@ShanFerg3 you asked “how do you think this student would be perceived by the adcom?”
Your daughter sounds amazing and obviously works incredibly hard.
That being said, a very poor student can focus on “general EC’s like the debate team”. In fact, many high schools with predominately low-income students still field debate teams, and those students are incredible despite often having low-paid advisors learning the rules of debate along with their students.
While I know there have been some movement to provide fencing opportunities to students who are so disadvantaged that the program must provide all equipment (from head to shoes) and arrange and pay for all travel to any tournament, I do think the number of truly disadvantaged students able to get the same kind of fencing training as more affluent ones is probably quite small.
So I presume adcoms also recognize that the opportunity to devote so much time to a sport like fencing is also a privilege – one that many students who participate in “general EC’s like the debate team” do not have.
@mdphd92 I think you are confusing revenue sports with non revenue sports. Or, you want me to be wrong. I know precisely what I’m talking about. Non revenue recruits are expected to raise the academic index for revenue recruits. I know what my daughter academic transcript had to be because I was told by the coaches. Below that I was told they wouldn’t be able to get an athlete pass the adcom. My daughter was certainly not the exception
" Mine with 0.5% top academic and dreamy non academic accomplishments was accepted at some better colleges but outright rejected from USC, not even waitlisted. Everyone was surprised but we assumed it was because they don’t like to give too many National Merit Scholarships, who knew they prefer famous and incompetent frauds."
wow.
USC’s admissions committee has LONG been able to sniff out applicants who have shown no genuine interest in actually going to USC, but think they “deserve” to be accepted.
your offensive, sour grapes post confirms that.
BTW, DS was a USC Trustee scholar, a Discovery Scholar, and last year received his PhD from Caltech. I doubt that he would be called a fraud, lol!
And btw, he also was accepted at many tip top colleges, too numerous to name here, but was happy and challenged at USC, where he was roommates with friends who went on to earn PhD’s at Princeton and MIT.
@MommyCoqui Don’t despair. It’s not as bad as it all seems. The system is flawed - it’s comprised of human beings and that’s life - but not its not as bad as it feels here on CC.
Let’s do the math. Last year 1.9mm students in the USA alone took the ACT. Some number slightly less than that took the SAT. This case over 10 years involves 700 students. Granted it’s 700 too many and 700 spots lost to others.
But ten years is 19mm test takers. 700 in this case. Make it ten times worse which is stretching things in my estimation. That’s 7000 out of 19,000,000. That’s not perfect but not broken.
That’s .0003 percent. Better reliability than most medical exams or finely engineered instruments.
And all 7000 students didn’t apply to the allnof the same schools at the same time. It was dispersed among millions. All the kids who lost out on one spot made it somewhere else. And maybe it was a better situation in the end.
Tighten up the system to avoid the 700 or 7000 scammers. It can be done.
And also I believe in our children. They do have integrity. Not that many would cheat even if they could.
@observer12 you really believe the adcom would look at a student like the one I described and what it took to accomplish what that student was able to and diminish it by saying she is privileged? You are entitled to your opinion.
ShanFerg3 I have agreed with much of what you have said previously but it appears you are now suggesting non revenue athletes at elites are martyrs of sorts, relative to alternative EC kids like debate, community service, researchers, 3 sport athletes (not on a national level) or working 20 hours a week to support a family.
Your daughter sounds truly amazing but no different then the vast majority of students I have met on Ivy campuses. The kids I reference are equally taxed, challenged tireless and ambitious. Generally I am blown away by how consistently impressive these kids are and how they all have all the academic credentials plus something that makes them unique. Your daughter seems consistent with this observation but not superior to it.
Last point. Lots of incredibly hard working and talented kids (comparable to yours) don’t get into their school of choice. It doesn’t diminish them at all nor should it serve to lessen the significance of their efforts. The system is not perfect and “deserving” is subjective.
Did I not start out by saying how amazing and hard working your daughter is?
YOU were the one who diminished students who did “general EC’s like debate”, as if an adcom would immediately understand that an accomplished fencer was far more deserving than an accomplished debater.
I really don’t want to argue with you because we both agree you have an amazing and talented daughter who certainly sounds deserving of a seat at any college. Perhaps we disagree as to whether she is automatically MORE deserving than a kid who does “general EC’s like the debate team” - most of whom would never have the family support and income to make participating in a sport like fencing viable.
And I’d say the same thing about a parent whose kid was one of the best “sailors” in the country, if he compared his kid’s accomplishment to debate in a way that seemed to unnecessarily diminish debate – something even very low-income students can participate in.
Don’t despair. It’s not as bad as it all seems. The system is flawed - it’s comprised of human beings and that’s life - but not its not as bad as it feels here on CC.
Let’s do the math. Last year 1.9mm students in the USA alone took the ACT. Some number slightly less than that took the SAT. This case over 10 years involves 700 students. Granted it’s 700 too many and 700 spots lost to others.
But ten years is 19mm test takers. 700 in this case. Make it ten times worse which is stretching things in my estimation. That’s 7000 out of 19,000,000. That’s not perfect but not broken.
That’s .0003 percent. Better reliability than most medical exams or finely engineered instruments.
And all 7000 students didn’t apply to the allnof the same schools at the same time. It was dispersed among millions. All the kids who lost out on one spot made it somewhere else. And maybe it was a better situation in the end.
Tighten up the system to avoid the 700 or 7000 scammers. It can be done.
And also I believe in our children. They do have integrity. Not that many would cheat even if they could.
@CupCakeMuffins No reason to be snide about USC. It IS an excellent school that attracts very talented students, and, yes, it has some vapid admits with rich parents, but then so does Harvard, Stanford and Princeton. Your child may have been the victim of the “Tufts Syndrome” – a university which rejects many superb students because it doesn’t want to be anybody’s “safety.” That’s less a reflection of Tufts or USC, and more of the rankings reality in higher education, a reality which consumes parents (and apparently you too, since you say your child got into “better” schools.)
It boggles the mind, how many parents think their children are owed admissions to elite schools.
@katliamom obviously Yale too.
Harvard has its own issues and Princeton seems to be avoiding most of these things for now. But neither of them are involved in admitting these particular students. Vapid and entitled is not for me to know.
@Nocreativity1 I don’t want to make this about my daughter. I used her, because through my experience with her I know what a recruited athlete in a non revenue sport to an Ivy looks like. I didn’t mean to diminish any other student. As an aside, my daughter won a prestigious award in her school as a member of the debate team lol.
@observer12 thank you for the remarks regarding my daughter. I won’t go further, because my goal isn’t to insult anyone. I could’ve made the point without mentioning any EC. But, yes being a recruited athlete is a different commitment than a general EC.
Why should athletes be treated differently in college admissions in general? Some posters make it sound like their highly gifted athletes deserve recognition for doing what they do, plus their schoolwork. How is that different from the kid who goes off to violin lessons and practices a couple hours a night, while also working on debate or newspaper articles and doing their schoolwork. Or, what about those kids who play sports at a high level and also spend hours practicing but don’t want to be or can’t be recruited, on top of participating in other ECs and doing schoolwork?
When did college sports become such an important part of college that all these (mostly non revenue) sports must recruit students to play, as if they’re professionals? Why can’t colleges hold tryouts and play with whomever they get? At lots of colleges (including Ivys) hardly anyone even attends some of the games. Just the other day, there was a bb game on tv (Notre Dame vs ?) and the stands were practically empty! And I read an article from an Ivy journal regarding why so many athletes in these schools quit (no one watching). (It does seem unfair to give spots to kids just because they play a sport vs doing so many other valuable activities.
And no, the recruited athletes at Ivys and other top schools do not need the same stats as “regular” kids. Someone explained the AI index earlier for the Ivys, and we’ve seen it first hand for years.
The spots taken by the phony recruits were not available for the general admission pool, they were athletic slots. Athletic departments and/or coaches robbed their teams.
Elite colleges do announce their recruits and some of these incoming athletes may actually be walk-ons that may have scarce athletic accomplishments. These walk-ons did not use athletic slots but were admitted for other reasons.
Many of the Ivy League athletes are really great students. Do not assume that your kids essays or grades are better than theirs.
I hope I do not violate the latest directive. Move on, nothing to see here.