<p>weenie - I <em>loved</em> #94. Question is what ever happened to that guy?</p>
<p>He left us to our peon-like selves.</p>
<p>e. There IS such a thing as a “safety Ivy”. Unicorns graze there.</p>
<p>pi. HS grade point averages are actually open ended.</p>
<p>h. There is no engineering subject that is so obscure, so narrow that it can not be subdivided. ("You’re majoring in biomedical engineering of prosthetic limb joints? I’m majoring in biomedical engineering of prosthetic limb joint <em>lubricants</em>!) </p>
<p>g. This is also true of art history, but there’s less money in it.</p>
<p>Berkeley is too liberal
Vanderbilt is too conservative
UCSC is full of hippies
UCSB is a party school
Cal Tech is too nerdy
At Dartmouth everybody drinks
USC has too many football freaks
<em>insert college</em> is too snobby, too arrogant, too Greek, too preppy, too goth, too artsy, too grenola, too this that and the other…
The only schools that are not too anything, ever, are HYP ofcourse.
If their student bodies were composed of chainsaw murderers, they’d still be the tops wouldn’t they?</p>
<p>n+1. Liberal arts degrees are worthless unless you then proceed to Wharton or Harvard Business School for an MBA and go to work for an investment banking firm.</p>
<p>n+2. We all feel sorry for anyone outside New England or the mid-Atlantic states, because they don’t have top public high schools there were all the students score 2250+ on their SATs.</p>
<p>10052: Applications turned in between August 1 and September 30th of senior year are “Early”, and will result in better acceptances. Applications turned in October 1- November 15th are “On-Time”. Applications after November 16th are “Late” and are cause for serious panicking. “OMG, Bobbie already got accepted to 5 schools… the only openings left will be at the local community college.”
DS just finished his 4th application. That puts him about 2 months ahead of his friends, but I don’t predict that it will make a whit of difference in outcomes. It’ll just be easier for me to sleep knowing that the applications will all be in soon!</p>
<p>Oh…I almost forgot this…Everything your neighbor says about their child’s acceptances and finaid awards are true. E.g. “Family has three BMW’s, parents are both doctors, and the kids aren’t that smart. All got accepted to (put in any three schools in the top 25)…with full aid. But they decided to go to (put in flagship U) because it was a better match.”</p>
<p>As soon as the adcom sees my kid’s music video/dance video/theater video/tape/poem/unpublished novel, the application becomes a shoo-in.</p>
<p>jmmom: I wonder too. Maybe he changed his identity? I think that thread was one of the funniest ever on CC. His name was Robert E. Lee. Happy Thanksgiving!</p>
<p>**Love your safeties!!<img src=“%5Bi%5DBut%20good%20lord%20don’t%20seriously%20consider%20actually%20attending%20one!!!%5B/i%5D” alt=“/b”></p>
<p>actually, that should be:
- Start your list with your safeties (build from bottom up)
- Make sure you have more than one safety (If a safety is a sure bet safety, why do you need more than one?)
and 3. Love your safeties</p>
<p>Some colleges are so perfect that if you mention the slightest criticism or even question if it might not be the right school you will get flamed and sent a zillion links to show what a fabulous school it is and that it is perfect for everyone no matter what they’re interested in studying not to mention better than any peer institution.</p>
<p>College admissions is just like the lottery. It is so, like, totally random. You cannot determine your chances by looking at a scattergram but you can figure it out by reading tea leaves and horoscopes.</p>
<p>All students at a SUNY school are miserable due to the rural location and brutal weather. Students at Dartmouth, Williams, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Cornell, Bates, Bowdoin, etc. are somehow impervious to the elements.</p>
<p>Students who go to State U’s binge drink, party and puke in the restrooms. Students who go to elite colleges work hard and play hard.</p>
<p>One Phrase Surprisingly Left Out Of This Discussion:</p>
<pre><code> Helicopter Parent
</code></pre>
<p>“Helicopter parent” - I believe we are all still in denial as to that one!</p>
<p>here we go: Parents who can reel off the college rankings, and who make all inquiries to the admissions office, who edit, re-edit and rewrite Junior’s essay, who stand in the front of the tour group and ask the loudest and the most demanding questions… are normal, involved and concerned parents, who just want the best “fit” for Junior. :)</p>
<p>But I thought it was that Junior exhaustively researched all the schools for himself, phoned the admissions offices with very specific questions from his cell phone during the school day (while walking from AP Chem to AP Calc B/C, of course, since he has no free periods), made all his own travel arrangements for overnight visits, went unaccompanied and handled the airport transfers with great aplomb, and certainly never thought of showing his essays to anyone. :)</p>
<p>At first I was confused…what is MOWC? what is Cur?..After a week, I figured it out. They must be well known CC celebrities, most likely two of their popular sit-down comics. :-)</p>
<p>-If you ask a question that has EVER been answered in ANY CC thread in the past four years, you are obviously completely ignorant because you didn’t take the time to search through the entire CC archive looking for the answer to your question. This is still applicable if you are new on CC and don’t even know that the feature is available; if you were an intelligent person you could have figured it out.</p>
<p>-After a week, you know that Northstarmom went to Harvard and will help with everything.</p>
<p>-If you post questions giving detailed descriptions of the five or six people you are thinking of getting recommendations from, somebody will be able to help you pick which one will write a better letter about you. The fact that they don’t know you or any of the recommenders is inadmissable.</p>
<p>-If the person writing your recommendation doesn’t speak perfect English, the school will likely reject you on that basis alone. Who cares if they are brilliant or your biggest fan?</p>
<p>-If your GPA rose from a 3.9998 to a 3.9999 between your freshman and sophomore year, you should certainly indicate that as HUGE GPA UPWARD TREND on your chances threads and/or resume.</p>
<p>-If you type a resume, you are pathetic and obviously don’t have the real credentials to get into HYP. If you did, you wouldn’t need a resume.</p>
<p>-If you type a resume, it means that you are involved into too many “filler-ECs.” Nobody cares that you are in Art Club, whether or not you spend five hours a week with it. </p>
<p>-If you do type a resume, you better not call it a resume. It better be a bragsheet, activities list, etc. because we are so obviously NOT applying for jobs here.</p>
<p>-If you have a job during high school, make sure that is not something as menial as a waitress or a cashier. If you want it to count for anything, it better be designing the graphics of the website for a top consulting firm in your city. Possibly a fact-checker at a major national newspaper (forgetting, of course, how would get that job while in high school in the first place). Actually, fact-checking doesn’t utilize any intellectual creative capabilities. You better just start your own company.</p>
<p>-After the SAT IIs, start a thread for each test in the SAT forum. Have a fight for about 100 posts about whether or not it’s “legal to share the answers to the test.” It will get very ethical and heated. </p>
<p>-After the majority of students have decided to ignore the “rules,” begin posting specific questions and answers and explaining them or arguing about them. This is especially useful on the Math II threads, where the problems sans font-formatting look like x=8*!2(^3x+4/xy3).</p>
<p>-An hour after the SAT II, start arguing about what the curves will be. Then you can calculate your score.</p>
<p>-There is ONE best test prep book for every part of the SAT. Ask around for long enough and eventually two people will respond with the same suggestion. Usually, they have used a combination of the first 20 pages of Barron’s, the index of Princeton Review, the practice tests of Kaplan, and the vocab of Sparknotes. And scored triple 800s on SAT IIs.</p>
<p>-If you can’t self-study an AP, you are a worthless individual.</p>
<p>-If you are applying to any two out of HYP, you are a prestige whore and you do not deserve a place in the college admissions game at all.</p>
<p>-If another student from your high school is applying to the same college with similar/better stats than you, it is best to post the stats side by side and say WHICH ONE OF US WILL GET IN?!</p>
<p>-Nobody on CC is a jerk. We are just stressed out.</p>
<p>-If you use the wrong stamps/printer paper/ink color/envelope size your recommendations will be trashed upon arrival.</p>
<p>-If you ever need a question answered and you are being ignored in the student forum, move on to the Parent Forum. Especially if it is something controversial.</p>
<p>-The price of USN&WR will be quoted at you in posts all over the place, because obviously you just need to buy it to be a functioning member of society.</p>