<p>Of course. It’s not in touch with reality to think that Thornton Chillington Wadsworth is stroking his pipe and saying, “We can’t let him in, because he won’t fit in with our type.” That’s someone’s imagination and hang-ups, run amuck.</p>
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<p>I agree completely and have said so on various threads, and I find it whining when people complain about mailings. But there’s a lot of ignorance on CC that the schools that they all drool over simply aren’t on the radar screen in other parts of the country.</p>
<p>Especially since many of the Adcom’s are themselves first gen/wooden spoon type alums who work in admissions for a few years after graduation and are mindful and grateful for the opportunities they had…</p>
<p>My main point is that your faith that all or even most adcoms share your values is more naive and fits in with the “Just World Syndrome” my social science/IR scholar friends used to describe folks who cannot conceive of elites or those in elite positions having differing values, sense of what’s good and just in the world, or otherwise abusing their power for various reasons. </p>
<p>While the ranks of Chillingsworth types have thinned considerably, their existence/influence cannot be dismissed altogether. It also varies by campus culture*, adcoms in place in a given period, etc. </p>
<p>For instance, their influence was still strongly felt at Princeton up till the mid-late '90s until there was a change of admission directors who emphasized admitting more lower SES students from public schools as Jonri recounted in a previous thread. </p>
<p>I also encountered several alum interviewers for various Ivy/elite universities who could be described as Chillingsworth types.* Thankfully, they are a minority within the ranks of influencers…but their existence even in the 21st century leads me to believe one shouldn’t completely dismiss their influence…however slight, out of hand. </p>
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<li>One happens to be a close HS friend who came from the same SES background as I did, but who bought into the “keep the riffraff out of elite college” mantra upon becoming an alum interviewer. Some mutual friends of ours are surprised we’re still friends…though a large part of that is our mutual sense of humor is such I can seriously rib him for his “Chillingsworth tendencies” and he ribs me in turn for being “the riffraff I’m supposed to do my best to keep out to ensure the college’s ice cream social provisions are kept safe”.</li>
</ul>
<p>There will always be Thornton Chillingsworth IV’s in this world, cobrat. You’re the only one who seems to assign them any kind of meaningful power or prestige.</p>
<p>Cobrat, all of your points are very well taken but we aren’t debating admissions practices in the mid or late 1990’s. We’re talking today; I have met dozens of adcom’s and Directors of Career Services in a professional context over the last few years and I have been struck by the absence of the Chillingsworth types. Not talking interviewers (I was an interviewer for my own alma mater; the bar is low for deciding who gets to volunteer for such work) but among the paid adcoms (regional representatives, plus the more senior folk on campus.)</p>
<p>I dismiss their influence out of hand- mainly because I’ve met these people when we’ve done campus visits prior to and during my companies recruiting events-- and they don’t exist.</p>
<p>cobrat, does your HS friend work in admissions or is he an alumnus who interviews? They are not the same thing, and their relative influence is not even on the same page. Paid Adcom’s set policy, screen applications, make in and out decisions. Involved Alums help “spread the word”, extend the reach of the paid adcom’s into underserved geographies, and “make nice” with influential donors and their children, whether or not these kids are going to get accepted or not.</p>
<p>Not the same thing at all. Whatever rif-raff your friend is trying to keep out? He’s long since lost that battle.</p>
<p>And a Questbridge kid; graduate from a KIPP type charter school with high scores; Harlem Children’s zone… if these kids have the goods academically, the elite schools will jump cartwheels.</p>
<p>I acknowledge the fact they exist and have some influence…however thin their ranks or weakened they have become. </p>
<p>On the other hand, you are exhibiting some signs of the “Just World Syndrome” my social science/IR scholar friends constantly discuss and write about in their scholarly writings.</p>
<p>I think you’re just intimidated by Thornton Chillingsworth IV’s, since so many of your posts are about how snooty they are and trying to take them down a peg. You needn’t be so intimidated. Believe me, they aren’t paying anywhere as much attention to you as you are paying to them.</p>
<p>It’s not intimidation. More amusement and concern they exist in the late 20/21st century society when such folks should justifiably be consigned to the dustbins of history back in the 19th. </p>
<p>And if they throw nice parties with good provisions and desserts, crashing them was a fine way to get a free meal and to get a rise out of them. A much more genteel version of General Sherman’s March to the Sea… :D</p>
<p>And eavesdrop in Martha’s Vineyard and Newport and Bar Harbor and their other watering holes this summer and hear them ruefully acknowledge that their influence is mostly within their own friendship and kinship circles, and that the rest of the world has pretty much moved on. They make for good newspaper copy, but they haven’t set social policy for the influential institutions and companies and universities since the Clinton’s arrived in the White House.</p>
<p>So what do you think your scorn, disdain, and crashing their parties does? It’s rather like the archetype of the boy dipping the pigtails of the girl he has a crush on into the inkwell. You want attention from them, and you’re bothered that you don’t get it, so you resort to pranks to obtain it. But secretly you’d love for them to pay you attention. Otherwise you wouldn’t resort to the pranks; you’d just move on with your life.</p>
I wish I could see the data in post #179 about SAT scores broken down by state/region, and find out how many and from where those with HIGH SAT scores plus exceptional academic records don’t have the most selective colleges in their radar screen. I am sure there are some, but how many? Well, granted there are not many high scorers that would grab these colleges’ attention to begin with. Still, when you see some of the tipsy-top colleges in the US are on the radar screen of so many people in many parts of the world, you start wondering if this country is too “regionalized”, as reflected in the fact that many don’t know a thing outside their country, state or even township, and they are simply not interested.</p>
<p>Of course, one may argue - wouldn’t those “drooling over those schools” be guilty of not knowing enough about the schools outside “their league”? Well maybe, but we live in a world that’s so dominated by “mainstream media” (last time I checked there’s only one version of US News and World Report for the whole country) that most of people are unavoidably susceptible to the college rankings and the media portrayal of elite colleges (not to mention the pedigrees of presidents and supreme court justices etc.). Is it wise or ideal to be “controlled” by the media? Probably not. But are those in “other parts” of the country who don’t know about or are not curious/interested in knowing these ‘non-regional’ schools wise people who choose a unique path consciously?</p>
<p>The majority of mailings haters simply realize that there is no requirement to flood the north shore of Long Island with marketing to find a diamond in the rough in “fly over” country. Colleges intentionally target both markets. To believe they cannot find their rural gems without also flooding already saturated suburban zip codes with mailings does not make sense. To suggest that those who criticize the app accumulating tactics of these schools as unnecessary and/or disingenuous are somehow ignorant or malcontent in some way is a little bit unfair, IMO.</p>
<p>As to the OP’s topic… It seems to me that for the most part, if a student is not satisfying some institutional need he or she needs to have an extremely impressive app and be highly accomplished in and out of school to be admitted. Is it any surprise that these things are highly correlated to prep school attendance? Aren’t families who send their kids to prep schools self selected as being more likely to be both interested in these colleges in the first place and more focused on building the accomplishments necessary to be admitted?</p>
<p>It seems to me that colleges do not prefer these kids as much as these kids just submit more accomplished, and more numerous, apps. If anything, colleges expect less (although not much less) in the way of accomplishments the further a student gets from the prep school culture.</p>
<p>Of course, some students were not interested in the Ivy League; others would not have the grades or extracurriculars to win admission. On the other hand, the Ivy League colleges’ SAT averages (25% - 75%) are so high they must be collectively admitting the lion’s share of the high scoring seniors. [Ivy</a> League SAT Scores - Compare SAT Scores for Ivy League Schools](<a href=“http://collegeapps.about.com/od/sat/a/sat_side_x_side.htm]Ivy”>Ivy League SAT Score Comparison for Admission)</p>
<p>I think the difference is that many of you on the east coast see high-scoring kids not interested in Ivies as “aberrations” / uncommon occurrences, and those of us elsewhere see high-scoring kids not interested in Ivies as commonplace and not out of the ordinary or unexpected. Certainly Californians aren’t “shocked” when high scorers choose UCLA, Berkeley or USC and don’t bother applying to Ivies. No one here in the Midwest bats an eye if a high scorer wants Michigan, Wisconsin or Illinois. But you guys all assume the natural course of events is that a high scoring kid would obviously want the Ivies above all.</p>
<p>I agree with you Pizzagirl but, from my point of view, the advantages of an Ivy are obvious in the Northeast. </p>
<p>I lived in Texas and would probably go to SMU for the advantages it offers there over the Ivies. Either way, parents just want the best for their kids and the best isn’t the Ivies for everyone.</p>
<p>Oh PG you forgot Purdue and IU! A poster upthread asked what high scorers are not Ivy aware/obsessed? I’m fairly comfortable in saying the huge majority of my state is not Ivy obsessed and would become certainly think nothing of the top students attending our flagships.</p>
But those are not 23,000 unique individuals, are they, if that’s the number admitted? Also, if we’re talking about super-selective schools, there are a number of non-Ivies that you’d have to include. And, even if there are 23,000, that’s still a lot less than 30,000, the number of high schools, and there are some high schools that have multiple high-scorers.</p>
<p>Also, I have to say that I don’t think adcoms are going to get too excited about a 2210 from an unhooked applicant, even if he or she does come from an unknown high school.</p>
<p>I assume the distribution of high-scorers is not uniform. Given the radical differences between communities, driven in part by the “good school” effect, I would be very surprised if there were a high-scorer in every high school. Rather, I’d expect the high-scorers to be more likely found in the “good” suburban high schools, the academic magnet schools, and the private (and public) schools which practice selective admission. </p>
<p>Many of the top schools (reaching beyond Ivies, now) offer early admission rounds. All the early decision kids are required to abide by their ED apps, so they only appear once in the stats. Many of the SCEA applicants choose to give up the college-application hobby, once they are admitted to their first choice–so they’re also more unique than not. </p>
<p>Some private schools restrict students who have an elite college admission in hand–Stanford, the Ivies, etc.–from applying to other colleges. Thus, some private school applicants apply to only one college. One private school we toured a few years ago claimed 75% of their seniors knew which college they would attend the next year by mid-December.</p>
<p>Yes, there are students admitted to multiple elite universities. However, most of the colleges publish stats of the matriculated freshman class. When multiple Ivy League schools report 75th percentiles near 800 in math or CR, there aren’t that many students who score that well on the SAT, who also want to attend college on the East Coast. Many students don’t want to go too far from home. </p>
<p>If you hang out on CC for too long, you start to think "adcoms won’t “get too excited” about a 2210. I consider some of the colleges recently caught fibbing about SAT scores to be very selective. If 2210s were thick on the ground, they wouldn’t have had to fib.</p>
<p>No. Wrong by a wide margin, at least if you’re looking at the Ivies’ middle 50%. They may be collecting the lion’s share of those with scores in their top quartile–though even that is doubtful because a number of other top schools like MIT, Chicago, Caltech, and Stanford are bringing in similar top quartiles, and undoubtedly there are many tippy-top scorers spread around among a large number of schools.</p>
<p>But if you look at the Ivies’ middle 50%, the quoted statement isn’t even close to true.</p>
<p>Princeton’s 25th percentile SAT/ACT scores (1410 CR+M, 31 ACT) mean that fully a quarter of its entering class is below those marks. Since Princeton enrolled 1,300 freshmen in 2012, that means 974 of them (75%) had SAT scores of 1410+ and/or ACT scores of 31+. </p>
<p>With a freshman enrollment of 6,236, Michigan had 1,559 freshman (its top quartile) with SAT CR+M of 1450+ and/or ACT scores of 32±-higher than Princeton’s 25th percentile marks. And with a freshman enrollment of 7,255, Illinois had 1,813 freshmen (its top quartile) with SAT CR+M of 1440+ and/or ACT scores of 31±-higher or the same as Princeton’s 25th percentile marks. In short, both Michigan and Illinois enrolled far more students with test scores that would have qualified them for at least the middle 50% of Princeton’s class than Princeton did. It’s plausible that Princeton had more super-high scorers (e.g., in the 2350 to 2400 range CR+M+W). But that’s far from the typical Princeton student. The typical Princeton student (middle 50%) is more like the above-average student (top quartile) at Michigan or Illinois—and there are far more of those people at Michigan and Illinois than at Princeton.</p>
<p>You could apply that same analysis to all the Ivy League schools and all the top publics, and the results would be similar. The median (middle 50%) Ivy League student has standardized test scores in the same range as the top quarter of the class at the much larger top public flagships, which means there are more people with test scores in that range at the top publics than at the Ivies.</p>