Ah, so your are being forced to settle for Cal or UCLA? Poor kid lol.
You are in for a rude awakening - I say as someone who got their PhD at Cal and taught there for several years, and as the parent of a current Cal sophomore. I don’t care who you think you are, Cal is going to challenge you in ways you can’t even imagine yet. It will frustrate you, it will stress you out, it will make you work hard for everything you get. Nothing is going to be handed to you there. But this is how you truly grow. There are also so, so many opportunities for the persistent, smart, and ambitious.
Embrace that challenge. Don’t try to rest on your laurels (many of your classmates are equally, and sometimes more, accomplished anyway). Stop feeling sorry for yourself and learn humility (sorry to say, I don’t see much of that right now in your posts). Let yourself grow, mature, and become a better person. That’s a big part of what college is about and Cal and UCLA are great places to do that.
Look forward to the future as, if you rise to the challenges ahead of you, it will surely be bright.
Not the UCs (which largely do not use them). If the OP’s LoRs were not that good, then they may have prevented admission to the private super-selectives, but not the UCs.
LoRs in general are the least transparent part of college applications from the applicant’s point of view, since the applicant typically does not see them, does not know who the best recommenders are (not necessarily the teachers who like the student the best, since some such teachers may be poor LoR writers), and does not know how their LoRs compare with those of other applicants to the college.
hi, its u again! i feel the same, had high stats, published paper in the concord review, advocated for woman’s rights, talked about domestic violence in my essays - got rejected from all the ivies except cornell’s art school - where my art portfolio was the main criteria. It’s literally funny that the schools i got into - most of them were the ones where i did not mention about the domestic violence things in my essay
I will give you the grace that some others seem to have not. I have two kids that are HYP kids. That being said they had their share of set backs. Because after admission comes Truman then MMR. I say this to tell you ,like I told them, it is OK to grieve and be disappointed! You put a lot of work in to getting here and made sacrifices. It is what you do with these feelings after that will show your character and restart your path. Go forward and make the best plan B that will land you where you want to go!!!
Yes, 1,000 times yes. ECs should not be the focus of the common app personal statement. Use only people who understand college essays to help on essays. That includes people who write for a living, and English teachers. I will note that the goal of many paid college counselors is to have the student’s voice front and center in essays.
Or how those LoRs compare to those of their classmates. A couple examples I’ve read:
if you are going to take just one student from our HS, this is the one
‘applicant’ was the student who brought to our attention there was a well coordinated, highly sophisticated cheating ring that operated in several higher level classes (at well known HS). Applicant risked their social standing to do the right thing. Know that many of our top students participated in said cheating ring but experienced no consequences due to administration decision.
a long list of examples of students who had to overcome tough situations including health issues, death of close family/friends, money issues, commute issues, etc.
I don’t love how important LoRs can be to getting a good picture of the student, because access to LoRs is not equitable. But that’s where we are, at least at the schools that use LoRs.
First off, I am sorry that you are disappointed. Unfortunately, Ivy admission is very hard to predict. A rejection doesn’t mean you did something wrong and it isn’t a reflection of you as a person (they don’t really know you). You will never know why you were rejected and it isn’t worth your time to worry about it. Wonderful, accomplished students with great awards and stellar academics are rejected in droves every year - unless you are hooked in some way a student should anticipate a rejection and be pleasantly surprised if they get a “yes”. Cal is a fantastic school and there are many students who would give their right arm to attend so once you’ve gotten over your disappointment, get excited for all the great things that Cal can give you.
Students and parents are in a bit of a hard place between consultants and doing it on your own. Consultants may result in having a too polished application (so admissions assume you’ve had a lot of help), while parents are woefully lacking in information. I’m describing my family since my child has 2 parents w/ advance degrees and we know university systems quite well, but we were unprepared. We cobbled together info from research (looking at CDS, reading a couple books, and advice from guidance counselor, the best we could do in addition to campus visits). I heard recently that some applicants were submitting published research papers from peer-reviewed journals. There was a cost for this service by university faculty members ($15k+). The articles I read were glorified high school essays. I questioned the ethics of faculty members setting up their services like this, and of a “peer-reviewed journal” that cheapened scholarship and publication. I am not at all saying this had something to do with the applications of stellar students such as yourself. I’m only trying to get into the mindset of an admissions officer who is bombarded with this stuff. If I’m being honest, I’d be highly annoyed if I were an admissions officer.
This is why I wondered about “access to interning at the UN and serving on a panel at multiple international conferences” (my words). I would add access to Harvard research. Is the STS scholarship for thoracic surgeons?
Not sure how any of this was presented- perhaps in details that helped AO’s understand- but often when reading essays I ask about the context of such activities and, basically, how did you get to do that? Overstating the status of a position can be a drag on admissions but I am sure you presented your activities appropriately.
I have some thoughts as a person who works in admissions at a highly rejective school, and as someone who also worked as an independent counselor (both for $ and as a volunteer for a non-profit.)
The pool of students who apply to highly rejective schools tend to be high stats and highly capable. The achievements of the students at the top of that pool is stunning. I didn’t fully understand that until I started reading apps, and I had worked with some high end students as a counselor.
I can not tell which essays had ‘help’ and which didn’t (especially in the group of what I would call ‘better’ essays.) Some of these students are SUPERB writers, as good as or better than me, as good as or better than most of the people I worked with in strategy consulting for 25 years. I saw it with some of my counseling students (the best writers were not always the highest stat students), and I knew they didn’t have outside help (except for me, who generally made very minor edits/suggestions.) In the big picture most of the essays are ‘average’ and not a real difference maker, meaning essays aren’t going to be overweighted as compared to GPA, rigor, test score.
I want to comment on this too. Generally, we can’t tell if someone did their research via a paid service (the student would have to say they worked with Polygence, for example. Note Polygence does not cost $15K, but some of these services indeed do.) Again, generally, if the student has a paper completed thru one of these services, it has not been published, and we wouldn’t read it, even if the student puts the link in their app. Sometimes I do read them, but mostly not.
It is still quite uncommon that an applicant has a published article in a peer-reviewed journal…that process takes a while (doing the research, analyzing the data, writing the paper, submitting for publication can easily take several years), so, generally the research would have had to be done in freshman year of HS to get published by time for college apps. So…a student who does have research published in a peer-reviewed journal does in fact stand out.
Lastly, I am seldom annoyed reading apps (mostly when I have to calculate GPA because the school doesn’t) and I’m never annoyed if someone says they did research even if it was thru a paid provider. That EC would be seen similarly to many other ECs, including students who have jobs, to take one example.
So many students have connections to professors or congress people or business leaders, etc. I can’t sort thru whether mom or dad helped, or they live next door to the person, or if they cold called the person to get their opportunity. What’s important is what the student did with the opportunity, and/or what the contact said in their LoR.
Thanks for your reply. I would only state that I know of “peer-reviewed” publications that are set up so that HS students can publish work almost instantly (within 6 months of completion). It’s a service sold to juniors in high school. I suppose one could even get it done in the summer before senior year.
Right, but AFAIK those essays aren’t published in peer-reviewed journals. They are published, but not “peer-reviewed” in the sense we typically talk about. With that said, maybe something has changed and the next time I go to a program from one of these companies I will ask about the publishing. I also know one of the profs who is charging the type of $ you mentioned, and this person also does an annual program that I participate in, so will take a look there too. Thanks for the info.
And I will point out that this DOES happen. My D participated in a research group at Stanford while she was in high school. She reached out herself, convinced them to give her a chance, proved her worth, and was listed in the peer-reviewed publication that resulted. She also helped present the findings at a national conference (paid for by the research grant).
HOWEVER.
She was of course not the PI or lead investigator. She was part of team lead by a faculty member and consisting of a couple of grad students. She did the grunt work of research, scrubbing data, finding and double checking citations, doing short write-ups, helping make the corrections following peer review. She arranged and did all of this herself, paid nothing for the opportunity, and legitimately got her name on a publication as part of the research team. She learned A TON in the process.
HOWEVER.
As wonderful an opportunity as it was for her, she never made her role out to be something that it wasn’t. I.E., she wasn’t leading a team of researchers, she wasn’t doing the bulk of experimentation, she wasn’t creating novel statistical models, etc. Although she was certainly proud of the role she did have, lower-rung that it was.
So i would say her research participation and publication were legitimate activities, that were also not pay-to-play, and which did not rely on the privilege of parental connections. At the same time, even if it had been those things, I also think that a high school student can still benefit from such opportunities and learn through the process.
And to the OP, this is a case in point. As a high school student my D also accomplished much of what you mention as your strongest achievements. And, if you go to Cal, she may just be sitting next to you in one of your classes
They are billed as “peer-review” because the service is offered by a team of faculty. I certainly understand the distinction you are making. But students paying for this service state that they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal (virtually no one outside the service publishes in that journal).
Oh, also want to mention to the OP that these experiences are never a waste. So even if you think, “why did I spend so much time trying do research (or whatever) when I ultimately never got the admissions result I wanted,” remember that these experiences stay with you, no matter where you go to college. You developed skills that you can build on and experience you can talk about in interviews. The college you go to - UCB or UCLA - will likely have a number of student research groups and opportunities to work with professors on their research projects. Having previous research experience will give you a leg up, which is great, because the more you prove yourself, the more responsibility you will be given and, at a college like UCB or UCLA, the sky’s really the limit. So be ready to talk about what you LEARNED through your past experiences, knowing that you will have opportunities to build on that.
Just know that people in admissions realize the difference between the type of paper/journal you mention and applicants who did research/published papers like: improving the elliptical path of robotic surgery/cited 1,000s of times by the time of the student’s apps, or the paper that advanced understanding of coronaviruses in important ways which was also oft cited, or the various research achievements of ISEF grand prize winners.
In the grand scheme of things, all of this is subjective. I read a paper and think it’s great but @Mwfan1921 may think it’s not. Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today b4 I read your app. Who knows.
What’s clear is while many schools have wealthy student bodies, many purposely don’t. The top rated schools are diverse in so many ways and while kids with the silver spoon may be at an advantage in some cases, they might also be at a disadvantage. If a school has 100 QB kids, that’s 100 less slots etc.
I don’t wish for anyone who uses a formulaic approach to admissions to get admitted.
Why should someone who’s paying others to write/edit their essays be admitted over someone presenting their true self, and respecting the process for what it’s meant to be—to find a mutual fit.
This entire process is broken, and favors those whose parents put more leg work and money into it. Admissions rather have a national level common entrance exam—no GPA, no ECs, no essays nothing, none of them can be trusted to be a students own work, with what’s really been going on.
