Closing temporarily to review since many posts were flagged. Which means closed for a while since I’m turning in.
On that basis, would you not say that standardized test scores are more fair than check boxes and holistic admissions?
Holistic admissions were introduced to keep Jews from gaining prominence in higher ed. Fact. The same is being done now to Asians.
Many first gens are being denied the very thing that helped their parents gain a foothold and get ahead in life – a good education.
The documentary “Try Harder” literally made me sick to my stomach. There is a scene where the counselor at Lowell literally tells the kids what you do in school does not matter, because you are Asian.
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Who is being denied a “good education”- does a kid not getting into Dartmouth (for a kid with Dartmouth-like stats) end up flipping burgers? No. That kid goes to another fine college.
Really, this is absurd logic. I’d love to know who is getting denied a good education- even with holistic admissions.
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It’s interesting to note that an enormous amount of CC content is a kid saying “I would like to go to Prestigious Colleges X, Y, and Z; I have more-than-appropriate stats and my parents have told me they can afford it” followed by 92 posts about how it doesn’t really matter where you go to college, your state school or a lower/no-prestige private that hands out a lot of merit is the way to go, you’d be throwing away a fortune to do otherwise.
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I tried to find the documentary “Try Harder” and it says it premiers on PBS May 2022. Is there somewhere else to watch it?
I hope that counselor finds a new job, my God.
eta: can’t find a school profile online, but Niche shows self-reported average scores of 1340/30, which makes this counselor’s advice even more toxic and self-defeating.
Funny you say that. And it is absolutely not.
7/8 SCOTUS judges went to Harvard or Yale. The other went to Notre Dame.
You are right, those kids will go to some other college and do well in life. Just not good enough to truly become “elite”, whatever that means. Unless of course, they work in a field where merit trumps everything else. I wonder why so many Asians end up in tech and medicine? Or, get into CalTech?
Anyway, I am done. Good luck!
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I would never tell ANYONE (and I believe I never have) that it doesn’t matter where you go to college. I am firmly in the camp that believes it matters- asks anyone who has posted with me, against me, for me, over the years. I regularly get messages calling me an elitist or whatever the word du jour is.
Yes it matters. period full stop.
What DOESN’T matter is the subtle difference between the colleges kids (and parents) on CC get so worked up about, vs. a terrific choice which is marginally, modestly, or significantly easier to get accepted to. That’s my point.
Kid can’t afford MIT because there is no merit aid. Got it. Kid can’t into Cooper Union because the competition there is so fierce (it’s no longer free but it’s still a great value). Kid may or may not get the merit aid at Case which would make it affordable. I’m the first poster to suggest Missouri M&T- a fabulous public engineering program. I’m the first poster to help a kid evaluate his or her own flagship U.
The notion that holistic admissions is keeping kids from getting an education is absurd.
I am too skeptical about merit aid (it’s a great discounting strategy, and like any other discount, it has pros and cons) to be the one advocating for “take the money and run”. Sometimes it’s the right answer. Sometimes it’s not.
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Truly elite? Give me a break. The most recent study on “how to become a CEO of a public company in the US” I believe gave the answer- go to U Wisconsin.
It is a fantastic institution. But are you arguing that the future “elite” of America- particularly the Asian kids who feel that holistic admissions is keeping them from the elite tranche of US society-- are annoyed that they can’t get admitted to Wisconsin? If so, I’d love to meet that kid. And the finger it has on the scale- being from Wisconsin- is about as transparent as you can get. Yes or no.
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Your argument is that the oldest supreme court judges who were born in 1930s-60s and attended college many decades ago went to Harvard/Yale for law school, therefore you can’t “truly become elite”, if holistic admission prevents you from going to an elite college for undergrad? There are many problems with that conclusion that I will elaborate on, if not obvious.
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I saw it on DOC NYC. Not sure if the makers are directly streaming it using some form of PPV model.
I saw Try Harder on Amazon Prime. Had to rent it - it wasn’t free.
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I would highlight the college outcomes for the students featured in the documentary:
Sophia Wu- UCLA
Ian Wang- Emory
Alvan Cai- UCB
Rachael Schmidt- Brown
Shealand Fairchild- Stanford
Class President- Stanford and Harvard
As stressful and seemingly difficult these kids journeys appeared to have been, they all are seemingly getting great college educations.
“Many first gens are being denied the very thing that helped their parents gain a foothold and get ahead in life – a good education.”
I would hardly conclude (from the documentary at least) that these kids were denied a good education either at a public and free HS like Lowell or the colleges they matriculated into. To the contrary their outcomes and opportunities are seemingly fantastic!
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Watching the movie, I wondered what the outcomes were for the students who didn’t make the cut. I am guessing, but suspect the director cherry picked the stories that were most compelling. We don’t really know how admissions shook out for that graduation class overall.
And for full disclosure (SPOILERS) the girl who went to Brown and one of the boys who got into Stanford were not Asian. Make of that what you will. And the kid who went to UCB got in off the waitlist. And the Emory kid went to Emory - Oxford (basically a community college, that is a side entry into Emory - but he also got great merit aid). The UCLA girl (great ECs and academics) got shut out of the private elites. They may have ended up in good schools, but they weren’t where they wanted to go.
The main takeaway I had was that first gen kids get really bad advice from their parents. And Stanford admissions is brutal.
ETA: the tragedy of the story, as articulated by a student at the end, is that these kids sacrificed their high school years for the hope to get into an elite college, when they ended up at schools that they could have gotten into anyway. What was it all for?
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I wasn’t saying this is something you do, personally. I am just guessing that there is some overlap between people who have given that kind of advice but who have a very different take in the context of the affirmative action debate. I agree with you that nearly every objectively high-stats kid who wants to go to an elite selective college will be able to attend one.
Maybe they learned how to apply appropriate discount rates to uncertain future outcomes.
“Remember: Enjoy your life today, because yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come”
- Alan Coren
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If some kids think that the purpose of HS is to spend your time shaping yourself into the “perfect” Ivy League applicant , that is just sad. What’s also sad is the idea that learning is only “worth it” if there’s a prestigious college payoff at the end. No wonder elite schools are mainly turning out investment bankers, management consultants and the like in lieu of brilliant original thinkers these days.
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I absolutely agree with your conclusion about the tragedy of lost HS time and effort spent in pursuit of an elusive, hard to value and unpredictable goal of getting into an elite college.
In terms of cherry picking, I have no doubt you are correct that the students featured may not have been representative but just more interesting. In trying to gather context I noted Lowell HS doesn’t provide matriculation data. So I looked at the NJ peer equivalent Bergen Academies.
As the data below shows the majority of the schools demographics are Asian and the school has an outstanding matriculation track record (121 Ivy attendees) along with the vast majority of the kids landing in great spots. My point being that unless you define success as attending a ridiculously small cohort of colleges, high schools like Lowell and Bergen Academies are giving these kids great outcomes and amazing academic opportunities for free (beyond the mental anguish mentioned).
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