Reflections of an elite legacy parent

Parents Forum
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@al2simon, I am not so sure about the “modest” part, at least as it relates to Princeton. But yeah, I think you are correct that among the most selective schools there is quite a bit more overlap than differentiation. And fwiw, I don’t find that to be a negative at all. I think some kids are drawn to testing themselves against the “best of the best”, and for those kids, HYPSM and a handful of others are going to scratch that itch. I have one kid for whom that type of environment was a priority and another who could care less. Different kids looking at different schools. I get it, I really do.

@pizzagirl, again I get your point about business relationships, and I basically agree with what you are saying. My point is really that beyond the broad strokes, it seems like certain categories of universities and colleges are looking for pretty much the same things in the main. If that is the case, then I kind of get the angst exhibited by some who are really invested in going to one of a relative handful of schools, and I get why some kids apply relatively widely. On the other hand, if it is true that Penn, Vandy and Northwestern as an example, are really looking for some things distinct from the others it would be of great benefit if they would be more forthcoming in what those discrete things are.

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“But yeah, I think you are correct that among the most selective schools there is quite a bit more overlap than differentiation.”

I think both “each college has its own mental picture of who it wants to attract” and “there is a lot of overlap” can be true statements.

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“On the other hand, if it is true that Penn, Vandy and Northwestern as an example, are really looking for some things distinct from the others it would be of great benefit if they would be more forthcoming in what those discrete things are.”

“Explicitly looking for” and “turned on by” are two different things. Of course they are all explicitly looking for smart kids with leadership abilities; that’s obvious. The nuance is in the how.

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Vandy had a huge push several years ago to attract Jewish kids with high scores. It was such a well kept secret that even the WSJ covered it.

How is this all so mysterious?

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The Vanderbilt example sort of proves the point. Vanderbilt wanted to change its image, and get more recognition for its academic quality and intellectual achievement. It put on a whole PR campaign, part of which was to say “Our research shows that perception of academic quality correlates with percentage of high-achieving Jewish students from the Northeast. So we want everyone to know that we are on a mission to admit more high-achieving Jewish students from the Northeast.”

It was actually changing its collective personality, and it would have been much harder and much slower if it hadn’t been transparent in order to draw applications it would never have gotten otherwise. It’s really tough to increase your percentage of high-achieving Jewish students from the Northeast if none of them apply. I think it worked for them, both in terms of attracting more applications and in terms of boosting Vandy’s perceived prestige. It probably would have worked even better if someone had told its frats to take down their Confederate battle flags.

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Fwiw, the school I know best is annually taking less than 20 dean’s discretion kids, (broader than just major donors or some alum big shot. In any given year, there just aren’t that many big donors who have kids at the right age and standing.)

Some guessing is futile. Tends to build assumptions on top of assumptions. You can ask elites to be “more forthcoming in what those discrete things are,” but what’s key is getting people to look for what is there, then interpret. (It’s a skill, a marker of a sort of inquiring nature- and something tippy tops like to see.) Do they? Or it’s “black box,” “a crap shoot,” but they know US News loves the school and lots of kids get into IB after and “I want IB, so I have to go there”? And they think “interest” is about getting on a mailing list?

PG mentioned some ways they looked for vibe and emphasis. I’ve told kids to dig deeper into their majors, programs, what sorts of kids they tout, what they are involved in, on campus and in the larger community- and the comeback is usually still superficial. (“See, they said one kid juggles on his unicycle and another does gypsy dancing, so that proves they want one offs.” But that’s a difference source for a different purpose. Or, “See, that kid got his name on some research publication, so I have to.” Sheesh. Where’s the thinking?)

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Even then, V positioned itself as a bit of a Southern P, insofar as both schools share the perceived loci of high socialization. Certainly U of Chicago doesn’t position itself that way, which is not to say they aren’t looking for kids with social skills, it’s that the ability to fit seamlessly into and feel comfortable in social clubs is not as defining of a characteristic for UC as it is for V and P.

V didn’t position itself as a southern Yale. That’s a different positioning than a southern Princeton.

I think of a perceptual map of these colleges, where there are umpteen vectors and the colleges are clustered together on their ratings on these dimensions. Penn, Cornell, NU and maybe WashU fall together. V and Princeton fall together. Columbia, Chicago and maybe Swat fall together. MIT and Caltech and CMU cluster together. Brown might fit near Oberlin.

We are not clustering on SAT scores or anything “literal” like that, so it’s irrelevant if CMU’s average SAT scores are 200 points below MIT’s or whatever - so there’s no need to go “oh but how dare you cluster those 2 together!” Not the freaking point. The distinction between LACs and unis is irrelevant here too.

We are clustering on personality attributes/characteristics. “The kinds of students who thrive best here are …” “This school prides itself most on students who …”

I don’t pretend to know this for colleges I’m not as familiar with or haven’t visited, but it’s just pretty darn easy to get a sense of this through visiting and just observing with open eyes and ears. It’s just really a variant of the skills needed in my Client A vs B example.

None of these precludes the fact that on the main, these schools are all looking for bright, interesting kids who are change-makers blah blah blah.

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At Vanderbilt, there is also this:
http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/news/article_4b8e10d8-4f93-11e5-8218-97730d429152.html
http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/news/article_75afbf24-2739-11e5-8743-5318829f0bb3.html

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Let’s try another analogy. Let’s suppose you had to audition to drive a particular car. What would you say about yourself if you were auditioning to drive a Saab? Do you think you would tell the Saab admission committee all about your latest trip to Walmart and how you love watching the Kardashians? Or would you tell them how you love tweed jackets with patches on the elbow surgery and frequenting second-hand book stores?

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It wasn’t a secret what Vanderbilt was looking for. They came to our college night and said exactly that in the spring of 2006. But yeah, those Confederate flags are going to be a BIG turnoff for most of the kids in our school.

Back when I first started thinking about colleges I knew that the top kids getting into superelite schools were part of the Science Research program. My kid lasted six months and bailed. (The first year they were asked to read ten Scientific American type articles a week and summarize them.) I spent way too much time worrying whether the things he was doing instead would be looked on favorably by admissions officers. Luckily my kids are no pushovers, they do what they want, and they got into the colleges that were appropriate for the kind and level of activity/outside interests/passions (whatever buzzword you prefer) was appropriate for them.

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Given the difficulty that Saab had in attracting drivers, it is unlikely that it would be very selective in this case.

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FGS, is it necessary to be so literal and pedantic all the time? I swear, it’s like being dropped into an episode of The Big Bang Theory at times.

Can you possibly conceptualize what the “Saab Club” would look like in my example, without requiring it to actually be true? Can you dabble in hypothetical constructs at all?

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@JHS, thanks for the above post. It makes me feel less like beating my head against the wall.

100% agree. But why not be more forthcoming in explaining the how part?

I am going to take one more stab at this and then quit. I am going to start with two assumptions. One that the highly selective colleges are looking for somewhat different traits when choosing among large numbers of objectively qualified applicants. Two, that what those traits are is discoverable from the publicly available information by at least some individuals out side of each institution.

If those two assumptions are correct, then it seems logical that being more forthcoming in advertising those different traits will lead to a pool of applicants more narrowly tailored to the institution’s “ethos”. Maybe this pool is shallower, as kids and parents who believe that highly selective admissions are a lottery have a light bulb moment and say “Wow, it really looks like Columbia, Princeton and Yale are looking for kids like me, while Penn and Harvard aren’t. Why waste the time applying to the later two?” But, as in the case of Vandy above, maybe that pool is wider too, as you reach students who perhaps were not economically fortunate enough to be able to go on several college visits/tours to discern what each school highlights. And yes, some will try to game the system and pretend that they are really in to this or that when they are not. But I read constantly on this site that ad coms are ferreting out those “pretenders” already. So other than losing some of the “what do I have to lose, it is a crap shoot anyway?” applications, I really don’t see the downside.

On the other hand, if those two assumptions are not correct, and in fact each of the highly selective schools are looking for roughly the same characteristics year over year, or specific characteristics that vary cycle to cycle, then I struggle with the advice to “get to know the school”, and with the poo pooing of people who believe that highly selective admissions are a lottery.

And Saab and the rest of the car companies spend a whole lot of money and time trying to distinguish their brand. Don’t really see that happening among most highly selective colleges.

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Perhaps an orange Dodge with numbers on the doors would be a better example than a Saab:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn43hrtkTKM

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The problem with the perceptual map exercise is that it ignores the reality that universities (less so an LAC) are complicated organisms. Sure- CMU has its geeky qualities and very strong programs in CS and related STEM subjects. But a kid interested in the performing arts at CMU isn’t going to be anything like the MIT-type kids attracted to CMU.

And that’s not a negative.

Kids (and their parents) twisting themselves into knots to present themselves as what they think the colleges want are going to blow it half the time (or more than half). Brown doesn’t need more artsy-boho kids to apply (trust me on this as a now old lady who interviewed aggressively for Brown. ) It has several new initiatives this year (not a secret- various press releases, letters to the public from President Saxon, etc.) in bio-statistics and big data creating an interdisciplinary center combining the (already strong) offerings in CS, applied math, theoretical math, and life sciences. So even though every kid I meet with multiple piercings who wants to take classes at RISD thinks that Brown is waiting for him/her to apply… guess what? The university is investing in different disciplines right now.

Cornell gets an unfair rap (in my opinion) for being too pre-professional. Sure- labor relations, hotel, - these are professional disciplines with a big apprenticeship component. But Cornell has a strong poli sci department. Strong psych. Wonderful history. etc.

I think parents and kids do a terrible job reading tea leaves.

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“And Saab and the rest of the car companies spend a whole lot of money and time trying to distinguish their brand. Don’t really see that happening among most highly selective colleges.”

The choice of the words used on websites and other materials. The words used and the opportunities emphasized by the adcoms at informational sessions. The posters and clubs you see advertised at the student center or on sidewalks. The types of choices made for commencement speakers. The extent to which the university brands itself uniformly. All of these are “marketing materials” just as much as a :30 TV spot is. They convey values, mores, ethos, personality. This is Marketing 101.

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To some extent, if you can’t figure it out without them explicitly telling you, you aren’t even near the starting gate. Just how much do these supposedly top kids need their hands held? As I’ve said, if you want Harvard (name a TT,) you have to be able to think and act on their level. They are not taking a class of raw recruits. One expression we use is: “able to hit the ground running.” Someone may say that’s condescending or exclusive- but c’mon, when you want a TT, you have to be TT in more respects than grades in hs classes and a handful of hs titles in your one high school. If you can’t, thousands of kids are lined up behind you.

Of course, academics comes first. An academically competitive school, where your peers are prepped at a high level, where faculty is expecting to teach at a high level, needs that. But it doesn’t stop there.

For a tippy top, most kids past first cut are 4.0, with the rigor and high enough scores for adcoms to know they can deal with the school. What comes next is (and has been) completely within the kid’s control- what they did during hs and what that shows, what they choose to write about in the app/supp, whether they show understanding this is a college app, needing to show college ready skills and thinking, not a quickly knocked out brag sheet for the GC. And what they know about that college shows how they think and decide, how they approached one of the first major decisions in their lives.

So, what’s the real quality of what you chose to do and at what level? How does it represent taking on challenges vs hanging with the crowd? Did you stretch or just color well between the lines? Most kids do mostly hs things, aim for hs recognition/titles. Your crown jewel is you founded a club, helped the hs recycle, gave love to the shelter animals? Or you got off your duff in ways that represent more? You focused primarily on yourself and your interests (the CC thinking that passions trump) or you’re a nice, well rounded, grounded, activated, compassionate individual, can think of more to do, did that, and can express yourself well? It goes on.

Don’t fool yourself adcoms use personal preferences when reacting.

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Ironically, Ohiodad, not “different traits.” A whole lot of this is about conformity- conforming to the expectations to be academically solid, energized, aware, tested, open to a range of experiences, having had some impact around you. And to know what the heck you are applying to and why. And more. Including, being able to show (not just tell) through all the choices, past and present.

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"Brown doesn’t need more artsy-boho kids to apply (trust me on this as a now old lady who interviewed aggressively for Brown. ) "

Fully agreed, and I don’t mean to imply that it’s as simple as - have piercing, will apply. But the value behind artsy-boho is a broader value of “think differently.” If I am a non-artsy boho kid interested in applying to Brown, I can still emphasize my “think differently” mindset and values even if I wear a sweater set and pearls to the interview.

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If you can’t figure out that Client A wants bottom line facts and Client B wants hand holding and collaborative BFFs, you are going to be an less successful consultant no matter if you scored 1600 on your SATs. And if you can’t figure out that College C leans towards preferring people who exemplify X values and College D leans towards people who exemplify Y values, then you are going to be a less successful college applicant no matter if you scored 1600.

Too many people here are confusing what a college values with specific activities (newspaper editor, science fair, etc.) and thus getting all discombobulated because they can’t figure out whether being the editor or the student council president is worth more points.