I am reminded of one of my friends attending his daughter’s interview at the Trinity School in NYC. The kid was intelligent, talented, very high scores, very good preparation. Things were bumping along in a neutral way until the interviewer asked why my friend was sitting askew in his chair. My friend mentioned he had just run a marathon the day before. The interviewer beamed and said she was in the same marathon. Yes, there were great scores on the standardized tests and grades, and those were a factor. Yes, luck was also a factor. I think kids know this and have expectations that reflect this knowledge. They also want to make the best luck they can.
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I can’t speak for others, but I encourage my own kids to invest in themselves, and to do it authentically. So we don’t encourage trying to crack the code to maximize some admissions rubric.
We do not “prepare more meticulously” for the SAT or ACT. We do not prep for them at all, and we take them only once. Because prepping for the SAT is prepping to gain the appearance of learning rather than true learning. This is different than studying for a test in Organic Chemistry or Japanese etc., because when you study for a real test you are studying to learn, which is an investment in yourself.
Rising among the ranks in orchestra? Not a goal. I do not care if my kids are 1st chair or 2nd chair or no chair at all. Because not a single one of the many successful professional musicians I know cared about that. Instead they were investing in themselves by developing authentic musicality. I know a lot of former high school 1st chairs who haven’t picked up their instruments in decades. But the girl who at age 12 spent every free moment listening to the masters and obsessed with the goal of learning to swing? She’s a professional jazz musician today.
Setting a new personal best? Sure, maybe someday. But I think of the star track athlete who recently graduated. Each race was about reaching a new personal best. For a female distance athlete, by far the surest path to that goal is to lose weight. But it often ends very poorly, as it did with this young woman. She is no longer running and she is not even attending the prestigious school that she got into as a recruited athlete.
Healthy, joyful, authentic, long-term investment in themselves. That’s what I want for my kids.
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In a thread where so many are concerned about depression, stress and mental health, where are these online commentators getting the dose of reality and bucket of cold water? The more stressed out these kids are, the more they are engaging this site for affirmation, information and comfort. That’s why they should be reminded about what matters and how their efforts really mean something. To me, that is compassionate.
That’s really the dichotomy isn’t it? How does striving fit with this very popular ideal of teenage years lived without worry or care. Can you strive without becoming a “grade grubbing striver”? That is the kind of place where I like to stay out of the judgment zone.
It’s a joy to see that you are so involved with your kids and that your household abides by such a definable set of principles. Where we disagree is applying this set of principles to others who are not your family and judging them thereby. If someone wants to prepare for the SAT? Might be a great idea. The same kinds of standardized test taking thought processes and strategies that a kid might learn there might actually pay dividends for the MCAT, LSAT, GRE, whatever. They’re all different tests, but certainly good test taking skills are a “thing”. Anecdotes aside, not everyone seeking a personal best becomes anorexic. And, the most likely predictor of continued involvement in music according to every instrumental and vocal teacher I’ve ever spoken with - attaining at least a moderately high level of competence that sustains the ability later in life. People have different reasons and different world views. I respect yours applied to your kids. “Social identity theory” poses a very stern warning that applying your value set to others leads to a path of demonizing or degrading others.
My S24 was that kid. 1580 SAT (single sitting), good ECs, excellent recommendations and near perfect GPA with top rigor. I am sure he made it past first review at every T20 he applied to but he was still WL or rejected at all of them. Meanwhile, there were several hooked students with lesser academic accomplishments that got in. That’s just the way it is—even more so when you come from an over represented area like MA. So what if his real chance of admission was closer to 15 or 20% than 3%. It’s still a long shot. That doesn’t diminish the value of his hard work, it’s just the reality that checking all the right boxes is no guarantee of anything.
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After carefully studying the litigation materials that are publicly-available, my takeaways were maybe a little different.
From what I could see, it was relatively attainable to get an Academic 2. Not easy, we are still talking about a level of consistent academic excellence that only a relatively small percentage of secondary school students will achieve. But achievable by the sorts of students who can plausibly be thinking about applying to Harvard unhooked in the first place.
In contrast, getting an Academic 1 was nearly impossible absent a truly extraordinary academic record. But it was also not necessary, because the vast majority of unhooked Harvard admits had an Academic 2.
The same thing was true with all the 1s, except Athletics where you “only” had to be a recruited athlete. Almost no one got an EC 1. Almost no one got a Personal 1. But in fact, outside of recruited athletes, very few Harvard admits got a 1 in anything. It just wasn’t necessary, couldn’t be necessary because so few people got one.
On the other hand, I think the big “surprise” was how seriously Harvard took the Personal rating, and how much of a problem it was if you only got a Personal 3 (or less, but almost everyone at least got a 3), and not a Personal 2. Again, a Personal 1 was not realistically obtainable, but a Personal 2 was, and if you didn’t get one and were otherwise unhooked, that was very likely the end for you.
OK, so you are one of the already very special kids who are academically qualified enough to get an Academic 2, and also have done the ECs to get an EC 2, and you are observing your chances at Harvard are better than the raw acceptance rate, but still no better than maybe like 20%. Darn. What can you do to actually get that up to a really good chance?
And one answer is to try to bump up that Academic 2 to an Academic 1, or EC 2 to an EC 1. But that is nearly impossible. And incredibly, might not even work–Harvard still rejected a decent fraction of Academic 1s and EC 1s despite their rarity.
But a different answer is to try to get a Personal 2 and not a Personal 3. And that is not easy, as a majority of applicants got the 3. But that was by far the most common route for such an unhooked applicant to get into the 20% who were admitted, to get a Personal 2 as opposed to upgrading to an Academic 1 or EC 1.
But yes, this is cold comfort to the sorts of kids (and parents) who want a formula based on individual achievement where all they have to do is reverse-engineer what it takes to get an Academic 1 or EC 1, and then make sure they do that.
Targeting a Personal 2 from Harvard is simply not formulaic, and it does not fit an individual achievement model at all. In fact it typically requires having a certain set of values and practicing those values for years in advance of applying to college.
And that is not a welcome message if your Harvard app is due in months, you and your family never really had those values (not the way Harvard does), and you are only finding out now that is something that Harvard takes so seriously.
But it is what it is.
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True. Many push back when they don’t like the answer. But an objective 3rd party opinion is why they came - isn’t it ? Why give false hope like I personally believe some tend to do.
Telling the 3.3 they have a great shot at BU without ensuring they have a complete and balanced list is almost malpractice.
Get his hopes up on BU and that kid is gonna crash.
But everyone should answer as they believe in their hearts.
Otherwise you have group think.
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And no one is saying that there is a guarantee, and kids certainly know this without being reminded. Anyone with a 1550 on the SAT and a 4.0 and who was captain of the volleyball team knows that admissions is not guaranteed.
If getting an undergraduate GPA of 4.0 is likely to improve your chances at landing a job at GS, is that a guarantee? Why is this something we are emphasizing in the context of talking about factors that can matter?
Oh, in terms of what kids need to hear–I also tend to lean toward telling them the truth, but I also think on a fundamental level, what Harvard and its peers are asking from kids is intentionally supposed to be humane. Yes, they are looking for academic high-flyers, and also kids who are unusually active, possibly talented in one or more ways, and so on.
But they are NOT looking for those kids to ruin their childhoods, and mental and physical health, trying to eke out the last 1% of achievement success just so they can get into Harvard.
Instead, they want those kids to actually have the sort of childhood that will lead to them being happy, well-adjusted, successful people in college, and then in life after that as well.
So I think in this case, the truth is also a good message for kids to hear.
But, some kids, or maybe some parents, do not want to hear it, because they are very invested in a different approach, may indeed already have made a lot of sacrifices to follow that approach, and it is not a happy message it might all have been unnecessary, and indeed possibly even counterproductive.
Hopefully, though, if enough kids (and parents) hear this message early enough, they can actually have happy, healthy childhoods. And then some will get into Harvard, and most won’t, just like now. But the cost to kids of getting to that result will be lower.
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If we want to bring the conversation back to Harvard specifically, I think the weight of the analyzed data is that having an Athletic 3 or better was by far the strongest predictor of admission especially in the context of other excellence. And as the article mentions there are 1+ and 1-, 2+ and 2-.
Personality scores have been a Harvard bugaboo. They were emphasized in the SFA litigation because certain groups who we are not allowed to mention were categorically given lower personality ratings even in light of across the board superior academic and extracurricular scores. It was a tough look to send a message that Harvard categorically thought that a single “group” was a bunch of worse people. Imagine if that were other “groups?”
The article mentions a few more specifics as to personality scores and subsequent articles have mentioned that essays should be considered relative to “personal qualities not always associated with extroversion” among other tips and restrictions. I guess maybe it’s hard to have a club where everyone is the president.
And this is precisely the kind of value-based statement that social identity theory predicts leads to exactly the kind of behavior seen - assessment of others with different values and priorities as bad, unhealthy, unwise or inhumane bad parents. That many of these values are also assorted by demographics only strengthens this phenomenon.
Online commentators even those with “AO Cred” are not the arbiters of the “truth”. The kids know the “truth”. Do all the truth tellers go to the kid who has struck out 15 times in a row and say “aw man, you’re very very likely to strike out again!” I’d rather say - man you were looking great in the batting cage yesterday. We got a shot here. And if he strikes out, trust me, the kid is the last one who is surprised. And that’s little league. These kids are a lot older and more savvy.
Emphasizing how powerless their position is and how meaningless their accomplishments are is not “the truth”. Part of the truth, at least according to the Crimson, is that excellence does matter. It’s a bit distressing to see how different we are from most European and Asian countries on this attitude.
Of course academic excellence matters, I never said it didn’t. Where it is really important (IMO) is in preparing kids to be successful in college, wherever that mighty be. What I am trying to convey, however, is that unhooked students have very limited control over outcomes at T20 even when they have a stellar application. That is why I am always cautionary when asked to chance - yes, some fabulous uhooked students will get in but many, many more will not despite their best efforts.
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It’s a mistake to lump highly selective schools into one group and assume that admissions works similarly to Harvard’s because we have 10+ year old data from their process, or at Yale because they have a podcast, etc.
Schools do not benefit by being transparent about their admission process. So, lots of students and parents think they have a chance. But, they really don’t.
To whit…when a T20 AO (currently a TO school) was recently asked (by a counselor group) if a URM with an ACT of 30 should send that score because you know, ‘context’….the AO said nope, do not send. Context not a thing here. Yet many CC posters think it is and will post just that. Why? Because they think what they heard about one school makes it true for others.
At the highly rejective school where I read apps, if a student has more than a couple of B’s it is highly likely they aren’t getting in. High Test score, high rigor, a great story, great ECs will not compensate for that student.
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Most European and Asian countries rack and stack. They only consider academic achievement. That has never been the way of T20 schools in this country.
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This is not an accurate description for 1 academic. The full quote from reader guidelines is below. In the lawsuit sample, only ~30 applicants per year received a 1 academic rating. It typically involves faculty review of academic pursuits/research. It’s not simply a matter of 1590 SAT = 1, 1580 SAT = 2. Instead scores are one of several factors considered in the 1 academic rating (when scores are submitted).
A potential major academic contributor; Summa potential. Genuine scholar; near perfect scores and grades (in most cases combined with unusual creativity and possible evidence of original scholarship, often substantiated by our faculty or other
academic mentors.) Possible national or international level recognition in academic
competitions
For letters of recommendation / school support, there is mention of specific phrases that are important and correlate tightly with scores of 1 vs. 2
I think this is the strongest case for relative excellence among the ratings system. A specific quote from the reader guidelines are below. Note that the quoted phrases are a direct comparison to others students the teacher/GC has had in the past.
1 . Strikingly unusual support. "The best of a career,” “one of the best in many years,”
truly over the top.
2. Very strong support. “One of the best” or “the best this year.”
3+ Well above average, consistently positive
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It’s a really tough call for the schools. Publicizing the kind of data in this article widely might discourage exactly the kind of students that those schools want to reach - the underprivileged, the under-opportunitied, the remote, the under-represented. Sticking to a party line (embraced by many on CC) that academic excellence is a low, binary bar leads to exactly what you say - a miscalculation by many of their chances of admission. I can see why schools do things their way. I don’t see why many on CC go with it.
It’s not the foreign colleges that I’m surprised by. It’s the attitude that the best teen experience is carefree. Right or wrong, that is not what our foreign competitors are thinking.
Yes. There are however 1- and 2+ ratings.
I wonder how well some must have done in their high school’s AP Bio class and AP European history class to have gotten a Harvard faculty review of their work in high school? Is that level of work only available at prestigious private boarding schools or did someone somewhere accelerate? Because that is “not expected”.
I believe that “1” rated applicants are math olympiad gold medalists, Regeneron Science winners and things like that. National or international academic recognition. I don’t think anyone is getting a “1” based on any AP class.
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For athletic rating, having a 1 (recruited athlete) was the strongest analyzed predictor of admission. Recruited athletes usually get a pre-screen before applying, so the ones that pass the pre-screen and apply have an extraordinarily high chance of admission. In contrast, 2 Athletic was no more influential in admission than 2 in other categories such as academic, EC, or personal. At appeared that being a varsity team captain and potential walk on was treated as just another EC for purposes of admission… unless that athlete was recruited by a coach.
It’s “personal” rather than “personality”. Among the full unhooked applicant pool, 19.5% of applicants received a 2 or better. Among the lowest scoring ethnicity, 18% of applicants received a 2 or better. That’s a significant difference, but a smaller difference than many might assume from news articles about lawsuit. Following the lawsuit the reader guidleines were modified to state:
"It is important to keep in mind that characteristics not always synonymous with extroversion are similarly valued. Applicants who seem to be particularly reflective, insightful and/or dedicated should receive higher personal ratings as well "
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