously, this number of admissions/applications is bound to raise questions about the adequacy of this young man college application process. While there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with his final choice, one has to wonder if you needed 45 applications to end up deciding between the Ivy League, Stanford, and FAMU. It seems that a lot of resources were wasted in a process that appeared to be similar to a “bidding” contest for one of the rare African Americans who score above 2100 on the SAT. </p>
<p>But again, my point is that someone might have helped this kid by suggesting to avoid the limelight or keep most of the details private.</p>
<p>This is his and his parents business, and nobody elses. Its a shame he applied to so many schools…I can’t imagine what that dining room table looked like.</p>
<p>The only thing that surprises me about this story is that the HBCU in question is FAMU rather than Howard or Spelman/Morehouse. Even that is somewhat explained by the student’s interest in engineering.</p>
<p>I don’t see how it is controversial. Harvard doesn’t hold a monopoly on success. If anything, this kid was wasting big $ on the application fees. Or he was abusing the system (though inadvertently perhaps) by using all those fee waivers!</p>
<p>I would pass up Harvard for the local community college. Of course, if someone is in the position of passing up Harvard, certainly there must be another school they can get in to without having to resort to community college. I cannot stand Harvard. I cannot stand anyone I have met who went to Harvard. I have more of a hate for it than anyone can possibly understand, and it is not a school rivalry thing either. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Harvard has such a strong history of accepting applicants based on things other than academic aptitude that many people coming out of Harvard are not that academically solid either. I would never hire a doctor or lawyer that came from Harvard.</p>
<p>Perhaps a fear of debt motivated his decision. Teachers typically aren’t rich but maybe his parents income excluded them from anything but modest aid from Harvard.</p>
<p>My older son graduated from high school at age 14. At his age, we never considered anywhere except the state university within walking distance. When he formally applied, the registrar looked at his 35 ACT and asked him, “Why are you here?”</p>
<p>I can see the decision to attend locally. I don’t what the point was of all those applications, other than to give bragging rights to the parents. Surely location must have been a primary consideration from Day One?</p>
<p>Some of this story is not hard to understand. If you are interested in engineering, Harvard is probably not going to be at the top of your list. MIT maybe, Columbia?, or logically Georgia Tech. He wanted to be close to home, but chose a college 300 miles away. Personally, IMHO, the driving force here was to attend a HBCU, with a good enough engineering department, that was close to home. GT was probably #1 only because it was in Atlanta (and must be a better engineering school than FAMU).</p>
<p>If Mr. Jones did not get a full ride at Harvard, his parents are not remotely poor, which also means that he should not have qualified for fee waivers, which in turn means that his parents spent roughly $2500 on applications. As Xiggi pointed out, this story is in the news because the parents have put it there.</p>
<p>*I cannot stand anyone I have met who went to Harvard. *</p>
<p>What an odd thing to say.</p>
<p>Either you’ve met very few people who went there and they just happened to be jerky, or you’ve met many and you have difficulties liking people in general. There is nothing commonly shared by people who go to Harvard that could elicit such a hate about them.</p>
<p>(You sound like my FIL who hated anyone who drove a Cadillac. Who hates people for something that is undeserving of hate?)</p>
<p>^^ Oh, well, I do understand your FIL. I have nothing against Cadillac drivers but Mazda drivers are the worst ;). And Nissan drivers aren’t much better either!</p>
<p>Sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder. It’s just a school, you know. It doesn’t magically transform nice people into jerks or jerks into nice people. Why not just judge people on who they are, instead of making assumptions that they must be this way or that way bc they went to Harvard?</p>
<p>Can’t he get fee waivers because he is an URM? Does it have to be low income?</p>
<p>I think it would be a scary thing to go off to college when you are 16. Maybe he is a momma’s boy and wanted to be near home. Maybe he wants to be a big fish in a small pond and was worried about not being the best at Harvard. I won’t judge since I won’t ever know the details.</p>
<p>I admire his choice and doing his own thing. HBCU- fun atmosphere and don’t take themselves too seriously. No stuffiness.</p>
<p>I don’t know the family income of the kid in the article - but a kid at a school near ours(URM, plus technically homeless) got into an Ivy last year. Even though his tuition, room and board were covered by the school, other expenses were not. The community had to raise funds for his transportation, a computer, furnishing his dorm room, new clothes and spending money. I often think of this kid and wonder if he feels out of place being the “poor kid” at school. It might have been easier to go to a local (and still good) state school and be close to his support network. I don’t know, but I know there are many reasons why kids pick colleges and not always the prestige factor.</p>