Craziest Admissions Stories

sakky
Sun, 02 Jan 2005 12:53:15 +0000

I believe you’re misunderstood the purpose. The purpose of the state Honors program is not really to keep the best students in state. The purpose is to get the best students to matriculate, regardless of what state those students may be coming from. As you said yourself, your D was admitted to the honors program of both Rutgers and Michigan at the same time. How could that have happened if the purpose really was to keep the best in-state students? How can your D be in-state in both Jersey and Michigan at the same time?

Furthermore, even if the purposes really was as you say it is, then that would mean that the purpose would be to keep those in-state students who might actually be “swayable” to stay in the state. If you’re not swayable, that is, if it’s pretty clear you’re not going to stay in the state no matter what because you have better options elsewhere, then clearly you must agree that there’s no point in keeping a spot open for you.

And like I said, you might think it’s not fair for somebody to be denied for being so good. But look at it another way. Person A might be denied or waitlisted because person B who is really really good is occupying a spot, only to not take that spot anyway. Is that fair to person A? Why should person A get denied a spot in favor of person B if B isn’t going to take the spot anyway?

It reminds me of the old ‘dog-in-the-manger’ story. A horse in a manger is hungry and wants to eat some straw. A dog, seeing that the horse wants the straw, deliberately decides that he is going to sleep on the straw, even though the straw is uncomfortable to sleep on. The dog doesn’t really want the straw at all, he just wants to deny the horse the pleasure of eating the straw.

The point is, if you’re not going to actually seriously consider using a particular offer of admission, then what does it really matter if you don’t get it? Give it to somebody else who might actually use it.