Ridiculous Negativity

Parent Cafe
81

My point is that, based on more than a few trips to the high selective rodeo, a lot of discourse with really clued-in GCs and my own experience as a student, there are too many here who, bluntly or nicely, pass on advice that isn’t always as qualified as it needs to be, and is offered before asking for and assessing a lot of other information that one absolutely needs before passing on these questions.

No doubt at a place like, say, Michigan, where I swear the admissions department is one person feeding numbers into a scan tron, yeah, you’re going to get numbered out if you don’t have the stats.

But even with the super-selective Ivies, there is just too much information that needs to be assessed before telling someone to not bother.

The post by @Lindagaf is a good example, assuming her example was meant to be serious. You don’t tell a kid that an A- in physics is going to hurt their Stanford odds. That one thing alone will not even factor into the rejection. It will be other things.

Last year at my kids’ school, which offers a great IB program, the kid who got into Stanford had a 3.7 GPA will full IB and very good test scores. From the same program, there were multiple kids with 3.989 GPAs, same course rigor and equal or better test scores that were rejected. I actually know this for a fact. I didn’t hear it at a cocktail party. I know it.

So, let’s not clown around here with hyperbole. Nobody, not even one of the resident monkeys, is saying that we should tell any kid (even a kid with crazy numbers) that they will get into Stanford. That is absurd and really is more rhetoric than anything.

The point is, nobody should tell a kid with an A- in physics that they’re not getting in either.

The best we can do in all but a very few very obvious circumstances is tell them they we have no clue. Because we don’t.

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Going back a couple pages to this quote:

Well, it might be a bit less amusing. I must admit that I sometimes find CC’s negativity very entertaining. For instance, I appreciated the following quotes from the most savage thread I’ve seen (though admittedly it was not in the “Chances” forum).

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@usualhopeful I remember that post . Let’s be honest , it did take a while to devolve into that level of bluntness and rudeness. While I exercised great restraint and didn’t post such comments, I have to admit to thinking the same things .

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@carolinamom2boys The first quote was actually reply #3, but the OP was certainly unusually provocative.

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@intparent , I didn’t say that they should be told they have a good shot - come onl. And, of course, I’d think it would go without saying that counseling to have a broad range of options is a good thing to offer for any kid.

I’m talking about the people who look at the common data set and stop there. You said it yourself: “Now… they might be hooked in some other way, have really high test scores, etc.”

My point: there’s more to know. That 84% stat you cite is a blunt substitute for insight. Bowdoin, as a random example, is a school I know well, because one of the IB counselors at my kids’ school knows the director of admissions well. If he were here and one of us threw out “Top 10%”, he’d want to know, Top 10% from where? Which school? What was their course load like, etc. I can say with confidence that if you’re in the top 10% of your high school and managed to get there with light course load then Bowdoin is a real stretch. If you’re in the top 20% with a very hard curriculum and otherwise appeal to the ad com, your chances are better.

And that’s before getting into hooks.

Like I said - it’s fine to tell a kid with a 3.5 that Bowdoin is a reach unless there’s something else they have to offer, and that in any event some back-up schools are in order. Nothing wrong with that at all.

But that’s not what a lot of folks on CC do.

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But @usualhopeful, I kinda think the OP in that thread was asking for it!
OP:
“Michigan is a meatheaded party school for slutty sorority girls and racist frat boys”

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@MiddleburyDad2 my point wasn’t about advising the kid that he could or couldn’t get into Stanford. My point was that the imaginary kid’s post was worded thus: “Got an A- in AP phsyics!!! Can I still get into Stanford???” The poster will then proceed to list incredible stats and amazing ECs, but will waste an inordinate amount of verbiage on bemoaning the A- and obsessing over it ruining his chances. If I were commenting on such a post,and it was written in a humble-brag fashion, I am sorry to say I might not be as understanding as an adult should be, because I suspect that imaginary poster might be bragging rather than having a legitimate cause for concern. .

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@Sue22 And incredibly, that comment was left after a mod edited out the worst comments.

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@Lindagaf I see. I know the type to which you refer, and yes, they are annoying. Have at it. :slight_smile:

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@usahopeful That entire thread should have been deleted along with the OP.

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Only another high school student would tell a kid that an A- in Physics would keep anyone out of any school. I challenge you to find one instance of an experienced adult poster saying that. Because there aren’t any.

And if I had a dollar for every time someone said THEIR high school was especially challenging and that was going to help them get into a college, I would be retired by now. There are a very tiny number of high schools in the US that feed a lot of kids to top schools (less than 20, including boarding schools). Other than that, it isn’t going to help you. And you really are missing the point… the metrics released by Bowdoin themselves give that high school percentage info. Now I KNOW those numbers aren’t all there is to it – I had a kid get into some top schools with an UW GPA of 3.7 – BUT, she had some other great stuff going for her – spectacular test scores, Subject Tests of 800 in Math II and Lit – the number of kids who can do that is pretty small, and some unusual and interesting ECs. The kid who has a 3.7 and none of that other stuff – they probably aren’t getting in. And again… no one will say “don’t apply to Stanford”. They will say, “sure, make it one of your reach schools, but apply to matches and safeties too”. Anyone who tells that 3.7 kid that they have a good chance at Stanford is lying to the kid – again, anecdote does not equal statistics.

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@robotrainbow, you can also just create an account on Parchment and enter whatever you want. (We did it for D2 to see what it would say) You can put your own GPA in, your own test scores, where you applied, and where you got in. At least Naviance data is entered by the GC offices. I am not saying they are perfect, they can make data entry errors, but Parchment isn’t based on solid data. It is fun to look at… and it can make you feel better or worse about your chances. But I don’t think it is reliable.

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As far as I could tell, no one answered @Postmodern’s questions. Regarding the first one, your question is almost unanswerable as it would be unwise for me to presume to know what “many people think” so I’ll provide my observations instead. Compared to other online fora, CC is a remarkably civilized place with a dearth of rude and crass posts. I’ve been reliably reading CC for over fifteen months and I’ve only ever had one thread infuriate me (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19615639/#Comment_19615639). Furthermore, I wasn’t upset by the behavior of the thread’s posters but the emotional abuse inherent in the originator’s predicament. That said, I skip every “Chance” thread so maybe that’s different.

Your second question is specific enough to answer. I do. Using “Will I get rescinded?” threads as my most obvious example, I think CC would be a better place if there was a bot that automatically responded “yes. Please don’t call the admissions office to find out as I, Karnak the magnificent, know the answer the admins won’t.” Likewise, the vacuous “OMG!! I got a B in Chemistry. Does this mean no elite school for me?,” would be well-answered with a “Yep. It’s Podunk U with the other plebes for you.” Likewise, the people asking a question that screams “let me google that for you” will often need significantly more than an implied reproach to see the error of their ways. Finally, sarcasm is often just plain funny.

Writing the above two paragraphs, I realize I’m ambivalent. I would agree there are crass threads (rescinds, histrionic “I screwed up. Does that mean my life is over?”, NJ kids complaining about NJ schools) but would vehemently disagree that discussions on substantive topics are rude or crass. Likewise, I think some additional snark would play well here while my experience on CC could be improved if I could filter out threads with certain words (e.g. “Chance”) in the title.

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Sometimes, the “kind” thing to say is to refer a kid to the near impossible admit percentage, suggest they look for safeties. We can’t reeducate a kid in a couple of paragraphs. The fact is, sorry, but hs kids don’t know what works. Often, they’re just looking through their own eyes, going off the hearsay they picked up.

For me, empty assurances are still empty. There have been some longer time adults who say, you won;t know unless you try. For me, trying while uninformed or under-informed is just nuts.

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@fragbot, things were a lot less civil when we had a Politics forum. :slight_smile:

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Chuckle, I bet. I remember when politics used to be a sport. Now it’s just litmus-test unpleasant at every turn. No room for disagreement at all and the Intarweb tunes everyone’s echo chamber so well that group think is inevitable. Just a hunch but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a whole lot of rueful Pauline Kael’s in the fall.

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I thought the gold standard in positive thinking was to consider Cornell and Dartmouth safety schools amongst the Ivies :slight_smile:

The problem is until you run the admission gauntlet you tend to believe that somehow you will beat the odds. Yeah others before you got scorched, but you are special. When your app goes in, they will sit up and take notice. That is what a lot of kids hope or sincerely believe.

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  1. I understand how you feel.
  2. The quality of responses varies widely. Focus on the reasons people give over their opinion of the result.
  3. Please, do not join 27 clubs. Focus on something and do it well.
  4. Most people do not want to get a students hopes up. So they tell them it is random, which is not true at all.
  5. Remember that grades and rigor are the most important thing.
  6. Test scores are important, but less than grades at most schools.
  7. ECs are not really very important outside the top 50 schools, unless you have a hard hook.
  8. Work on your essays and make them stand out. Get others to proof them.
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QUOTE=porcupine98

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They were naughty, apparently.

100

@fragbot that thread was deeply upsetting on so many levels.

I’m a mod on a Disney website and it’s a lot saltier than CC. We’re allowed more latitude on there with language and shots across the bow, though. There is a lot more YAGE’ing when people say stupid things, get a lot of feedback they don’t like that can get snarky, and stomp off in a huff rather than us having to slap them on the wrists.

@intparent on the Disney site we consolidated all political talk into one thread. Any time someone starts a new thread that is political, we just merge (subsume, lol) it into the politics thread.

I LOVE how this is worded-it’s textbook mean girl. “Does anybody doubt” “Does anybody think”-the wording infers that you’ll be called to the carpet if you dare disagree. So cracks me up how one person thinks people are behaving in a way they don’t like, and then they try to dictate behavior by using verbiage that’s socially controlling.

Nopety nope nope. I laugh at your imaginary coterie of people who are “nice”.

If I ran the joint, I’d do the same thing with the Chance threads as we did with the Politics thread-dump them all onto one big ridiculous thread and disallow Chance Me Backs unless it’s on that same thread. It concentrates all the craziness and useless information into one smoldering cauldron.