<p>I have a slightly different view on this thread. While the girl in question may or may not write well (that in of itself being a subjective evaluation, some people think Hemingway was a great writer, others find him irritating) the fact that she published it on a blog in the NYT means it is going to draw critics and those who like it. That said, though, I frankly don’t know why anyone would go to some of the levels I have seen on here, they write about this girl with the same kind of sneering attitude that certain religious types reserve for atheists, and it doesn’t make much sense to me. Whatever this girl is or isn’t, her writing style or who she is doesn’t affect anyone posting on here nor is her success or failure anything to gloat about. </p>
<p>More importantly, assuming that her writing skills and ‘critical reasoning’ skills were why she didn’t get in is about as suspect as anything I have read recently, it puts out the idea that somehow writing and critical reasoning skills a)are lacking in this girl (they may or may not be) and b)that schools take them as the ultimate test of students, and that is a joke IMO. School admissions are complex, based on a lot of factors, and anyone who has read what admissions people say when interviewed anonymously would probably second the fact that claiming it was weak writing skills or analytical skills is way off base, that so many factors go into the process. Maybe this girl had only decent test scores and grades, maybe she was an overachiever who turned off the admissions people, there are a lot of factors that get you heaved from top programs (want to know kids who get heaved more often then accepted according to what I have read? 4.0 math geeks who seem to offer little except having ground through school and gotten high test scores and grades, but as people seem little more then a test taking machine…)</p>
<p>And when you are talking Ivy level admissions, it gets even more complicated, because they have so many uber achievers applying there that the criteria is even more esoteric then in ‘lesser’ programs. More importantly, there has been a lot written about the fact that a lot of kids in the Ivies and other top programs have poor writing and communication skills (I am leaving out non native english speakers), and that many of them also lack critical reasoning skills. You say that is hearsay, but I have interviewed students from the top Ivies over the years, I am talking Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc, and frankly many of them had litle critical reasoning skills and their writing wasn’t so great either, even though they went to those schools and had near 4.0 GPA’s. Plus I suspect the schools don’t put all that much weight on the essays and such the students write these days, because they know that a lot of them either are ghostwritten or edited to make them appear like they were written by a genius.</p>
<p>And using a statement that she fell in with the idea that somehow going to an Ivy was better without thinking about it, believe me that isn’t a sign of lack of critical reasoning skills, that is more the reflection of what has become conventional wisdom. These days, with all the pressure we put on kids, and all the hype that is out there, I would bet that if you interviewed people out there, you would find 80% of them would tell you it is true that going to an Ivy is always better then another school (and if the girl is a member of some ethnic groups, especially Asians, there is a cultural factor at work, in Asian cultures and societies, where you go to college is an indicator of what you will do in life; In Japan the big deal is to get into their prestigious public universities, and in getting in there your course is set. In this country, many of those attitudes hold, there is the belief that going to Harvard, Yale, etc is the only road to success. To them this is like other deeply held beliefs, like religious ones, which critical reasoning skills are not going to break all that easily).</p>
<p>Do people have the right to criticize this girl? Of course, it was a public blog; but there is a line between criticism and being vituperative, what amazes me is the tone of the criticism leveled at this girl, that I find to be puzzling and troubling. I could understand it if she had won some major prize for writing, or if based on her writing on the blog she was hired as a writer for a magazine or paper, and other deserving kids were shut out, but that wasn’t true here, what this girl did has like zero impact on anyone reading this thread, yet the level of response made it sound like they were personally insulted or something that people were even talking about this girl.</p>