<p>Some things aren’t about logic, and to speak or write effectively or persuasively they also need to be taken into consideration.</p>
<p>epiphany: What do you say to the next door neighbors whose kids don’t get into their first choice schools?</p>
<p>I personally think it is weird when students (and especially their parents) go around telling others what their “first choice school” is. Why do people do this?</p>
<p>Because the “first choice” almost invariably represents a school that generates oohs and aahs at the cocktail hour. It also represents a choice by the applicant. It’s a shame that the “first choice” should not be the safety one would be happy to attend and the parents happy and able to pay for. A low hanging fruit that is ripe and tasty leaves less of a bitter aftertaste! </p>
<p>The narrative change tremendously when the schools release their first choices.</p>
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<p>Uh - sorry you didn’t get in, but I’m sure you’ll do fabulously at XYZ school, they’re lucky to have you? I mean, what else are you supposed to say? Isn’t that kind of obvious?</p>
<p>To listen to half of CC, you’d think the appropriate response was, “Sorry you didn’t get in. Too bad that legacy / URM / athlete / kid with 100 points lower on the SAT’s one town over took your spot.” Why on earth would you facilitate an 18 yo thinking that HYPSM are exalted gold, everything else is sloppy seconds but not quite up to stuff, and that life success depends solely on their getting into those handful of schools?</p>
<p>One of the most obnoxious threads I ever read on CC had to do with a poster whose daughter was rejected by Ivies, “settled” for U Chicago (oh the sorrow! the horror! avert your eyes from the trainwreck) and then “showed them all” by becoming a Rhodes Scholar. Because of all the tremendous face she lost among her peers by not getting into an Ivy. Well, if bright kids from Podunk can ignore their classmates who think that there’s no reason to go anywhere other than East Podunk State, then I think bright kids from well-to-do suburbs can learn to ignore their classmates who think that not getting into an Ivy League is the worst thing that could happen in life. I absolutely would not facilitate such attitudes in my kids or any one else’s kids, so I have no clue why anything other than the above “sorry you didn’t get it - but hey, you’ll do great!” would be the appropriate response.</p>
<p>We just view things differently, epiphany. If a student is unhappy if rejected (at least in the short term), and I sympathize with that, it doesn’t mean that either of us thinks that the student was “owed” admission–and it certainly doesn’t mean that either of us thinks that the student was owed happiness. </p>
<p>In fact, some strong students might wind up happier overall, going to other universities than those in the very top group.</p>
<p>I do think that universities should generally admit students who can reasonably be predicted to wind up in the top 5% of the student body, integrated across multiple criteria. That does not happen 100% of the time. Maybe it happens 99.99% of the time–I can just claim a few counter-examples. I don’t think that I am focusing on the student excessively, in making this statement. It would seem to me to allow a lot of room for all sorts of other considerations in constructing the class as a whole. For the purpose of this specific argument, it is not relevant that there are very large numbers of students who are qualified to be in the top 95% of the student body.</p>
<p>To be fair with our first one, we only disclosed it to more people because we didn´t know better. We didn´t think it was that big of a deal. We didn´t disclose to get a “wow, we are impressed” reaction, especially since it wasn´t HYPS. We did it because people asked, and we just answered. I think back then I thought it was weird if someone was too cagey about it.</p>
<p>We have a second kid who is applying this year, I think I have only disclosed her first choice to very few people. I am not even talking about it on CC in order not to jinx her. When people ask, I tell them D2 is still undecided.</p>
<p>I tell people hopefully a state school since it will save me so much moolah!</p>
<p>“should generally admit students who can reasonably be predicted to wind up in the top 5% of the student body”</p>
<p>What if the top 5% of the student body, as measured by college grades and thesis scores, is 99.9% white and upper-middle-class year after year? I don’t know if that’s true at any of the schools we’re talking about, but if it were true, would the college be justified in refusing to admit poor and URM students due to their rotten odds of ending up in the top 5%? What about public school graduates, if the college finds as a statistical matter that they almost never graduate summa?</p>
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<p>…like what criteria? GPA? Top grad school admit? Top-paying job? Most prestigious job? Most famous? Most politically powerful? Most philanthropic? Olympic athlete? Most influential? Most popular? Most winningest at game shows? My impression is that HYPS et al, do think their admits will end up in one of those (or like) categories.</p>
<p>Don’t you mean 90% Asian (tongue in cheek). :p</p>
<p>'I do think that universities should generally admit students who can reasonably be predicted to wind up in the top 5% of the student body, integrated across multiple criteria."</p>
<p>All 100% of their admitted students should wind up in the top 5% of that college’s student body? Wow, that is impressive! I think at both my kids’ schools, only 5% of the students wind up in the top 5%.</p>
<p>And I couldn’t disagree more about that end goal. Sorry, it sounds too much like the usual dorky STEM blather of people who can only think in terms of numbers and statistics. I think there is very great merit in the diverse classes that elite schools get, in terms of students with various life backgrounds, circumstances, upbringing, and so forth, and I think creating the interesting “soup” is rightly a high institutional priority. If we wanted college admissions by the numbers, we’d move to that system. Clearly the colleges think their system works better than just rack-em-and-stack-em-by-descending-SAT-scores. And clearly they still have that cachet, so they aren’t graduating kids who are <em>too</em> dumb.</p>
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<p>Could you clarify, Deborah? (Because even though I do tend to emphasize logic, I freely admit that admissions are not reducible to a logic that is always manfest to the observer, the writer, or the reader. 
I apologize for any clumsiness on my part.</p>
<p>Hanna, I am not sure what you believe that I am arguing. Only 5% of the students who enroll could be projected to wind up in the top 5% of the student body, under any scenario, no matter what the weighting is assigned to accomplishments in each of the categories listed by Bay. This leaves 95% of the slots open. (Of course, one might over-predict or under-predict.)</p>
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<p>All of us find some threads less appealing than others. Sometimes our views are clouded by knowing a few details about individual situations. I happen to think that the story conveyed a lot more subtle messages about the journey of the student who did rise above an early rejection to earn a prestigious award a few years later. </p>
<p>I also think that that particular year was particularly hit by the vagaries of admissions at HYPS. Common sentences on CC included the Yale EA massacre or other similar attention-grabbers. I do not think that it is particularly easy to let open wounds heal without some form of closure. For some, this takes the form of “bragging” about later successes. For others, criticizing the school that was not too nice with the loved applicant seem more appropriate. </p>
<p>It is particularly hard to judge the comments and reactions correctly. I know my own record if far from stellar. ;)</p>
<p>"…like what criteria? GPA? Top grad school admit? Top-paying job? Most prestigious job? Most famous? Most politically powerful? Most philanthropic? Olympic athlete? Most influential? Most popular? Most winningest at game shows? "</p>
<p>More to the point - if you did a longitudinal study of the 2400’s/36’s compared to “mere” excellent scoring peers, do you REALLY think that they would achieved all that more by whatever measure? It’s kind of like being a high school valedictorian. It matters in the moment, but not at all in any kind of long run. The characteristics for long-term success have so very little to do with scoring on standardized testing and it’s kind of scary when adults don’t get that.</p>
<p>Sorry, I obviously wasn’t clear: I think that 5% of the slots should go to students who could be predicted to wind up in the top 5% of graduates (not solely by GPA, but in overall undergraduate contribution to the university, by their presence), at the time of graduation.</p>
<p>I did say: “It would seem to me to allow a lot of room for all sorts of other considerations in constructing the class as a whole.”</p>
<p>Clearly there are multiple considerations. I support affirmative action strongly. I even see the point in admitting students from wealthy families who might give entire buildings. I’m not so interested in having Olympic athletes in a class, but clearly some are.</p>
<p>Was not subscribing to an extreme form of Lake-Woebegonism.</p>
<p>Xiggi-I didn’t think the poster was obnoxious; he was justifiably proud of his obviously smart and talented daughter. The whole thread was obnoxious, though.</p>
<p>Epiphany, you can run circles around most of us with how well you write, in <em>most</em> regards, but sometimes, um, well, I think you aren’t taking into consideration how the reader feels or his/her background. You make gazillions of excellent points, but I guess I would say please remember it’s just a fellow humink at the other end. You hold the power in a couple of ways – that brain of yours and also participating in deciding the fate of younguns who so desperately want to be admitted at an elite university. It’s got to get frustrating having people question the choices made when you know how much effort gets put into the process, but some of these people care so much, who knows, maybe they feel like they or their child just lost a limb if they don’t get accepted. Hopefully not! Anyhow, thanks for listening.</p>
<p>I know, PG, that you called the thread … obnoxious. I was not trying to correct you, but simply opining that the thread conveyed more subtle messages.</p>