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<p>Sigh. No one said she isn’t smart. No one commented on her character. I’m sure she is a lovely person. The subject of this thread is not her character, but the wisdom of her admissions strategy.</p>
<p>The point simply that her plan of attack for elite college admissions is probably misguided. According to the article, she spends her time being tutored in math and self-studying extra APs rather than participating in sports and ECs (and by ECs, I do not mean just school clubs, but intellectual pursuits beyond test-taking). This may be a misrepresentation of who she is and what she does. It would not be surprising: most articles of this type misrepresent the unfortunate souls who agree to be interviewed, because most of the time the writer has a conclusion in mind and the interviewees are used as stock figures to prove a predetermined point. In this article she is a stock figure: the Asian cliche.</p>
<p>She has great qualifications, and I’m sure that she will get into great schools. But if she is relying on self-studying APs as her ONLY means of “standing out,” as the article says, she may be making a mistake, depending on her target schools. Maybe she will have wonderful recommendations that emphasize her personal and intellectual qualities and do the trick and differentiate her from the pile of candidates with similar lists of APs and test scores. I certainly hope so, for her sake.</p>