Okay. I am laughing so hard right now. S19 brought home the list of 26 colleges that the GC offered him. As I looked at the list, it seemed so, well, random. PA state schools, MD state schools, LACs, HBCUs, UPenn, the Naval Academy.
Turns out the GC did this through BigFuture. S19’s grades, current test scores, and the fact that I specifically told her that merit would be needed for private school were not factored in. The criteria was English major, 100 mile radius, small/medium size, and MARCHING BAND as an activity.
NOW the list makes complete sense. :))
S19 and I had already gone through all of this. While he’d like marching band as a possibility, it is not a must. We actually visited/considered several colleges on the GC marching band list. Many were ruled out for various reasons (Frats! Too preppy! Catholic!). The ones that stayed on his list are Lebanon Valley and Shippensburg.
PSU main campus has lots of opportunities for marching band students who don’t do Blue Band but it was not on the GC list because of the small/medium size criteria.
@ninakatarina I don’t think that your S will be out of the running because the GC did not check the box. Your kid brings some unique qualities that can offset the unchecked box.
I don’t know if my son will get the box checked either, he’s not taking AP English classes or AP social studies classes. Just math and science. But he brings other unique things to the school that they might not find with students that just load up on AP, study all day, and don’t have great ECs…
“Bro Culture” My short take.
Bro once described a self-absorbed young white guy in surf shorts that liked to surf, and party and just have a good time and chill out with his friends all day. But now it’s become sort of shorthand for the sort of privileged ignorance that thrives in groups dominated by wealthy, white, straight boys. So for example, lots of bro culture in hockey, lacrosse and club travel teams, and fraternities where the kids have access to money and parties. They like to play sports, hang out with the their buds, party, work out, party, hang out in sweats, $200 pair of sneakers, wear backwards baseball hats all day. So basically upper middle class, rich white dudes who just want to have fun and not worry about real life, ha. Usually. the " popular group" in suburban High schools in New England and boarding schools.
My kids have been surrounded by bro culture, but they aren’t part of it.
There are definitely Girl Bro’s too. Just picture the female version of the boys.
Schools that are heavy on bro culture would be places with a heavy frat scene or smaller schools that have good hockey and lacrosse teams and lean more wealthy and white.
Note: not all lacrosse players, hockey players, wealthy white kids from the burbs are " Bros".
No tours today, son has a track meet and it’s not snowing. Going on a few more local college visits later in the week and then that will be a wrap. We probably won’t visit too many more schools unless he thinks he wants to apply somewhere further away.
We’ve managed to see most of the schools that he would consider, some schools where he should get in, some match schools and then a few more selective types. We’ve seen small, medium, big both private and public. So I think we are done.
I’ve got to tell you that not all Bros are wealthy or white. There are quite a few in our lower middle class ethnically mixed school. DS19 has a devastating Bro impersonation, he has no patience for them. They also tend to be homophobic and transphobic and become bullies when they are in packs. Luckily the kiddo attends an arts school so the arts kids form their own pack to counter the Bros.
That was the big thing that made Swarthmore click for my kid last year. I arranged for him to sit in on an English class on the underpinnings of comedy. It was a small seminar discussing comedy. He got to class early and a pair of kids who looked like bros came in just after him. Before class started they were talking about studying cutting in to their workout schedule. In class they discussed When Harry Met Sally. One of the bros steered the discussion towards the societal value of the way the film subverted the tropes of toxic masculinity. Kiddo was immediately sold on the school.
@infinitewaves I think your GC and my dds GC trained in the same school. We had ITT Tech and CMU. She put major as “Artificial Intelligence” which I’m pretty sure is not a major in UG. She used “selectivity” as her criteria not maybe something like scores, avg gpa.
I agree that it probably won’t matter much that the most rigorous box is not checked @ninakatarina as long as he has other great things about his application, and it sounds like he will. I don’t know which box was checked for my D17 but she technically didn’t have the most rigorous curriculum at our school since she didn’t do the full IB diploma. She did four years of drama which was incredibly time consuming (as you know) and meant she couldn’t do a lot else with regard to ECs. She did very well with admissions and got into many very selective LACs.
I’m kind of hung up on the most rigorous box as well, but I have no idea if it really matters to the AOs. Seems like it’s up to the GCs and, even at our school, I’ve heard that different GCs don’t define it the same way so part of it depends on which GC you have!
Ditto @elena13 for my D16 who attends a university with a sub-20% acceptance rate. She took rigorous classes, to be sure, but not all honors or all the APs that were offered at her very competitive public high school. Her grades were very good, but not the best (although her ACTs were top-notch). I believe that her acceptance was the the result of a truly holistic look and if I had to guess I would assume she stood out because she was passionate about her (not all that unique) ECs and it showed, and wrote objectively excellent essays with a powerful and personal voice.
Somewhat, though not entirely, related to the concept of bro culture, I would HIGHLY recommend that anyone interested in the differences between colleges, and how they get shaped, listen to the Malcolm Gladwell podcast called “Food Fight” in his Revisionist History series (it’s season 1, episode 5). Ostensibly, it’s about why the food at Bowdoin is so much better than the food at Vassar. But what it’s really about are the conscious choices that different private colleges make in how to spend their endowment/revenue, and what impact that has on the student body and student experience. You can find the podcast for free on any podcast app, and it’s really fascinating!
Here’s the short version: about a decade ago (or a bit more), Vassar made a conscious choice to try to dramatically expand access to the poorest applicants, which resulted in more than doubling its number of Pell grant recipients (for those not aware, Pell grants are federally funded grants available only to the lowest income segment of society – the eligibility cutoff is a family income of $50,000, but most Pell money goes to students with a family income of less than $20,000; looking at a school’s Pell grant-eligible population is therefore a good proxy for understanding how a school is prioritizing where its financial aid dollars go, and how socio-economically diverse the student body is). Vassar made this move because the then-new president felt that it was a moral imperative to give opportunity to more really low-income students. But as a result, many other places that a school would like to spend more money – food, refurbishing dining halls, etc – have to get shortchanged. By contrast, Bowdoin has a much lower percentage of Pell grant students, but reputedly pretty much the best food of any college in the country.
Some people may find Malcom Gladwell’s moralizing about the choices colleges make off-putting (I didn’t, but that’s because I happen to agree with him in large part). But even if you might be, I’d still recommend listening to it, as it’s really interesting to get some of the behind the scenes explanation (including his interviews with the college presidents and CFOs) about the financial decision-making. And if you find that episode interesting, the one right before it and the one right after it in the series are also about colleges.
@soxmom A friend on mine mentioned his podcast just the other day. Ideally, for us, there’s a good amount of economic diversity on campus. It’s one of the columns on my college spreadsheet - percent of students with Pell Grants. I don’t know where S19 will end up but it’s a huge plus in my book. I will say, though, that the schools with a high percentage of Pell Grant kids are harder for S19 to get into. It’s a catch-22. He’d like more diversity but I’m not sure he could get in because that means those schools take fewer kids like him.
I’m really hoping to find a school with true economic diversity. I’ve read about a couple of schools that have two distinct cultures, the rich kids and the poor kids, and the cultures don’t really socialize outside of class. But it would be hard to measure that without spending significant time on campus - do they have lower middle, upper middle, middle middle class kids as well as the riches and the poors?
One great thing about Vassar is that they have continued their commitment to diversity and giving great financial aid, but also have better food this year, thanks to a revamped dining hall and a new company preparing the food. Everyone has the same meal plan and low income students don’t have to worry about having fewer meals, snacks etc.
Don’t forget @homerdog about the favorable admission rate for boys at Vassar!
@RightCoaster I think your bro definition is perfect - at least that is exactly how D defines it. It is something she is worried about at smaller colleges - she doesn’t want the whole school to be bro culture or as she usually calls it “typical frat boys.”
@karen0 is he talking about raising it from 760 to 800, or from 500 to 540? There are different strategies depending on how close to perfect he needs to be.
Can anyone answer this question about teacher recommendations?
If D wants to ask for teacher recs now, what is the process? The teachers said yes, so does she sign in to the apps and send requests right from there, right now, even though it’s early? Can she do that now even if the applications still have last years date, so the recommendations will update in the app if they are collected now?
She has several colleges on her list, one only uses Common, one only uses Coalition, and one says they have their own individual app. Does she need to send requests from all these apps to both teachers? Sounds complicated.
I wouldn’t worry about having them sent now, just be working on them and have them ready to do by the start of the school year when the portals have updated. Yes, she should have to send request from each site.
If she hasn’t already, she should do a detailed resume or biographical sketch for the teachers she is asking and talk about what she’s interested in studying, plus additional facts about herself that they may not know.
@elena13 I’ve been thinking about your son missing the paperwork deadline to run to be class president again next year. How you felt about it resonated so much for me:
“At the same time that I was feeling very disappointed and worried, I was also angry with myself for dwelling on something so stupid. In the big scheme of life and thinking about parents who have much bigger worries about their kids, I know this is not important. Ultimately, it is a life lesson and I hope he learns from it.”
I hear you!!
Like many of us, I’ve been stressing over that “Most Rigorous” box. D19 would love to take Theater Arts next year and do a Senior Experience where she could direct a community show in the spring. But I worry that she better take AP Literature because it’s the “most rigorous”. She could always take literature in college, but she can’t always direct a show in her home town with all her theater friends, put it on for free in a beautiful theater, and invite disadvantaged seniors/kids. Sigh. Before I read all the admissions stress on “rigor”, there would be no question in my mind which class she should take. Now, I’m totally conflicted.