We’ve given a lot of latitude on this thread. A reminder that debate is not permit outside the political forum. Make your rebuttal once and move on. Back and forth between posters need to be moved to PM.
And, time to move on from “one dimensional” students.
Here’s a link to the @MITChris blog post that GreenOwlMom referred to and it is well worth a read. The advice to striving HS kids (and their parents) is as good now as it was when it was written in 2010. Applying Sideways | MIT Admissions
"There is no golden ticket.
So breathe.
Now that you are Zen calm, liberated from the pressures of not having cured cancer by your 18th birthday, what should you do if you still want to come to MIT?
If you do these three things, you will be applying sideways to MIT."
It is a great essay. I only came across it after our older was admitted, but it turns out we were practicing this approach all along with both our kids.
I do not think it is a contradiction to at once wish for more transparency in the process and to refuse to do things just for the sake of college admissions:-)
I like this sentiment, but how do parents react when they discover that there might be some kids who were admitted over their own children because they were nice or pursued their passion for hopscotch or double-dutch jump-rope (or baking or napping) with zeal over students with a higher SAT score who weren’t nice? I have a hard time believing that there are many (any?) kids without passions, but certainly some are better able to articulate and convey their passions to their teachers or in their essays. I also think that sometimes there are students who are very passionate about a topic, but they are are afraid that their love of naps and hopscotch is not serious enough nor intellectual enough so they don’t share that passion with people who they perceive to be judging them or to have power over them. I mean wouldn’t you be afraid if you wrote an essay extolling the virtue of napping that you would be beaten out with somebody with a “real” passion?
There are lots of kids without passions.
I’ve interviewed them for my alma mater; I’ve interviewed them for new grad positions in my professional life; I’ve tried to help them launch after they graduate and spend the summer sitting on the couch with zero plan to ever move out of mom’s house.
If you can call TP’ing a rival frat house a passion- then sure, they have a passion. They’ve perfected pranks and tiktok and documenting every flat white espresso they drink. They are experts on Yelp and can advise on where to buy the perfect acai bowl and the right brand of shampoo if you have hard water because they eat and sleep product ratings on Amazon and Sephora.
Compared to graduates of “any college or no college”, graduates of certain flagships do end up disproportionately in Fortune 500 C-suites. But graduates of Ivys are even more disproportionately likely to do so. And more importantly they are disproportionately likely to end up on the Supreme Court, in the House and the Senate, in the White House, and in the sort of jobs that bring in enough money to create power.
Ivy+ schools provide opportunities and connections in ways that less elite schools cannot. This is why you and your own family choose these schools, no?
Is this really an issue at a top tier school? Are kids with just average good test scores who wrote interesting essays about unique passions getting selected oven kids with stellar test scores who wrote safer essays?
I don’t think a parent really knows why one kid gets picked over another. I know that’s an argument for transparency! But you don’t really know another kid’s profile in depth. Is there a significant number of “less than” students getting into T20 schools?
Do you think there are lots of high achieving kids without passions? To be frank, I am trying to move the conversation away from what seems like a binary debate (yeah, yeah, yeah, no debating allowed on CC). So many posters seemed to take offensive at the idea that there might be some 1600/4.0 students who are “boring” or “bots without personalities” Others seemed to take offensive at the notion that a difference of 50 or 100 or 200 points on the SAT should disqualify some students from highly selective universities. I was looking to explore the question without debating it. Can someone really be more passionate about NAPPING than research and still be seen as a viable candidate for a highly selective college? Most kids that I know do have passions even if it is for Tetris and Pokemon and not much else.
Or to be more specific to my kids, D24 applied to an academic scholarship that asked her to discuss the single extracurricular activity most important to her. The activity that she discussed is something that I consider frivolous and silly. It really bothered me given she has done some really impressive and more academically relevant activities. It was not a case where there was room to discuss both the impressive and the frivolous. She had to choose. She chose the frivolous because she cares about it most. I still have misgivings about that choice and hope somewhere in her letters of rec, the more “important” accomplishments came out. Yeah, she is passionate about this subject, but Oy vey. Same thing happened on a couple of non-common app college applications. She had to choose and she sure didn’t choose the passion that I consider more indicative of her academic strengths!
I don’t know if there are such students, but the raging against holistic admissions seems to suggest that some perceive there to be a bias against top scorers.
It was brought up in the Harvard suit by a minority group concerned about bias against it…
In other words: they are no boring bots.
I would guess the system isn’t perfect and there are probably areas most people would agree seem unfair, but I think broken is a strong word based on perceptions.
I see kids just competing for limited top state school university spots who will tell you it’s unfair. I think most of their teachers can point to why maybe it isn’t.
Yes, and in the case of safe drinking water for the poor, this is a matter of civil engineering. As of 2022, 73% of the world’s humans have safe water, on demand, in their own homes. And each year the mid-level civil engineers chip away on the remaining percentage who don’t. A miracle that doesn’t require “EQ” or “out-of-the-box” thinking, or the sort of “leadership” that one can predict from a 17 yo’s being the captain of his lacrosse team, or a “passion” for dance, or even tuba playing.
Same with cancer researchers. Years of slogging through the field. No tubas required.
I think he was using a bit of humor/hyperbole in the MIT Admissions blog post to convey the broader point.
Yes, so was I (using hyperbole), but my broader question still remains.
BTW, I do think my daughter chose to write about the most frivolous thing that she does, but knowing her, at least she probably wrote about it well.
ETA: I was mostly going for hyperbole. As for “humor,” I was even attempting that a bit as well while trying to explore a serious question, but as my children constantly remind me, I am not nearly as funny as I think that I am. Or rather as one of them so kindly put it, “Mom, you need to learn to tell the difference between when other people find you funny and you find yourself funny.”
There are dozens of issues which society has either solved or gotten close to solving where the problem is NOT the science, but the communications, the persuading, the politicking, and yes, the ability to socialize or syndicate appropriately.
Measles- wow. We still have measles in 2024, and the rate of infection seems to be growing. This isn’t a scientific problem, this requires masterful “art of persuasion” skills. Teenage pregnancy- wow. We’ve known what makes babies (and how to prevent them being made) for a long time. And yet every year there are thousands of kids who are shocked- SHOCKED- that having unprotected intercourse resulted in getting pregnant. The solution here is NOT the science- we’ve conquered that. It’s a tricky solution which requires sociology and psychology and religion and theology and communications.
I could go on for hours but you get my drift. At some point, people who have “can’t be measured by a test” skills are required for some of these problems. I’m got civil engineers in my family. Love them to pieces. But by golly, you don’t want them showing up at a hearing before the government of Uganda or Pakistan and persuading the responsible agencies to participate in a multinational coalition to solve the drinking water problem. Trust me you don’t. Give them a technical problem and they’re all over it. Give them a problem which requires storytelling and nuance and dramatic flair to get to “yes”- no. Not in their wheelhouse.
Cancer- bit of a different animal but we’ll get to the same place. There are hundreds of cancers. But just one- lung cancer- we’ve known for decades that although smoking is not the ONLY cause of lung cancer, it is a leading cause.
Do you think the bench scientists working on cures for cancer have the skillset to persuade thousands of 14 year olds not to smoke? If they did, they’d have done it. And we wouldn’t have 55 year old three pack a day smokers dying of lung cancer. Maybe put a tuba player on that team. Maybe making some noise, entertaining, getting some energy into the process. No mystery what causes a large percentage of lung cancers-- why can’t those darn scientists who are so smart and score so high on standardized tests explain to people that they shouldn’t start smoking???
and why can’t… their antipodes;) do that?
He was an anthropology major - physics performance unknown (but cello performance unbelievable).
My son wrote one essay about Star Wars . . .