My alma mater and I suspect most schools are well aware of the hs a student attends: what AP courses are offered, how many guidance counselors are there, etc. So you are not competing with other schools. You are only competing within your own school… Colleges try to keep a level playing field and they recognize there are differences.
HS counselors are required to fill out a form for Admissions that tells the Admissions officer what the school is like.
Yes!! One friend said, in sophomore year when we were taking APUSH and APES, “Mental health is more important than any school thing.” I still remember it. (Wish I followed it better…)
@DonQixote I would suspect you’ve always been Asian. Your choosing to adopt-a-religion strategy (your other post asks about marking Roman Catholic) to wash away your Asian-ness is rather mercenary. I hope Karma kicks you in the rear.
@DonQixote When you fill out the common app and you list your parents attending university in Mumbai or Pusan rather than Kiev or St Petersburg – that inconsistency might be a little hard to hide as well… Oh, you also need to list any time you’ve not lived in the US, if that applies to you.
@DonQixote The only thing you will accomplish by attempting to hide your ethnicity in such a manner is giving the impression to admissions that you are insecure about your identity. OWN IT. They will be much more impressed by a proud Asian than an Asian who has clearly made efforts to mislead them. As alluded to by @T26E4 , you’re not going to be able to get around it so you might as well put you best foot forward rather than trip and fall trying to balance on a beam of misdirection about your perfectly valid, perfectly legitimate ethnicity of “asian”. Be fearless! it’s worth far more in the long run and let’s be honest here, if you believe a college discriminates against who you are, do you really want to attend there? If they do discriminate it’s likely to go FAR beyond the admissions office!
Back to the original intent of this thread, which I’ve put-off reading until today, but have weirdly enjoyed much to my surprise. I am ridiculously angry I can’t convince my sweet baby girl the “top 50 schools” are not worth the cost, time, and emotional upheaval to apply.
It reminds of trying to convince her living in a smaller house than all her friends is fine in 4th grade. Or that she could still be cool without having an iPhone in 8th grade. Or that losing five pounds does not make you a more desirable human being, well, all the time.
College admissions is just one more societal/marketing pressure that can off-set attempts at home to convince your kid “you are good enough, you are smart enough, and gosh darn-it, people like you.”
The thing that’s starting to get on my nerves is the outdated idea that at highly selective schools, a letter from a highly placed friend of a friend who has never met my kid will somehow guarantee his acceptance.
I hate how many parents are complaining about how ridiculously competitive admissions has gotten and then will turn right around and tell students that reporting cheaters and those who lie on their applications is immature, snitching and “to mind your own business”. Those who lie on their applications are directly raising the bar for all the other applicants at their school and region. When they go unchecked in large numbers, the whole applicant pool gets really skewed.
I hate it too, when they complain about how competitive it is, then go right around and insist that their child apply to all the top 15 schools, regardless of fit, not including their mid and safeties… Well yes there are going to be a lot more rejections when every kid is applying to 30 schools.
In my experience in application attempts in recent years, the letters from highly placed friends no longer carry useful weight. One example-top donor (MAJOR player) to a top 20 university wrote on behalf of a top student, student leader, varsity multisport athlete he actually knew, who was applying as a full pay, the and student got wait listed.
Aside from the high costs of admission and attendance, I think I am more sad than angry about how the process has evolved. Many of these points have been mentioned in some form already in this thread. But here they are, FWIW.
The requirement to self-define a “passion” early. IMO, this goes beyond college readiness as I have seen kids who demonstrate talent in all sorts of ECs - music, dance, sports, gymnastics, rock climbing, etc. to be asked to specialize as early as age 11-12 and devote most of their spare hours to a single pursuit. This potentially takes an enormous toll on the entire family in terms of time commitment, financial cost, and lost opportunities for family togetherness.
And, somehow, young people also are expected to find time for community service, volunteering, seeking out vaguely defined “leadership” opportunities, school clubs, a job or some sort of evidence of entrepreneurship, regional or national awards, etc., and must juggle a super-charged course load at a high level, and prep time for standardized tests.
There’s so little room for down time. Whatever happened to reading for pleasure? Sketching for fun? Writing a poem? Hanging out with friends? Going to a football game or a poetry slam? Taking a walk because it’s a beautiful afternoon?
I understand the need for standardized tests to level the field. But both the SAT and the ACT are such imperfect instruments. IMO, the SAT is somewhat subjective - especially in CR - and the ACT privileges students who can work very quickly. To a certain extent, both can be gamed if you have the time and money to expend on formal preparation. They are so high stakes. The stress they induce seems disproportionate to the predictive data that they generate.
Emphasis on AP tests: IMO, this encourages even more “teaching to the test.” They become a hurdle to clear, not subject matter that might be pleasurable to master. I am glad that my kid’s school doesn’t offer them. One more stressor that she doesn’t need.
I wonder if they did away with the common app or somehow limited applications to 6-8 schools per student, if some of this craziness would abate.
Back in the 80s when I applied to school, it seemed so much simpler. I began thinking about college during the summer before my senior year. I visited a handful of college campuses within a 4-5 hour driving radius. Transcript, SAT or ACT (taken once, done!), LORs, one AP class, and an essay or two. It really was about academic achievement rather than assembling an ideal bundle of traits to be checked off on an application. I had some limited ECs but I don’t remember them mattering much. I applied to two schools, a reach and a safety, and got into both.
I remember my dad telling me about how he got into college back in the 40s. He was an immigrant growing up in Brooklyn and attended a better-than-average PS. A teacher suggested that he apply to college. He hadn’t a clue - he was a first generation college applicant. He was poor and had a widowed mother and had to stay in the city. He thought naively “Columbia is in NY, I’ll apply there.” He applied early and was accepted.
Only a few months after his acceptance did he place nationally in the Science Talent Search! That he did for fun, not with the intent to impress an admissions committee.
Being penalized for AP performance when you have a class of horrendous, immature kids that could not care less about learning, causing the teacher to not be able to properly do their job.
I have to disagree with the the “things were so much simpler in the 80s” posting.
I went to a top private school in Texas and, yes, there was a plan one followed when one wanted to go to an Ivy. I will stipulate that there were fewer kids nationally and internationally trying to get into the ivies, but it was not unheard of to take the SATs twice (as I did) or to be aware that one should spend the summers engaged in interesting intellectual pursuits and take the most rigorous curriculum, which meant taking APs classes in areas one was serious about. In 1985 it was not a secret that ivies and top colleges wanted high test scores, rigorous academics, sincere passions and interesting outside pursuits.
I personally ended up taking 8 AP classes/exams and applied to somewhere around 12 schools on the east coast ( 3 ivies, several LACs and some large research institutions). My parents went to college in Texas, so I wasn’t a legacy of any of the colleges I was interested in - I was just a very serious student who did what I loved and also happened to be well-advised by my secondary school. My older brother was the same, with the same admission results.
So while I agree that the competition for the ivies and other top colleges has gotten exponentially more intense in the last 25 years, let’s not kid ourselves that no one in 1985 was going the extra mile when they were serious high school students and had specific aspirations.
^ When I said that things were simpler, I didn’t mean to imply that a rigorous course load wasn’t important. What I was trying to say was that a rigorous course load and good test scores were more sufficient then than they are now. I don’t remember having to jump through hoops to rack up hundreds of hours of community service AND to practice sports AND music AND speech and debate AND start my own business AND/OR publish a research paper in a peer reviewed journal. And with all that to fret about not getting in to top-flight schools.
Being valedictorian from a so-so public HS, NM finalist, and a gold award Girl Scout was good enough for Amherst and a flagship state U’s honors program in the mid 80s. I am by no means certain that they would be sufficient today. My daughter, a HS junior, is far more accomplished than I and I expect that her credentials will yield less than if she had the same record three decades ago.
If part of affirmative action is to make up for past discrimination, why are people of Chinese ancestry held to a higher standard? The Chinese were treated horribly in the late 19th and early 20th century, yet they get no special designation. In fact, they have to have higher scores than other groups. Chinese, Korean, Indian students all have a harder time, yet they are not part of the pc “white privilege.”
@mamaedefamilia I now see what you mean, and agree with you.
I do think things were a lot less competitive in the '80s. It does make me a bit angry how much more my son does as far as class rigor and ECs and still has to worry about whether it will be enough to get somewhere that’s a good fit for him.
I went to a small private school with really poor academics–no honors or AP classes, science classes said the Earth was 6000 years old, etc. I did take calculus, but it was nothing compared to Calc I in college. Somehow, I got a NMSF qualifying PSAT and a reasonable (but not tippy-top) SAT. I tried the Chemistry SAT II or whatever we called them back then, but got a bad score. Homework was almost non-existent, and the only B I got was in Bible class for disagreeing too much. I took a couple of interesting sounding community college classes (geology and genetics), because they were free in CA back then.
I did do 2 varsity sports and made regionals in both, but it was a small school in a not-very competitive league for girls. I guess I did a few ECs, which may have been rare back then–volunteered at the library, wrote for the local newspaper, etc–and had a couple jobs. My school didn’t have clubs. I got some awards that now seem to be very competitive; they either weren’t competitive then or being a big fish in a small pool helped a lot back then.
I applied to some schools that seemed interesting based on the brochures they mailed me. There was no internet, of course, so you had to mail in postcards to get the application form. If I wanted any actual info about colleges, I had to impose on the counselors at the local public school to give some info to a private school student.
I still got accepted to MIT, RPI, and UC Berkeley. The only one I actually toured was RPI, because it was close to where my grandma lived. (The admissions director bragged about having the highest per capita beer consumption in front of my teetotaler mom. That was weird.)
@mamaedefamilia I completely agree with you (although I can’t comment on the 80’s since I’m a 90’s baby). It’s crazy the amount of stuff students have to do to even be considered by top schools. I’m not only talking about HYP either. Local privates and public flagships are playing the admissions game too.
Not all students are lucky to develop an intense passion. Most students are still trying to figure it out. I understand that top schools do not require that you have a passion or do research or create a business, but it’s pretty obvious that these applicants are favorable to top schools. It’s unfortunate that being a good student just isn’t good enough anymore.
I can only imagine how things will be when my younger siblings start applying to college. That last thing I want them to do is peak at the age of 17.
A lot of the posts on this thread consistently criticize the college admissions process for forcing 17-18 years old into figuring out what they want to do/who they want to be. I disagree with this as, to apply, one does not need to know their passion. There just needs to be a sense of self-reflection and evaluation which I believe is absolutely necessary at this transition age we all go through. It conveys depth, and allows you to develop as a person as well, which is necessary before one joins college and all of a sudden is required to be independent and mature. The college admissions process has truly allowed me to understand myself, what I want and what I value.
But I do hate the ridiculously high application fees, short (<50 word) answer questions that do not tell you anything about a person and probably has a negligible impact on one’s application, standardized testing and the emergence of university consultants in this process. The admissions process, granted, was never meritocratic but the stage at which it is at now is appalling. I’m waiting for this Ivy-League-Hungry bubble to burst when people start realize applying is nothing but a gamble (unless you’re from Madagascar, 25th generation and a polygot).
A lot of these kids are going into college with enough credits to be sophomores, some almost juniors. I think it’s a shame, but I know I had to declare a major almost immediately after enrolling. So if they don’t know what they want to do, they should do some soul-searching.
I think the whole process has gotten out of control.