Suppose someone is admitted to a highly selective college. People tend to be impressed for some reason :).
However, supposed it is known or perceived that the student in question has a “hook” that helped him/her get admitted. Does it cause other people to be less impressed with him/her being admitted to the highly selective college?
My opinion is that these highly selective colleges have the privilege to choose among many more qualified candidates than they have room for. So, those with a “hook” aren’t keeping a “better” qualified student out.
That being said, there are some people who will be less impressed. But those people are generally the type of people who like to blame others for their own lack of accomplishments. I wouldn’t worry about their opinions, and I certainly wouldn’t take them seriously.
The grocery I worked at in high school regularly promoted the manager’s not terribly productive grandson.
So, one vote yes. Although generally it depends entirely on the hook and how the hookee waves it around.
It depends on the hook.
A hook that the kid earned, more power to her.
A hook that helps promote an otherwise qualified candidate because the hook serves a greater societal or institutional need, fine.
A hook that exists only, or in large part, because of a last name or relative’s accomplishments is not impressive.
Kids with famous parents seem to have to prove themselves worthy once they are admitted. Honestly, most of those kids are eminently “worthy” on their own merits, and go on to excellent success of their own. But we (society) are always a little suspicious at first, aren’t we?
And we all have the privilege of judging their judgment.
I don’t remember I or other students feeling resentful in the least about classmates who had obviously gotten in on hooks. For the most part, we were impressed by the same things that had impressed the admissions staff: football stars, an Olympian or two, a classical music prodigy with a burgeoning international career, a few children of famous politicians or cabinet members, a few scions of ultra-wealthy families, a few kids whose lives had been much more challenging to date than the average. What’s not to love? They hadn’t taken our slots, and it was fun to drop their names/stories back home.
What’s more, most of the “hooked” clearly belonged there – they had the intellectual goods. (A football player in my dorm who initially came across as something of a dumb hick went on to be Editor-in-Chief of the law review at a top law school, a Supreme Court clerk, and a Federal judge. He may have been a hick; he was anything but dumb.) Only a couple struggled to keep up academically, and people felt bad for them – they were miserable – and tried to help them out. Plus maybe there was a little happiness in the thought that this meant someone else was anchoring the bad end of the grading curve.
Except for that last part, I think it was the same deal out in the world. Who isn’t a little impressed by sports heroes and artistic stars? Not to mention people who are not only rich and famous but also smart and nice?
Of course people are judged by their ‘hooks.’ Athletes, affirmative action admits, Malia Obama. They may have been admitted on their own merits, but people are still going to wonder if they would have been admitted without the hockey skills, the affirmative action bump, her dad being president.
This year there is a football player who is a Rhodes Scholar. I’m sure he’ll always be known as ‘the football player who is a Rhodes Scholar’ rather than as ‘the Rhodes Scholar.’
But it works the other way too. In the NFL, they point out all the Ivy players who make it to the big dance. I guess that’s more of a ‘despite having a Harvard degree, Fitzgerald plays in the NFL.’
“However, supposed it is known or perceived that the student in question has a “hook” that helped him/her get admitted. Does it cause other people to be less impressed with him/her being admitted to the highly selective college?”
Yes.
The sad thing that is that this is also true for students who have the “hook”, but didn’t actually need it since their grades and test scores are so strong and would have gotten them in anyway.
There is another potential issue which might apply to a few students and probably doesn’t apply to most. Some of the “highly selected” universities are not actually particularly more difficult to handle once admitted. Others (MIT comes to mind) are academically very difficult for students who attend there. I personally would be reluctant to attend any such “very difficult” university if my GPA or SAT were significantly lower than the 25th percentile for admitted students.
There used to be a cc poster/MIT grad so opposed to hooks that he’d say, hooked kids should be embarrassed to attend a top school. Oi. Just freaking Oi.
You don’t know what brought a kid into that class. You don’t know it was a hook only. If you’re open-minded, (not a bad thing to be,) you will wait to form opinions. (And I mean, about individuals- not the old ‘anecdata,’ “Well, I knew a kid who” that you use to generalize against all.)
The second category can overlap with the first and third categories.
It does seem like you are making the distinction between “hooks” which are “earned” and “unearned” by the student (first and third categories above respectively). “Earned hooks” would be recruited athletes and other unusual talents, while “unearned hooks” would be those which the student has no control over or ability to change (relation to celebrity, politician, or big donor; legacy, URM). Within the “unearned hooks”, note that most of them correlate to a more advantaged upbringing, except for URM, which correlates to a less advantaged upbringing (obviously, there are individual exceptions in each category).
This certainly was a factor for the majority of Princeton admits from my graduating class as most were admitted with far lower GPA/SATs than would have been the case for HYPSMCC/peer elite colleges because they were legacy/developmental factors involved.
The lowest GPA admitted with the “SA(Special Admit)” designator on the GC released college admission stats was admitted with a GPA which would have precluded him/her from meeting the minimum GPA cutoff for Binghamton (Minimum of a 90/100).
As a result, mentioning one was a Princeton undergrad student/graduate wasn’t likely to impress most public magnet HS alums of my era or earlier…especially those who attended the other HYPSMCC/peer elite schools.
Also, anyone who was admitted on the basis of a legacy/developmental or athletic “hook” would be wise to keep that to themselves at my public magnet as the common perception is those who were admitted on that basis relied on their family wealth/pedigree/legacy/connections or athletics* needed them because they couldn’t compete on their own academic merits.
** It was taken to ridiculous extremes…especially considering the HS athletes took the same public magnet admissions exam as the rest of us.
Just using CC as a sample, I’m sure there’s lots of people who resent legacies and development admits. I’m equally sure the children of Sterling Fellows couldn’t care less whether some random person thought they bought their way in.
That was in your circle of friend, Cobrat. In the athletic circle, they were the
That was in your circle of friend, Cobrat. In the athletic circle, they were the BMOC. Even those in both groups (top athlete, top of the class) don’t consider one group better than the other.
I really doubt there is a group of Princeton grads embarrassed that the school was letting in unde rqualified students and that their diplomas are worth less.
Nope.
In fact, several athlete classmates during our HS years expressed they felt in the same social position at our HS that nerds at mainstream US high schools were often placed in …at the very bottom of the HS social pecking order.
It was schoolwide, not just within social groups. Especially considering I didn’t strictly stick with one crowd/group as that would have been too socially constricting/boring.
This was underscored when I was at an alum gathering which had alums from several decades worth of graduating classes, one class '82 graduate and MD remarked, “Unlike most mainstream US high schools where the athletes are idolized, we MADE FUN of our athletes”.
Nowadays, nowhere near as much as since the end of the '90s, Princeton has revamped their admissions policies so private/boarding school graduates, legacy/developmental factors, and being an athlete who plays an upper SES sport are no longer as highly privileged as it was when I was applying to college ~2 decades ago and before.
Wait, @cobrat are you saying your school actually listed Soecail Admits as such on a document expected to be seen by other students? What was the reason?
I don’t know if I would call it “stigma.” Maybe more of a judgment/assumption - that can affect your experience.
An African American woman I know who went to an elite school told me she simply got used to the fact that MOST of her white classmates assumed she got in because of affirmative action.
And although she proved – by her performance in the classroom – that she was as good if not better than many of the white kids, she also said she never felt she “belonged.”
They listed legacy/developmental admits under the “Special Admit” category. Athletic admits are also likely to be listed, but that’d be a rarity as my HS isn’t known for being an athletic powerhouse.
There’s a separate one for affirmative action admits, but there weren’t any for Princeton from my graduating class.
Reason for those designators was to give the junior and younger classes a heads up that the Special Admits’ GPA/SAT stats weren’t typical for what the vast majority of unhooked applicants would need to be viable contenders for such schools.
Yes. My D was a top student who earned A’s in honors and AP courses, had a very nice SAT score, and some good EC’s besides sports. Nonetheless, when National Merit kids were being honored at a BOE meeting, the principal himself implied she had only been admitted to Harvard because she was an athlete. Countless annoyed parents also made remarks to the effect that their kids wouldn’t be able to get into top schools like D had because they weren’t athletes. (Never mind they didn’t have the rest of the resume either.)
That said, for the most part she didn’t hear comments like that while at Stanford. A few people there seemed to think she got special tutoring and academic perks to make her life easier, which was most definitely not the case. It may have been true for the football players and other teams, but not for hers. Among her illustrious teammates were a Rhodes Scholar and a math major with a 3.9 GPA. Frankly, there were enough super smart athletes on that campus to dispel the false idea that a hook was their only asset.
@TheGFG My story matches yours but I have a S and a slight twist. The irony for his school, however, is those very same countless annoyed parents, were happily using legacy and development hooks for the equally selective schools their children DID end up attending.