<p>Ok, epiphany, I really don’t understand why you are reading statements into my posts. I have made no claim that students are owed happiness by the top universities. I have made no claim that students who were admitted everywhere did not deserve it.</p>
<p>But why do you not think that it is a happier experience for a student to be admitted than to be rejected? I do think that. Yet you seem to think that this is a “logical fallacy.”</p>
<p>I have read the book on “Essays that Worked” (maybe it was “100 Essays that Worked”), although QMP had no interest in it. If others have read it, did you share the opinions of the commentators on these essays, which were included in the book? Sometimes I did, and sometimes I did not. </p>
<p>A few years back, there was a comment on a Stanford admissions web page about a student who had written that she hated her dog. The admissions rep found it hilarious and the student was in. I think that could have gone differently if the admissions rep had just lost a pet he loved. This year, there was the “chicken nuggets” guy. Compelling story overall, but that one-liner in the essay would not have grabbed me as a reader. I think some essays read differently amidst a very large stack of earnest essays than they do in isolation.</p>
<p>@Hunt’s comment #540. The student I have mentioned was waitlisted (then accepted) at 1 of the HYPSM group, rejected at 2, and did not apply to the other 2. Accepted everywhere else, including universities he would have been happy to attend–although he took the acceptance from the waitlist. Sort of a gray area for your classification.</p>
<p>I understand that there are explanations for some decisions, unknown to us. However, I think the admissions committees disagree somewhat more often about candidates than has been acknowledged, with different outcomes (in/out) hinging on committee members’ interactions.</p>
<p>Perhaps this one case was a fluke. My sample size is admittedly small. But I don’t think it makes sense for me to conclude that this was the only such instance in the country.</p>
<p>Also, I know how this particular case turned out, after the student was admitted from the waitlist, studied, worked as a teaching assistant, did undergraduate research, had leadership positions, and graduated: it turned out extraordinarily well, in all dimensions, not just academically.</p>
<p>I think a lot of people like to think that we live in a rational world, and that people in authority make decisions for rational reasons–although they might be secret and even evil reasons. Some people (like Shelby Steele, to bring this back to the original topic) like to think that the decision-makers are lying about the “real” reasons for their decisions. But nobody is happy to think that some decisions may not be all that rational in the first place. I choose to believe that most of the decisions at top schools are based on the criteria that they say they are, including demonstrated merit, along with identified “hooks” and “tips.” But the imperfections in the system mean that some decisions won’t be entirely rational and can’t be explained by looking only at those criteria. This is little consolation to the person who is the victim of that kind of decision–all you can do is to try to protect yourself against this risk by applying to enough schools, and being careful in your applications. Also, it’s a good idea not to have a single “dream” school, but rather to have a strategy.</p>
<p>"If a student who looks like a superstar gets rejected by a significant number of top schools, then I have to wonder whether there is some unknown bad thing in the packet–it could also be a mistake, or an unexpectedly bad rec, or even something that is being misunderstood. "</p>
<p>I wonder about this too. particularly in reference to silverturtle. Couple of years ago, someone I know personally with similar stats (2400, 36 all in one sitting, 3rd in class in a large public) was waitlisted in EA stanford but was admitted HPSPennColumbia in RD and ended up in the EA school. Only school that had waitlisted him was Yale and he asked to be off the list. Although he did get into Brown and Columbia, I am not sure why HYPS snubbed silverturtle. Something that was misunderstood?</p>
<p>I’m coming into this kinda late. I know of silverturtle, where IS he going and which HYPS was he hoping for?</p>
<p>Silverturtle is (I believe) going to Brown–which is Brown’s gain and the other schools’ loss, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Hunt - being a semi conservative myself, I know where Steele is going with it. It is perfectly acceptable when someone can buy the seat (we are capitalists afterall) but if schools themselves have affirmative action, social goals like first gen/minority recruitment/questbridge recruitment as their goals, then it does nt serve the purpose of merit admissions.</p>
<p>Princeton waitlisted silverturtle but others turned him down. I don’t believe Princeton matriculated him.</p>
<p>Remember, the Steele comment that start this discussion was:
I suppose one could be extremely charitable and say that this is just overblown hyperbole. But it’s certainly not the truth, even if schools do practice affirmative action.</p>
<p>I don’t work in admissions. I work in corporate recruiting. That’s my disclaimer.</p>
<p>You cannot imagine the gaffes and mistakes we see every single day by college seniors who are applying to work at our company- many from the “elite” universities and LAC’s. I am inclined to believe that four years ago some of these kids made stupid mistakes on their applications. We get cover letters addressed to other employers; we get out of date references to our businesses (I don’t mean from a year ago- we’re talking a decade or more); when we ask for a cover letter we often don’t get one, and then there are the kids who send a 20 page packet which includes letters of reference from their Senator and Pastor.</p>
<p>Does carelessness and an inability to read directions keep them out of the interview pool at my company? Absolutely. Does that give a tired adcom a reason to put the essay with the typo’s and careless use of comma’s and run-on sentences into the reject pile? You betcha, as my favorite former governor of Alaska likes to say.</p>
<p>Kids- it’s not so hard. Don’t write an essay about why you want to go to Middlebury which keeps referencing New Hampshire. Clearly- you’ve just recycled your Dartmouth essay without re-reading it. Don’t misspell Johns Hopkins. (god help those adcoms.) Don’t extol the core curriculum in your Brown essay (er- Brown has no core but Columbia does.) And if you were never taught to read a real map (like the kind that used to sit in a car’s glove compartment) at least look on Goople maps or something to see that Cambridge is a city, Cornell is not in New York City, and Princeton, while a lovely suburb, will never qualify as “a gritty and challenging urban environment.” Send them what they ask for- make sure it’s accurate. If you’ve never learned what a topic sentence is and you’re 17 years old and writing a college essay, please ask your English teacher to at least read the essay for comprehension.</p>
<p>As to the tragic fate of a kid who is admitted to Harvard but not Princeton and to Cal Tech but not MIT- probably a conspiracy by the lame stream media, to quote that favorite governor again.</p>
<p>“You cannot imagine the gaffes and mistakes we see every single day by college seniors who are applying to work at our company- many from the “elite” universities and LAC’s.”</p>
<p>When I was in a federal judge’s chambers, I saw it every day from law school graduates. 90% of life is showing up, but a lot of the remaining 10% is proofreading.</p>
<p>Hanna- I will quote you and send you a royalty every time I use your line!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is it really market oriented to promote legacy achievement or inherited wealth, as opposed to one’s own achievement or earned wealth?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Many people with inherited wealth think they have it because they deserve it.</p>
<p>lots of people have complained that Ivys are doing a lot better than the past when prep school GCs told Ivys which kids need to be admitted in which school based on their families wishes. I am just theorizing why Steele may not have had an issue with it, i.e., you have money and you should be able to buy that seat.</p>
<p>As I think more about this, I’m musing on whether the Ivies are more or less conscious of merit now than they were a generation or two ago. First, I think, the concept of what “merit” is may shift over time, changing the balance of grades, scores, achievements in ECs, overcoming obstacles, etc., in terms of what is “merit.”
But beyond that, it’s clear that even for “hooked” candidates, the Ivies still look closely at merit, because nobody gets in who doesn’t have very good grades and scores–not football players, not legacies, and not URMs (maybe some development cases). The majority of legacies are rejected. An athlete doesn’t get in unless the minimum academic index is satisfied. Does anybody think that coming from the “right” private school will get you into Harvard if you don’t have excellent grades and scores?
How was it in the past? Based on some famous people, it appears that legacy was a much stronger hook, and perhaps so was coming from the right high school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It is unfortunate that good advice needs to be repeated every year. Most of it ends up buried in the depths of this community. As it happens so often in terms of tips about the admission process, people-in-the-know grow tired of repeating the same advice or are simply tuned out by a sea a well-meaners who have heard a few rumors. </p>
<p>For the essay, I would add that unless specifically requested no applicant should ever waste precious words on the … school or its programs. We know that the “Why Podunk U” is hard to address without discussing someone or something at Podunk, but for the standard essays the focus should solely be on the … applicant.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>May I suggest you change the ‘and’ to ‘or’? I know of several recruited Ivy athletes who had great grades but were told directly by the coach that they only needed to clear 1800 on the SAT. (Yes, an 1800 maybe ‘good’, but not Ivy-good.)</p>
<p>I think a student with an 1800 SAT, even with very good grades, would, at best, be in the “low low” band of the academic index, and thus a school would only be able to take a tiny handful of such students.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well yes, it is hard, if you don’t really have a reason that you want to go to college X other than they appear near the top of the USNWR ranking, just like the other 12 to 15 schools you’re applying to. And that’s especially the case if you’re applying to that list mainly because mommy and daddy want you to go to a school they can brag about.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If they aren’t owed it, then why have you made such a point of bemoaning the rejects to elite U’s, and how we should “sympathize”? The language you use implies that there’s some entitlement (connected with demonstrated achievement) that should be matched with an admission offer, and we know that that is not mathematically possible in the overqualified applicant pool to 10 U.S. universities. It means that there will far more “unhappy” results than “happy” ones.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I was really referring to other logical fallacies I have enumerated of yours. My comment was probably sloppily placed, but nevertheless accurately characterizes a faulty premise: that admission to an Elite U is some gateway to happiness. It may be. It may not be. Happiness includes a lot of factors. We can ask if Mengyao (May) Zhou found “happiness.” It would appear not.</p>
<p>What I’m saying overall is that you tend to make the same mistake that students often make, who apply to Reach schools (which is kind of surprising given your refined intellectual background). You put the focus on the student. I hate to tell you this, but the colleges are very selfish about the undergrads they admit. They’re not focused on the student in terms of that student’s personal needs, desires, or “happiness.” That student could say 50 times on his application (and some do) how “happy” he would be to be admitted. The colleges are focused on what will make the college happy, and the student body happy with each other, and the professors happy, and the public happy (with the results of the U’s graduates in the real world, because that is tied to the U’s stature). The student’s happiness is quite secondary, or tertiary.</p>