Don’t forget the natural: Kevin…
Yes-- I meant to say Kevin the natural.
Cardinalfang’s assessment matches what we have seen. Zoes win out every time over Chloes even though they may prefer Chloes because these schools like to keep their SAT and GPA averages up to preserve their rankings.
The goal of elites couldn’t be to educate, cultivate, or curate the Does. Even with the greater likelihood of concentration of Does…there’s just not enough Does to go around so the elites could guarantee that 100% of the admitted class are Does. Not to mention some Does may desire to go elsewhere for their own personal reasons and/or financial constraints and the vast majority of elite colleges are likely to feel a campus filled with Does…or Flooeys may not make for the most vibrant campus as opposed to ones filled with Does, Zoes, Chloes, and maybe a handful of Lizas as well.
From what I’ve seen from growing up in neighborhoods with such families and attending K-12 with such kids, most such parents would not only expect them to study for hours on end, but also put in some time working in the family business.
The more complex issues which are often missed are:
- Such families may not be aware that working in the family business or doing other "ordinary" afterschool/weekend jobs/family responsibilities would be regarded as a positive hook by elite Us.....especially considering most of the publicized hype in the mass media about "How to get into elite colleges" are driven by and mainly targeted to the upper/upper-middle class set who have the means to hire admissions consultants and game the system by paying for those supposed "overseas charity trips".
- Some families at the lower SES end of the spectrum may be urging their children to study because it's a way to "keep them out of trouble" in violent dangerous neighborhoods where venturing outside one's apartment/house door can mean taking one's life in one's own hands. That and possibly a large presence of "bad elements" like violent gangs/drug dealers who could be a pervasive negative influence and/or threatening presences for the children and families constrained to being in/staying in those neighborhoods due to financial and other constraints. I have some firsthand experiences with this aspect as I was mugged several times from 6 onwards and I had to attend a couple of funerals of elementary school classmates who were victims of violent crime from such "bad elements". One such victim was killed when while walking home from junior high school, he unwittingly walked right into a gun battle between two rival groups of local drug gangs.
- Some families at the lower SES end of the spectrum may be urging their children to study because it's a way to "keep them out of trouble" in violent dangerous neighborhoods where venturing outside one's apartment/house door can mean taking one's life in one's own hands. That and possibly a large presence of "bad elements" like violent gangs/drug dealers who could be a pervasive negative influence and/or threatening presences for the children and families constrained to being in/staying in those neighborhoods due to financial and other constraints. I have some firsthand experiences with this aspect as I was mugged several times from 6 onwards and I had to attend a couple of funerals of elementary school classmates who were victims of violent crime from such "bad elements". One such victim was killed when while walking home from junior high school, he unwittingly walked right into a gun battle between two rival groups of local drug gangs.
^^but that’s the thing, the clearly don’t prefer Chloe; if they did, they would accept her.
And if I was an Adcom at an extremely selective college, that’s what I’d do, for perceived “fairness”, if for no other reason. Why would I take someone ranked “barely” in the top decile, over someone who is in the top ~1%, but had less sleep due to a more rigorous schedule?
btw: a bunch of classes at my college require math…I would much rather admit someone who could also take courses in that discipline, even if they are an intended Lit major.
I don’t even think the elite colleges are picking Zoes because they want to keep their averages up. Their averages are plenty high already. Rather, they’re picking Zoe because under their criteria, she’s better. And that’s the problem. If a college incentivizes some attributes, they’ll get those attributes.
If elite colleges were serious that they didn’t want students to take a zillion APs, the colleges would ensure that admissions committees didn’t know how many APs students took over . And they’d demand that high schools calculate GPA and rank without rewarding APs over . If they believe their applicants shouldn’t take more than of APs, they need to stop rewarding students who do.
Elite schools know that only half of US high schools even offer APs in the first place.
And they’re choosing their students mostly from the half that offer APs.
I think elites are pursuing this policy publicly to cloak what they are already doing - it gives them an acceptable excuse to accept URMs with standardized scores and grades below say what an accomplished Asian student might have.
In short, they can pursue their diversity agendas and still get the high scoring people if they want - and if anyone protests (such as an Asian class action
lawsuit), the elites can say “but we are changing how we do admissions.”
I doubt, however, that anything besides the window dressing will change.
206 posts before the A bomb…The thread closer!!
Back to topic…I think colleges just need to embed some other way to weed out Zoe, assuming they don’t want her. She’s still a great candidate after all.
I’m just not convinced there needs to be a systemic, philosophical change in how top colleges evaluate students. Rather, we need smaller, common sense changes:
- Only provide space on applications for a few main ECs, removing the incentive for racking up loads of comparatively trivial experiences. Make sure the language clearly states that employment and home assistance may also be included.
- Make it clear in the language of the application and other admissions materials that GPAs will be calculated according to the college's own systems, and will not necessarily reflect the number arrived at by the high school.
- Stop asking for or tracking class rank. Whether or not a student is in the top ten percent of his or her class doesn't really matter when this may well be an effect of taking AP Environmental Science rather than choir, rather than a reflection of differences in ability. The transcript, combined with a school profile, should be enough for admissions officers to determine approximately how this student is measuring up by any substantive assessment.
- Stop asking guidance counselors to sign off on the academic rigor of the student's program. Instead (if this isn't already happening), ask guidance to present a school profile that includes information like which AP/IB courses are offered, how many students participate in those courses, and what the average AP exam score is. That should give schools a really good idea of what kind of high school they are dealing with and where an individual student falls.
- Include a section that asks students to briefly explain any deviations from the high school's typical academic program (i.e, skipping Algebra II). This should include a requirement to indicate how they learned the material for any skipped courses, with relevant transcripts when appropriate. This should make it easier to distinguish between heavily packaged students and the naturally gifted without also requiring struggling students to "confess" to every bit of tutoring received.
These changes would, I think, be helpful in alleviating the pressure to aggressively “game” the system lest one fall behind the cohort who are eschewing non-honors electives in order to take every AP available and using the summers to skip ahead in the math sequence. Increasing the emphasis on volunteerism is just going to lead to another kind of rat race, no matter how good schools think they are in sifting the wheat from the chaff.
On the other hand, I don’t believe top colleges are going to stop expecting applicants from schools that offer such courses to take AP English, AP Calc, and AP US History any time soon – nor should they. There is no reason for a history buff who isn’t that interested in science to feel pressure to take AP Bio AND AP Chem AND AP Physics, but I think it is fair enough, in a competitive process, to expect that such a student will push him or herself enough to take honors bio, chem and physics before that point, and then select one science to continue at the AP level. Obviously, if there are some other really impressive things in the kid’s application, failure to do so shouldn’t be a killer, but I see no problem with the notion that the “default” transcript should include four years of upper-level courses in the core academic subjects. That should still leave students so inclined with time for choir or creative writing.
The last post was getting unwieldy, so I split it up:
Another thing I don’t like about the emphasis on volunteerism – and, for that matter, the concern for “Chloes” – is that it actually participates in the over-valuing of top schools. Getting into an elite school is not a beatification. It is an indication that, based on some metric heavily (and reasonably) tilted toward academic achievement, you’ve succeeded at a certain level. That’s fine, and also fair. Sure, schools want to avoid the soulless automaton, to the extent that they can spot him or her, and sure, schools need to acknowledge that “achievement” needs to be taken in the context of background, but yeah, all other things being equal, they’re going to expect that a student has gotten good grades in a challenging curriculum. That doesn’t mean Zoe should always get in over Chloe, especially if Chloe has something else to offer (i.e, exceptional talent in the subjects she did focus on, or significant achievement in an EC), and especially if something in Zoe’s package suggests that she is, in fact, a soulless automaton. But otherwise, yeah, I would expect the student who took advanced courses in all academic subjects to do better in admissions than the kid who said “You know, I’m not that into math and science. I’ll just take the regular college prep courses.” Or, for that matter, the kid who spent hours volunteering, but wasn’t a terribly impressive student.
The problem isn’t that Chloe, or the committed volunteer, isn’t getting into an elite school. The problem is that we think it is a problem that she isn’t getting into an elite school.
“The goal of elites couldn’t be to educate, cultivate, or curate the Does. Even with the greater likelihood of concentration of Does…there’s just not enough Does to go around so the elites could guarantee that 100% of the admitted class are Does.”
@cobrat How does this square with the reality - at least what I perceive as reality, largely through intel provided on this site - that the elite schools are rejecting the perfect test score/valedictorian/national merit finalist kids left and right? At least the unhooked ones, without an “AND”.
This is quite easy. Kids stay up to midnight doing homework, and get up to catch 7:15am bus. Even if you urge them to cut the loose time, they still chat and giggle on SNS and end up going to bed late because they have to finish homework due tomorrow! sigh ~
@dadofs #211: I don’t know about yours, but my kids don’t get to take their phones to bed. House rules are house rules.
As to me, I don’t think that’s the problem. My concern is the Zoes who are throwing themselves in front of trains. The high stress, high pressure academic squeeze is bad for the physical and mental health of Zoes. By hypothesis (and I get to say this, because I invented Zoe and Chloe) Zoe is taking a course schedule that has so much work that she has to sacrifice everything else including sleep in favor of academics. I don’t think that elite schools ought to reward that choice. It is not better to take BC Calculus as a junior if it means that you have to spend ten hours a week at math tutoring and another ten doing your math homework. Colleges should not prefer that.
Because having perfect test scores, graduating as a val, and being a national merit finalist doesn’t necessarily mean one’s a Doe.
Plenty of students who achieve one or more of those could be Zoes as well…possibly even what I’d call “relaxed Zoe’s” or borderline Does. In fact, from what I’ve seen of most who achieved one or more of what you’ve listed at my HS and those at topflight NJ suburban public high schools comparable to TheGFG’s WWP/her own school district, most of them tended to fit the profile of a Zoe more than a Doe.
Granted, part of this may also be due to the academic culture of a given HS.
For instance, at my HS…it was much more of a big deal to be a Westinghouse/Intel Science Competition semi-finalist/finalist than it is to graduate as a Val or Sal. And even then, most of those semi-finalists/finalists seem to fit the Zoe profile much more than the Doe profile.
I think a lot of the class rank comments in this thread have been overblown. Only a small minority of admits submit rank at the colleges we have been discussing. Fewer than 30% of the entering class submits rank at Yale and Princeton. Harvard says that they do not consider rank in their CDS. In the NACAC survey of over 1000 college admissions departments, class rank used to be ranked as the 2nd most important factor in admissions decisions in the early 90s. In the latest survey I could find, it had dropped all the way down to 9th – lower than grades, course rigor, test scores, LORs, essays, demonstrated interest, etc. It’s not as important as it used to be for admissions decisions, with good reason (aside from the UT system and some other key exceptions).
@cobrat, totally agree. Having perfect test scores does not make one a Doe. I think, though, that a lot of people on these boards may believe that it does. And that’s part of what creates the Zoes, the notion that it’s only hard work that distinguishes them.
And I’m also going to venture that the kids that are rejected “left and right” aren’t getting rejected at ALL of the elites, only some of them. But having turned this into a competition of sorts, not having won everywhere turns into losing.
“As to me, I don’t think that’s the problem. My concern is the Zoes who are throwing themselves in front of trains. The high stress, high pressure academic squeeze is bad for the physical and mental health of Zoes. By hypothesis (and I get to say this, because I invented Zoe and Chloe) Zoe is taking a course schedule that has so much work that she has to sacrifice everything else including sleep in favor of academics. I don’t think that elite schools ought to reward that choice. It is not better to take BC Calculus as a junior if it means that you have to spend ten hours a week at math tutoring and another ten doing your math homework. Colleges should not prefer that.”
@“Cardinal Fang” It isn’t the schools who need to change in that regard. It is Zoe and her parents that need to change. A school or any other institution shouldn’t have to apologize for rewarding and acknowledging excellence, achievement or distinction.
What applies here applies to a thousand other pedestals in life. Professional sports, recording artists, scientific or business achievement, the list goes on and on. In life, we have the right to try to turn ourselves inside out trying to achieve something if we want to. We also have the choice not to.
For every success story we talk about, there are at least 99 who tried just as hard and didn’t get there. And you know what, the world is a better place because of it. You won’t improve the world we live in trying to change the rules of the game to make the Zoes and Does look alike.