The College Admissions Process Is Broken

@preppedparent

That might be the norm at prep schools. I think it would be very unusual for public schools to keep records of whether a student’s parents attended college.

One’s parents education is self reported on the Common Application itself - while it may be impactful in a GC’s LOR, there isn’t a need to provide such insight.

I disagree, schools are communities and teachers, principals and guidance counselors want to get to know their students. In large communities, a few may fall thru the cracks, but these are dedicated professionals who know their community and know the students and make it their business to meet with the students and get to know their unique challenges.

For the UC system, including Berkeley and UCLA, GCs do not provide any sort of letter or report as part of the application process. In fact, transcripts are self-reported by the students applying, and are not sent by the schools until the summer after HS. So, GCs in CA don’t necessarily get to know their students, especially those not applying beyond the UC/CSU system. And, many GCs in CA are likely less-practiced at writing LoRs, school profiles, etc.

The UC application, which doesn’t use the Common App, also asks about the highest level of education completed by each parent, but not about what colleges the parents attended.

I disagree with preppedparent on this one. I agree that principals and guidance counselors are often dedicated professionals, but in a typical public school with 4 GCs and 2000 students, and something as not visually obvious as 1st gen status, there is no way they actually know this about many or even most students. That doesn’t even account for GC turnover (at least one GC has turned over every year we’ve been here).
So my guess is if self-reported and not readily verified first gen status continues its growth in importance to the admissions process, expect stories about taking advantage of this system to follow.

Agree with #143 and #144 that in a typical high school, GCs probably do not know their students (as far as college plans) anywhere near as well as GCs in academically elite private schools may. To the extent that a student could attract GC mindshare, s/he would have to stand out in some way – but not all students in a typical high school who stand out do so in a good way (e.g. the students in danger of flunking or dropping out).

“99.9% are honest and looking to do the right thing - the .1% that is broken will remain that way, but it won’t change what the rest do…”

In filling out the college app, I think most are honest, not sure if it’s 99.9% but over 90. Where the misrepresentation happens is on fafsa and the income tax returns that the FAOs see. There you have a lot of income and asset hiding, if you will.

Lying on the common app about your parents’ education or anything else may be tempting for various reasons but doing so can have very serious consequences, up to expulsion, rescinding of your degree, etc. I doubt people lie about that anymore than they lie about their race or ECs or anything else, and any lie is, IMO, not worth the risk of getting caught.

FWIW our GC in a large public school DID ask, via the form families filled out before she wrote her recs.

^Race, especially seems like a case where the odds of getting caught would be about zero. I can’t imagine any college asking a student to take a DNA test to prove their race, and if you go by the one drop theory, you can’t assume anything from appearances either.

I think though if you put Native American a box pops up asking if you are registered and for your tribe number. I heard that MIT had a followup questionnaire for students who put Native American on their app (not the common app).

Native American is really the only race/ethnicity category that may require some verifying documentation (tribal enrollment). Everything else is basically on the honor system, since colleges do not want to get into the business of determining race classification (for Native American, they outsource it to the tribes). For example, someone who may appear white may honestly identify as (also) black on a regular basis (e.g. http://theundefeated.com/features/isaiah-hartenstein-nba-draft-2017/ ), but someone else who may appear white may only identify as black on a college application based on 1% African ancestry in a DNA test. A college may reasonably want to stay far away from the often subjective guesswork of determining which is actually the case.

Yes but lying about your parents having gone to college seems like it would not be hard to prove, if the college suspected you lied.

Race is fuzzy anyway, was back when it was used to enslave or segregate, still is.