<p>Postgrad fellowships:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.k-state.edu/media/achievements/scholarstop10of5.pdf[/url]”>http://www.k-state.edu/media/achievements/scholarstop10of5.pdf</a></p>
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Caltech and MIT have fantastic reputations in the US. I’m not sure why you say they don’t. It’s not relevant whether a school has a great reputation or is well known abroad unless one plans to work in that particular foreign country and the employers there aren’t willing to consider people unless they went to a college they’re ‘heard of’, which is pretty shortsighted. </p>
<p>I’ve had a number of applicants from India and China and I’ve not only not heard of the colleges they went to in their home countries, I can’t even pronounce most of them. At that point one takes a look at the courses of study and other relatively objective measures.</p>
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There are several different things at play with the AP courses - how they affect the UC GPA, how they affect the perception of rigor in HS, and how they take the place of courses one would otherwise need to take in college.
The reason to take other AP courses (if one desires) is -
- To take a more rigorous courseload which may be noted noted by the admissions staff (who don’t simply look at a computed GPA to determine admission).
- Some of these AP courses might be accepted for course credit and lessen the number of courses needed to be taken in the college and allow the student to be more accelerated, take additional courses in college, or even finish college earlier and save money and go to grad school or the workforce earlier.
- Depending on the level of the student and the HS taking less than AP courses might be too slow and boring for the student.</p>
<p>Who gets the bread? For those who arguing that the UCB system is unfair, consider that it is funded by a billion dollars a year in Government support. (Fed & State support-financials page 20), making it largely a welfare system. Ironically those who claim that they are being shorted in the admissions process are really complaining about not getting enough welfare, and those who are overrepresented are in reality receiving the bulk of the welfare at UCB. The point is that is illogical to begrudge other races when your race is in the breadline with both hands held out wide. </p>
<p><a href=“http://controller.berkeley.edu/FINRPTS/2011-12/AnnualFinancialReport2011-12.pdf[/url]”>http://controller.berkeley.edu/FINRPTS/2011-12/AnnualFinancialReport2011-12.pdf</a></p>
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californiaa, if you’re not ■■■■■■■■ us, you really need to get out more. The statement above is nonsense. And if you care about a school’s reputation overseas, then maybe it makes more sense to go to school overseas.</p>
<p>And the idea that an online degree is just as good as one from even a “third tier” school…well…are you sure you’re not posting from under a bridge?</p>
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<p>I agree and would even expand Pizzagirl’s statement to the top 100. True, some may be slightly weaker in some areas than someone who wants to specialize in that particular area would like, but the last time I looked at USNWR’s current rankings it seemed to me that a serious student could get an excellent education at any of them.</p>
<p>Californiaa, your daughter is just entering high school now and it’s very likely that over the next 3 years or so you will be learning that most of your current notions about college just aren’t as solid as you may think. You also need to recognize that your DD will have her own ideas (at least I hope she does) about what she wants from college which may not align with your current ideas.</p>
<p>You really need to keep an open mind and let your daughter and her interests start to lead her rather than think you can control her destiny with an iron fist, if you can just figure out how to predetermine the outcome. Actually it’s a lot more fun if you can lighten up and see what schools, which may not even be on your radar now, can surprise you. The poor kid is only entering 9th grade; don’t use up all your energy stressing now ;).</p>
<p>@Sosomenza, based on your description, every government service or supported service is welfare. Kind of a reach :)</p>
<p>Based on your link, 12% of revenue is state funds, 5% is Federal Pell Grants and Cal Grants. The bulk of revenue comes from Student Tuition/fees and research grants and contracts (Government and private).</p>
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<p>If you do the math, you’ll find out it doesn’t matter; the 8 bonus points are added to the numerator.</p>
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<p>Completely agree.</p>
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My concern is exactly opposite. I am not sure which schools at top 50 are really good, and which ones are just well marketed. For example, many US Ivies are almost unknown abroad. CALTeh and MIT have great reputation abroad, but not in the US. Many top schools have names that I haven’t ever heard in my life."</p>
<p>Why would you think that you would have to have heard of it when you lived abroad, for it to be good?</p>
<p>californiaa, I think some of your fears are because you’re steeped in a background in which there are certain “uber-names” that promise sunshine and rainbows for life, and everything else is – don’t bother, you’re doomed. The US higher education landscape isn’t like that, and the US isn’t like that. I am always fascinated by how people from abroad come here and exalt the Ivies. The Ivies are great schools. No question about it. They deserve their excellent reputations in every way. But they do not “promise” or “guarantee” success in life-- the individual does that. And there are plenty of other fine places where one can get as good of an education or have just as many opportunities. You’re coming from a zero-sum opportunity – the opportunity is either here, or it’s gone. In the US, it’s very different. Sure, Harvard may offer 30,000 opportunities – but Tufts offers 25,000 and at the end of the day any given person can only take advantage of a handful anyway.</p>
<p>As well, there are many different fields out there. In some fields, having certain brand names is critical – investment banking being the usual suspect. In other fields, it’s important to go to schools known for prowess in that area, which may or may not be elite schools – engineering is a good example of that. And for many, many fields, it just doesn’t matter all that much.</p>
<p>I’m a huge proponent of elite schools. I went to one, married someone from there, and my kids go to schools generally recognized as elite (though not Ivy – the horror). But that’s because they offer high quality of education, not because they are magic bullets to life success. For what it’s worth, my kids looked at schools that I would classify as all up and down the top 40 uni and LAC lists. (Not that the lists are magic, but just to give you a sense.) A great education could be had at any of them. They were just all different “flavors.”</p>
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<p>A formulaic approach would result in some decisions that outsiders think are strange, but so will a holistic approach, where the decision may depend heavily on who reads the application. The question is which approach works better overall.</p>
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<p>We don’t, but to some extent the range of classes offered reflect the abilities of the students. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has more advanced math and science classes but also more students who can handle those classes.</p>
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<p>You make a lot of cultural assumptions yourself. AP Calculus and Physics exams require students to solve problems not just “regurgitate information”. An AP US History exam requires students to marshal evidence to answer essay questions.</p>
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<p>So if a high potential kid happens to be in a school district where there aren’t a lot of other high-potential kids, then write him off? Is that what you say to the diamond-in-the-rough from rural South Dakota – too bad your parents didn’t move to affluent and heavily populated suburban Washington DC for you to go to TJHSST? </p>
<p>The range of classes offered has to do with RESOURCES, Beliavsky. It goes without saying that the rural public high school in South Dakota doesn’t have the same resources as my kids’ pleasant upper middle class public high school, much less TJHSST and its peers. You seem never to care about adjusting for this in any way. You have a real let-them-eat-cake, let-the-diamonds-in-the-rough-stay-in-the-rough attitude. Why is that? Why do you not wish to maximize human potential – why do you think the only potential worth maximizing is that of kids already born on third base? (which, btw, I include both my kids and yours in that description)</p>
<p>You keep writing that it’s no tragedy when “privileged” students who are rejected from the selective schools go to less selective ones, including state flagships. That should be true for non-privileged students too.</p>
<p>In the larger scheme of things, I agree it’s no greater tragedy for the diamond-in-the-rough kid from South Dakoka to slum it at U Michigan instead of MIT than it is for the TJHHST kid to slum it at U Michigan instead of MIT. I do think that experience at top schools is more transformative (for lack of a better word) for kids on the lower socioeconomic levels than it is for kids who are already from privileged backgrounds and have social capital. I believe research backs me up on this, but I’ll let you find the links :-)</p>
<p>You also seem to be assuming that schools admit somewhat lower scoring students purely out of altruism. If I am an admissions officer and I see a student who has overcome significant obstacles and achieved at a level well beyond similarly situated peers, I want that student - not to give him the privilege of hobnobbing with the elites, but because someone who has managed to do that much with that little is obviously a bright and promising student who may well do extraordinary things when given access to more resources.</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean schools should throw out “objective” measures entirely. A student below a certain level - and while the SAT isn’t perfect, as the only direct basis for comparison, it is valuable if considered intelligently - probably isn’t prepared for the rigors of an elite school, even with a strong work ethic. No reason he can’t go to a different college and grow and thrive there. But when you are dealing with an already high scoring student, why isn’t that student more impressive and valuable to me than a somewhat higher scoring student whose achievement is a lot less of an outlier in the context of his community?</p>
<p>At the very top schools, there are precious few students, if you look at the numbers, scoring below about a 1300 M +V. That’s not a score to write home about if you’re an upper middle class kid who has gone to a good school and gotten test prep, although it is still above-average. It is a great score from someone from a less privileged background, and one high enough that the student should have no trouble both succeeding and adding to the intellectual life of the campus.</p>
<p>apprenticeprof posed a question a while ago that I missed earlier:
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<p>If there were no disqualifying element that was not mentioned, if I could take only one of the three, I would take the “first-gen minority who is valedictorian of his failing school, has a 2100 in a school with an average combined SAT of 1300, and has spent a lot of time taking care of his two younger siblings” of course. </p>
<p>I think it’s worth mentioning that the sample admissions cases at Berkeley did not resemble that at all, though. Of course, they might be totally non-representative. But I think the profile that you have presented is pretty rare, to the point that I would expect the “top” schools to fight over such a person.</p>
<p>I don’t think that I have enough information to choose between the other two, if I could pick two of the three hypotheticals you’ve presented. I’d want some additional background information. For example, does the student who was a state Science Olympiad winner come from a high school that frequently places among the top 3 in the state? Or from one where the team rarely makes the state competition? What were the events that the student won? If the event has apparatus, how recyclable is it? For example, back in the days when QMP was doing Science Olympiad, there was generally a Rube Goldberg type event. Teams had to assemble a Rube Goldberg machine that could accomplish a particular (small) task–e.g., raise a flag. The task varied from year to year, but the kicker was that the individual “machines” could be re-used from a previous year’s entry. I think this gives a real “legacy schools” advantage, and would therefore find winning that event somewhat less impressive than winning when the team had to start from scratch–that, I would find impressive. What effect did the person have on the rest of the team? What organizational and leadership skills did the student show? There are plenty of opportunities to develop and demonstrate those skills within the Science Olympiad context.</p>
<p>(First part is a catch-up.) No kid is “owed” admissions to a selective private. And, no selective private is beholden to take a kid solely for his being a superstar in his own little hs context. Getting admitted to that selective private is about meeting their (well-considered) needs. </p>
<p>The big problem, imo, is that high school itself is such a narrow experience. You live at home, Mom and Dad rule the roost, guide many choices; it is this set of classes, clubs, opportunities and peers. The bright kids, no doubt, learn to work the system, take rigor, get the grades, maybe achieve some social standing. But imo, getting into a selective private is NOT about how you learned to work your hs experience. It’s about what potential you exhibit to fit and thrive at that college, among many from different hs, with different local contexts, and the huge range of educational, social and other choices to become engaged in. What it seems your may contribute. “You’re not in Kansas, anymore.” This is a leap up; a large part of admissions is focused on what happens once you are there- a look forward. The look back is not to validate you hs standing, but to identify traits, decisions, commitments, values, etc, that suggest what happens next, after the leap.</p>
<p>Then going to the student with the 2250 who is 5th in his class and started a significant charitable organization: Again, I would want to know more before rating him relative to the Science Olympiad competitor.</p>
<p>I think that some families now believe that founding a charitable organization is a great route to HYPSM (since short international trips to help people have fallen out of vogue).</p>
<p>The situation mentioned could be a really good thing! Absolutely! I think that sometimes more giving is encouraged when there is a very specific recipient (organization) of the charity and some personal connection to the recipient. So the person might be increasing net giving in his/her community. It might be that the person has identified a need that existing charitable organizations do not fill, and then it’s all to the good.</p>
<p>In this case, I would want to know about the size and sustainability of the charitable organization that the student started. Are there more than 5 people who are really involved in it? Does the organization do things other than fund raising? How much did the group raise, by what means, and how much is that in the context of the student’s community?</p>
<p>There are neighborhoods not too far from us where I would find a student group raising (say) $650 tremendously impressive, and other places in the state where a student group could raise $20,000 from parents and relatives, without too much trouble.</p>
<p>A lot of the charitable giving that my spouse and I do is concentrated on existing organizations that we think are well run. Examples include Heifer International, the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), Habitat for Humanity, health-related organizations, universities, and arts organizations.</p>
<p>My niece (the engineer) worked in construction for Habitat for Humanity throughout high school, and received a gold hammer from a local chapter that requires 500 hours of work for that level of recognition. (In some areas, a gold hammer can essentially be “bought” with donations.) Personally, I find my niece’s work more impressive than being Founder and President of a charitable organization that raises money from friends and relatives and fizzles out after the President graduates, either from high school or college.</p>
<p>I think that some international trips that are sponsored by church groups do actually succeed in helping people, and I don’t regard all of them with a jaundiced eye, though they have fallen out of vogue.</p>
<p>I agree with apprenticeprof’s comments. This isn’t altruism, this is about performance above and beyond- no, not always with glossy SAT/ACT, but with grades, AP scores and so very much stretch, so much more than “our” kids exhibit. LoRs that discuss their ability to juggle so much, influence so many, take on so much with vision toward their futures. It is hard to stereotype- it’s not that they are limited by family responsibilities, tough living conditions, the need to work, problem peers, distance, etc. It’s that they are not. </p>
<p>Some, for a variety of reasons, don’t belong at my school. Some will thrive and have greater impact as big fish in their state pond, closer to home, maybe with a context we don’t offer. Some are so formed and motivated by their particular socio-cultural roots that their own state is where they will have the most impact on others, rise and go on to their own sort of greatness. Some are less certain to master our bars. We can let go.</p>
<p>Charities? We’ve got a few good threads going where the adults weigh in with focused comments.</p>