Is The College Admissions Process Broken?

still very very unethical though.

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This is so true. I’ve been reading this thread, and it seems like there is a whole solar system worth of different planets that people are living on. And, kid choices matter, too. My kid has great scores and grades, participates in a sport that he loves, just earned his Eagle in scouts, and has won a ton of things in academic competitions (mostly Science Olympiad) because that’s what he does with his science friends. None of that was for building a resume, although it’s given him great things to write about in honors college essays. But, kid didn’t want to apply anywhere ‘where people will be impressed with themselves for getting in’ - pretentiousness really grates on this kid. When adding in other preferences, kid applied to, and was accepted at, Clemson, UAH, VT, Auburn, UTK, TN Tech, and Rose Hulman. I think he has narrowed it down in his head to the first 2 on the list, for reasons that make sense to kid and us. It’s been annoying writing honors essays, and there has been more stress than there should have been because we were told that we might not get in to some of those OOS schools - we could have applied to fewer, but it wasn’t a crisis.

But, kid’s friend, who is in almost identical activities, has applied to a lot of ivies and private schools. The only school that they’ve heard back from is UTK, their safety. They also just lived life and did what they love, and just had an interview for an ivy, but their experience is completely different. We are looking at choosing the option that kid likes best, and kid is seriously considering a safety because he likes it. They are hoping that they get in anywhere besides their safety, because they don’t like it. I would guess that their stress level is many times ours.

And, even with our ‘easy’ application process, there were still a lot of unique essays for honors colleges, and essays for National Merit, and we just had more essays for Presidential Scholar. Kid is a decent writer, and essays that are narratives are great. But, there have been essays like ‘How would you improve the world?’ and, you know, if an 18 year old knew enough to make serious improvements in the world, they might not need college.

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I understand this, but I don’t always think it’s with college as the end goal. When I was growing up, the family expectation was to learn an instrument. I ended up taking about 7 years of one instrument. In the beginning it wasn’t my favorite, but it wasn’t terrible, and it made my parents happy. Once I came to really not enjoy playing (and definitely not practicing) I was forced to continue until I had something that I was equally good at to replace it with. (Which makes no sense, but
)

Why am I bringing this up when it seems to prove your point? Because the music lessons had nothing to do with college admissions. Perhaps it had something to do with being able to show off their kid to guests at dinner parties, but nothing to do with college. So although I totally believe that there’s this phenomenon of kids continuing to do an activity to please their parents when they would rather stop, I don’t think it’s necessarily because of college admissions.

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I’ve listened to that audio book and I liked it a lot. It’s a personal account yes, but it starts to venture into describing the industrial machine that travel ball has become. I don’t think it lacks value or insight into the experience as a whole. It really should be on the recommended list for all travel families. Simply put, Lewis’ daughter loved her sport and had a very competitive personality. They did not get into it for the college admissions boost.

However, the exponential growth of travel ball, the rising demands and costs, the number of coaches, consultants, camps, recruiting services, etc are greatly accelerated by the college admissions process and the value families believe their sports gives them in that arena. It has changed how the various sports have been run and it has changed the experience of the dedicated athlete. I am incredibly skeptical of the belief that all this was just a result of love of the game.

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We have ruined youth sports in the US. I can’t speak to other countries

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Harvard study, 69% of hs kids stressed about getting into college.

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i couldn’t agree more!

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Having lived through 10 years of this, it is indeed a “racket” at certain levels. What is particularly galling is that often less educated/lower income families are sucked into this. For them, it is not about getting into “Harvard” but dreams of an athletic scholarship. Many have no idea that softball is an equivalency sport and most likely they might get a quarter scholarship so even if they are able to secure a scholarship they will not be able to recover the money spent on team fees, equipment (high end bats are $300-500, and are prone to breaking), personal coaching or travel. I tried to educate a lot of these families, but most were unwilling to hear me, so I think it was also an “ego/parent reliving their own glory days” thing going on. If those families (often low SES/URM) spent the same amount of time and money on tutors for classes and tests, they probably could have had their daughters go to college for free through FA and/or academic scholarships.

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it is such a shame that we are putting our young minds and their parents through it. it is absolutely a racket, but as a society we don’t have the courage to discard this perverse college admission system.

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I’m not sure the affluence of a town has as much influence as you’re implying. Kids from affluent towns do the things you mention. We have a number of thriving scout troops alongside more sports and volunteer orgs than you can shake a stick at. I don’t understand the need to make so much of this into a class war. The issue with living in an affluent town is not necessarily the people (I believe there are pros and cons to people in all walks of life. We have to all learn to deal regardless of where you sit).

What ever is there is made worse though by the college admissions system. Even if it’s not broken, I don’t have to like it, especially with the collateral damage this one has. Any set of policies or system has to have the subject population in mind. I’ve heard it said before that communism only failed as the people weren’t “evolved” enough to allow it to work. I guess there’s two sides to viewing everything.

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My point is that in a town where the kids aren’t growing up going on fancy ski trips and spending every vacation boarding a plane- instead of the bloated EC’s we read about- and which many of you claim are stressing kids out which shows how broken the admissions process is–

Kids are working at the yogurt store, folding sweaters at the Gap, working at the local car wash, taking tickets at the multiplex theater. I.e. normal HS jobs. They contribute to their family, they save money for college or for gas and insurance. They aren’t worrying that their original String Theory research won’t be published in time for their college applications.

THAT’s the impact of affluence. If you are working 20 hours a week waitressing (which I know many of us parents did in HS) you simply don’t have time to pursue the exotic and impressive EC’s.

Collateral damage? Opt out. Many colleges are auto-admit- your stats are X, you apply on time, your social security number is accurate- you’re in. Pay your housing deposit.

Nobody is forcing kids to amass hundreds of hours doing fancy EC’s. Nobody is forcing kids to hire essay coaches!

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But they aren’t working at the yogurt store; even poor kids aren’t. Teen employment has never been lower. Most kids say they do not have time for jobs due to sports, clubs, etc

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i may not agree with a lot of what you have said here, but this statement is hilarious. i have friends who pursue strings theory as their research. this points to how ridiculous and stressful the overall systems is.

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I think you’ve hit it spot on. The number I’ve heard (I think it was softball) was ~10k per summer season including team, coaching, equipment, hotels, food, transportation. Then there is fall season, camps, injuries, hour long commutes, etc, etc. To continue the softball example, let’s use the Colorado showcases as an example (IDT/Sparkler). The draw is that college recruiters from all over will be there. And hold their own special camps on the side. Thousands in plane flight, hotel stays, meals, rentals, recruiting events
 and it last a week or so I believe?

And all the top teams go there, and people join the teams that travel to the events where the major recruiters are. Top girls generally don’t join the teams that don’t go to these special showcases that teams have to qualify for. It’s all skewed for the college recruiting angle.

And to your point, most know their not donning the Crimson when they hit the field. They are craving that scholarship that only a handful per team get, mostly in fractions. And they attend schools where academically they could have had better choices. There are families by the wayside here that the college process doesn’t even really see.

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My kid isn’t that old and she worked at a sub shop in high school during the summer. Most of her friends worked in similar jobs or life guarded or waitressed. I have friends with HS kids now and they all have summer jobs they are lining up.

Now I agree that once school started, it was tough to keep working and she pivoted to just keeping up her volunteer job.

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I’ve checked out one of the main sites for the pay to play research. There’s only a couple professors and they are retired. Everyone else is a PhD student or postdoc who is careful to not list their affiliation on the site. The “research” products are underwhelming and I doubt anyone but the HS students want their name on any of them. (I am opposed to such services, for the record).

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My town is middle to upper middle class (not super wealthy, but not generally low income) and a lot of kids here hold down part time jobs - Taco Bell, Starbucks, the local Boba shop, a number of families own small family restaurants and their high school kids almost invariably wait tables, Ross, Trader Joe’s. Those are all popular places for high schoolers to have part time jobs in my city. My daughter has held a job since pretty much the day she turned 16. Again, I can’t speak for other areas, but quite a few high schoolers around here definitely have part time jobs.

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Even in a single high school, I feel that there can be a lot of variation in how much stress kids feel that they are under to come up with the perfect ECs, etc. Our high school is a large public, the only public HS in our city, and has a lot of economic, cultural and racial diversity. Kids end up going to a very wide range of colleges, from community college (or no college) to HYPSM.

S23 definitely knew some kids who felt very stressed and overwhelmed. From those kids’ perspective, OMG kids these days are under so much stress to perform academically and line up the perfect ECs, it’s crazy! But he also knew other kids who did not seem to feel stressed at all, and simply did what they did and figured they would let the chips fall where they may, and thought the process was just not that big of a deal. Oddly (?) enough, the apparent stress level wasn’t super correlated with the eliteness level of the schools targeted. (He had a seemingly laid back friend who is at MIT now, for example.)

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From my very early days research (sophomore kid), it seems like AO can’t read or vet anywhere close to the #s of these research papers, so are they ALL treated as equally impressive, because there’s just no way there’s office staff to differentiate? In which case, any kid could do the cheapest research option, and get a pretty big bump up in the admit pile?

There are plenty of kids with regular jobs and experiences. I keep hearing people here describing “rich kids” living like they’re on the set of 90210 or Clueless (sorry I’m old and I don’t know any better examples). Let’s get it out there: that’s fostering a bias unnecessarily. No string theory papers here (although I did judge a science project on carbon nanotubes several years back
 that takes connections, not money).

The issue is: this bias is also being held up in committee. And now, families that live in these towns that don’t get test prep, or essay coaching, or paid consultants
 they are behind the 8-ball as they are still held to some standard that shouldn’t really apply to them. This is looking at them “in context”. By their zip code. Why does one need to spend money just because that’s the “context”?

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