Ridiculous that Ga Tech admissions is going to assume that a kid from a large public high school is going to be more successful.
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I definitely donât think this is a factor for GT Admissions, if anything they go the opposite direction because they have a mission to serve rural areas. They also have programs to help out kids adjust. My point was more that someone coming from a similar type of environment academically and culturally tends to be more successful but there are plenty of exceptions.
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No itâs notâŠthe person must be referring to a low ranked public high school. The large suburban publics are very competitive.
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Agree on time management. Our GT junior son maintained his 4.0 in BME through âgrown adult likeâ time management. No doubt he has found himself (put himself?) in at about one tough course/situation per semester, but as long as you put in the time can hang 99%s in ochem, cs, physics, math, etc. Once get through the weed-out years/courses⊠it seems more straightforward you do the work you get the grade⊠still hard and no free-As⊠but less volatile. Not sure how to describe it just one Dadâs view. Make no mistake life is in the library - and sitting in Bobby Dodd on game day. 
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Bottom line⊠only the âgunnersâ and those that want to hustle once they get into GT will do fine. My GT son has several way-smarter kids out of HS (more oppty, better stats) have imploded and gone by the wayside⊠but a kid who hustles will win. Hustle. That is a metric AO should look for (and in life).
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My point is there are 2 parts to the equation. Academics and culture. Simply being a large public school is just one aspect of culture and has nothing to do with academic quality. Many if not most large public schools are not very good.
You do have some large public schools though with very rigorous academics and intense college prep. Some of which are mind boggling how far they go. As I said I donât know how many are in Georgia vs Texas where I am from but there are around 20 that are flat out factories here in DFW, Houston, and Austin. The level of academic and EC competition is just incredible and everything is geared around preparing kids for college. I could certainly tell you some stories that would blow your hair back, the intensity is just off the charts. I also know a lot of those kids though that go to school and room with someone from an average and lower performing school and see them get crushed because they simply donât know what to expect in terms of the rigor. They were used to just being the smart kid in class who could barely study and get Aâs. Most eventually adjust and make it but itâs a rough transition. When we did our tour at GT the guide actually fit that profile as well when she talked about herself. She didnât even know how highly ranked GT was and only went because she had Zell Miller and was at the top of her class for a small rural school. It sounded like so many kids I had seen at Texas and A&M with the Top 10/6% rule that we have here.
Once again, know a lot of exceptions as well. Kids from great HSâs with every advantage that flunk out because they discover Greek Life and kids from terrible HSâs that work their tails off and crush it. Still, if you take 100 of each the odds are the kids with the academic and cultural environment that is more similar to a place like GT will be more successful. You need both but you arenât doing a kid who isnât from that environment any favors telling them it doesnât matter, they need to be ready for the meat grinder.
As the mom of two GT hustlers, I agree. I learned late in my college career how important it was to use time between classes wisely. Get your work done and keep up. Nothing fun is happening at 2 oâclock in the afternoon during the week. They were both in fraternities, very active social life, very involved on campus, intramural sports, gym 4-5x a week, and both hit the 4.0 metric multiple times (but not every semester like your son - congrats). They spent a lot of daylight hours on homework.
And yes, I donât care how smart your kid is there will be a bunch of kids that are smarter. I promise! Like the twin undergrad women who invented a seizure detector for kids that is in the GT game day commercials;)
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I can only speak about my older childâs experience as my youngest is just accepted into GT. Both are coming from a large and rigorous public school. For my older one, GT has been a much more relaxed experience then his HS years. He has been spending 2+ hours every other day in the gym, having late night gatherings with friends at the dorm- I donât know how often but it sounds frequent-, going outdoor weekend trips like two-three times per semester, checking out other social events going on on-campus-there is something happening all the time- joining hackathons with friends, doing some extra things on the side, and he still has time to play video games and such. Yes, he has to study for his classes but it is his major and he likes it. The students are very helpful to each other; it is not a cutthroat place. GT is a fun experience for the right kid.
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DS25, an out-of-state student, received an email today from Georgia Tech Financial Aid requesting him to complete the steps to finalize his financial aid file, even though he believes he has already submitted the application.
Any thoughts?
I can only speak to my sonâs experience. Heâs my only child to attend a private school as my others attended a very large âhigh performanceâ public high school He also attended that large rigorous public high school before attending his now private high school. The rigors both academically and athletically have been much more at his private school, but fortunately he thrives on it. He starts as a captain on his schoolâs varsity basketball team. This is a program where the pressure is high and several kids have been recruited Division 1. We are talking 2 hours plus a day of practice and that does not include the training between practices. Not only has the athletic competition been more intense, but the demand and accountability for excellence in the classroom is also much more focused and intense. Quite sure he also will be well prepared for a large public university. Again, just my experience.
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Well, there are all types of schools and all types of kids within those schools. Bottom line is GT is taking kids at the tail ends of a normal distribution, regardless of what their schools are-public or private, or rural vs. urban. I believe a kid from a rural/impoverished area is just as deserving as a kid from a well resourced public/private school. Just because that kid didnât have the privileges of my kid doesnât make him/her less deserving. Yes, it is possible or perhaps even likely that s/he may struggle a bit for the first semester or two but tail-ends are quick to catch up. GT had this policy for several years now; if it wasnât working, if those kids were failing at a higher rate, GT would have stopped accepting them. Nobody wants a high drop-out/transfer rate. Does that mean some kids with insane stats and ECs are not offered acceptance? Yes, it does and it hurts (my kids best friend is not accepted and he is a phenomenal kid) but it is a very difficult choice among many deserving kids, not between a less deserving and more deserving one. I wouldnât want to be in the shoes of admission officers. Congratulations to all who are accepted! Good luck to all who is still waiting. And to all those wonderful kids who are not accepted, any place would be lucky to have you as their student! Best of luck for the rest of the seasonđ
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Going to a competitive and well resourced school is not a âprivilegeâ. The word has a negative connotation as something undeserved.
Sorry, if it came across negative. It didnât mean it that way. Students going to competitive schools are not having it easy at all. I donât think that my kid who is going to a competitive and well-resourced school is undeserving. Of course, he deserved it, but also others who went to less well-resourced schools if they were at the tail-ends of the curve in their context. So are many other deserving students who are not accepted. As I wrote, IMO, for reputable universities, it is a very difficult choice among many deserving kids.
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No worries, I just notice the term âprivilegedâ being used quite a bit in these forums and I find that concerning.
I expect that word is used around CC a lot because itâs a concept in college admissions, one that seemingly really took hold during the Varsity Blues scandal. There are many sources, and CollegeBoardâs Landscape (which is CBâs repackaged adversity score) is used by many selective schools today.
It is important to know that all admissions officers at colleges that use holistic admissions are trained to factor in privilege as they read and evaluate a studentâs application. Thereâs really no way to hide it. Admissions officers will start making a judgment about your kid from the moment they see their name and from there, the expectations will likely rise considerably. And for good reason. If your child is privileged in the traditional sense of the word, they likely have access to resources (like private tutors or stellar internships) that other students donât.
Admissions officers know this. So, yes, a studentâs name, their race, high school, home address, parentsâ education, and parentsâ occupations become a framework of how admissions officers will evaluate your child. And for those colleges that are using the College Boardâs new âAdversity Score,â admissions officers will have one more piece of data to make assumptions about your kid even before any required pieces of your childâs application are read.
The admissions scandal has exposed the hidden âprivilege biasâ in education that clearly favors affluent families. It also has re-opened the debate over the myriad ways that economically disadvantaged and minoritized families lose access to higher education.
The reality is that âcollege admissions offices still struggle to level the playing field for students within a system in which various forms of privilegeâracial and ethnic, financial, access to social networks, familyâs educational aspirationsâconfer advantages on some groups at the expense of others,â said a report Art & Science is releasing about the data.
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Thanks. The fact that it has actually become a concept in college admissions is precisely what I find concerning. The idea that a kid should be effectively penalized by being considered âprivilegedâ because his/her parents were successful enough to move to a wealthy zip code with a high ranked high school. Social mobility and the creation of generational wealth should not be discouraged by handicapping a hard working student just because of their zip code. Affirmative action on the basis of socioeconomic status is just as wrong as affirmative action on the basis of race.
Anyway, this probably has little to do with Georgia Tech and is not the right thread to discuss.
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No, I live in Maryland.
no mid terms
no finals
turned in assignments get a 50% no matter what (I think they are getting rid of this)
retakes allowed
late assignments allowed
Itâs crazy honestly.
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It does not seem fair especially the retake, I will worry about kids going top ranked school from this kinda high school, not they are not smart enough to do the work but the âculture shockâ transition from the lossy goosy to rigorous environment
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Iâve seen totally just from observation that some kids do indeed struggle, but the highly motivated kids generally never took advantage of these policies and so they do well regardless.
I do feel like all it does is muddy the waters though and does kids no actual favors in preparing them for college or even a job.
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My kid tried to fill it out, but it doesnât allow her to login.