<li><p>If you don’t have 10 AP courses before senior year (with 5s on all the tests, of course), you might as well only apply to State U</p></li>
<li><p>If you have ever had a minor disciplinary infraction such as a scuffle or being late to school too many times, forget about applying to elite schools. If you EVER had an alcohol suspension, get ready for a year at community college.</p></li>
<li><p>4.0 is a pretty low GPA.</p></li>
<li><p>1400 old scale SAT is embarrassing.</p></li>
<li><p>SAT IIs should only be taken once one is prepared to get an 800.</p></li>
<li><p>If you aren’t a recruitable level athlete, you better at least be the captain of your team or don’t even bother with the sport.</p></li>
<li><p>“Community service” needs to be your middle name. You better be on a first name basis with everyone down at the homeless shelter. You can take time out to organize a large charity benefit.</p></li>
<li><p>There are only 20 colleges worth attending.</p></li>
<li><p>Nobody’s kids on CC drink in high school. They don’t like the taste.</p></li>
<li><p>Williams may be a pretty good school, but not enough people have heard of it, so you might not want to apply.</p></li>
<li><p>Everyone at Williams is a binge drinker, anyway.</p></li>
<li><p>Swarthmore has perfect kids- except for the one drunken lout from last year. Swarthmore is perfect in every respect, actually, and doesn’t have the big, bad athletes that Williams and Amherst attract.</p></li>
<li><p>If you aren’t first in your class, you really messed up somewhere.</p></li>
<li><p>Only take classes that will look good on your transcript.</p></li>
<li><p>Everyone at University of Chicago is a nerd.</p></li>
<li><p>Be careful of Rice. It’s in Texas which means everyone is conservative and Republican.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If you stay around, you’ll sort it all out and get at the REAL truths!!</p>
<p>Geez, I don’t know MOWC. Maybe hanging around the student section, but the Parents Forum? I agree with the last statement, but I think that it takes less than a week. The parents are pretty good at mercilessly pummeling the people who believe this stuff.</p>
<p>LOL mowc! That list is great! Pretty much sums up some of the crazy threads around here. Sometimes it seems that no matter what the original topic, the thread ends up talking about either drinking, bad athletes, or ec’s and which ones are worth pursuing.</p>
<ol>
<li>If you don’t have at least 2 safeties that have all the criteria that you have for your dream school, you haven’t done due diligence yet.</li>
</ol>
<p>Not that I don’t believe safeties are important! But, we do get a little carried away sometimes, usually in response to the kid or parent who blithefully applies to State U, and all the Ivies plus Duke, Stanford and MIT.</p>
<ol>
<li>Most everyone would benefit from a LAC education - except those few benighted engineering majors.</li>
</ol>
<p>ps - I can beat you, I never drank in high school OR college. “She sits nervously awaiting the lightning bolt of vengance attacking her for lying (partially) on the Internet” ;).</p>
<p>No, that’s too weak. The true CC dogma is that an LAC education is superior in every way to a university education. And this applies to all LACs, all universities, and all students. Students wishing to major in engineering can go to Harvey Mudd or go another LAC that teams up with a university (shudder) to offer an engineering program.</p>
<p>Penn, Columbia, NYU and Chicago are too dangerous anyway, so don’t consider them. :)</p>
<p>I first posted this topic on one of the student threads in response to an OP that inquired about whether all college applicants were really this superior.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you don’t do original research while in high school, you have no chance of getting into an Ivy.</p></li>
<li><p>If you do original research while in high school, it probably really isn’t original and is all about who you know, not what you know.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Or college. They either live in substance free dorms or are too athletic/health conscious to partake. They do occasionally go to parties where other kids drink, however.</p>
<p>Here’s another one:
19. Pre-professionalism is gauche. Students should major in whatever esoteric subject that interests them (the more obscure the better) and worry about a job after they graduate.</p>
<p>Athletes who get into highly selective schools have SAT scores under 1000 and GPAs of 2.5 and would have never gotten into the school except for their sport. They take up most of the Early Decision spots, too, except the few that are left forthe equally un-qualified sons and daughters of alums who have donated buildings.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The goal of high school is to get into an Ivy League school.</p></li>
<li><p>The goal of going to an Ivy League school is to be accepted into a top-ten professional school in business, law or medicine (except for a few weirdos who want to earn a PhD in biomedical sciences at Johns Hopkins or Yale).</p></li>
<li><p>The goal of going to a good professional school is be number one in your career area and make lots of money.</p></li>
<li><p>The goal of making lots of money is having stuff.</p></li>
<li><p>It’s all about the goal – not the journey.</p></li>
<li><p>If you are forced to attend any public university except Berkeley or maybe the University of Virginia, you are a loser who is to be pitied – but in the simple, folksie terms that you can understand with your inferior non-Ivy brain.</p></li>
<li><p>The USN&WR rankings don’t mean anything unless you are accepted to a top-20 college.</p></li>
<li><p>The SAT is meaningless unless you score over 2300.</p></li>
<li><p>Anyone with a 1700 can study their way to a 2400. You just have to work hard enough.</p></li>
<li><p>It’s a miracle that anyone of Asian ancestory is ever admitted to a college in the US due to the amazing amounts of anti-Asian discrimination.</p></li>
<li><p>There are only 12 universities in the US that Asians can attend. The others don’t count.</p></li>
<li><p>College admissions officers are mindless robots who can easily be manipulated by the correct mixture of course selection, essays, and ECs. “Resume stacking” is something they don’t understand.</p></li>
<li><p>If I ask a bunch of anonymous Internet participants what my “chances” are enough times, I can get in the college of my dreams.</p></li>
<li><p>“Regional” colleges are for losers.</p></li>
<li><p>The purpose of the higher education system in America is to insure that I get a high-paying job.</p></li>
<li><p>If my parents loved me they would have $200,000 sitting in the bank to pay for my college education.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Well, for half the student population, the answer to the Swarthmore-Williams dispute is Smith, he says smugly.</p>
<p>And the thing about only 20 colleges being worth attending is ridiculous. I make it at least 75. And I’d worry more about conservatives and Republicans at Texas A&M than Rice.</p>
<ol>
<li> The Greek system is evil. Finding a school with little to no Greek presence is top priority. The pathetic, misguided kids who do join are all drunken partiers who simply are out to buy their friends.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>Everyone who ever joins a fraternity is doomed to a life of alcoholism, if they live past the hazing and pledging phase.</p></li>
<li><p>Every caucasian prep school kid from the northeast who attends school in the south is a racist hooligan.</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>If you got a 2350 on your SATs you should retake them to “bring those scores up”.</p></li>
<li><p>You can only know your professors if you go to a LAC (preferably with <1600 students); large publics are only good for grad school (if that).</p></li>
<li><p>Since the kids with sky-high stats start their “chances” posts with “I’m screwed” or “Probably no chance” or “Average student”, you should probably start your applications to culinary school.</p></li>
<li><p>The only way to determine if you should apply to a school is to have lunch in the dining hall and see if you like the way the students look. You especially want to judge if they are too preppy, cut-throat, liberal/conservative, etc.</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li> The only true measure of an institution’s quality is the number of PHD candidates it produces. A PHD is the only measure of true intellectualism.</li>
</ol>
<p>“If my parents loved me enough, they would have hired one of those Ivy Admissions consultants when I was in the 8th grade, so I wouldn’t have ruined my chances by taking regular pre-calc instead of honors pre-calc in the 10th grade.”</p>