Never heard that one before! Learning new things!!
loved those books!
Many types of programs and majors are widely available at less selective schools. However, many of these schoolsâ âcollege experienceâ is basically academics and related career preparation only, not the residential âcollege experienceâ that is a common desire or expectation on these forums.
I think social media contributes to this, but I also think some kids are becoming better about not broadcasting their applications and hopes and dreams for the world to judge.
UCF has a terrific engineering program, yet people call it âjustâ going to UCF (maybe thatâs just my kidâs private school 
Why? Because it isnât UF that is climbing the ranking and is considered the big catch.
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Iâm impressed you got it down to 4! Since your son really likes the rolling acceptance and itâs affordable youâve already won.
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Even if we look only at stats or academics there are still different measures. Some of you seem to want to just pick one thing and base it off that, but there a plenty of academic measures that can be different.
If you (hypothetically) look only at the kids within one top high-school, where they have tested to get in - like a Thomas Jefferson or a Lowell. All the kids are smart and could be successful anywhere. And they have equal grade inflation or not, same curriculum, teachers etc, so GPA is as consistent as it can be across students. So if the # 1 ranked student for GPA has a 1500 SAT (750/750) and the # 150 ranked student has a 1600 SAT (and a perfect math score on one of your national math exams), who gets chosen? Is the GPA shown over four years more important or the score on one test one Saturday morning? Both kids can do the work.
Or what if the #65 ranked kid has a 1550 but is a national chess champion? Or wins multiple creative writing awards? Or a Regeneron finalist? Or is a nationally ranked tennis player? Or was able to do research with a local college and present their findings at a national conference? But their GPA (at the same school) isnât as high as our first student and their test score isnât as high as our lower ranked student? Who should a particular college choose?
Those are the kids that the colleges are choosing between. Kids that have met the threshold but each have different strengths and different areas of expertise. Is the kid who maintains great grades over 4 years stronger than the one who can take a multiple choice test slightly better on a specific day? What about the one who can maintain great grades while also developing apps or winning science olympiads or creative writing competitions?
I can see how a different college might answer those questions differently. The kid MIT picks might be different than the one Harvard picks. Or Stanford. Or Pomona. Or Brown etc etc. And I certainly couldnât begin to say which was more deserving. That doesnât mean the system is broken. It just means one school might prefer the Science Olympiad winners while another wants the debate champions. Who both also have great but maybe not perfect grades and test scores.
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HYPSM+ arenât stealing anyoneâs students: their class sizes remain relatively constant over decades. In fact, they are being criticized for that.
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Fine for private schools. Public universities, in my opinion, need a system which is at least perceived by its residents to be fair ( however they define that), transparent, and predictable. In some places, that does not seem to be the case.
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It shouldnât be. But it also shouldnât be measured by oneâs race or oneâs parents to fund a new building.
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The problem with this is that the public will not agree on what is fair or transparent. Most people who are paying attention have a dog in the fight, and they will naturally want âfairâ to benefit their kid.
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My daughter is incredibly grateful for covid for this. She didnât have to take the GRE (and it really wasnât available to her because the testing centers were closed). She is really bad at math, and especially math testing (she can often figure it out if given enough time and help with statistics or charts, but timed tests have always been a disaster). Iâm not sure she would have been admitted if sheâd had to take the GRE and been admitted based on that. Even if admitted, I doubt she would have gotten a funded spot in the program. Since sheâd gone to undergrad in the same department, the faculty based her admission on what they knew of her work, and didnât have to justify it to the university as a whole with a low GRE score. And gave her a fully funded spot and a lot of extra assignments to supplement her living expenses.
Of course her qualifications not driven by stats (personality, hard worker, interest in the subject) were well known to the department. They knew she could do the work and could be helped with the statistics part of her thesis.
IMO, it is easier to teach a student the math needed than how to write, how to do research, how to work in a group, but the GRE scores the math sections the same as the reading and writing sections and no one scores the social IQ of an applicant at all.
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Then vote on what admission system to have for public school. That is how communities decide how to govern. Almost anyone can adjust, once they know what the system is.
I understood that private school kids do disproportionately poorly in the UT admissions race. There are plenty of very smart qualified kids who have zero chance due to their rank. But they knew that since before they started high school. The system is transparent.some change high schools to improve their rank, some do not. The rules are clear and apply to everyone ( well, almost. 75% anyway).
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Absolutely they are not steeling anyone, but they are where EVERYONE (well not everyone) wants to go. And a lot of kids seem to have this burning need to get in even if it is not the right place for them. The state popular state schools are also getting slammed with applications also, so it is not just the HYPSM+ I am talking about. Kids find a place, but some end up at CC and then transfer to a 4-year, but other non CC colleges are shutting down. Maybe they are overpriced for what they are and they deserve to close.
As an aside, Husband and I talked to one of the deans on one of the HYPSM at an event and told him that we, as alums, thought it was their duty to expand their class size. I donât see it happening but you never know.
Absolutely. But I can be outraged and stressed for other peopleâs kids.
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Would be fine if true but isnât in many cases. There is no doubt that there arenât nearly enough spaces in the most prestigious universities for all the academic and testing superstars, so most must be rejected. However, some kids get accepted with stats and even extracurricular contributions not nearly as strong as many of the rejected academic superstars. If a desire for diversity, big funding, first-generation or whatever leads Harvard to accept an applicant with a 3.9 GPA and 1480 SAT instead of a 4.0 and 1510 without those extra characteristics, everything else the same, I suspect most could live with that. The problem I have is that the advantage for race and legacy/money are huge, e.g., full grade points in GPA, even with less advanced courses, and hundreds of points lower in the SAT.
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I donât think most people (including myself) know enough about the nuances of college admissions to make it a purely democratic vote. People would choose what seems fair to them, without factoring in unintended consequences and what it means to manage a college.
Most things are not purely democratic votes. We vote for people to make decisions, and when we donât like their decisions, we vote them out. When they hired a transportation manager for my county, I didnât get to vote on how the traffic patterns should work. I am not an expert on traffic patterns or highway construction or projecting future growth.
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Her successful chain of non-profit bikini car-washes, which sent 90% of proceeds to various charities here and abroad, is what got her into Harvard.
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Not many of those financial donor type students. An inconsequential blip in any given class.
Exactly. To take one example, many in Texas donât think UT Austin admissions are fair, as some of the top 6% at some of the underperforming/underresourced schools arenât college ready, whereas at some of the highly competitive HSs, students well into the bottom half of the class are relatively stronger academically speaking. UT Austin is also not transparent in the application process with regard to major.
Another example is California where high school and neighborhood context plays a role for some applicants in UC admissions.
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Why do you perceive this to be a problem?
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I think the âcollege experienceâ is pretty important. Maybe not the rah-rah football experience (but that is my bias, and i know it is important for some in building relationships etc for the future). The residential campus where kids become young adults I think it very important. And I think some of these residential schools are struggling to find students.
I have some friends who used college advisors just to find these âhidden gemsâ. How do students with less privilege get that information? Now donât get me started on the overworked HS public school guidance councellor.
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