Turning the Tide- Rethinking College Admissions- a new report endorsed by many top Universities

Parents Forum
141

Not sure the Doe’s would necessarily be behaving like the Zoe’s even in high schools with an intense and sometimes even a cutthroat academic environment. I will agree the threshold for being a Doe or Zoe would likely be higher…but the genuine geniuses like many HS classmates or a few of my cousins would be Does regardless of the HS environment.

While the Does are a minority even at such high schools which tends to cluster them in larger numbers than many public high schools*…including academically respectable suburban high schools like some in NJ which are comparable to WWP, they seldom actually need to stay up late and work hard out of actual academic necessity/college admissions.

Several friends who are Does are the types who could easily finish the most advanced AP’s/4-year university DE courses while taking the same/less time to do so than the Chloe’s and then having the same/more free time for ECs/hanging out/pursuing co-curriculars they are passionate about.

Recalled several classmates who were more like Zoes, Chloes or Lizas(those of us who don’t fall into any of those three classifications) being seriously/jokingly jealous of the Stuy Doe’s for being able to churn through assigned homework/readings/projects much more quickly than the norm while gaining high proficiency/near-complete mastery of the course material far above everyone else. The Does at Stuy weren’t the ones who were staying up till 1-2 am like the Lizas or 3-4 am for the Zoes taking APs.

Also, keep in mind these classifications could be very situational for each individual student depending on what high school one attends.

For instance, most of the Zoe’s at Stuy would very likely have been Does and most of Stuy’s Lizas probably more like the Does/relaxed Zoe’s/Chloe’s at other high schools…including academically respectable/strong suburban public high school districts like WWP or comparable NJ suburban school districts like the ones my cousins went through from the '70’s till the beginning of this decade.

  • Even so...vast majority of Stuy classmates tended to be Zoe's or another category which hasn't been mentioned....students who are like Zoe's in terms of feeling the pressure to work hard.....but doing so merely to keep their heads above academic water and survive to graduate. Maybe we can call her one of the Lizas?
142

Regarding teen suicide, being from inner cities is negatively correlated with suicide. For example, the states with the highest teen suicide rates are Alaska, N/S Dakota, Montana, etc. While the states with lowest rates generally have a high percentage of urban areas, such as NY and NJ. The rate is highest among Asian teens and lowest among Black teens. It’s not just a inner city issue and is notable among several schools with a large portion of Zoe/Doe/… students such as the recent suicide clusters at Gunn HS, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, etc.

143

This thread is timely and I am truly hoping that schools look outside the top 10% parameter. After her first semester in HS with straight A’s, all honors academic classes and non-weighted electives, my daughter is ranked 91/740. She isn’t even in the top 10%. She will take the most rigorous academic classes possible because that is the type of kid she is, but her chances of breaking into the top 10%, even with straight A’s in HS, are slim based on the fact that she chose to take drama and competitive speech her freshman year. Neither of these electives are weighted. At her school you can’t take APs freshman year and there are no honors level classes for languages 1 & 2. My daughter self-studied Japanese in 8th grade and wanted to start in Japanese III, but as she was a freshman, she was placed into Japanese II because there was no space for her in Japanese III. According to my daughter, she hasn’t learned “anything” In Japanese class this year. She is basically a TA in the class. She continues to self-study Japanese at home every day. My daughter came to me yesterday requesting to either self-study AP Japanese or take Japanese at the college level next year. While she thinks her Japanese teacher is nice, she doesn’t anticipate that she will learn anything in class next year. My daughter is also self-studying French 1 & 2 so that she can start French at a higher level her sophomore year. This is a kid who may possibly not graduate in the top 10% of her class because she didn’t take Honors orchestra her freshman year and couldn’t get into Japanese IIi because of scheduling issues.

BTW - My daughter is completely unaware of the top 10% threshold. I wanted her to take what she wanted for electives in HS, but I must admit to some moments of doubt about my decision when the she received her first report card. In six years, the school has become much more “competitive”. My son with the same scenario as my daughter was ranked 20th his freshman year. Even with a final UW GPA of 3.96 and all honors/AP classes for the rest of HS, he only moved up 4 spots to graduate 16th in his class. I never once saw my son stressed about school, nor did he ever burn the midnight oil studying. He may have been up late, but it certainly wasn’t because he was studying. Also, by competition, I don’t mean that the actual academic classes are harder, I mean that the school has become one of the top performing high schools in our city; thereby, it is attracting more high achieving kids. This does not bode well for my daughter. She wants to take another unweighted elective next year and I won’t discourage her as she has decided to explore choir and loves to sing. On the plus side, there is definitely more room for upward movement in class rank for my daughter.

I truly hope that the AO’s can suss out my Doe.

Also, for our family, an Ivy League/meets full need school is much less expensive than our state flagship. This definitely factors into the equation.

144

The article is just dribble. The Ivy’s and other top colleges maintain their mystique simply because they emphasize their exclusivity. They do this by restricting supply and massively increasing demand through an easy application process (common app), generous financial aid, near constant publicity and advertising. Then they throw in an inscrutable selection process know only to the cognoscenti, tell kids to get A’s in every class and take only AP’s, make new discoveries and start social activist organizations, all while reserving half of their spots for big donors kids, legacies and athletes.

No wonder kids are so stressed out.

145

Digressing a bit from the Zoes/Does/Chloes, etc. I thought about this thread when I was at the regional spelling bee today. There was one boy who stood out by asking a series of procedural questions before the event began and seemed simultaneously anxious and arrogant. It turned out I was sitting next to his parents and they chatted me up between rounds. Let’s just say the helicopter blades were whirring. I learned that he wasn’t going to be participating in an upcoming math competition because he had too many scheduling conflicts - quiz bowl, science olympiad, speech and debate are the only ones I remember.

So the kid makes a mistake in the second round, looks incredulous and then angry but manages to hold it together until the round is complete. During the next interval he has a major tantrum and is screaming at his dad to get him a piece of paper so he can file an appeal. When they can’t locate paper, he insists that they use a tissue. Sorry, kid, you did spell it wrong. It’s OK, many words were esoteric, even for educated adults.

Here’s the kicker - this kid was in the 8th grade! I cannot imagine the stress load by the time he is a senior. I’m not saying that this was all coming from the parents. Kids are wired as they are and perhaps he is simply naturally competitive and his parents are supporting him in what he thinks he wants. Nonetheless, I feared for his emotional well being in the long term.

p.s. the girl who won seemed, to all appearances, to be a sweet Doe who was having fun.

146

Y’all know Michele Hernandez, right? High-dollar college consultant? This is what her outfit says … and I mostly agree.

"We’ve always worked with our students on the qualitative elements of college admissions applications alongside their academic programs. Though we were happy to read the new admissions report “Turning the Tide” released from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, we would say it’s nothing particularly earth-shattering.

"Colleges are encouraged to pay less attention to standardized test scores and long lists of extracurriculars, and more attention to students’ essays, letters of recommendations, and demonstrated commitment to community/family service as opposed to ‘high profile brief forms of service’ in high quantity, not quality.

"So, why is this nothing new? Even back in the 70’s and 80’s colleges wanted students who contributed to their communities. Once high schools figured this out, thousands required mandatory community service hour requirements, some as much as 100 hours. This led to over a decade of soul-less community service where many just plugged away hours and colleges couldn’t tell which students really did it because they loved it and which did it because they had to. We’re not sure how simply looking at a short response essay would shed much light on the situation –many students fake their enthusiasm.

"As the report states, ‘Applications should not just ask students about the number and type of their service or community engagement activities, but about their significant and demanding family contributions, longest period of service, why they chose this service/activity, what they learned from their experience and how they may have changed as a result.’

"We’ve said this for years and always have had our students highlight when they take care of siblings or work hours to help support their families, and we look forward to the supplemental essay prompts that colleges will release in 2016 with this in mind.

"Admissions applications should be less about scores and tallied lists and more about the substantive academic and extracurricular pursuits students have engaged in and seek to continue with at the college level. Though we might add, not at the expense of scores and grades but in addition to.

"Is it likely HYPS (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford) are going to suddenly no longer require a rigorous course load and high scores? No. If they really wanted to focus on good Samaritans and those who are truly high impact, they’d dramatically reduce the number of preferential admits, which right now makes up almost 50% of the class. Recruited athletes alone take up almost a fifth of every Ivy class and most of those recruits have spent every free moment on sports, not engaging in high-level community service.

“When we see major changes to legacy, recruited athlete, VIP and development case admissions, we’ll know colleges have changed their admissions procedures but until then, it’s strictly paying lip service to a noble goal most of us can agree on.”

147

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1853666-turning-the-tide-rethinking-college-admissions-a-new-report-endorsed-by-many-top-universities-p1.html

148

He’s only in 8th grade? Good, there’s still time to fix this. The cure is simple - the kid needs his ass kicked. That’s his Dad’s job, or failing that maybe a few of his classmates could do it and write it up for their community service project :wink:

149

Wow, you guys are fast…

Here is the glossy Turning the Tide report.

http://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/collegeadmissions

150

Thank you @panpacific. Already 10 pages in that thread!

151

@al2simon That really made me laugh, thank you! In this case, though, I think the dad had too much invested personally in his kid’s achievements and awards. My kid’s remark: “I don’t care who wins - as long as it’s not him!”

152

And scroll down to “read the full report”
http://mcc.gse.harvard.edu//collegeadmissions

I liked the coverage in the WaPo, wnich fleshed that out:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2016/01/20/to-get-into-college-harvard-report-advocates-for-kindness-instead-of-overachieving/

Sorry if the above links were already posted; I see this thread is several pages long and I just came aboard.

I think the more moderated attitude toward community service is long overdue. I cannot tell you what a mania it has become among applicants in my region, and in a particular subset of those applicants who apparently think they have found The Magic Trick for college admissions. These students have discarded other pursuits in their lives (academic, personal, and artistic) to engage in Extreme Community Service, in the illusion that such will given them an unparalleled edge. I’m speechless when I see this. The worst ones are the ones who engage in frenetic “leadership,” and I don’t mean the natural born leaders who are an asset to colleges and societies, but those who “practice” leadership to an artificial and self-conscious degree, as if to prove something to U.S. colleges. They have merely shifted their focus from proving how many AP courses they can manage while still breathing, to how they can “outdo” others in “community service” which is much more about invented, unnecessary projects than making a truly needed contribution.

Just more transparent and competitive posing.

153

“Pizzagirl, we are really speaking different languages her. is important for college admission. - happens anyway, you can’t stop teenagers to do what they want to do. These are two parallel worlds, that have nothing in common.”

Nonsense. There are plenty of kids who organically choose something they enjoy, and it also makes them interesting to college admission officers, which is a nice bonus. Maybe your kid isn’t Stanford-worthy, though. That’s fine. My kids wouldn’t have been either (they weren’t interested in the first place). The difference is, the totality of all your posts makes it abundantly clear that the only worthwhile schools for your daughter are pretty much HYPSM, oh and maybe Berkeley.

There is a wide, wide world of lots of great colleges and universities in this country. Why don’t you check some of them out, as opposed to trying to fit a round peg into a square hole? Why don’t you think about trying to find the college that is the best fit for your kid, instead of decreeing that only certain colleges will do and trying to fit her into that mold? You are a freakin’ Ph D at Stanford, allegedly, and you STILL don’t get that going to Stanford et al isn’t necessary for success in the US?

154

But I think this report is going to make that worse not better @epiphany It will no longer be meaningful to restack books at the library or volunteer at the concession stand at the basketball game. You’ll have to do something “with impact” for a sustained period because helping the library or raising money for your school is not as meaningful as working at a soup kitchen. AOs are going to judge the relative merits of charity work. I hope I am wrong.

155

I disagree. It’s what you got out of it and how it’s shaped you as a person. It’s completely obvious to me that the person who might have raised $100 for Tiny X in their own backyard might have had more personal meaning behind it than the person who raised $10,000 for Global X Charity, and if I were interviewing them, I could easily discern whether that was the case. I don’t know why people always have to put competitiveness behind it. The colleges have already had their run and rejected the “I dug ditches in Guatemala” mission trips; they figured out pretty quickly which were the real, sincere ones and which were the daddy-paid-$10,000-for-an-experience types.

156

The report is very clear – service to immediate family “counts” as well - which could mean babysitting younger siblings, visiting grandma in the nursing home, reading to the blind in your community, etc. It’s not all about digging ditches in Guatemala. The report seems very aware that a lot of the service opportunities wound up being “gamed” by well-to-do kids, whose parents could afford to secretly donate the $10,000 to the faux-charity they set up, or could send them to Guatemala.

157

It is clear that kind of service to immediate family seems to count for students of “low and modest income and working class communities.” Not sure about other kids. I agree the voluntourism is called out as not good. I hope you are right! I just hate for one rat race to get traded for another. Either way, my little rats will continue to do what interests them and makes them feel they are contributing.

158

Community service is a wonderful thing, but this report seems to add more pressure to find a meaningful, sustained, service activity that promotes diversity. Within a given area, there are just not that many activities that fit that profile. And it really helps if you have a parent at home to drive you to the activity in a distant city. Some kids may not have younger siblings to baby sit or grandparents that need assistance. Even getting a job, at least in my area, is very difficult for kids, certainly before junior year.

159

SOO many activities are predicated upon a student having a car at his / her disposal. and / or having a parent who has no job and hence can drive the student hither and yon. It’s really rather ridiculous, IMO - I say as a parent who had a full time job, and whose suburban kids did not have their own cars.

160

Harvard and others have always put “character” first in a list of criteria for admission. The whole business of Zoe and Chloe and Doey leaves out the kid who doesn’t focus on admissions, takes classes that interest but maybe not as rigorous as top students in order to concentrate on a passion (music, for instance) outside of school. Despite lower rank and stats, and a few less rigorous classes, Harvard has always admitted kids like this. It would seem they now want to put the word out that they want more of them.

This deemphasis on stats and AP’s would accomplish one of the goals: reduce pressure on kids and allow them to develop normally in adolescence, to be more “themselves.” But I doubt they will substantially change benchmarks.

But I think the most important goal of this new admissions policy in any school is socioeconomic diversity. Top schools like Ivies are always talking about socioeconomic diversity. Progress has been made over decades, from the prep school finishing model. This is social engineering. Now, partly due to student and other external pressures, they are pushing it further.

To be really specific, some ethnic groups favor taking care of family over doing something like an extracurricular. A parent might work and a younger sibling might need supervision. Other families do not have the income to pay for activities outside of school, or a babysitter. And some kids really need the money from working at Burger King after school or in the summer.

So I don’t see any of these changes as really geared to middle class families, but more of an attempt to honor family and work responsibilities more at the lower income level. I don’t think this means that every kid should rush out to get a job at a fast food restaurant :slight_smile: Colleges have been saying they would honor the summer ice cream scoopers over the ones who pay to do summer anthropology in Asia for some time, we’ll see if they do it.

As for the community service angle, we can expect lots more of it on resumes I suppose, so that will be a new rat race. Some may go so far as to be “nice” people to get in!!

Smart applicants will have included recommendations from extracurriculars or the arts already.

I do think it is sad to read that some parents and kids don’t consider Ivies or selective schools because of the notion that they are stressful places with anxious accomplished robot kids. There is a lot of prejudice out there, some of it sour grapes. I don’t think Ivies should be a major goal for anyone, but certainly applying and considering attendance as a possibility is not a bad thing at all. They offer a great education and many interesting peers. So do a gazillion other schools. Honestly one of the best darn reasons to apply to Ivies is financial aid, if that is relevant to a family.

The real point is, teens should live their lives as their lives should be lived, and let the chips fall where they may in terms of colleges. Changes in admissions policy, as stated (whether real or not), should really not change behavior, in an ideal world.