<p>"The hook aspect comes into play because it’s a less common life experience, and universities are looking for interesting people from diverse backgrounds. Applications don’t have a section that says, “please indicate which of the following hooks apply …” Instead, they provide an opportunity to highlight how your own unique background has made you a compelling candidate via your essays. "</p>
<p>no, no, I know that. </p>
<p>Someone said all the ivy admits in her school were either URMs, athletes, or 2nd gen immigrants. Implying it was a standard category like URM or athlete, not something to hang an essay on.</p>
<p>Can’t we beat up on Shelby Steele instead of each other? After all, he’s the one who is lying, while the rest of us are doing our best to tell the truth.</p>
<p>The irony here is that while it is true that legacies, URMs, and athletes have an advantage in getting into the Ivies, the legacies, URMs and athletes that do get in are ridiculously well qualified academically–just a little bit less qualified than the unhooked people. And since the pool of the unhooked is bigger, the effects people are complaining about are seen. But this doesn’t mean that Harvard is taking dumb people–in fact, it’s taking much smarter people than it used to take, and more accomplished people.</p>
<p>Let me amend that–all the top schools are probably taking a few dumb people–the same ones they have always taken, the children of the super-rich. Do you think Shelby Steele is complaining about them?</p>
<p>Y’now, in 2006, 238 students scored 2400 on the SAT. In 2008, only 294 students earned a perfect score. Now unless that percentage has gone WAY up, I’m beginning to get suspicious about all these anecdotal reports of multiple-2400s-I-personally-know who got rejected by every Ivy League school.</p>
<p>And 34,567 of those 238 earned that score in China or India. :)</p>
<p>PS There are more perfect scores than the ones reported by TCB. You must add the combination of multiple sittings over several years and superscoring to the final tally. Still a very small number compared to the 30,000+ valedictorians who all are shoo-ins at Harvard.</p>
<p>No, it really happened, annasdad. I think it is important for the top-scoring group to know this. The students with 2400’s who are rejected do <em>not</em> in general have weak GPAs, unchallenging classes, no EC’s, poor essays, problem personalities, and/or lukewarm recommendations–as I would have guessed before seeing admissions in operation second-hand (friend of child). Of course, a few of them probably do; but it’s probably not the majority of those who are rejected.</p>
<p>In the case that I know of, the student scored 2400 in a single sitting, first time taking the SAT in high school (had also taken it in middle school for a talent search, one year). Incidentally, the student’s interviewer (for the school where he came off the waitlist) said that she had given him the top recommendation in 15 years of interviewing.</p>
<p>Look for deadparrot55 on the MIT thread from 2007. Every item in the post is true.</p>
<p>"Let me amend that–all the top schools are probably taking a few dumb people–the same ones they have always taken, the children of the super-rich. Do you think Shelby Steele is complaining about them? "</p>
<p>But THEYRE the ones who make America EXCEPTIONAL!!! </p>
<p>remember how American exceptionalism works</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If european countries have govt health insurance, or high marginal tax rates on the wealthy, or carbon trading schemes, well we cant have that, cause god made us different, and to look to them for models is to ignore our distinctive heritage</p></li>
<li><p>If european countries like germany, france and the UK are practicing fiscal austerity, well we should copy them, cause if the whole world is doing something and we arent, it must mean we are being obstinate and unrealistic. They are being sensible. On global warming following Russia is being sensible, while following Europe and Japan is sacrificing our exceptionalism. WRT to Australia and global warming, it depends which Aussie party is currently in office. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>With respect to education, we should of course follow European and east asian countries that use test scores to determine university admissions. However we should NOT follow them on university financing, or on the role of the national govt vs the states. Whoever does not understand this does not really understand our exceptionalism.</p>
<p>The Ivies used to be about only the smartest folks, but not anymore. As a result we will need to elect a President who graduated Texas A&M and couldnt keep up a B average.</p>
<p>Is this when we go look for Kennedy’s application and test scores? Or do we jump directly to Kerry versus Bush? </p>
<p>Fwiw, you can find great politicians who attended BOTH Texas A&M and Harvard. Too bad the best one got kicked into the gutter because of the current one. But we should not get deeper in politics, even it is remotely connected to education.</p>
I believe he’s talking about Rick Perry. Which, call me crazy (and I’m sure someone will),seems political and a bit off topic to me, except in a pretty tangential way.</p>
<p>“Fwiw, you can find great politicians who attended BOTH Texas A&M and Harvard. But we should not get deeper in politics, even it is remotely connnected to education”</p>
<p>Then why are we discussing Shelby Steele at all? That was a political hit piece. There are enough other threads for discussing Ivy admissions. Let the mods close this thread.</p>
<p>BTW, Im sure there are bright grads from Texas A&M who arent resistant to science. Its just amusing how some folks try to pull off the elitist act AND the aw shucks populist act at the same time (Shelby “Black children who get into Harvard with a 50 point SAT edge are having their moral characters destroyed” Steele managed to vote for Sarah Palin to one John McCain heart problem away from the Presidency)</p>
<p>"Which, call me crazy (and I’m sure someone will),seems political and a bit off topic to me, except in a pretty tangential way. "</p>
<p>We are talking about Shelby Steele’s hit piece. If politics is off topic, this thread should have been locked from the get go. ACTUAL discussion of colleges - other than the, I think, widely agreed point that Steele is lying about Ivy admissions, is off topic to this thread.</p>
<p>Of course. Because at the end of the day, these are humans selecting other humans. How did you pick your best friends? Your spouse? Did you objectively evaluate them on a numbered set of criteria and dispassionately pick the person who scored the highest, or did you use some level of intuition and gut feel as to who would be most interesting, click with you, etc.? </p>
<p>It seems like Common Sense 101 that the adcom who came from a hardscrabble background might (subconsciously) favor those from a similar background, the adcom who is a real fan of classical music might (subconsciously) favor those who excel in it, and so on and so forth. You just need to read the Gatekeepers to see how that plays out. That’s not “unfair,” it’s just part of life selection for anything, and as long as people are aware of their own subtle biases and try not to overly perpetuate them, what’s the big deal? That’s how life goes. And yes, it may be that the deserving oboe player from Manhattan doesn’t get in because he’s the fifth oboe player from Manhattan on a Friday afternoon and they’re sick and tired of oboe players, but he’s the first oboe player from Manhattan on Monday morning at a different college. It’s just a certain level of randomness in life that is unavoidable. I swear, it’s like some people on here have never actually interviewed candidates for a job or anything, the way they don’t understand the vagaries of life.</p>
<p>arbitrary decisions are unfair. And yes, they are found throughout life.</p>
<p>Now if only Mr Steele and his associates could see that, and not defend a distribution of income, wealth, and life chances based on arbitrary things, as “American exceptionalism” t and claim that its heresy to try to ameliorate the results of such arbitrariness.</p>