Our school has terrible grade inflation/compression. The school stopped reporting class rank 2 years ago because of it. But after freshman year DS was 250 / 1050 with 1 B+ rest As, he was taking most difficult classes possible without really gaming the weighted GPA system. The school reports that 40% of grades are As or A+s (I assume this includes gym and other classes not in the GPA computation but it is not clear in the profile)
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This cannot be emphasized enough.
Not just the expectations-- but the whole parental input/guidance mechanism. I know kids who are getting shoved into majors for which they are not suited- not just that they wonāt be superstars, but that they will end up flunking out of (or a string of Wās and Iās, hoping for a sympathetic dean).
I get that-- horrors- the idea of your kid majoring in English or Russian lit is terrifying for some. But honestly-- the rush for pre-professional majors gets a little crazy (and counterproductive) in some families.
Neighbor of mine- sweet kid. Barely got through a CS major at a middling regional state college. Itās not a very rigorous CS major but the parents insisted. Heās now miserably employed as a āGeniusā at the local Apple store. Parents get to brag that their kid āworks for Appleā. Kid gets to work retail (not knocking retail at all- but that was not why the parents shoved him into the major but it was āitās our money, we pickā deal).
I guess the idea of the kid choosing occupational therapy or teaching HS history or slowly working his way up the ladder doing claims analysis at an insurance company (all of which pay better than the Apple store btw) was too- what- middle class?
Must everyone work for Apple or Meta or Goldman Sachs in order to validate ones parenting?
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Is there something preventing this man from changing careers if he wants to now? He could still be a teacher, or insurance agent, or whatever. His degree isnāt preventing that. Either he doesnāt want to or doesnāt care enough to try.
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Of course. And once he tires of the endless changes in schedules, the precarity of trying to make it on a low wage heāll get there.
But the notion that he was going to land in an elite CS career- given his lack of interest in CS, his mediocre skills in math, and his admissions resultsā¦ I think the parents were delusional from the git-go.
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Probably. But as you remind us, oneās choice of major does not always correlate to oneās career, and many options are open to almost anyone regardless of major.
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I 100% agree with all of this. Our HS does several ācollege-boundā workshops for parents throughout HSā¦2 years ago, one of the counselors mentioned āColleges That Change Livesā and what great schools they are AND how so many of them offer a lot of merit money. D24 applied to 3 of them, got accepted to all of them with good merit scholarships despite not having a perfect GPA, and based on how things are going so far, I think that sheās going pick 1 of them to attend. Prior to the counselor mentioning it, I had NO IDEA these schools even existed.
Some parents DO have totally unrealistic expectations or desires for their kid(s) though. Take D24ās BFF, for example. BFF is an amazing student, got accepted to our in-state publics and last week, got an acceptance from University of Richmond (sheās hoping for one of their full-ride scholarships). BFFās parents told her that theyāre not going to contribute anything to paying for her college (they can afford to do so, paid for her 2 older brothers to go to college, I think itās a cultural thing + maybe the money ran out? I donāt know and neither does D24).
BFF is realistic, though, has a good head on her shoulders. She purposely applied to places with some good merit scholarships. She has a high enough GPA that attending in-state publics here in AZ will be free tuition or nearly free tuition. Guess what? Her parents wanted her to apply to UCB, UCLA, and some other big name bragging rights schools.
BFF asked her parents, āSo if I get into Berkeley, will you pay for the full cost of attendance for me to go there?ā Parents said, āOf course not.ā BFF said, āThen Iām not applying. Thatās a waste of time.ā BFF has told D24 that her parents are worried about what will they say to their relatives āback homeā in their country of origin if BFF goes to a college that nobody āback homeā has heard of.
Last year, the counselor told us parents about how the year before, a senior applied to and got accepted to NYU. Huge accomplishment. This was the kidās and the parentsā dream school. The entire time, the parents told the kid to not worry about the finances, theyāll figure something out. The parents ignored the advice of the counselor, who warned them that NYU doesnāt give out scholarshipsā¦the financial aid was only need-based and their family ended up not qualifying for any need-based aid.
So that student isnāt going to NYU. Heās in the honors college at an in-state public university and doing really well.
But how many times does it happen where the kid applies to only (or almost only) elite universities, under pressure from themselves, peers, or parents, and they end up not getting accepted anywhere? Itās so frustrating to see it happen because there really are a lot of great programs out there all across the United States. Thereās a lot more than 50 of the most-popular, most-talked-about schools.
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We know an English major who got a job as an Apple genius. He left that job for an IT position with UPenn. Left that job to work for a private company doing IT work and some technical writing.
Nothing wrong with working at the Apple Storeā¦if you have an eye on what other options are available to you.
But this is sort of off topic.
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Itās not the college admissions process that is broken; itās American society that has become polarized along class lines that no one my age could have imagined. Think about it: in 1970, at the height of the Baby Boom, the Harvard College acceptance rate was still 20%. Harvard Acceptance Rate 1970 - EducationScientists. In other words, not every high school valedictorian thought they had to fly across the country in order to get a leg up on the rest of their lives. What has happened in the meantime? IMHO, there are a lot more dollars in the upper half of American society and they are chasing fewer and fewer signifiers of status. Pretty soon, no oneās bucket list will be complete without a round-trip ticket on a sub-orbital trip outside the earthās atmosphere. The same is already true for admission to a T50 college or university. Americans are bidding up the prices of admission to the same 30 or 40 colleges that were considered āMost Competitiveā in 1970 with maybe <30% admission rates, and the colleges are only too willing to take their money to buy sanitized, suburbanized campuses with a surfeit of wellness and academic support. If you want to fix the problem, start by investing tax dollars into keeping OOS students home!
EDIT: Removed references to Ivy League SAT scores which have been reset several times since 1970.
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If the most prestigious universities in the US had half a million undergrads each, then they would likely be roughly equivalent in admission difficulty as Toronto, McGill, and UBC.
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The overwhelming number of college and universities in the US accept just about everyone. They require no insider information.
There is a strong consensus on this site that where you go to school is irrelevant. The majority of users on this site feel that it is all about the effort of the student, and where they go to school does not matter. If that is true, nothing is broken, and anyone spending money or spending time in the pursuit of a highly selective institution is making the wrong choices.
To be convinced there is a problem with the college admissions process is to hold firm to the belief that there is value in attending a highly selective institution. Cards on the table, I fall into this camp. I also detest holistic admissions. Someone smarter than me needs to develop a fair meritocratic system that takes individual decision-making entirely out of the process. No more shaping a class. No more taking a lesser student because you need an oboe player. Have an orchestra with the best academic applicants.
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Yes, this young man actually seems well positioned to me. His CS degree might have been from a āmiddling regional state college,ā but I would think that even a not very rigorous CS major is more rigorous than most other majors. Certainly it will have required him to improve upon his previously mediocre skills in math. We keep hearing how important quantitative skills are in so many areas now (including in fields such as history, insurance etc.)
So very confused as to why this kid has been done wrong by his parents?
Your statement suggests that thereās no merit in being an Oboe player, or a Football player, or a (insert non-graded attribute). And maybe in your view there isnāt. I think many here would disagree. We would all just have our kids cut out all extra-curricular activities and lock them in their rooms studying to get perfect scores on ACT/SAT and get their 4.0UW.
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I think there is tremendous value in all of these activities (and many more activities). I also think these activities should have nothing to do with the admissions process at highly selective academic institutions.
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That is the critical difference between the admissions process in the US vs in Europe and Asia.
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To me, that means the system is broken. If high school counselors who deal with this every year cannot understand it, thereās little hope for most parents to understand it.
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^^This^^. Why does Common App even allow 20 schools? I think this alone skews the system, as kids can very easily apply to colleges around the country that they arenāt realistically going to attend, which in turn makes it much more difficult for the colleges to predict their yield and avoid significant over- or under-enrollment, which in turn leads schools to take more extreme steps to manage yield (increasing ED admits, relying on demonstrated interest, etc.). I think this is at the root of the Southern flagship crunch this year - if youāre applying to NC State but concerned about declining admission rates, you might as well apply to Clemson and UTK and Auburn and Bama and Florida State and South Carolina and Virginia Tech and Kentucky and Ole Miss and MS State also, with still plenty of spots left for some likelies/safeties and a handful of reaches. In the current system, that makes sense. But if each student had to narrow their choices to just a few of those flagships (which is feasible with a little research), then admissions would be less crazy and more predictable at all of them.
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Itās fairly common around where I live for kids (by and large, high achieving, UMC or higher, unhooked kids) to apply to 20 or more schools. Itās not because they just want to apply to a large number (itās not fun). Itās because college admissions for these kind of students have become very unpredictable. So they need to apply to more colleges, because colleges that would have been targets or likelies for them a few years ago, no longer are.
And yes, one can say this is unnecessary because there are many colleges that will admit almost everybody - but these highly accomplished kids want to go to the best school they can get into. Itās not just about rankings - they are seeking academic quality and a peer group.
Unless an alternative is developed, applying to a large number of schools is their best bet.
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I agree that where you go can matter. The resources, opportunities and quality of fellow students will be different. Some people make the most of whatever resources and opportunities that are available and others do not ā how outcomes are shaped by what you do vs where you go.
I disagree that anyone can develop a mechanical algorithm that will yield the most ādeserving and optimal classā. To do so you would have to define āmeritā and then list the factors and weight them. The whole process in setting up the formula is itself subjective and based on some human judgment. More importantly, one of the most valuable and enriching experience in college is interacting and being challenged by fellow students with different experiences, perspectives, talents and backgrounds. I would not want my kids to go to a university populated by academic clones.
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But this is just perpetuates a cycle of treating college applications like a lottery and drives lower admissions rates and greater uncertainty. The saner approach is to limit the number of applications that any one student can make to certain schools which have insanely low admission rates.
Letās say schools like MIT and Caltech decided to craft their own entrance exams. Want to major in physics? You take their physics test. Same for mathematics, and so on. They offer the students who perform the best on these exams. No other criteria evaluated.
Would your child have a substandard life experience if they were accepted and studied with students accepted the same way? How could you be sure?
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