Rejection and college students

[MACXC1009]

@AustenNut

This is obviously written from the lens of someone who strongly values academics and intellectual pursuits (i.e. was teaching a seminar at Yale and is writing a column in the NY Times). I can’t believe that 94% of kids are feeling as though they’re not smart or not winners because they don’t attend a Top X school, much less that they’re feeling that way by middle school. That said, however, there is too big of a percentage of kids who do feel that they’re not good at school/school’s not for them by early adolescence.

I agree. As a middle school teacher, I don’t feel this is the message 94% of students are getting. I know many talk about grade inflation, but I also think there has been a grading shift and it is possible for more students to succeed and reach standards versus only having X% of kids that are able to get an A. It is a much better system when all students have the ability to master standards and show they are competent in grade-level skills. Or, having no grades at all (which many schools are moving to K-8) which allows kids to learn for the sake of learning and get feedback based on their performance in a more narrative way. All students have strengths and goals and using systems like that allow teachers to push all students.

On a different note, DD just got together with her HS friends last night, all of whom are at selective colleges. Her friends at Ivies verbalized feeling less happy because the work is so challenging and everything is a competition (classes, clubs, etc.). They like the people where they go, but were pretty negative about the workload and competition. In contrast, those at a very competitive state school (top 5 in the country) or SLAC that is not an Ivy were more enthusiastic about classes and they social life in work hard/play hard environments where there is time for both.

[NemesisLead]

Groucho Marx sent the following wire to a Hollywood club he had joined:

"Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

These kids often apply to these schools and these clubs BECAUSE they are rejective.

There will ALWAYS be interest in organizations that offer the possibility of “elite status.”

I have seen this with elite military units, elite colleges, elite sports camps…you name it. Many people crave special recognition.

There is no need to feel sorry for the kids. They implicitly buy into and accept the “elite logic.” They can’t complain when it doesn’t work for them.

[BKSquared]

And recently there were only 9000 interviews completed. So @NiceUnparticularMan 20% rate for applicants making it through the initial screen/getting an interview sounds about right.

[ManyTails]

@NemesisLead

There is no need to feel sorry for the kids. They implicitly buy into and accept the “elite logic.” They can’t complain when it doesn’t work for them.

I agree. There is no need to feel sorry for these kids. Even so, I don’t think that a 17 or 18 year old really understands what they are “implicitly” buying into, and there is no doubt in my mind that going to these elites schools comes at a cost.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

Yeah, I seem to be hearing more of that sort of thing recently. Of course it was never the case that the kids at the most selective colleges were uniformly more happy with their experience. But lots of great kids I know about at the most selective colleges seem to be having more issues than most of their peers who ended up at very selective, but not the most selective, LACs, OOS publics, and even pretty similar midsize private research universities.

But it is not like I am doing a scientific study, so I don’t really know for sure that anything has changed.

[circuitrider]

Yes, the Yale interview, in essence, is the initial review process even though they are loathe to say so explicitly.

[Aimlesscat1]

Same response from my neighbor who has done interviews for Penn for the last 20 or so years. He said “maybe two” when we discussed this during my daughters college search.

[goldbug]

@DadOfJerseyGirl

the inside secret is interviews have almost no impact on admissions decisions.

This is why I stopped doing admissions interviews for Princeton – the only applicants I interviewed who were admitted were apparently hooked water polo players. It became clear that while it was a nice way to engage alumni (debatable, actually) and prospective students, it didn’t seem to have much material impact on the admissions decision.

[goldbug]

To the original topic of rejective social and extracurricular experiences w/in elite universities, our student tour guide at Case Western Reserve seemed to have homed in on that anxiety and was marketing the school as a kinder, gentler alternative. I suppose this could have actually been a strategic directive from the admissions office (I wouldn’t have been surprised, given the general quality of their communications during the info session) but regardless, we ate it up with a spoon. “My high school friends studying at Cornell and U Mich can’t get into the fun engineering extracurriculars unless they’ve already had significant experience in high school, whereas here, my friend who was planning to study art history joined the baja racing team on a whim and ended up switching to mechanical engineering.”

[Wjs1107]

This is very true. I grew up in the Bay Area (Gen X) with a software engineer dad and a stay at home mom. My dad was the first in his family to finish college, my mom didn’t go. He finished his degree at Berkeley when I was a baby. The first house I really remember living in was a 3 bedroom ranch that my parents bought for 146k. This was in the early 1980s. I just went to look it up on Zillow—estimated at $2.58 million for 1350 square feet.

We raised our kids in the Bay Area too, but damn, it’s been a hustle the whole way through. Both my husband and i work, and are fortunate to have well paying jobs with decent amount of flexibility, but there’s no rest for the weary. I feel lucky that I love my job and I don’t mind the hustle, but as I get into my 50s, I do dream more of slowing down.

If my kids want the settle here, they will have to figure out how to hustle even harder. I wouldn’t mind if they set up camp somewhere less expensive and less competitive. Maybe I’d follow them

[MWolf]

@AustenNut

It seems we’ve created a vast multilayered system that evaluates the worth of millions of young adults and, most of the time, tells them they are not up to snuff.

This is actually BS, and demonstrates what people have repeatedly said here (and what I repeat way too often).

These articles are being written by people who grew up in privilege and are surrounded by privilege, and they have absolutely no idea what is happening outside their little bubble of Elite Private schools, mostly in the NE, and the private high schools which feed into them, or in one of the public high schools that serves very wealthy communities.

No, Brooks (of COURSE it was him), this is not “millions of young adults”. Maybe “hundreds of thousands”. This is not the experience of the vast majority of young adults in the USA.

Even among the top 20% by income, fewer than 10% will attend an “elite” college. It’s only when you hit the top 1% by income do you see a substantial percentage of students who attend “elite” colleges.

If one looks at the number of applications submitted to “elite” colleges by students at a high school you see that, for high schools which serve kids who are below the top 20% by income, only a small percent are applying to “elite” colleges. It’s only at the schools for the wealthier families do you start seeing hundreds of applications being sent to colleges with admissions rates of under 20%.

However, even at those high schools, especially the public schools, you only really see a lot of stress and angst among the kids who are in the top 10% academically or so. If you look at the bottom 75% of the class, they’re not applying to college which “reject the majority of the qualified applicants”. Most of them are applying to colleges that accept all qualified applicants. Only in the “elite” private or public magnet schools will you see classes in which more than half of the graduating seniors are applying to “elite” colleges (mostly private).

When I read that an article was written by David Brooks, what comes to mind is always “this article is going to provide the perspective of his bubble of wealth and privilege, and have very little research”. He didn’t disappoint. This case is even more egregious. He has moved from implying that what he sees among the wealthy and privileged is the general experience of all the USA, to explicitly making that claim.

I’m sorry, but these articles are starting to look like the journalist equivalent of Shower Thoughts, generated by thinking about the claims of the wealthy educated parents in his circle of friends and acquaintances.

[circuitrider]

I think he may have been commenting on the whole “teaching to the test” movement of some decades ago, not that 90% of American kids were applying to Ivy style colleges. I’m giving him some credit that he didn’t mean the latter.

[GKUnion]

This topic only reinforces my belief in the need for a mandatory 1-2 years of national service between high school and college, preferably in lower income areas.

[cinnamon1212]

100% agree!!

[Lindagaf]

Sorry, what? Preferably in lower income areas? So it is better for low income people to do national service? I would love to hear the rationale for that belief.

[momofboiler1]

I read that to mean that all student should volunteer in low income communities to expose them to the real world.

[Lindagaf]

Ah, got it. I misinterpreted that, @GKUnion . Apologies.

[BKSquared]

I have noticed a change within the past 5 years or so for Yale when it began to be selective in choosing interview candidates. When the policy was let’s try to interview as many as possible with the limited number of interviewers, there may have been 1 in 10 of my interviewees who got in. I also interviewed kids that had no real shot. I came to that assessment even though I did not receive grades or test scores because of the lack of depth in their thought process. For the last 3 cycles, 2022, 2 out of 4 got in; 2023 1 out of 4; 2024 1 out of 5 with 1 waitlisted. The total number of admits for my region has been relatively stable over the years, but the number of interviews has been sharply reduced.

Interviews are not part of a prescreen, that was done by a senior AO. If we believe what is in the Yale admissions podcast (why would they lie in such detail), the interviews are adding color to their assessments and whether the app synchs up with how they present themselves live.

[blossom]

@MWolf

I’m sorry, but these articles are starting to look like the journalist equivalent of Shower Thoughts, generated by thinking about the claims of the wealthy educated parents in his circle of friends and acquaintances.

I will add (to your very fine post) that many of the “oh look how hard it is to be a young person these days” cite misleading statistics on mental health, suicidal ideation, etc. as if only Cornell students try to (and sometimes succeed) in killing themselves, what have we done to this generation that experiences so much pressure and anxiety, etc.

Yes, suicide is a tragedy. Yes, anxiety and the mental health crisis is real. But look at the ACTUAL numbers- not the “I pluck the statistics that work for my argument” numbers. Suicide is a real phenomenon- among the non-college attending late adolescents working, among the non-college attending late adolescents in the military, etc. Anxiety, all the other mental health ailments- truly an equal opportunity affliction-- upper middle class, middle class, working poor, etc.

The counterpoint to "We put so much pressure on our kids to get into Princeton, and then once they’re there, the system is stacked so they can’t get into the “Right Eating Club” is- "The suicide rates in the military have jumped significantly. In part- it’s access to a weapon. In part- it’s due to addiction and how we count overdose deaths (accidental? intentional?) In part it’s due to reduced access to counseling early enough to flag a soldier/seaman/airman as “high risk” before it spirals.

Etc. I doubt the men and women in our armed forces are hankering for a spot at an Eating Club when they are fighting their inner demons and not getting help, support, etc.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

This also seemed to us a big part of the pitch when we visited Vassar post-offer. It seemed to us like they were basically marketing themselves as a friendlier, more supportive alternative to Ivies and certain NESCACs and such. Like to the point there were multiple anecdotes involving actual hugging.

And I think a lot of people there were quite receptive, although in the case of my S24, it soured him on the very idea of going East for college. Like he liked our Carleton visits much better, and then ultimately picked WashU, and basically part of the logic was they didn’t need to provide all those assurances, because it was built into the culture and assumed. At Carleton, the pitch was more about how much fun they had despite being serious students, and WashU Arts and Sciences was basically about how they had all the flexibility and per student resources of a top LAC while being part of a bigger research university.

That said, WashU apparently has its share of anxious first years, not least among the kids who basically chose it because it is known as a “good for premed” college. So I do think that sort of thing can be more or less common depending not just on the type of college but also the types of students who tend to choose that college. And all that can be affected by location, perceived academic strengths, and other things.