All are welcome to fly high at Eagle Academy, as long as they have a 3.9+/1500+ or 34+
ETA – the mascot is the Stackers
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I’m not so sure about that. I have quite a few former classmates who now attend top schools, but find many of their classmates very unlikable and describe them as exhibiting many traits similar to those of the “bots” that GRR describes. To quote a friend of mine at Harvard, “Everyone is so transactional; it feels like every single person I meet is trying to coffee chat me.” I’ve also heard similar sentiments echoed from people at MIT and Penn.
Of course, this is anec"data," but I still have never observed a similar pattern among my classmates at my own highly-selective school; I suspect this is because our “name brand” isn’t big enough to attract those types.
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Those types?
There is nobody at Harvard, MIT or Penn who is too busy in the sculpture studio or the music practice room or traveling with their debate team to “coffee chat” a classmate?
And you’ve NEVER observed this at your own college? Terrific. You’ve clearly found your peeps!
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Bummer.
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Yo Yo Ma was a music major, right? He displayed incredible strength in one area. He is the opposite of “well rounded”, having devoted his life from age 3 to music. His math scores had nothing to do with admissions; he didnt study math.
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And under the logic of “rack and stack”, he’d never have been admitted to a “holistic” U if he didn’t exhibit the right combination of GPA and test scores. Why give a seat to a guy who plays the cello if you can admit one more CS major with higher everything?
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I agree on the transactional characteristics of many in top schools. To say that that is an exclusive result of people who score high on math tests is stretching it.
I will grant that the distribution of “late blooming” personalities may be higher in groups with high math scores. But certainly not exclusive. There are English nerds, art nerds, music nerds (mon dieu!), linguistic nerds, history nerds (my father is a history PhD that will make your eyes roll so far back in your head…). There are also those who believe they have the gift of entertaining gab… and think they are the second coming of Stockard Channing in Six Degrees when they’re more in line with Bruno Kirby in When Harry met Sally.
To be honest, that characterization of students being so prevalent on top campuses is a failure of today’s admissions process, holistic or otherwise.
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Yo yo ma dropped out of Columbia 
At this point we have lots of experience with Penn kids and this is definitely not accurate for the vast majority. What is it with the unlikeable bot and drone stereotypes today? There are extroverts “trying to coffee chat” as well as introverts who love to dive deep into their subjects at Penn and at many different schools–some folks relate to them, some do not. To each his own. No school is filled with ideal perfect personality matches for everyone. And none of this stereotyping indicates the admissions process is broken. In fact I am starting to think it works better than I realized.
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Because he was admitted to a musical conservatory, Julliard, for music. He did graduate study in, yes, music. He was never competing for a compsci space. Actually, he would soar under “rack and stack”-proven, objective ability at the top of one’s field, no fake nonprofits or trips to Haiti done or needed. No essays on his hardships.
The top of one’s field in music is measured by auditions/performances; other arts must have similar criteria for determining their top performers. Just like the top performers in math can be recognized by math tests. Yo Yo Ma is an example of not using “holistic” admissions ( he wasnt in the drama club; did not play a sport) but rather objective criteria of excellence in one field.
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I assume that music schools would want the best musicians, so they might have auditions to make sure they accept the best. Anything wrong with that?
But, now I’m wondering, do any music schools accept students that can’t play any instrument? Do they provide catch-up classes?
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I don’t think conservatories have remediation as part of their curricula.
Students may come in with different levels of skills, but all are musically qualified
Wouldn’t think music composition, music theory, music history, etc requires playing an instrument.
I believe you have to be able to demonstrate musical proficiency with at least one instrument (and voice is included as an instrument) in order to audition fully for music schools.
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Is your friend an economics major or otherwise in a sub environment that attracts status seekers, social climbers, and the like (aiming for finance and consulting)?
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Good catch!
I would think preference would be given to those with backgrounds in music composition and theory. Music history could be anyone, no experience necessary, because its,…history.