@CA1543- I think that this is about the “why us?” essay. They (schools) want to know that it’s a good fit for both the school and the student.
Also- Check the common data sets for colleges and you will see that some place importance on the interview while others don’t consider it in admissions.
thanks @longwood & @acdchai – appreciate your feedback.
I also saw this post:
So making sure these qualities show are important – in letters of rec, supplements etc.
@CA1543 Have you ever participated in a “Admissions Officer for a day” event? They are so much fun but they are also eye opening. We were invited to attend one last summer and if I recall correctly it was by Tufts. It was a lot of fun and a very eye opening experience of what AO’s are faced with. You are provided with the “application” of about 8 applicants. These were real applicants who applied about two years earlier with all personal identifying information replaced to protect the applicants privacy.
Students were strong critics of GPAs, # of AP (or lack thereof), lack of ECs. The adults looked for intriguing essays and depth. All of the “applicants” were extremely impressive and when forced to choose between them, you start looking for anything outside of the stats. The audience, as the Admissions Officers, vote on which candidate to admit. At the end of the evening, you are advised which students truly were admitted and compare it to how we voted. It was hard! So many wonderfully qualified students. The problem was they all looked the same. Just like when you go on to some of the threads where the kids are waiting for their decisions and post their stats. It could easily be a cut and paste but with different posters.
At the end of the school year, the last few days of school for the juniors was spent on what the kids need to do over the summer in preparation for college. They spent a morning doing the “Admissions Officer for a day” activity and I believe it was UNC-CH that ran this event. My son said it was well done and he enjoyed it. The point of this exercise is to show the kids that while your stats may be very high, you all look the same so give us something that separates you from the rest.
Interesting article I read a couple of years ago about discrimination of Asian students. The argument made in the article was that the applications/ resume all looked the same right down to what are appropriate ECs and you could change the name on the application and the rest looked the same.
I have no experience at this as this is my first time going through this process but what I’ve heard at the info sessions is they are looking for kids that bring something to campus life which means they know all the kids are highly qualified but what are you going to bring to the community? In other words, the schools are asking “who are you??” That’s my take.
Question: Dd asked her French tutor today if she would write a LOR. She said yes, but she doesn’t want to write it in English. We are going to ask someone from the Alliance Francaise to translate it. Should she have both uploaded onto the CA or just the translation with an explanation that it was translated? Any idea?
Another question for the vets: how well does humor come across in these short college essays? D17 wants to ‘have fun’ with the CA essay. The prompts are SO dull. I told her not to worry much about answering the prompt, but write something that maybe the prompt made her think of, if that makes any sense. Be creative. She wants to try humor, which is very much her. She’s a funny kid. It will be interesting.
FYI:
Prompt 1: 47% of applicants do this one
Prompt 2: 17%
Prompt 3: 4%
Prompt 4: 10%
Prompt 5: 22%
@2muchquan I say she goes with her personality and since she’s a funny kid if she can express that skillfully in an essay, she should go for it! (PS. Non-vet here so just take it for what it’s worth 
)
Prompts 3 and 4 are the most difficult to write about as reflected by the stats. Seems to me those would be the most interesting to write about.
@CA1543 – chilling story. There was a story circulating a few years back about someone named Andy (Andi) who was completely shut out. IIRC, took a gap year and came back for a great outcome but I cannot recall the details. Trying to avoid a similar outcome ourselves (but no Val or Sal here).
@paveyourpath – our PTO hosted one of those evenings for parents and students, and it was interesting. Your school’s end-of-year program with the students sounds so helpful. We just have me nagging…although son FINALLY looked at the CA and some school-specific essay prompts today. Announced that several will be ‘annoying’ and that CMU even has an essay about their interview. (Hey—good thing mom bought plane tickets to Pittsburg and scheduled that interview! Sarcasm icon needed here…)
@Mom2aphysicsgeek – I have absolutely no idea but you will certainly know the answer to every app question by the time your children all apply!
Remember, if your DC is having a hard time remembering ECs, here is a thread about one they may have forgotten (yes, I know I posted before. This is for the newbies):
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/470497-clam-fart-oh-my-god-what-did-i-do.html
My neighbor (kid) was shut out, high stats music kid going for high stakes conservatories. Did a gap year and an amazing outcome both undergrad and grad school and is a fellow at New World so it’s worked out but yikes it was brutal and he really had to regroup
Mom was so frustrated as kid at the time refused to apply to a safety.
@2muchquan I hope some humor is ok. I would not be surprised if some creeps into S’s essay. I personally love the advice that if you forgot to put your name on your essay and someone found it, they would know it was yours. Personality, if shown well, I should think can be part of sets one apart from the pack. And if humor is part of the personality it may well have a place in the essay as long as it rings true.
@2muchquan – I read that one a couple of years back. Very amusing as were the comments.
Given your advanced searching skills, I will leave it to you to find the Andi saga. (Of course, I may have the name wrong…)
@CT1417 I remembered reading that story a while back, and I wanted to avoid doing the dishes for a few minutes, so I decided to see if I could find it.
It is the story of a parent of a high school senior who was completely shut out during college acceptances because they did not apply to a single safety school. The kid decided to take a gap year and reapply to colleges after the gap year. This time the college list did include safeties and was very successful. It is a great read!
Thank you @BusyNapping – shutting down for the evening but will skim again tomorrow. Clearly I need search help!
Regarding essay writing timing: Our school suggests taking the summer off from thinking about college applications. Get a job, volunteer, read, relax and live. Once mid-August rolls around (when they go back to school) it’s pretty intense however. So, my D17 has done nothing so far which stresses me out but I’m trusting in the process.
So many different feelings about the AP classes! Here in TX, you have to take them if your school offers them in order to get into the top 7-10% if you want to go to UT Austin or A&M. Sad, but true. My DS walks to the beat of a different drummer and takes classes he likes, leaves school early for his EC which is also a hit on his class rank but is happy with his choices. He does take some AP classes but not all. He knows he will find a school he likes and where he will do well. If only I had his confidence.
One thing I will say about handwriting notes for class, this year his first couple of dual credit class quizzes didn’t go well. He read the material and then took the quiz the next day. Bombed them. I suggested making an outline of the chapter as he read and then study those notes. Lo and behold, he got As on his next quizzes. For him, taking handwritten notes really works.
@2muchquan I guarantee my S will use humor in his essays whether I like it or not. Hopefully, the admissions officers will “get” him. If your D is as funny as you, she should have no problems.
@paveyourpath I agree that 3&4 are the most interesting. S is using one or the other, either works for his topic so he will write it and see what fits best. That’s all him though, I had zero input. I am hoping his topic isn’t too cliche but trusting in him to make it not so.
@CT1417 and @BusyNapping oh my, that is so similar to neighbor kids story (though his was more of a Julliard or bust approach) Interestingly enough one of the schools NK’s did attend after his gap year was in andisons revised application/acceptance list and both are top 15 for music.
ACT writing scores: Just another reminder to pay attention to the percentiles, not the scores. When the ACT shifted to a 1–36 scale for the writing section, they didn’t align the scores with the rest of the sections, so the same percentile writing score will look lower than the rest of them.
**Translations/b: I would suggest that, both ethically and practically, it would be best to include a note like “Originally written in French by XXX, translated into English by YYY” at the end, both to acknowledge the translator’s contribution and in case the college does reference checking—you don’t want the letter writer to be flummoxed by having phrases from their letter read to them!
Essays and humor: My daughter (doing prompt 2, FWIW) isn’t being terribly funny with her common app essay. Her Kansas honors essay, however, is shaping up to have a hilarious—serious—back-to-the-hilarity-to-show-it-had-a-point arc.
Essay timing: Given everything my daughter has going on during the school year, once school rolls around, that’s going to be her chance to stop thinking about college—assuming she has her applications done Otherwise, she’s going to be drowning in the workload for a bit. (Of course, since we’re chasing merit aid, she needs to have stuff in early anyway.)
My D will be going mainstream and answering prompt #1, which is certainly the most general. I find it a bit frightening that #5 (“Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.”) is the second most popular because it seems to invite the most cliched answers. Maybe that would be the best one to do a really original take on and surprise the adcoms. I’d most want to read essays on #4 (something about how you would solve a problem).
I think funny kids should absolutely write humorous essays, but no kid should try to force it. S18 is very funny and it often shows up in his school work. From teacher conferences I know it works very well for him. I’d be quite surprised if @2muchquan’s kid wasn’t funny!
@2muchquan Today I just watched part of a video about this top from a university. (I was looking for something else). What they said was to a) Make sure to speak to the prompt. b) Being funny is fine but don’t forget your audience, and make sure keep the humor appropriate.
OMG, I had a bunch of work to do and found myself hundreds of posts behind. Maybe I can catch up at night while most of you are sleeping. I-)
APs: DS didn’t do as well as he’d hoped. 5 on Biology, but 4s on APUSH and English Lang. His teachers in both those subjects lead him to believe that he’d have 5s with no problem. But, looking back, he remembers hearing students say that no one his English teacher taught had gotten 5s in past years, so he supposes he should have reviewed the writing rubrics with outside prep books even though he got 100% on the released multiple choices she gave and she graded him quite highly on practice essays. DS is a good writer, I think, but he is sometime creative and not “in the box”.
@carachel2 Our APUSH homework was the same with the handwritten outlining of the entire book counting for enough to pass the class for student who bombed the tests. It took DS about 2 hours per chapter. Not a lot of essays or papers, though. He had very little homework in AP English or Biology but tons in Multivariable, so 2 hours twice a week for APUSH wasn’t that bad from his perspective. (In spring 1/3 of the kids got caught copying notes off one website; the teachers were clueless up to that point.)
He got a 3 in Spanish, but he knew it would be either a 3 or a 4. It was an IB Spanish SL class, so he doesn’t need to report the score, since it won’t look like he probably took the AP test but wasn’t reporting it. People who take IB SLs without doing the diploma don’t usually take the IB test at our school, and he didn’t. The class was more about essay writing than speaking, and they only did the kind of speaking that is on the AP test a couple times. He says he spoke too fast and ran out of things to say.
He was bummed, but I reminded him that he does still have 5s in all the STEM subjects, and he’s not planning to major in humanities. I think that overall his school has better STEM teachers than English teachers. They put kids who probably shouldn’t be in AP classes in history and English APs (but not so much in science and math), so the humanities APs are probably watered down.
They definitely don’t have the high pass rates that some of your schools report. They don’t report the pass rate in the school profile or elsewhere, but I happen to know it is 66% since I was on the school’s re-accreditation committee this year. (62% SATs over 1500/2400, 69% weighted GPA of 3.0+)
For 11th and 12th grade it is AP/IB or “regular” – no honors or fun elective options. Also, for the sciences, the AP can be the only class they take in a subject; no requirement to take the regular science class prior. So, some kids end up taking a lot of APs.
So, that’s 8 AP tests done, but one below a 4, so AP Scholar with Distinction but not National AP Scholar until after senior year. Not that big a deal, but I’m sure it was a little rough on him mentally what with the probable scores of the kids at his summer program (who he says are nice and also very impressive).
I’m not pro or con with APs. I can certainly imagine much better options. We don’t have better options, so AP is better than “regular” classes, which have no homework and kids who may be dropping out soon. We have a la carte IB options, but not in STEM.
Electives: We only have a 6 period day (including 6 semesters of required stuff like PE and health). So something has to give between taking a full load of academics vs. being able to take electives. DS didn’t take band etc (piano player anyway) and still had to do dual-enrollment to fit things in. His friends in the same engineering program who did band generally didn’t take science aside from engineering and one life science.
@MSHopeful We have another school in the district with the same block schedule you have. I have a friend who teaches AP history there. It sounds so rushed!
GPA: We have 6 GPAs on our transcripts. Weighted and unweighted versions of each of: 9-12th academic GPA (no PE/sports but does include health), 10-12th academic GPA, and 9-12th total GPA. Sounds similar to @curiositycat333. So, 2 of the 6 GPAs do include PE/sports. Credit/grade is awarded for sports team just as it would be for PE. Sports counts as a class period, so you can’t take sports to get an extra academic class.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek (post #9438) DS took Precalculus from the AoPS book so he could skip it at school. It was a lot more work than the Precalc class at his HS, and covered many more topics. I haven’t really been involved in his math learning since 6th grade, when he and some friends were in a separate mommy-led math pullout group. So no “mommy math wars” here. (I’ll leave that to the Kumon folks in town.) Somewhere along the way he seems to have internalized the “math is not memorizing” idea.
He says that when he tutors students (usually in Calculus), he tries to get them past the idea of memorizing formulas. He says a lot of kids memorize their way through Calculus and Physics, and he doesn’t think it’s a good idea or a strategy that works for certain types of tests.
He also didn’t do a lot of specific memorizing work for AP Bio this year, though he said the other people who got the same high grades made flash cards. When I quizzed him, he seemed to be just understanding the concepts and principles and hanging names on the diagrams in his head. I don’t think he will ever need to take OChem, but I’m happy to hear there are ways to problem solve your way through it.