Can political involvement hurt admissions chances?

Parents Forum
21

There were conservatives at Oberlin when I attended.

While they had to put up with more challenges, the level of heated discussions/attacks were similar to or sometimes far less in frequency/intensity than what I’ve seen radical progressive left classmates dish out to each other over disagreement on 1-2% of things.

That’s a gross overgeneralization. Engineers/CS folks I’ve worked with, knew from HS, or interacted with at computer techie conventions tended to the extremes politically…either extreme-right libertarians or radical progressive(a.k.a. radical neo-hippies) who’d fit in very well among the more radical Oberlinians of the '90s*.

I’ve known several undergrad humanities**/Ed school graduates who are deeply conservative and voted for the current POTUS, including a spouse of a friend who is himself a CS graduate and is center-left in his politics. Incidentally, this is one major factor in why the recent election caused much tension between him and his spouse and her parents.

  • Oberlin has actually become less radical and more mainstreamed after I graduated at the end of the '90s. Back when I attended, even favoring the Green Party meant you would have been considered "too conservative/right wing" for some whereas nowadays, they'd be a bit more left than many younger Oberlin alums/students who graduated from ~'03 and later.

** Within the humanities/social sciences, the areas where conservatives tend to gravitate to in my observations tend to be Art History, Classics, US/Western European History(Mainly of the Anglo-Saxon societies), US and Western European areas of Politics/Poli-sci, Military History***, Economics, etc.

*** That’s not synonymous to say no left-leaning centrists or progressives gravitate to those fields as well.

Incidentally, Michelle Malkin is an Oberlin alum(Class '92).

Found it interesting that according to wikipedia’s sources, she initially attempted to enroll in the Conservatory as a Piano performance major****, but ended up in the college majoring in English lit.

Especially considering she’s followed a well-worn path many Oberlin classmates trotted…enrolling in the college after failing to gain admission to or not being able to cope with the Conservatory’s more exacting demands/competition.

****http://www.goldsea.com/Personalities/Malkin/malkin.html

22

@roethlisburger - that may be true, but he pleaded guilty.

23

I’d argue that the very large schools that have to hire those “legions” are the schools least likely to care about applicants’ political leanings.

24

The *schools/i may not (or may have an official political neutrality policy for admissions), but that does not necessarily mean that individual admissions readers will be the same. In many jobs, people can inappropriately inject their own political viewpoints into how they do their jobs; college admissions reading is no different in this respect.

In addition, the school does not have to be very large; it just needs to attract a large number of applications for it to have a need to hire legions of temporary admission readers to do preliminary scoring.

25

I would hope that it wouldn’t make a difference, but it might. I guess if a college would not want your D because of this perhaps it’s not the right place for her.

26

Yeah, I won’t try to argue that it’s impossible, but I do think it’s unlikely at all but the largest schools. Adcomm meet in conference with great frequency, and an adcomm with such a proclivity would not be employed for long. Now, if the director of admissions did, that’s another story…

27

I work for a liberal elite and no, it won’t hurt, in itself. But. A) remember, they aren’t just looking for club titles, nor get togethers, a little chat club. And B,) she’ll still need to show she’s a thinking individual, isn’t just reactive. It helps to show she consdered her positions, has followed through on pursuing them. Eg, she could vol with a cause or local representative. Same as for more liberal types intetested in this.

Regional reps, the admissions officers, read apps first, not the additional folks. They want diversity of thought, but some sophistication helps, energies in the right directions. In a way, it’s put your efforts where you say your interests are.

This isn’t about expounding on her beliefs in the app. They aren’t vetting on political stands.

28

Would they have time to regrade the preliminary grades given by initial admissions readers to 30,000+ applications just to make sure that no political bias crept into the readings?

29

And I doubt you could call any college’s addl folks “legion.”

Of course there are conservatives in the mix. Or many who see value in a range of their own positions. It’s not cookie cutter.

30

@ucbalumnus - why do you think those initial grades would reflect something like this? They’re based on very clear, quantitative measures like GPA and test scores, afaik.

31

For at least some schools, initial scoring of applications is done by holistic reading, rather than just by numbers.

32

Ucb, the goal is to put together a well functioning community. They want smart, accomplished, activated kids, a mix that can succeed and grow together, maybe stretch each other. In itself, that precludes extremists or a funnel too narrow.

The valid concern isn’t some particular hypothetical adcom.

33

That’s really interesting! Did you read about that somewhere? Got a link? Have to admit it’s news to me, if true.

34

@TooOld4School : one of the biggest shifts in the past ten years is related to the new GOP stance toward science (making faith and science opposites, something Catholics had reconciled by papal edict in 1962, earlier for mainstream protestants; climate change denial; attacks on data; use of scientific facts as an easy punching ball) and the concomitant impossibility for scientists to support it. Until the 21st century, you could be a social and economic conservative and consider scientific data sacrosanct and not be heckled when you spoke about scientific facts at a conservative meeting. It can shift just as quickly if the GOP gets back to celebrating science as patriotic: Engineers and scientists aren’t any more liberal, but they don’t affiliate with official American conservatism anymore.
I suppose many current conservatives would consider these scientists ‘establishment’ or 'swampy ’ so I get there are different ways if looking at it.

@fredrica : it’d actually help her if she founded a club and got it going with actual actions or positive impact. It couldn’t just be a chat club where five kids autocongratulate themselves for not being libtards (and yes that term exists and is used with glee).
Building a successful conservative club that is both respectful and productive would be a huge challenge in high school, especially for now. She’d have to have strict rules on heckling and a system for enforcement - she would likely encounter virulence from other students and her club would sink if they were able to book her as well as it would if her club members did the same to others. She would have to think of an experiential project that helps the school or the community and follows her conservative principles. If she could pull that off it’s be very impressive and would definitely help her.
The only exceptions would be if ‘conservatism’ is a euphemism for racism - such as the kid who spoke about his involvement in the KuKlux Klan, which he assimilated to ‘conservative boyscouts’.

35

Is this old quote still relevant today, whatever ‘republican’ means? “If a man is not a republican at twenty, it is because he has no heart, and if he is one at forty, it is because he has no brains.”

36

I absolutely agree that your daughter’s involvement with politics, regardless of whether she leans left or right, will help her in the college admissions process. There is LITTLE chance that it would hurt her. Frankly, it is insulting to assert that revealing that she is a conservative in that way would hurt her chances at liberal LACs. Colleges everywhere want diversity, measured in innumerable ways. Given the current environment, being conservative would help her even more because there is more concern about balance. And any involvement, particularly one in which she is involved in a leadership capacity, will help her.

Keep this in mind - parents value diversity of opinion. My daughter is headed to Brown and given that we live in the midwest, our version of liberalism, including our language, is different than what it appears to be on the east coast! So my daughter will be learning different views to her left, and I would surely hope she will learn more views on her right as well. She takes very importantly the goal of being able to talk with everybody. If we can’t talk with each other, we are doomed. Where best to do that than in college?

I also think that it is unfair to point to recent events at Middlebury and the reactions to our beloved Milo and say…THAT reaction has become normalized. The universities involved have reacted well, speaking against intolerance. How they will handle future potential volatile situations is unclear - young people can be SO certain in their views. But the adults on campus will have to find a way to teach tolerance and deference, even if there can’t be respect.

37

Example: http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/committees/aepe/hout_report_0.pdf

There have been other statements on these forums about highly selective private schools where initial reading includes subjectively graded criteria.

38

Do you similarly warn posters asking about starting a leftist club about their language? Look up “repukes”, “republicnt”, “republicntard”, etc. on google. Even TV shows use those terms with glee.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/07/hbo-beyond-the-pale.php
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6508066
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=republitard

39

How can “adults” on campus teach tolerance, deference, and respect in politics, when “adults” generally, including prominent political figures and social media contacts, no longer practice such?

40

I think she’d be better served by getting actively involved in local politics. Help with an upcoming referendum, cover school board meetings for the school paper, get involved with a campaign for the 2018 midterm, volunteer for the local party in whatever capacity they need. Colleges like doers.