<p>“Actually if your premise were correct, that would point to a deficiency in undergrad education of STEM kids.”</p>
<p>Yes, there is a mismatch between good students and good faculty. Great labs are located mainly in top schools. However, these top schools are not admitting enough good STEM students. Students, that may have benefited from exposure to Stanford, (for example) labs, don’t have such exposure, because they were never admitted to Stanford. Golden Gate University (for example) can’t provide good STEM education to students, because it doesn’t have great STEM faculty.</p>
<p>Imagine, that a ballet academy admits students based on holistic approach. Few years later, they have lots of drop-outs and not enough students for advanced classes. Your argument is “why can’t they admit transfer students from second tier school?” Because transfer students lost several very important years and steps in education, when they were in second-tier schools. It’s easier to import students from an oversee ballet academy for advanced classes.</p>
I haven’t read all 680 posts in this thread…but I’m not understanding the problem here. There are plenty of top programs at schools with automatic or near-automatic academic admissions criteria. Kids with perfect SAT scores and grades are not going to be turned away by Minnesota, Purdue, Utah, etc.</p>
<p>These assumptions are incorrect. Every admissions reader will know the difference between those two courses. And, in the UC/CSU context, the +/- does not matter, while the calculus BC course will get an honors +1 point, as well as fulfilling the entire math requirement (which requires a minimum of algebra 2 and geometry, or a higher level course which has these as prerequisites).</p>
<p>Recent LA Times describes South Los Angeles black kid, top of his class, no AP at all, admitted to Berkeley … got plenty or remedial classes, all grades failing except African-American studies… lots of tutoring, lots of help from faculty, major difficulty with drafting essays… </p>
<p>UC accepts a maximum of 6 AP classes (2 in 10th grade, 4 in 11th) for GPA calculations. Many parents want their kids to take the easiest classes at HS and get solid A+. Last year, many kids in my D. middle school passed algebra tests … yet, their parents signed them for pre-algebra classes, that are way lower than the kids abilities.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s exactly what holistic admissions DOES take into account - that the upper middle class from Short Hills who had a car at his disposal and plenty of money and free time to devote to extracurricular activities (and parents who could pay for SAT prep and tutoring) was able to accomplish things the rancher’s kid from South Dakota whose school was 25 miles from home or the kid from the ghetto who had to watch his younger siblings while mom worked as a waitress to put food on the table couldn’t accomplish. </p>
<p>I feel like people aren’t making up their minds here. Is it good to take into account that Mr. Short Hills’ accomplishments are read in the context of his socioeconomic milieu when compared to Ms. Rancher or Mr. Ghetto, or not?</p>
<p>This came up in your thread asking about magnet vs less rigorous schools and as I recall, every single person who posted in that thread said that the rigor would serve your kid better in college admissions.</p>
<p>If you don’t believe the dozens of people who told you that, go right to the sources, I’ll pick two that you have stated you admire.</p>
<p>In MIT’s common data set you can see that it values rigor more than rank (this is the basic comparison of hard high school with advanced courses vs. regular or low-performing HS without difficult courses). Also only 45% of accepted students even submitted a class rank. MORE THAN HALF didn’t even report one!</p>
<p>Clearly I won’t be able to keep up with answering all of Pizzagirl’s arguments. However, I did want to respond to a few of them, starting with this one, from #647:
</p>
<h1>647 seems a little polemical, but nonetheless, I will plunge in.</h1>
<p>I am a STEM professor. I go over to the admissions office at my university–a large, public university that apparently does use holistic admissions with one definition of “holistic”. </p>
<p>I say, “I think we should admit more of the hyper-brilliant applicants here.”<br>
Dean of Admissions, “Hah, hah, hah, hah! You mean admit people who haven’t applied? We admit 100% of those who apply and throw money at many of those.”</p>
<p>When it comes to graduate admissions, my colleagues and I make the decisions.</p>
<p>Now, I walk into the admissions office at MIT and say, “I think you should admit more of the hyper-brilliant applicants.”
Dean of Admissions, “Hah, hah, hah, hah. You’re who again?”</p>
<p>My colleagues at MIT and elsewhere are indeed very busy. Frankly, I doubt that any of them ever read CC, let alone posting on it.</p>
<p>Typically, a faculty member at MIT accepts the statements of the admissions personnel to the effect that they are admitting the “best” applicants. If some of the undergrad students are somewhat disappointing, there is plenty of gloom-and-doom in the media about American K-12 education, and they suppose there just aren’t better applicants out there. Why would there be? </p>
<p>Often, it is only when the faculty member’s children reach college application age that the faculty member even learns about the phenomenon of the rejected hyper-brilliant applicant (who is a good person). By that time, the faculty member is quite often in his/her mid-50’s. And by that time, the faculty member has acquired a small village worth of Ph.D. students, post-docs, and former students and post-docs, pretty much all of whom need the faculty member’s attention–beyond the responsibilities of research, teaching, and service that the faculty member handled when younger.</p>
<p>I don’t fault them for thinking that while the current situation could be improved, it’s not among their top priorities for attention.</p>
<p>I am talking about admission only. UC accepts 6 AP or honors classes only in GPA calculations. </p>
<p>9th grade - no AP or honors counted.
10th grade - 2 honors classes max. Honors geometry and some honors science class, the easiest workload.
11th grade - 4 AP classes max. In my D. case, Spanish AP, Spanish History, Algebra 2 Honors, some AP science.
12th grade … only first semester is counted.</p>
<p>In other words, the easier is the workload - the better are the chances to get great GPA. It is very sad, because my D. could take Algebra 2 in 8th grade, easily. However, it would put her on track of Calculus BC in HS, and it’s a very difficult to get A+ in Calculus BC.</p>
<p>The adjective that I have been using the majority of the time to describe the rejection of hyper-qualified applicants to “top” schools is “sub-optimal.” Clearly, it’s not tragic.</p>
<p>But I don’t understand why there would be opposition to matching truly “top” undergrad students with “top” professors and “top” environments.</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t “count much higher.” It says different things. Kids have different opportunities available to them. People of substance try to take that into account when evaluating them.</p>
<p>There was a poster on CC whose D attended a rural high school that, IIRC, only taught physics every other year. The kids there attended the local directional, if they attended college at all. Of <em>course</em> the D didn’t have the same opportunity to learn physics as students who attend a top school or a math and science academy. This young woman went onto a state math and science academy, but not everyone has that opportunity. It seems, californiaa, that your preference is just to say “let them eat cake” to people of promise who through no fault of their own have socioeconomic or other barriers that prevent them from having the same opportunities as the rich kids. A lot of adcoms feel differently, and want to evaluate in context.</p>
<p>"Often, it is only when the faculty member’s children reach college application age that the faculty member even learns about the phenomenon of the rejected hyper-brilliant applicant (who is a good person). " - agree, 200%</p>
<p>IMHO, MIT, Caltech, and Berkeley - are great in terms of admission practices. Stanford really disappoints.</p>
<p>Because you’ve not shown me examples of that happening. You’ve shown examples of the MIT aspirant who winds up at Carnegie Mellon, which is still a top school by anyone’s reasonable definition. Not examples of the MIT aspirant who gets shut out of all good programs and winds up at East Directional State University.</p>
<p>On the flip side californiaaa, if D wants to apply to, say, Princeton engineering, it’s unlikely they will even consider her if she hasn’t completed Calculus. </p>
<p>They put it a little more gently in their official blurb, but our HS guidance says even Calc AB taken as a senior may not be enough to be seriously considered there.</p>
<p>So the student who hangs back and takes Algebra 1 in 9th grade and gets A+ will have a higher gpa, maybe, but won’t be able to get into some of the tippy top schools/programs.</p>
<p>“The adjective that I have been using the majority of the time to describe the rejection of hyper-qualified applicants to “top” schools is “sub-optimal.” Clearly, it’s not tragic.”</p>
<p>So then don’t have your kid apply to Stanford. Problem solved.
Why do you think Stanford “owes” you a change of their admissions policies? Good grief, it’s not like you are forced to have your kid apply to a certain list of schools. Write them off your list and move on if you don’t like them. But to claim that they’re so fabulous at the same time they’re admitting allegedly unqualified people – and then to claim that you so badly want your kid to be among them – makes no sense.</p>
<p>When it comes to disappointment about not being admitted, I sympathize with everyone who was disappointed. This is sincere.</p>
<p>However, I have to admit that I do sympathize quite a bit more with someone who had reason to think he/she had a realistic chance of admission than with someone who had no real chance at University X.</p>
<p>If James Thomson, the stem cell pioneer mentioned by momsquad in #668 is disappointed not to have won the Nobel Prize, I feel sympathetic. An Assistant Professor down the hall is disappointed not to have won the Nobel Prize–sorry, are you kidding me?</p>
<p>Again, I wish you would be right. I’ve heard exactly the opposite from our admission counselor at HS. Again, all admission web-sites deemphasize the importance of AP classes.</p>