I agree that it’s really frustrating when schools give inaccurate info. I wish student interns had to identify themselves as such so parents and other students knew who was supplying information.
The college admissions process is so convoluted nowadays that to list all the things about it that make me angry would take an unhealthy amount of time and coffee. Here are some of my pet peeves.
- Cosmetic extracurriculars. By this, I mean clubs that kids start for no reason other than to put them on an app. I mean clubs that parents start on behalf of their kids for the exact same reason. I mean full-blown nonprofits started by children or (more often) wealthy parents simply to put on an app. These clubs are another step in the college admissions arms race, and they're one that's almost always taken by families that have been planning their kid's Ivy acceptance since he/she was in diapers. I know a few kids who ran clubs like this, and they left them to die the minute their acceptance letter came through the mail.
- Recruited athletes. When did we decide that we should award spots at academic institutions-which ostensibly choose the best *students* in their applicant pool-to people whose main calling card is their ability to hit a ball or hit a puck or throw a ball or run fast or run fast with a ball in their hands or swim fast and so on?
- The AP arms race. First top students took AP classes. Then they took 5 AP classes. Then it was 10. Now it's 15 or even 20 in some cases, with students taking subjects they have no interest in simply because they look good on a transcript.
I almost expect to hear of a student taking all 34 AP courses as a freshman at some point in the next decade in order to later take courses for truly elite students-Super Advanced Placement, to be followed eventually by Super-Duper Advanced Placement…and so on and so on.
- Parental influence-legacy and admission due to someone's last name. Legacy may well benefit me, but there's still something wrong about the idea that the bar can be set lower for a student because his/her parents worked hard. As for last-name acceptance, Exhibit A in my mind is George Bush junior, he of the Yale acceptance on his "merits" and subsequent graduation with a C+ average.
- Everything about the SAT and ACT. The registration fees, which are certainly higher than the cost of shipping a booklet to a test center and back and slipping an answer sheet into a test-marking machine. The prep industry, amounting to billions of dollars a year, all playing off students' insecurities. The cheating scandals. The score report fees. The sheer absurdity of saying that the kid who bubbled in 'A' instead of 'D' isn't suited to elite schools.
All in all, these tests are about as predictive of college success as asking kids to build a bridge out of spaghetti. You can tell who lacks basic reading or arithmetic skills, and an A+ student will likely score higher than a B- student, but A+ and A- kids could well get the same score and pretending that a 1960 is worse by far than a 2000 is sheer nonsense.
And, last but most assuredly not least,
6. The madness surrounding college admissions in general (especially Ivy League schools). Yes, Harvard is lovely. Yes, Stanford is the tech campus. Yes, Columbia is better than Bob Jones University and I’d rather attend Northwestern than your run-of-the-mill community college. Is Harvard appreciably better than Brown in every way? Not unless a school’s name value is all that matters to you. Is Johns Hopkins worse than Duke? Not necessarily. Are there departments at the University of West Podunk, Timbuktu, that are just as good as their peers at colleges that everyone in the country knows? You’d be surprised.
And colleges don’t determine the course of a person’s life. The college you go to matters less, by a wide margin, than what you do there. Hilary Clinton went to Wellesley. Jeb Bush went to the University of Texas at Austin. Jimmy Wales went to Auburn University. Scott Walker and Richard Branson are both college dropouts. On the gaudy list of Harvard alumni that the college is so proud of, here’s someone you won’t see mentioned: Ted Kaczynski, class of '62. Calm down, everyone.
Ok, rant over.
I hated that I had to waste money sending the CSS profile to schools without knowing if I was accepted or not. Huge waste of $$$ for any applicant.
i hate how my guidance counselor pressured me to apply to schools that i would never go to
I hate how time consuming apply to colleges can be, but then again, it works in its own way. Especially when you consider how many applicants there would be if we didn’t have to write essays after essays after essays…
I agree with GMTplus7. I feel partially responsible for starting the back-and-forth between the different point of view. Regardless of your argument you Will not convince the other side. The purpose of this web was to state what makes you angry about the college admissions process. I said I did not like AA; others state do you like AA. I feel I have some valid points and I suspect the other side has some valid points too. I propose we move on.
Thumbs up for @ZeeTee 's post #199. The type of system ZeeTee describes sets up a more fair admissions process than the one we have today. AA should be in place to give support to those who actually need it.
Privileged URMs that take advantage of the current system would be similar to rich people that shop with food stamps. If it’s not right for the wealthy to use food stamps, then why is it okay for the privileged to receive AA support? And to those who counter with “But we must think about the discrimination URMs will face later in the work force”, the hiring (or non-hiring) of a person based on race is illegal.
@GreenEggsHam Can you please elucidate how someone can tell that a URM was or was not hired based on discrimination? I really need tips to help me discern when it is happening to me especially since huge studies have found that when two identical studies with everything the same except their white or black sounding names have consistently found the black sounding name called back significantly less.
Tell me why when my black friends with white sounding names get an interview, only to find that right after the job has been given away again and again.
Please explain.
We need to stop arguing about race here unless you have a comment relating to college admissions that hasn’t already been said. The thread specifically says not to start prolonged debates, no matter how wrong you think anyone else is, and I’m sure none of you want to get this thread forcibly closed. Please stop.
I hate that my high stats caucasian male child will undoubtedly get rejected from a lot of his top choice schools next year and the only thing we’ll be able to blame it on is that he didn’t work hard enough. Can’t blame it on being an ORM. Can’t blame it on centuries of institutional bias against him. Nothing but a very personal sense of failure. Seems like rejection would be a lot easier to take with a nice laundry list of beyond-our-control excuses.
Stop talking about race if you dotn want thr thread to be shut
Can a moderator make a note that any discussion of AA in this thread is no longer allowed
I think one thing that really bugs me is the fact that many people believe going to a top college is a do or die situation. To me, it looks like the world’s most succesful people didnt need HYP and others to succeed. Not saying no one should appy since these schools usually have great connections and financial aid, but rejection from these schools is not going to kill anyone (anyone)
Another problem I have is people who get accepted/apply to all the Ivies+ MIT/Stanford. For one, all these schools are so different curriculum wise and location wise. An applicant who is in love with Yale will most likely not like Brown because it is set up differently. Also does no one think of the cost of apply to all these schools. You are spending close to $1000 on reach schools that you have a <5% of entering. It just seems illogical. It just bugs me when I see “… got into all 8 Ivies”. I mean congrats on the accomplishment, but for the most part, your app was based on name/prestige than fit
Meant (hopefully)
Some people like me applied to several schools because fit was not a luxury to indulge in, but rather getting the best financial aid was.
Lots of people apply for top schools because they tend to give better FA
Being expected to shape my life towards maximizing my chances for college! I want to avoid the stress and panic that admissions is causing for people around me, and just apply to universities that appeal to me and see what happens. If what I like to do with my life isn’t enough, then fine, I’ll happily attend one of my less selective options.
Application costs and time.
- That colleges don’t give in-state and OOS score ranges - many times the “combined” range can be deceiving.
- The amount of personal details and data that is needed for CSS profile. I asked a GC - what do they do with that data? She did not know. In current world of data breaches, this is scary to me.
- How one has to REALLY scour the college websites to conjure up a cohesive picture - including fees, requirements, what is it that college REALLY asks etc… this is really time consuming.
- That many students are unaware of how they can improve their resume for college - as much as “resume” is a bad word.
- That a student who choses non-elite schools has to constantly explain his choices
I also want to take this opportunity to thank the incredible support CC community has given - especially parent community of 2015 - to each other. They defy the “stereo type” of “obsessed , cut throat parents bent on getting their kids in elite colleges”…
“What makes you ridiculously angry about the college admissions process?” Nothing.