<p>@Pizzagirl, #576: Well, if weighted averages are taken, then Bill Gates does the really high scorers a lot of good. STEM + business success + philanthropy. True, Berke Breathed in Bloom County made a lot of fun of a character who seemed to be Gates . . .</p>
<p>“My impression is that HYPS et al, do think their admits will end up in one of those (or like) categories.”</p>
<p>And that’s very much their goal. It makes Harvard look good to have Natalie Portman carrying its brand around Hollywood. HYPS want their alumni to rack up PhDs, Nobel prizes, and Rhodes Scholarships, sure. But they also want them to collect Oscars, Olympic medals, Pulitzers, Silver Stars, platinum albums, Senate seats, Fortune 500 board chairs, etc.</p>
<p>LOL pizzagirl - so what about a longitudinal study of the 2400’s/36’s, also valedictorians, also receiving national academic recognition of some sort? Is that not predictive of long term success? Or will it only matter in the moment?</p>
<p>Quantmech: Thanks for your posts! I have enjoyed and appreciated them.</p>
<p>Here’s a practical suggestion on how to respond to questions about “first choice.” Say, “We don’t have a first choice–we have a strategy.” In fact, this should be the truth, if at all possible.</p>
<p>I think there is a significant misunderstanding between “not accepted at” and “rejected by.” For the strong students described here (or as epiphany puts it, Wonderful, Super Wonderful, and so forth), they are not “being rejected” - as in, the adcom sadly shakes his head and says, this poor schlub just doesn’t have what it takes, look at his B in 10th grade history or his 690 on his Chemistry SAT II or the fact that he was only vice-president of the chess club instead of president. They accept other students who are more interesting, stand out, feel like “wow, this is a kid I’d like to meet and have representing our campus” and therefore they don’t have room for everybody.</p>
<p>In the 10 (wild!!) minutes we had when S had gotten accepted to his ED school and we were awaiting D’s ED decision due momentarily, H and I wanted to emphasize that this wasn’t about whether they “landed” their big schools or not – this was about the accomplishment and hard work that it took for them to be reasonable applicants for elite colleges. That all that work and effort was the real accomplishment, and whether they wound up with USNWR #3 or USNWR #30 wasn’t the point of the whole endeavor. It’s kind of a shame, really, that more people on CC don’t seem to think that way, or if they do, they sure don’t articulate it to their kids. Half of life is showing up, and if your kid “shows up” as a reasonable contender at a elite school, with strong academics, EC’s, evidence of leadership, etc. – then <em>whether or not he gets in,</em> he’s got the goods to be successful in whatever path he chooses.</p>
<p>I liike Hunt’s suggestion about first choices very much. It’s also a good way of thinking. We did a lot to dissuade our kids from putting their first choices on pedestals.</p>
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<p>I emphasize the positive; that’s my training. First, I listen. (That’s the most respectful form of kindness: merely listening. Many people simply need to vent. There’s nothing wrong with that.) If I were to happen to know this student thoroughly, really thoroughly (doubtful, unless that were my own student – and I don’t mean my own child), and I truly believed that the student was a Match for the U, I would validate that with the family (after validating the family’s feelings), indicating that I know the student would have thrived & contributed there, but that it’s the U’s loss, and I know the student will rock wherever. </p>
<p>And that’s because I not only believe, I know, that it’s not 10 schools in the US that Make or Break Lives.</p>
<p>But more importantly, I believe and know that a college admission, whether “low” or “high” (subjectively determined) does not equal “worth.” That’s why “sympathy” is somewhat misplaced, in my view.</p>
<p>If I were to ‘sympathize,’ it would be internal feelings of sympathy toward those who let others erect the bar by which worth is measured.</p>
<p>Pizza where I would agree with you is that HYPSM clearly think its very important and beneficial to their schools and society to have a very diverse, interesting student body. That is clearly the direction they have gone but to Shelby Steele’s point lets stop kidding ourselves and believe that you can take that approach and still claim that you have admitted the best and the brightest academically. Each of those schools admitts exceptionally bright people but the depth is nothing like it used to be.</p>
<p>Deborah, I very much respect and cherish your constructive criticism, and I thank you for answering so directly and respectfully. I will try indeed to communicate more ‘humanly.’ :)</p>
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<p>I just have to call “hogwash” on that one. Shelby Steele has a a very clear agenda. The Ivy League was collateral damage in this particular article in his pursuit of that agenda.</p>
<p>Depth? Read Karabel’s book. Harvard added interviews to the admissions process to keep out the high scoring, academically focused Jews who often had “waspy” names to confuse the unwitting adcoms. They needed to save space for the “Gentleman C’s” who’d be applying from Groton and Exeter. Anyone who thinks the elite U’s cared about intellectual depth "back in the day’ is delusional.</p>
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<p>ROFL! Compared to the days when it was High WASPs from the right schools and handshakes from the headmaster? Who are you KIDDING, sm74? You know, at least the admission price for the dumb-kid-from-the-rich-family is higher than it used to be, so at least if they’re going to let in the occasional dumb-kid-from-the-rich-family, maybe they can get a new science wing or a dozen new scholarships out of the deal. In the old days, they didn’t even get anything from the dumb-kid-from-the-rich-family. </p>
<p>You know, take a look at the stats for any elite school. How much higher could you possibly get?</p>
<p>And if the depth “isn’t what it used to be,” then (for the twentieth time) where are the bright kids shut-out-by-elite-schools going, and why aren’t you aiming your student there where they really value academic excellence? I mean, the proper response to “My kid didn’t get into HYPSM because they admitted the URM down the road who had 200 points lower on his SAT’s” should be, therefore, “Wow, you sure dodged that bullet! If HYPSM lets in slackers like that, then who wants to go there anyway – find a better school!”</p>
<p>Another thought about the Ivy League back in the 50s and 60s and the notion of ‘depth’–</p>
<p>I think it was also the cases that these schools were drawing from a more local applicant pool than they do now, especially for schools such as Dartmouth and Brown. So I think it’s hard to compare overall applicants and matriculants across time.</p>
<p>I do know overall class size was smaller back then as well. But if you took the top 1000 admitted applicants in 1955 to, say, Brown, in terms of SAT and GPA and other academic achievements, and then looked at that bottom applicant in 1955, would it necessarily be better than that 3000 ranked applicant in 2011 who might have been chosen over applicant 2500 because they are a URM, or athlete, or legacy, etc?</p>
<p>“the depth is nothing like it used to be.”</p>
<p>I agree that the depth is nothing like it COULD be if the schools adopted an academics-only admissions policy. But there isn’t any “used to be” here.</p>
<p>We should remember that in the days of the prep school auto-admit, the prep schools themselves had nothing like the student body they have today. They admitted kids from the right families more or less automatically. The SSAT wasn’t even invented until 1957. It’s a whole new ball game today. The average SAT score at Exeter has risen dramatically since 1950.</p>
<p>On 9-2-2011, Pizzagirl wrote:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13161532-post190.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13161532-post190.html</a></p>
<p>Short month, huh?</p>
<p>(But I’m glad you’re back; I find your posts provocative, even when I don’t agree with them.)</p>
<p>The proof is in the pudding. If the student bodies at these schools weren’t, on the whole, generally talented and accomplished, then the schools wouldn’t maintain the prestige that they do; employers would be on to it, graduate schools would be onto it, and their prestige would decline. Doesn’t anyone believe in capitalism any more?!</p>
<p>Put another way - the only people who seem to think HYPSM “should” move to numbers-numbers-strictly-by-the-numbers, or other very objective forms of evaluation only without regard to diversity of any sort, aren’t really people in positions of power to confer prestige in the first place. </p>
<p>I do wonder why it is that when Johnny the suburban white kid of the 3.9 and 2350 kid doesn’t get into HYPSM, he doesn’t seem to have any resentment towards Bobby, another suburban white kid with the 3.8 and 2300 who got in, but only Jamal or Juan Carlos with the 3.7 and 2250 who got in. I guess “less qualified than I am” seems to rankle more if the allegedly less qualified person has a different skin color.</p>
<p>Ha, annasdad - no willpower :-). Actually I realized that my D had looked into attending the school your D is in - it’s a great place - but for other reasons not germane to this thread, we decided not to send her to a residential magnet academy. So we could have been RL buds!</p>
<p>Does anyone know how much the scholarship money was back in 1960s at Harvard or other Ivies? Until they started expanding funding in the last decade, I don’t think too many people cared who they admitted.</p>
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<p>I would probably sympathize, but honestly, rejection is a part of life. There’s orchestras, theatre, scholarships, fellowships, summer programs, internships, grad school, med school, law school, jobs, girls, etc. I get rejected from things on what feels like a daily basis (and I even got into my first choice college!). If you don’t want to deal with rejection in the college admissions process, then it might be best to just apply to safety schools.</p>
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<p>I keep coming back to this, because it seems that there’s a population on CC who thinks that the only way to comfort the next door neighbors whose kid didn’t get in is to call the process opaque and utterly unfair. As opposed to reasonably fair and there simply aren’t enough beds and that’s how life goes. It is quite possible for both of these things to coexist: “Johnny was certainly qualified for HYPSM” and “Johnny didn’t get into HYPSM” and the conclusion can be “It just wasn’t Johnny’s turn, but he’s going to be a rock star wherever he goes” as opposed to “But it’s just not faaaaaair! If those adcoms didn’t privilege [insert favorite rant here] Johnny would have gotten in, for sure!”</p>
<p>Really, if the elites snapped their fingers and took away all benefits of legacies, URM’s, developmental admits, athletes, etc. … Johnny still might not get in. And then what? I think the legacy / URM / athlete thing is just the convenient scapegoat for not accepting the element of luck-of-the-draw.</p>
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<p>It would depend on the neighbor’s attitude. If they were *****ing and moaning about how unfair the process was and how some half-qualified URM got “their kid’s spot,” I’d probably make excuses to not be around them until they’d cooled down. If they were more focused on helping their kid understand that stuff happens for a reason and that s/he still had a bright future ahead at a school where s/he DID get in, I’d be supportive as possible.</p>