<p>I think you are confused by the “sponsorship” relationship. College Confidential (like a lot of Web-based discussion boards these days) posts Google ads that third-party companies pay for, with some of the revenue from those ads going to CC (which, after all, has to pay its bills). Whether you like the services of the advertised company or not is your decision, but I find CC helpful enough that I am very happy to read and post here, with the same exposure to advertisements that I get on some other useful sites.</p>
<p>Columbia, first of all, congratulations on your admission! Columbia is a terrific school. Based on your description of yourself, you sound like just the kind of student that any college would be happy to have.</p>
<p>Second, I tend to share your sentiments about private college counselors and counseling services that charge huge amounts of money to package students for admission to elite colleges. And as I said in my earlier post, I think admissions committees tend to view packaging, at least when they can detect it, as a negative.</p>
<p>At the same time, I find it hard to get to outraged at the sponsors of this board. Their profit motive has generated this discussion forum, where students and parents can share a huge amount of useful information for free (and also obsess endlessly about college admissions). No one is forced to buy the sponsor’s counseling services - and it would never occur to me to do so. In fact, until you pointed it out, I had never even bothered to click on the IGAP link or any of the other college counseling links on the board.</p>
<p>But the fact of the matter is that people pay ridiculous amounts of money all the time for these kinds of services, and I have no problem with the sponsors using this board to advertise their services for those who might be interested. At least they offer a money-back guarantee, which is more than I can say for the service one of my friends used last year - which charged a similar amount and turned out to be worthless (and unsuccessful).</p>
<p>As for the notion that the sponsors ask for people to post stats so they can use them in their counseling service - I doubt it. They can get more reliable stats on admitted students directly from the colleges.</p>
<p>A number of posts have pointed out that, even if one accepts that there are problems with elite admissions, I have done a poor job of suggesting alternatives or changes. Or as several have put it, the adcoms are doing the best job possible (figurately this would make me a sort of back seat driver).</p>
<p>So let me try to make a better effort at offering suggestions, which I hope will contribute further to the discussion.</p>
<p>As I’ve probably said too many times already, my concern starts with a judgement that Harvard and other elite admissions have helped create an unhealthy situation where students (along with parents, schools, and other professionals) believe it is necessary to be nearly “perfect” on many measures. This kind of perfection is of little predictive value and encourages students and parents to spend inordinate amounts of time and money, not to mention fostering anxiety and other psychological and social problems.</p>
<p>My suggestion is that Harvard use predictive measures in a way appropriate to their actual value and with more thoughtfulness about their potential for misuse and harm. Some specifics:</p>
<p>–Make clear that the SAT has truly limited value. In the first place, how important is it to know that a student is slightly more likely to do slightly better on freshman grades? Second, acknowledge that adcoms know that scores are not exact and that there is almost no objective value in getting an SAT above a certain value. (Unfortunately for the admission process, it is likely that most applicants are already at this value.)</p>
<p>–Likewise there is no real meaning to a near perfect GPA, make clear this is not expected or particularly important. Why should a student have to get an A in every class. Most humans are not good at everything. A real human being should be doing not so well in some subjects and well in others.</p>
<p>–Make clear that doing massive amounts of extracurricular activities will not improve admission chances. It actually looks kind of strange, as some poster on CC have pointed out.</p>
<p>–Make clear that taking massive amounts of AP exams is not needed. It is another example of taking something to a ridiculous extreme.</p>
<p>–Likewise, make clear there are limits to how rigorous a curriculum needs to be. Otherwise, it will lead students to think that more is better without limit. Human beings are not machines. Yes, it is good to see a serious committment to academics. But there has to be a reasonable limit, based once again on objective facts.</p>
<p>–Suggest specific ways that students can increase their chances of admissions in light of these previous facts. Make clear that this is not one path, but there are numerous alternative pathways. Give concrete examples. Make sure this is the way admissions is actually carried out. </p>
<p>–Work with everyone involved in the admission process to make all of this actually true. Give clear messages to adcoms, alumni interviewers, etc.</p>
<p>–Make clear that Harvard recognizes it has played and continues to play a key role in the development of the current situation (perhaps originally out of an effort to be “fairer” but it’s now gotten out of control). This includes the way the current process has led to many families spending huge amounts of money on helping their children improve their admission chances, money which could have been used for other purposes and which not every student or family has to spare. Make clear Harvard and other elite schools have a responsiblity in addressing the problem.</p>
<p>Finally, I recognize these suggestions are not perfect and that it would be hard to pick out people from a pool of 21,000. But it doesn’t mean I or others on this forum can’t think about it. I also notice a number of alumni and current students contributing to the discussion. We can play an important role in improving the situation.</p>
<p>I’d say Harvard does all of those things already.</p>
<p>Trouble is, kids, their parents - and you, apparently - either aren’t listening or don’t want to hear it.</p>
<p>They don’t want solace, they want in!</p>
<p>Well said, Byerly.</p>
<p>There is a ridiculous sense of entitlement that just because one is a ____ (put your “hook” here), one should be accepted by Harvard.</p>
<p>That Siemens winner is entitled to Harvard, plain and simple. Solving Dirichlet’s problem is a significant accomplishment, even for a mature mathematician; at the age of 16, it is amazing. For the rest of us mortals, too many people want a too few spots, and most will be rejected as a matter of absolute logic. Harvard’s obligation is to meet its institutional needs as it invests in each new class it builds.</p>
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<p>Byerly has the truth of the matter on these points. I attended the most recent Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, and Penn joint meeting in my town, and I stayed after the joint presentations to listen to the Harvard admission officer answer individual questions. She covered every point mentioned by the OP. In particular, to a specific question about how many AP courses a high school student should take, she responded by asking, “How much sleep do you get at night?” The Harvard admission officers are making as clear as they can that leading a balanced life is more important for a high school student than leading a programmed, packaged life, but I’m not sure everyone is listening. </p>
<p>The recent Harvard admittees I know best dared to be themselves while they were in their high school years. They pursued the subjects that interested them, were amazingly risk-taking about blowing off subjects that didn’t interest them, but were curious and active day by day as a matter of habitual character. They didn’t all have perfect SAT scores, nor did they all have faultless grade averages, but they all had track records of major accomplishments in some area of personal interest. That kind of genuineness beats “packaging,” as a general rule, and it is something I would like to see all four of my children develop even if none of them ever apply to Harvard.</p>
<p>As an aside to the thread, is “ivyalumni” claiming to be more than one person? Isn’t one person either an “Ivy alumnus” or an “Ivy alumna”?</p>
<p>Dear Token Adult:</p>
<p>Peel back the link on this page.</p>
<p>Go to College Confidential.</p>
<p>Go to the first link:</p>
<p><a href=“http://collegeconfidential.com/college_counseling/[/url]”>http://collegeconfidential.com/college_counseling/</a></p>
<p>Link to the section on paying $15,000.00 for Guaranteed Ivy Admission.</p>
<p>Gee, Token Adult, may be you are confused by the blinking lights above but I’m not!</p>
<p>The company that sponsors these boards are counseling students on getting into schools and charging them huge amounts of money.</p>
<p>Am I really so out of touch with reality in bringing up my concerns? I’ve been reading posts on CC for awhile, and I have ended up feeling quite sympathetic to the applicants’ frequent comments about what they are going through. I personally would not label them as having a “ridiculous sense of entitlement”. I think you need to put yourself in their shoes, especially if you experienced the admission process at another time.</p>
<p>I don’t see an unhealthy sense of “entitlement”, but just too many people struggling for too few seats. Not their fault. Not Harvard’s fault. Its just demographics and the “winner take all” factor.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0001s.pdf[/url]”>Error;
<p>Originally Posted by ivyalumni</p>
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<p>–Make clear that the SAT has truly LIMITED value. </p>
<p>–Likewise there is NO real meaning to a near perfect GPA, make clear this is NOT expected or particularly important. </p>
<p>–Make clear that doing massive amounts of extracurricular activities will NOT improve admission chances. </p>
<p>–Make clear that taking massive amounts of AP exams is NOT needed.<<</p>
<p>I added the all-caps to the above quote to point out one again that you have listed what colleges should NOT do but have said almost nothing about what they SHOULD do.</p>
<p>You did also say:</p>
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<p>This is a rather empty suggestion. You want to take away or at least significanty reduce the weight given to SATs, GPA, ECs, and APs, but you offer nothing to fill the void that would leave. You say that schools should offer many alternative pathways without naming a single one. What are these alternative pathways? Name the objective measures that DO predict performance up to the standard you desire. Before you junk the current system, why don’t YOU offer some “concrete examples”?</p>
<p>I don’t think that most people who are Harvard material get taken in by online ads, which I take great care to ignore.</p>
<p>I never argued they should “junk” the current system; just that it needs some correction in the face of recent trends. </p>
<p>As to specific ideas, I was hoping to encourage people to come up with suggestions rather than just put out my ideas.</p>
<p>I think relatively less emphasis on SAT GPA etc would allow more attention to a wider range of accomplishments and potential contributions. It would be a shift in relative weighting. I’d like to see more students with lower SAT and GPA but with something to offer (dedication and talent is not strongly correlated with SAT and GPA). </p>
<p>As to what other “objective measures” could be used, my point is that good simple measures are NOT available, and those who see SAT and GPA as offering this are not being very accurate. That makes for harder work in admissions, and perhaps it is unpleasant to come to terms with that.</p>
<p>The reason I am not spelling out the details is that I think that these need to emerge from a genuine discussion at many levels among students, alumni, professors, administrators, even us here on the CC board.</p>
<p>I think that Harvard has no shortage of qualified, interesting people, and can afford to pick and choose however it pleases. SAT/AP/GPA and class rank can only moderately predict college performance, but why risk not using such factors when you still have more than enough applicants to fill your class no matter how you cut it?</p>
<p>Also, students with “better” ECs tend to have higher SAT scores, r=~.5
I doubt that more than a few dozen students with GPA/SAT scores outside the typical Harvard admit (700-800 on each subsection) range have impressive ECs that the rest of the applicants can’t match.</p>
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<p>That’s an interesting empirical statement, and a plausible one to me. The one kind of EC that might be an exception to that statement (and is already known to be a good channel to Harvard admission) is sports at the NCAA Division I level.</p>
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<li><p>I’m not sure where you learned that EC correlates with SAT by r=0.5. That would mean the measure explains 25% of the variation in SAT which in turn predicts about 13% of the GPA variation of college freshman. Not I think an overwhelming statistic.</p></li>
<li><p>Remember I opened this thread under the heading of “limitations and risks” not “solutions”. Much of critical inquiry begins with pointing out problems. Indeed, some would say that real science is more about proving something is not correct than proving what is correct (I’m not making this up, ask a scientist). I think we have come to give undue credence to GPA and SAT etc. Challenging this is important and a necessary start. It would be truly unfortunate if we use weak predictors to skim away applicants who may actually be better. I certainly can say that many of those who graduated with me who were most successful and creative in life had lower than average SAT and GPA!</p></li>
<li><p>Yes I should have written Ivyalumnus. I suppose a mistake like that might be another reason to reject a candidate. After all, with so many good candidates, you have to find some way to thin the pile. . .</p></li>
<li><p>The current “meritocratic” system of admissions has existed for only about forty years and it has followed a particular trajectory leading up to the present somewhat ridiculous situation. I think it is okay to consider modifying it.</p></li>
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<p>Demographics will force modfication, as the % of potential applicants who are URMs, and/or from families in the lower economic quadrant, become the majority.</p>
<p>If the % of total applicants who are URM’s become the majority, then they will no longer be under-represented <em>minorities,</em> at least for college admissions. And I actually think that if that situation were to arise, it could be an excuse for reinstating a “meritocratic” system, based on perceived improvement of opportunity & broader representation of all segments in the applicant pool. (Same for low-income.)</p>
<p>Regarding the OP’s points:
Ivies & top LAC’s have been doing the modifying for some time now. However, it is not universally well communicated, & even less universally received. Families are still getting mixed messages in many cases (from the institutions & from general publicity, such as the “ranking” publications), & in other cases families and/or students and/or GC’s remain in denial.</p>
<p>There is also some mythology about the either-or assumption. (High stats OR singular passions.) It is often both; further, such “ambidextrous” students are often low income – a surprising percentage of them.</p>
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<p>No, but you said the colleges shouldn’t put much weight on GPA, SATs, ECs, and APs, which are currently four of the six or so main pillars of college admissions at most schools. Such a reform would be a de facto junking of the current system.</p>
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<p>I am a scientist myself, and in my business it’s a pretty poor scientist who criticizes current ideas or theories without offering any alternatives.</p>
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<p>I think it’s okay to consider modifying it too. But I think what we’ve got today is VASTLY better than what we had forty years ago, when getting admitted to an Ivy league school was more about wealth, privilege, and connections than any sort of merit, however imperfectly measured.</p>
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<p>Well, why don’t you start the ball rolling among us here on CC with a few concrete ideas of your own? My suspicion is that you haven’t got any. Complaining about problems is easy. Solving them is hard.</p>
<p>I agree with coureur. You can moan and gripe all you want about the numbers games admissions constantly plays, but you have to realize that these are the only ways an adcom can predict with college success with any amount of certainty. Obviously scores fall within a range, GPA and rank would vary by school, and adcoms know that. Provided that schools don’t have any absolute cutoffs (ex. Harvard says “We will under no circumstances admit anyone with less than a 2000 on their SATs”) the current system is as “fair” as one could imagine.</p>