<p>Consolation, I guess we all just look at the world (and this site) through different lenses. I’d say the favored story starts here with, “what can I do to get my eighth grader ready for elite college admission?” followed by the offspring starting “chance me for Ivies!” and “what is more prestigious, Duke or Williams?” threads, followed by “should my special snowflake double up on AP science classes now so she can take molecular biology at the local university as a senior in high school?” and “of course my child will be applying to the Ivies/Stanford/MIT…he has worked so hard and deserves to get in and oh by the way I really don’t want him coming back and living at home after graduation, which would for sure happen if he went to a lesser school.”</p>
<p>sally, I said FAVORED not MOST COMMON. The person who relates the story I cited will probably not get a whiff of criticism from anyone. THe person who posts about positioning their 8th grader will get plenty of people telling them to calm down and back off.</p>
<p>lookingforward, I think MIT has mockery of well-qualified, hard-working students on its official Admissions web site right now. If you go to the official site at [The</a> Selection Process | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/selection]The”>Our selection process | MIT Admissions) and then look at several of the 5 blog posts that are specifically highlighted there, you will see what I am talking about; at least I hope so. </p>
<p>I am not referring to the specific insult mentioned by Daniel Golden (“textureless math grind”), nor to the phrases used by MIT adult volunteer interviewers in posts on CC.</p>
<p>Sincerely, I do not understand why you react to the comments by Weiss and not to these comments. What is your thinking on this?</p>
<p>Alh, think about that thread. Not that winning big math competitions> “as ever a valid reason to accept those students.” But whether they should be AUTO admits.</p>
<p>A discussion turns personal when people assign derogatory and judgmental labels to an entire group of people who hold an opposing opinion from theirs. It’s not about the disagreement per se or the strong challenging of ideas. It’s about dismissing others as less intelligent or narrow-minded if their ideas, or the life experiences that support them, differ from yours. Now, not all ideas are equally well-thought out or equally accurate. But on a thread like this, populated by intelligent people with different perspectives, I think an attitude of dismissal is uncalled for. </p>
<p>It’s better to explore why smart people think differently about the same issue. I think regional differences come into play quite a bit on this topic. No doubt my perspective partly arises from living in a densely populated state with a large, highly-educated international population.</p>
<p>And, re lookingforward’s comment in #754: I don’t know, poetgrl, but wasn’t I included in the discussion that you were grateful we weren’t having on this thread (post #730)?</p>
<p>Sorry, cross-posted with poetgrl’s more recent comment (#756). How could I have missed an entire MIT-fest?</p>
<p>TheGFG, I agree with you. I think you might be ascribing statements to me that were actually made by others. I do feel strongly that people should back up sweeping generalizations or at least qualify them as such. (In this case I am referring mostly to LoremIpsum and his claim that an elite degree is more likely to get someone hired in the current job market). Your statement about the ads you have seen supported his claim, so I asked you to provide examples. Which I then responded to. :)</p>
<p>A thought not directly related to the recent discussion:</p>
<p>When excellent students are rejected from “top” schools, and wind up going to a public research university, they might be disappointed if they feel that they could have taken it easier, had much more fun, and had the same outcome. If they know other students in their classes who are also going to Large State University and spent less time on academic work and taking EC’s to the extreme, I think they can be forgiven for feeling this way.</p>
<p>In my view, they did not actually “have the same outcome” as those who put out less effort academically and in EC’s. They have gained all of the intellectual growth (+ the fraction of the factual knowledge that they have retained) and all of the personal growth that they garnered from their efforts. They will have wound up in the “same place” geographically, but not in the same place educationally. Presumably, they will qualify for and take more challenging courses, and continue to gain from those.</p>
<p>I have one request in connection with this, for anyone out there who is a high school teacher: Bearing in mind that a lot of excellent students will not get into the top schools, please assign the kind of work that causes intellectual growth in the students, independent of their admissions outcomes, and please do not assign work where the intellectual returns are dwarfed by the time investment. If the local school that your sons/daughters attend is like our local school, you will understand the type of assignment that I would like to see deep-sixed. If not, you are fortunate, as are your children!</p>
<p>The situation is really fairly pernicious when combined with grade inflation. By my calculations, at the local school, which uses only unweighted GPA, a student who had a single B+ for one semester in one class, and A’s otherwise, would not make it into the top 10% of the class. This tends to cut down on the advisability of opting out of pointless work.</p>
<p>It seems that we are going back to the original discussion and to what the young girl did write. </p>
<p>And, fwiw, I have to disagree about the WSJ being an example of satire. It wasn’t. While it relied on humor and stacks of cheap shots, it surely did not present a veiled (or obvious) constructive social criticism in any form or fashion. If that was her intent, which I seriously doubt after reading about her “explanations” on national TV, she failed miserably. </p>
<p>I still think that “we” gave way too much credit to a gratuitous and hollow penned tantrum by a misguided teenager who gave free reins to her penchant for fabrication and grandstanding.</p>
<p>All in all, it reminds me of the virtue of NOT commenting on the success and failures of others in terms of admissions. We have had the discussions about what do we say, and my suggestion is still to simply smile and let the other party assume it is in agreement. And, more importantly, to remember how virtuous it is to NOT second-guess or diminish the success of others, especially if part of disavantaged groups. And that the opposite, regardless of the attempted humor, is nothing short of … vicious.</p>
<p>It’s one of the featured discussions in admissions and hindsight Ahl. It’s on the side scroll to the left, last one down, at this point.</p>
<p>QM, I agree that the busywork grades which were originally invented as a way to give students who had difficulty proving mastery of the material on tests, as extra points, ie…participation and homework grades…have taken over grading in a negative way. I think this has to do with the fact that a lot of the people who became teachers benefitted from the added participation grades and did not know that many of us were not even being graded on homework since we were getting A’s on the tests.</p>
<p>It’s very unfortunate development in my opinion.</p>
<p>“The situation is really fairly pernicious when combined with grade inflation. By my calculations, at the local school, which uses only unweighted GPA, a student who had a single B+ for one semester in one class, and A’s otherwise, would not make it into the top 10% of the class. This tends to cut down on the advisability of opting out of pointless work.”</p>
<p>I saw some posts some time ago in which someone was advocating for a mandatory “expunge” of the bottom x% of all student grades. The reason was exactly this. Grade inflation makes the grade in a single course so punitive that very few students take the risk of taking an interesting but difficult class, or as in your example, an interesting but busywork class.</p>
<p>Exactly. And double your points if the private schools the kid turned down includes an Ivy. And you totally peg the CC Correct-O-Meter if one of the turned down schools is among the YPSM group. And total apotheosis of the kid (and his/her parents) is achieved if the turned down school is Harvard.</p>
<p>Wow. Just wow. I go away for several hours and return today to see this inaccurate and highly reactive post, which i.m.o., is character defamation of me – accusing me of something I never did. </p>
<p>Wait: let’s get a show of hands. Who here things I “called GFG a liar?” (In any post of mine, here or on any other thread.)</p>
<p>My post 682:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>= My perception. I didnt call you a liar.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>= My perception.</p>
<p>There and elsewhere, I pleaded for help in finding those, calling not you a liar, but MYSELF dense.</p>
<p>Way to completely mischaracterize another poster, in entire unfairness, engage in character assassination of another, entirely misrepresent their motives, and nastily refer to that poster in the third person, to another poster. </p>
<p>Further, my genuineness with regard to your point of view (earlier) was that I granted your very points your point about every right to strive for an elite school, a universal right, I pointed out. I demonstrated in previous posts that I honored your position and was by no means criticizing it. I defended you, and you responded by attacking me. Way to create enemies. </p>
<p>I think you need to stop personalizing every posters reaction to general commentary about college admissions, not sent in your direction. No ones persecuting you. But you are very truly persecuting me now, and not surprisingly, I am reacting.</p>
<p>coureur, why such disdain and condescension? Simply because not everyone agrees with the premise that “elite” schools are the ticket to happiness and prosperity for everyone? Geez, this thread is bringing out the worst in people.</p>
<p>Well, given the article we started with, I suppose it was bound to eventually bring out the worst in all of us.</p>
<p>Personally, I feel I just gave a very humor willing and cursory read to the article, and having taken in the fact that so many people’s feelings were hurt and some even outraged by the article, I think I was not reading carefully enough. I know I wasn’t reading carefully at all, in fact.</p>
<p>I was just happy to see a kid who was choosing sarcasm and humor over the depth of despair I was seeing in some posts, and I thought “well this is a better way to deal with rejection.”</p>
<p>Anyway, fwiw, it is a sign of depression in teenagers if they have a “realistic” view of themselves. An actual symptom. of depression.</p>
<p>So, I always feel better when a kid seems inflated, to an extent.</p>
<p>All that said, if the article is that offensive to so many, then it is simply offensive. No doubt about that.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, Sally, if it came across like that. My intent was actually quite the opposite – I was trying to present a clear-cut situation where a state flagship could outweigh an Ivy League school in desirability. In other words, a situation where the ultimate number of job opportunities favored the flagship.</p>
<p>But no student should choose a school based only on how many job interviews it might yield 4 years hence. Fit is very important, if for no other reason than the fact that you will be happier and generally do better in a place that feels like home.</p>
<p>My younger son used to be painfully shy as a child and even now is fairly quiet, content to mostly listen unless he has something particularly relevant to say. When I discovered CC and found that changes in financial aid made even the most elite schools an affordable option, we were most drawn to the top LACs which were small enough to know him and encourage him to become involved rather than to hide in his room and only study.</p>
<p>And, indeed, both Williams and Amherst sent him early-writes which tempted him. Yet in the 7 months between the time that he started the application process (very early via Questbridge) and the time he needed to make a final decision, he opened up: captaining Scholastic Bowl, peer-tutoring AP math and science classes, ACT prep and his fellow math-team members, giving required front-of-class presentations in his AP history and English classes made a profound difference. So by the time he visited Brown, he felt comfortable going with a slightly larger school with its correspondingly larger selection of class choices. But Brown’s 5000 students is a far cry from UIUC’s 35,000!</p>
<p>I do believe that attending an elite school gives a quiet student an advantage during the job interview process: you are generally assumed to be intelligent enough to be viable for the job and thus don’t have to “sell yourself” so hard. Yet for students who are outgoing and aggressive enough to “seize the day” in pursuing opportunities as TAs, researchers and interns, the opposite may well hold true: a large school with a small honors program may well yield the most opportunities to prove oneself with a minimum of peer competition.</p>
<p>After affordability, fit should be the second most important criterion. Then selectivity should be considered. I am sorry if I have not been clear on the matter in my earlier posts. Yes, you can find a job no matter where you attend college, but you may have to work much harder at it or supplement your education with more internships.</p>
<p>Nope. I happen to agree that elite schools are not right for everyone. In fact I consider that point to be obvious. But I do consider turning down an elite school to be simply a legitimate choice and not a demonstration of personal virtue to be applauded or bragged about (and at the same time implying that those who choose to attend the elite school have less virtue). </p>
<p>And I do get tired of the Ivy-bashers - people who are eager to jump in on any thread they come across to assert that they aren’t all that great and may not even be mediocre. They are the flip side of the Ivy-or-nothing obsessed kids (and parents) we so often see on the Chances and other threads, and they are every bit as misguided and tiresome.</p>