Thought Experiment: Build the Perfect Applicant

[xiggi]

<p>

While I agree with you, I will note that people also actively seek and use “methods” to improve specific elements of their academic package–such as SAT scores.

</p>

<p>“Methods” that focus on helping students earning a score they are CAPABLE of is not packaging. Telling someone that he or she can get better by practicing is hardly “fabricating” a new applicant, especially when the tools are a $15, a box of pencils, and perhaps access to this website.</p>

[lisa58]

<p>I should just stop reading this. The concept of creating or packaging our kids or treating them like science projects gives me the creeps. When they need some parental advice or help in reaching their own reasonable goals (that is, goals they’re old enough to understand; I’d say a fifth-grader’s aim to go to Harvard doesn’t qualify), or when we as parents have to impose some realities on them whether they like it or not, that’s another story. This may be a good-natured game, but it’s played all too seriously in real life.
Okay, finished opining.</p>

[Hunt]

<p>

Finally, don’t confuse packaging with creating the product. If you’ve got a kid who is a genuinely talented artist, have him/her create a portfolio and get help doing it. Attend those “national portfolio days.” (If that’s not the right name, I apologize.) If your kid is an excellent actor, have her attend one of the numerous high quality summer programs, or at least enter things like the national Shakespeare contest. All of these will help develop a talent and package it. But don’t think that if your kid has no artistic talent whatsoever, you can “package” him or her in such a way as to convince someone that (s)he does. And if your kid can’t act at all, (s)he isn’t going to win the Shakespeare contest.

“Methods” that focus on helping students earning a score they are CAPABLE of is not packaging. Telling someone that he or she can get better by practicing is hardly “fabricating” a new applicant, especially when the tools are a $15, a box of pencils, and perhaps access to this website.

I agree with both of these points. Indeed, I think they’re essentially the same point.</p>

<p>I would just add that the truly ultimate candidate wouldn’t have fake or overblown credentials–they’d be real.</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>Fake authenticity, and be the absolute BEST when it comes to being humble!</p>

[xiggi]

<p>“especially when the tools are a $15, a box of pencils, and perhaps access to this website.”</p>

<p>As it often happens to me, one word stayed in my keyboard. The sentence should have read “especially when the tools are a $15 book, a box of pencils, and perhaps access to this website.” The book is the College Board “Blue” book.</p>

[momma-three]

<p>If I had to do it over again…I would have all of my kids do ineresting volunteer work through church groups to far off places…a great education to augment what they learn in school. It was one of those things they never did but would have loved.</p>