<p>“I think that about sums it up. No one is entitled to admission to Harvard, or MIT, or any of the Ivies. If you’re rejected despite great qualifications, write it off to chance and move on with your life. And if you do get in, don’t assume it means you’re better qualified than someone who didn’t. Just thank your lucky stars.”</p>
<p>This is probably the best way to put it. The Ivies and just generally top private schools have some sort of nuanced art to select their perfect class of students amidst several applications. And as someone said, a school like Caltech is much more likely to take plain old top scorers…many top schools just don’t <em>WANT</em> top scorers.</p>
<p>Let’s not kid ourselves by saying “EVERYONE IS A TOP SCORER, but you need MORE than that.” Everyone is <em>NOT</em> that intellectually successful when it comes to judging pure intellectuals. How many people can do wonderful things in their majors in college and become intellectual kings <em>in their colleges</em> – not that many amongst the vast number of “top high school students”. The bottom line is a lot of people look the same in high school, but it is what they do in college that shapes them. </p>
<p>So really the quoted line is the best advice I can imagine – if you get into a great school, thank your stars and be sure to use the resources that school provides and respect that someone else got rejected, but could have done equally great things, if not better things, at your own school. The top schools assemble a class with some kind of promise and talent, and nobody’s saying that someone who got into a top school is either sharper or better at life…they just got a good opportunity.</p>
<p>“Anyone who thinks they should be admitted solely on the basis of a few numbers is seriously mistaken.”</p>
<p>This is, in my opinion, not a great attitude. The “few numbers” like GPA and grades in classes actually are products of <em>SEMESTERS</em> of work. If one calls a standardized test score among these “few numbers” then that’s more legitimate. </p>
<p>But in all seriousness, there is nothing wrong with allowing students who are unusually intellectual [beyond that of a standard high scorer] into top schools even if they have weaker EC’s. Not everyone with high scores has the same passion for studies, and it would be an insult to many such passionate ones to say otherwise…</p>
<p>I mean, in response to the above, one can also say the college essays are just “a few words” – we haven’t met the person and understood him/her in the deepest way by reading a college essay response to a question directed at thousands of students! We don’t even know much if we interview the given student. </p>
<p>So to say that grades are just these “few numbers” is really kind of ridiculous. Now looking at the whole applicant is fine with me, but let’s not diminish how important grades really are. The only way grades can be taken less seriously is if we admit that high school courses are not excellent ones. Which, in some cases, I’m willing to completely agree with. But otherwise, the <em>principle</em> behind looking at grades is a very good one.</p>
<p>“Colleges hate people with really good scores who don’t spend their time meaningfully!”</p>
<p>I also have a problem with this. How about the kid who enjoys quality time with his family,helping siblings, ect…how about the kid who would rather be outdoors after school fishing or hunting, climbing, biking, ect. than some meaningless club. Why do they have to be a part of an organized “club” to look important in the eyes of colleges?. Not right, IMO</p>
<p>I don’t think any college admission committee requires high school students to engage in meaningless activities to have better chances of admission. I’ve actually heard one admission officer from a highly selective college say that baby-sitting is an activity to be sure to mention on an application to a college. If it’s meaningful for you, do it proudly, and mention it on your application.</p>
<p>^ I’ve also heard an admissions officer at a top LAC say, “We’re really not impressed if it looks like you’re just racking up service hours and long lists of ECs because you think it will impress us. That doesn’t tell us who you are. Just tell us what your passions are. If your passion is stamp collecting, that’s fine. We don’t get a lot of stamp collectors here. But we do get tons of applicants who have logged hundreds of hours on service projects that they couldn’t care less about.”</p>
<p>“I also have a problem with this. How about the kid who enjoys quality time with his family,helping siblings, ect…how about the kid who would rather be outdoors after school fishing or hunting, climbing, biking, ect. than some meaningless club.”</p>
<p>It’s unfortunately a legitimate concern. I’m pretty sure an organized activity [if done with passion] is much more likely to get you places than stamp-collecting is. Sure, admissions officers will say that they don’t care what it is you do. But I honestly think most of the people getting recognized at top private schools do something <em>Organized</em> actively. Can be through interest in politics, debate, sports, anything. </p>
<p>I have plenty of interests intellectually, and went deeper into them than most. I also am very close to family and spent time with it. Honestly, not just me, but a host of people like me were pretty consistently not taken by certain schools. While that’s their choice, and while I’m very happy where I am today, I definitely <em>despise</em> the attitude that it’s better to do something organized than just to follow your passions.</p>
<p>Now, writing a great essay about your passion for something less organized COULD work for private colleges, but usually seems not to.</p>
<p>Just a word of caution about tokenadult’s comment: I think that it’s largely an MIT idiosyncrasy, that it would be advantageous to mention babysitting on the application. MIT regional reps were the only ones I’ve ever heard (indirectly) saying that. An exception: a student who has primary care responsibility for younger siblings should mention that fact.</p>
<p>A word about babysitting. My D babysits for several families, and believe me, she is worth her weight in gold to them. They tell me how conscientious, responsible, kind and wonderful she is with their children and they pay for her. She commands a monetary premium in the community. She charges $12 per hour when the going rate is $8-10. Still, she has had to refuse work due to time constraints. She is not even looking for summer or part time jobs, because babysitting is so lucrative.</p>
<p>You can bet that this will all be on her college applications. If the adcoms can’t see the value in this, maybe they don’t deserve to have my Queen at their college.</p>
<p>What was it Archimedes said? Give me enough data and I will move the world? From the outcomes of a small number of applications that mentioned/did not mention babysitting, nothing could be deduced . . . but perhaps, over time, CC applicants could, in effect, run a sufficient number of experiments . . . ?</p>
<p>Nothing whatever against babysitting. I acknowledge that babysitters in high demand very likely have the sterling qualities that Queen’s Mom mentioned. But I think that MIT is interested in babysitting as a guarantor of the student’s character and–especially–normalcy, since they also assume that their applicants are to some extent techno-obsessed. With other schools, I’d still surmise that the advantage is greatly reduced.</p>
<p>I think this is right. Among other things, adcoms at highly selective schools are looking for people who will be active in ways that add vibrancy to the campus and contribute to college life for other students. Solitary hobbies like stamp collecting just won’t cut it. I seriously doubt the particular LAC whose admissions office mentioned stamp collecting has any particular interest in recruiting stamp collectors. The larger point he was trying to make, I think, is that racking up large numbers of ECs or service hours just so you have a numerically impressive list is not, in fact, what is going to impress him. He’d rather have people who will do a smaller number of things–even one thing–with genuine and full-bore enthusiasm than people who spent their HS careers methodically and mechanically building up a checklist to impress adcoms, inter alia because, checklist in hand and admission accomplished, the latter group are far less likely to follow through on those ECs at the college level in a way that contributes to the overall vibrancy of the campus. They’ll be off working on whatever other checklist they think will get them into the top law schools, med schools, or MBA programs, where college ECs are not likely to count for very much.</p>
<p>Well, in our experience with selective programs at not so selective schools, we just realized that they simply need to make a decision that in most cases not predictable. If program has 800 applicants, all of whom are way way above average and most being close to GPA = 4.0uw with very high scores, tons of EC’s of verious sorts, huge % of valedictorians, they still will reject 785 if there are only 15 spots in a program for incoming freshmen. And, no, there are no kids without AP’s (mostly 5 on exams), high SAT II scores and absolutely most regourous curriculum that offered at respective HS, etc. D got lucky to be accepted at 3 such programs, rejected at another 3. She graduated at the top of her HS class from very competitive HS that always places 100% of graduates into 4 years colleges.</p>
<p>What ever happened to having our kids just be themselves? </p>
<p>Truth is, for every succcessful effort to game the admissions process by carefully tweaking the application to put spin on one part or another, a dozen efforts fail because they put the spin on the wrong thing. </p>
<p>Let’s just present the kids in the best light as they really are.</p>
<p>The reason is that H and S love to take valedictorians. Y and P too, but to a lesser extent. H and S just love the little butt-kissing grade grubbers and will give away points on the SAT rather than take a number 2 or 3 over a number 1. And you dont want to be a n umber 3 applying where the number 1 is too, even if you have a 2400 and the number 1 has a 2300 or 2200. And, unfortunately it doesnt seem to matter all that much how competitive a school you come out of, it matters some but not enough.</p>
<p>It is very insulting to describe valedictorians as “little butt-kissing grade grubbers”. Are you describing your own child? My D had put enormous effort into her accomplishment with significant sacrifices and continue to do so in college to achieve straight “A” status.</p>
<p>How do we know that H and S “love to take valedictorians?” Valedictorians are only #1s at their particular school, and schools vary enormously in quality.
My S’s public high school sent 11 students to H one year. None was a valedictorian (she went to an all-women college).</p>
<p>I’m sure that selective schools take some stamp collectors, and they might even be impressed by it…if, for example, the student writes articles for stamp collecting magazines, tells an interesting story of how he finds unusual stamps at estate sales, how he set a website for stamp information, etc.</p>