<p>So I go to a very non-competitive school in the inner city where the workload is not that intensive. I got into Yale, first ivy leaguer in school history. I am afraid that I am not going to be able to handle the workload. Should I turn it down for a less competitive school?</p>
<p>No .</p>
<p>They would not have admitted you if they felt you were not able to handle the work…</p>
<p>Xuperdominican:</p>
<p>First congratulations! I’m sure you’ll love Yale. As Frazleddad said, Yale would not have admitted you if it did not feel you could not handle the work. What trips a lot of students up in college is not “preparation” but study skills, time management issues and lack of writing skills. In college, there is no one to nag you to study, do your homework, turn it in. If you don’t you are marked down and eventually you get a low grade and perhaps fail the course. Unfortunately, for some students, such wake-up calls come too late in the term for them to rescue themselves. So make a resolution to study regularly, tackle assignments as soon as they are handed out.
Study skills: You will have a large amount of reading. You may already have good study skills, i.e., you are able to distill the important point from a passage, you are able to take good notes either in class or when reading a book. If you are not certain about your study skills, Yale probably has a bureau of study advice or something similar where you can ask for help. The same goes for writing skills. There is likely as well a drop-in math center and all sorts of tutoring available. Be ready to make use of these resources if you feel the least out of your depths. Don’t be afraid to ask profs and Teaching Fellows for help clarifying certain points that were made in class or in section. In math and sciences, joining study groups is very helpful; it’s also a way to make friends.
Finally, if you feel a little overwhelmed in your first semester, remind yourself that every other freshman is in the same boat.</p>
<p>I went to Harvard, and some of my classmates had similar backgrounds to yours. I know that the Ivies are telling the truth when they say they do not admit anyone incapable of doing the work.</p>
<p>My classmates who came from backgrounds similar to yours are did fine in college. Virtually everyone who goes to an Ivy ends up graduating from an Ivy, and that was the case with them, too. As middle aged adults, they include judges in major cities, college professors, physicians as well as people who work in a variety of other fields. </p>
<p>Whatever your race, I suggest that you read biographies and autobiographies of people who came from similar backgrounds to yours and who did well. Because I happen to be black, the names of prominent African Americans who were first generation college students are who come to my mind, but you can find examples in all races.</p>
<p>I also think that if you ask, the Yale adcoms could put you in touch with students and alum whose backgrounds are similar to yours. Just ask. They accepted you early. They view you as an outstanding potential student. They want you to accept their admission offer, and probably gladly will help you talk to people who can let you know from personal experience that you definitely can do well at Yale.</p>
<p>Dr. Ben Carson, the world renowned neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins, grew up in inner city Detroit and had an illiterate mom who worked as a domestic. He graduated from U Michigan and, I think, Yale.</p>
<p>Henry Louis Gates, who heads Harvards African-American department, was born in a poor West Virginia town of 2,500 people. His father was a laborer and janitor. His mother worked as a domestic. Gates went to Yale, and graduated summa, got a fellowship to Cambridge University in England, and got his doctorate from Yale. </p>
<p>Ruth Simmons, the current president of Brown University and former president of Smith College, was the twelth child of sharecroppers. She was born in Grapeland, Texas. She has a doctorate from Harvard and is a scholar of French literature.</p>
<p>I hope that others wil add to this list and tell about other successful first generation college students who attended colleges like Yale.</p>
<p>Best wishes to you! I hope you’ll keep posting.</p>
<p>George Bush went there. :)</p>
<p>More inspiration:
Bush’s 2001 commencement speech at Yale.
" </p>
<p>NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (CNN) – President Bush returned to his old college stomping grounds and the city of his birth Monday to receive an honorary degree and address graduates at Yale University’s commencement. </p>
<p>He kept the mood light while honoring the school where he received his bachelor’s degree. </p>
<p>Bush poked fun at his average college record while at the Ivy League school. “And to you ‘C’ students, you too can be president of the United States,” he said to a crowd that rippled with laughter. </p>
<p>The president also got in a good-natured jab at his vice president, who attended Yale for a time. “A Yale degree is worth a lot, as I often remind Dick Cheney, who studied here but left a little early,” Bush said. “So now we know, if you graduate from Yale, you become president. If you drop out, you get to be vice president.” </p>
<p>The president had one big punchline left for the crowd, tying it to the school’s reputation as a bastion of liberal thought and its tradition of not having a commencement speaker unless it is the president of the United States. </p>
<p>“Most people think that to speak at Yale’s commencement, you have to be president. But over the years, the specifications have become far more demanding,” the self-described compassionate conservative noted. “Now, you have to be a Yale graduate, you have to be president, and you have had to have lost the Yale vote to Ralph Nader.”</p>
<p>FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANY WAY.</p>
<p>In other words, sometimes the most important steps we take are scary — acknowlege that, accept that, and then plunge in. You will never regret taking the more challenging route in life. </p>
<p>Best of luck in this exciting new year!!!</p>
<p>The adcom mentioned a book called gifted hands by Ben Carson, can’t seem to find it in stores though.</p>
<p>Order it through Amazon.com. You probably can get a used copy for very cheap. It is a wonderful and very inspiring book. Also Google him because there’s a lot of inspiring info about him on-line. He became very well known about 20 years ago when he was the lead surgeon who separated German infant twins who were joined at the head.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to his foundation. I would imagine that they may be able to help you contact Carson directly, too. Don’t be shy about seeing if this is possible. Everything that I hear about him is that he’s a very nice person: <a href=“http://www.carsonscholars.org/for.html[/url]”>http://www.carsonscholars.org/for.html</a></p>
<p>Yale also probably can help you contact him or similar alum. Such people are usually veyr happy to reach out a hand to encourage others whose stories are similar to their own. Do not be shy about asking for this help. Yale wants you. That’s why you got in early. You are a top pick for this year.</p>
<p>Sometimes it is best to trust adcoms, like we trust our physicians. They are professionals and have been in this business for a very long time. If they think you can handle Yale, so you can. </p>
<p>Just a few minutes ago, I was having an arguement with my husband over one of S’s essays. He said it was too childish, and would not appeal to an adcom. I said ‘then so be it’. It is better to let the child speak from his heart in his words, and let the adcom decide if he will do well in the school. Better if he gets rejected if the adcom feels he would not fit in based on the essay, rather than make him do an essay that will make a ‘good’ impression, and than S sufferring in the school later.</p>
<p>Wow, Sugee. Your comment is really a breath of fresh air. I’m getting really sick of the kind of parents - actually, the kind which normally use this site - who send their kid to expensive councilors and places like Princeton Review and the omnipresent Kaplan to try to “crack the test.” If their goal is to give their kid a better future or chances of “success,” take a look around. True success doesn’t come from 20 points on the SATs.</p>
<p>Oh, and it really doesn’t have to do with this, but have any of you noticed how… well… STUPID American kids are these days?!? I mean, I don’t think the average teenager has to ace the SATs, but really - the average is around 1000. That’s just sad.</p>
<p>Finally, just to clear up any misconceptions, I’m not a ranting 50-year-old. I may be ranting, but I’m 14.</p>
<p>its probably not stupidity - it’s a discomfort with standardized testing. 3 hours of concentration, few and short breaks, etc… it’s very mechanical. i think standardized testing should be taken with a grain of salt - not every kid is ready to perform to their highest potential under the conditions created in the standardized testing environment. People who are good standardizd testers don’t always understand the mental freeze and the panic that some students feel when they take standardized tests. Sure, “stupid” kids won’t generally do well on standardized tests, but plenty of kids who aren’t “stupid” do poorly on them.</p>
<p>I have a 1560 and 790/790/750, and i was recently accepted to Amherst College - I hope this serves to dissuade any stereotyping of me as an apologist for “slow” kids who tries to cover up his/her own inadequacies.</p>
<p>Xuperdominican, you can do it. You got into the school - don’t second-guess yourself now.</p>
<p>Good point about the standardized testing. However, I also think the opposite is going on - colleges relying too much on sports and other extracurriculars instead of simple academics. GPA itself isn’t exactly enough to go on, but it seems to me that skill at basketball pales in comparison to, say, really good physics grades all through school. Standardized testing doesn’t always reflect academic potential, but still, I’m getting a bit tired of that old standby - “some people are just not good test-takers.” I’ll believe, it, though, if I can have some concrete evidence - do you know of someone who does well academically but doesn’t do well on standardized tests (and PLEASE don’t cite Bush or someone else that does something entirely estranged from an academic field).</p>
<p>ha, Bush didn’t do well academically. I don’t know any famous names off the top of my head; however, I fit the description you gave, to some degree. The first time I took the Writing SAT 2, I was uncomfortable with the format of the test, had not taken any class, etc - a frequent situation for kids who perform poorly on SATs - and I received a 650 (66th percentile). These results devastated me, especially after years of positive feedback from teachers and even two college professors on my writing ability. I drilled myself to write a longer essay in 20 minutes, and the next time I took the Writing SAT 2, I scored a 790 out of 800 - a 140 point jump (this would be like a 280 point jump on the SAT1) and a change of over 30 percentile points. A similar but less dramatic jump happened on my Math IIC test. My scenario is especially interesting b ecause I obviously do well when i’m comfortable with the test and the environment, but my difficulties proved to me that outstanding students (I have a 4.0 uw and glowing recs from teachers and a college professor) can test poorly (And my SAT 1 verbal was 800!). I know of other students who get great grades but lower test scores, but I don’t know what validation of their academic strength i could offer you, since you point out that a good GPA isn’t always indicative of a good student.</p>
<p>You bring up a good point with stating that colleges may be moving away from “simple academics”. However, I think GPA and teacher recs are more accurate descriptions of a student’s academic skill than SATs are. I accept that schools need to field athletic teams, but maybe you’re saying they should stop caring about the strength of their athletic teams to the point that they recruit athletes with far inferior academic records.</p>
<p>Hoo hoo yeah I see what you mean about how familiarity with the tests affects scores. If that’s so, wouldn’t AP tests be the best indicator of academic prowess? They combine the best of both worlds - there’s no issue of familiarity, since AP classes are classes which run the whole year. Also, AP classes are far less mechanical than the SATs, since you have a teacher as a sort of moderator. They are standardized, which makes AP scores much more reliable than GPAs (though I suppose that the actual AP tests might void all of these good things). </p>
<p>Anyway - what do you think about AP tests as the new SAT?</p>
<p>By the way, I probably have no business discussing AP classes, since I skipped high school (w00t TS shoutout).</p>
<p>I don’t know - So far, I’ve taken the AP Chem and AP History tests and received 5s on both of them. I do think it’s possible to bomb the tests, though - I felt like I almost did on the AP Chem, but for me, bombing would have meant a 3 or 4, still a passing grade. I might be being hypersensitive to my testing experiences here, since I still got the 5, but in some parts of the Chem test I had to brush away some inklings of the same feeling of panic I felt when I knew I was doing poorly on my first takings of the SAT 2s.</p>
<p>How did you skip highschool? I considered quitting it midway through soph year, but I decided I’d look better to the top colleges if I just went through the typical system and excelled. Everything worked out fine for me, because I did just that.</p>
<p>Well, still, you did really well at the APs. </p>
<p>But anyway, about high school -</p>
<p>I’m doing this spiffy little program at the University of Washington where I take a fairly heavy load of pre-college classes for a year during my high school freshman year (not THAT heavy - just maybe 6 hours of classes/day, 5-6 hours of HW). Then, I’ll just matriculate as a normal freshman - sorta redshirt I guess since I’m starting calculus this winter quarter. You don’t have to be hella smart - I mean, I have pretty good SAT scores (1490 in my freshman year), but nothing to write home about. Some of the people have mid-1200s scores as 8th-9th graders, which is not THAT much above average.</p>
<p>Sorry about my shameless promotion of TS/EEP - it just doesn’t get enough publicity.</p>
<p>Drbott,
Become acquainted with ratiocination.</p>
<p>"I’m getting really sick of the kind of parents - actually, the kind which normally use this site - who send their kid to expensive councilors and places like Princeton Review and the omnipresent Kaplan to try to “crack the test.”</p>
<p>Parents with the cash to use counselors charging as much as $20 k to give college advice have no need to post on a site like this.</p>
<p>" have any of you noticed how… well… STUPID American kids are these days?!? I mean, I don’t think the average teenager has to ace the SATs, but really - the average is around 1000. That’s just sad."</p>
<p>The SAT is designed so that the average score will be around 1000. If everyone clustered around 750 or higher, it would be of no use to colleges.</p>
<p>–
Whew! Now that I’ve gotten that out (and I have to admit that I found your comment about parents here offensive), let’s look at some other points.</p>
<p>“People who are good standardizd testers don’t always understand the mental freeze and the panic that some students feel when they take standardized tests.”</p>
<p>Someone who freezes on tests will be in big trouble at colleges where final and midterm grades may account for 100% of a course grade.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I often hear of students with grades who are poor standardized test takers. I also have had to teach some students who got into the third tier where I used to teach, and had that constellation.</p>
<p>In every such case, I found that the students had major deficits in their skills, and those deficits were caused by poor teaching.</p>
<p>An example is on this board. Check out the grammar, punctuation, spelling of the student who wrote the thread about studying until 3 a.m. The student is getting “As” in English in high school yet is making errors that most students posting here would not have made in second grade. The student also scored in the 9th percentile of the SAT or PSAT.</p>
<p>I also suspect that some high grade/low score students have smart, educated, caring parents who “helping” the students so much with homework that the parents basically are doing the work for the students. These kids don’t end up at third tiers, so I didn’t work with them directly. My conjectures comes from some anamalies I’ve noticed in some students in S’s program.</p>
<p>I suspect that some of these kids parents bully or charm teachers into giving their kids high grades. I suspect that this is what is happening with some kids whom I know who have low test scores and sky high grades and appear to have average intelligence (I am judging this by various conversations), but highly educated, very involved parents, very caring and charming parents. </p>
<p>In some cases, I have even seen parents offering such help over very long distances when their kids were in college. The parents called this help “editing.”</p>