<p>Yeah, I"m not sure the schools are all that full of URMs “filling spaces.”</p>
<p>I did hear an interview with the president of Harvard in which she said there are, right now, 650 Chinese nationals attending Harvard, in addition to all the other international students. That might help, too. To be from another country.</p>
<p>I don’t care if they want to admit nearly a quarter of the student body as international students. But…it is a lot.</p>
<p>Mine qualify as extroverts, also comfortable with their own company and downtime. Neither held a peer title in hs of any significance. (One was the x rep, but did zip over two years.) But they were deeply and broadly engaged in service. And one had lots of music. Leadership is more than top of the heap. A lot has to do with the choices you do make. How you engage reflects how you’ll engage on campus. Isolation is its own issue.</p>
<p>garland - Though it’s probably presumptuous, I feel concern and sympathy for her. I only posted on this thread because you did. I am glad you did! </p>
<p>She’s a HS senior. I was probably 40 before it occurred to me my entire world view was middle class, heteronormative WASP. She may look back on this with dismay at some point in the not too distant future. Who knows? Seems a possibility, at least, to me.</p>
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I said “URMs etc” and to be more clear should have probably said URMs, legacies, developmental admits, celebrities, athletes, and so on. Which undoubtedly do take up significant portions of the classes at these schools.</p>
<p>That’s beside the point, what I was getting at is that it is very possible to be admitted without being a) a diversity admit or b) “running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off” as someone said earlier.</p>
<p>I seriously hope she doesn’t spend a lot of time looking back at things she did when she was 17 when she is 40.</p>
<p>I think the U in URM stands for underrepresented.</p>
<p>^^mainly I was wondering how the article will be regarded by her college classmates next year? Probably a mixed reaction, just like here.</p>
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<p>I’m wondering about this. If you leave out all of the issues she touched on, what would be the “arms” in the “arms race” you would write about? Grades and test scores?</p>
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<p>I doubt it will be regarded at all, since none of them will have read it. :p</p>
<p>^^if she wrote from the perspective of “the kid on the couch” watching reality tv - would that do it? If there was no mention of APs, ECs, etc.? Wouldn’t we get the message that she had disengaged? Does there need to be the contrast? Don’t we know it is there?</p>
<p>If its not slightly incendiary, it doesn’t get published. </p>
<p>But, then we’d be talking about the media in America today. And, that is just a whole other depressing story.</p>
<p>“I did hear an interview with the president of Harvard in which she said there are, right now, 650 Chinese nationals attending Harvard, in addition to all the other international students.”</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of the Chinese/Indian/Korean/… students in Harvard or other elite schools are graduate students. The international undergraduate population is still very small, rarely above 10%.</p>
<p>poetgrl: I am wondering whether deliberately disengaging from the college admissions arms race wouldn’t be rather an incendiary and radical notion in the WSJ or on CC. I am thinking someone could write something incredibly provocative about opting out.</p>
<p>And I am giving this idea away, free of any restriction, to any interested high school student reading. ;)</p>
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<p>However, your Ivy League application essay may not be the best place for such musings. ;)</p>
<p>Yeah, my youngest opted out for some pretty uncompelling reasons. ;)</p>
<p>But we were discussing the other day why people hate the word Fate but love the word Destiny. I don’t think that would get published in any major newspapers, either, but it would make a nice paper.</p>
<p>well - if you are really opting out, you aren’t submitting those applications & maybe no applications at all, unless to an open admissions type school? Do those still exist?</p>
<p>If you don’t happen to have a relative at a big newspaper -
I guess you start a blog about opting out -
And after you have a following-
Self publish on Amazon-
Get noticed by the mainstream media
and so on</p>
<p>I could imagine it really getting traction.</p>
<p>Controversial? Potentially threatening to parents? </p>
<p>A movie about snowflakes opting out. It has to have a happy ending, though.</p>
<p>Well, she didn’t opt out, like that. More like EA UNC-CH. Poor dear.</p>
<p>But, I just asked her and she said “Walden Pond” is one of her favorites and suggested that I recommend that to you. I’m not kidding. This is what I have to live with. :D</p>
<p>Please tell her I recently relocated to Walden Pond, which in the 21st C does happily include both internet and plumbing. I am pretty sure Thoreau would have wanted plumbing if it had been available.</p>
<p>I have some neighbors who don’t even have the internet. At Walden Pond the neighbors are more than a mile away.</p>
<p>So why do you think people hate the word fate and love the word destiny?</p>
<p>I think this has a lot to do with elite school admissions, personally.</p>
<p>I didn’t know that people hate the one word and love the other? Is this a reference to something?</p>
<p>Just one more literary allusion I don’t get?</p>
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<p>The great thing is, if you believe a college devotes too much time / money / attention / admission spots to athletes, you don’t HAVE to apply there, you know. You CAN vote with your admissions booklet, so to speak. But, again, spare me the “I don’t like what they do at all, but I’m just DYING to go there.”</p>