Why applicants overreach and are disappointed in April...

Parents Forum
541

Is it really the case that after you weed out the “clueless” applicants at the top schools, you have the class? I would guess not.

Most students only go through this process once, and so some of the things that no doubt seem totally obvious to people in the admissions office are not obvious to the students, even if they have conducted a close reading of the posts on the web site, and looked at the specific programs in their areas of interest. Many students do not have good advice available to them locally.

If I were applying (and thankfully, there is an entire new generation before anyone in my extended family will be applying to college again), I would hope that my application was read by someone who was kind, and not dismissive.

When it comes to “show, don’t tell,” which several posters have advocated, I think it should be kept in mind that the advice was originally directed at playwrights, for obvious reasons. It also suggests that by golly, you the applicant, had better be really interesting to the admissions committee readers. Academic statements are not wanted–presumably because you only think you are applying to an academic institution. Also “show, don’t tell” seems to me to be awfully tell-y and not very show-y.

Sure, the applicant has to buck up and make the best of what’s on offer in the system, and be biddable, or at least compliant in terms of the essays. But I am not at all convinced that the status quo is an ideal way to pick top classes, to build the future of the country. I am reminded of one of the more famous quotations from Robert F. Kennedy, “Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream things that never were, and ask why not.”

542

Who suggested that’s the case? Even after you review the clueless vs the clued in, there’s more to it. You know Fitzsimmons has said finalists can be 3x the number of seats.

And why raise this (straw man?) concern admissions folks are not “kind?”
Show not tell has evolved to mean don’t just claim it or dream it. Do something relevant.

Dreams are not actions. If they inspire, it should be to do something. That’s what RFK hoped for. (Not that he’s relevant to this thread. Nor what any one person thinks admissions “should” be like.)

543

If you want to enter the arena in a highly competitive environment, it is not ever going to be about “kind”. Not in the admissions decisions, not in the hierarchy of the investment banking business to which so many prestige-seekers aspire.

Not that “kind” is a bad quality. But it’s really incongruous for students or parents to somehow think there ought to be an easier path to the tippy top. The steeper the climb, the tougher it is going to be.

It’s not a matter of being “unkind” – when admissions readers have to cull through 20 applications for every one they admit – they simply don’t have time to weed through to find redeeming qualities that may have been overlooked. They are also answerable to their peers and to the director of admissions – it’s one thing to see something that the others don’t see on occasion, it’s quite another to be perceived as entirely out of step with the standards and expectations of one’s peers.

So yes… there are many skills that a student needs to acquire or manifest in order to get into a top college. One of them is to be able to effectively communicate who they are and what they have to offer within the confines of a written college application.

The other skill is resiliency – the ability to understand that not everyone is a winner, and not everyone gets a trophy – and to move on from there. That seems to be a quality that is sadly lacking in some… though from the discussion on CC it seems to often be more of a problem for parents than their offspring.

544

@ucbalumnus Looking at the Naviance scattergrams, for every top school I can see a bunch of acceptances clustered at the top right end, and always a few outliers, sometimes with drastically lower stats. Not sure if they’re recruited athletes or outstanding in some other way, but it does seem like there are factors which trump the stats.

545

I think students look at the admitted student profiles, see that they are in the top 50% or maybe even the top 25%, and think that means they have a 50% or 75% chance of getting in. Even quoting the “only 6% of applicants are accepted” statistic at them doesn’t convince them, because they think “well, but a lot of those applicants probably have inadequate stats and are just hoping they’ll get lucky. They’re just applying the same way someone buys a lottery ticket.”

What might actually be helpful is if schools published not only the average stats of their accepted students, but also the average stats of the entire applicant pool – and maybe the average stats of those who weren’t accepted as well. If hopeful applicants saw that stats of the entire applicant pool aren’t that different from those of the accepted students, they might realize that yes, that 6% chance applies even to applicants with 1600 SATs and 4.0 GPAs.

546

All a student needs to do is look at the college specific forums to see all the 1600SAT/4.0GPA students rejected. I think kids are too quick to assume something was “wrong” with those applications - not enough ECs, poor essays, instead of it being a sobering reality check.

547

This has been a huge pet peeve of mine on these threads. Its one of the reasons I keep looking for concrete examples.

548

I agree that an unhooked applicant needs to tell his/her story in a way that grabs the attention of the AO who reads his/her app during that brief period of time, and back up that story with relevant ECs, accomplishments, etc. However, there’re at least two problems I can think of with the current admission process in this regard:

  1. Some really good STEM students are disadvantaged. They tend to be more introverted, less showy. They may be singularly focused on an area they’re interested in (which is what it may take in some scientific endeavor), and they may not care how they’re perceived outside of their area of interest.

  2. Applicants from middle and lower class families are disadvantaged. Their families (and GCs) are likely not able to provide the guidance that’s discussed in this very interesting thread, and don’t have the resources to develop the “right” interest to create, let alone the “right” activities to “show” and back up, their stories that the colleges are looking for.

549

“This has been a huge pet peeve of mine on these threads. Its one of the reasons I keep looking for concrete examples.”

Me too. Although kid #1 is set on his college journey, kid #2 will be going through the admissions process in a few years and it would be nice to have a more thorough understanding of some of the details. Yes, there are some specific pieces of advice for specific schools, but much of the other advice sounds like it comes from a badly translated kung fu style sitcom… uses great buzz words and sounds profound but is actually a pile of mumbo jumbo that is too vague to be helpful and that you suspect only applies to a few unnamed colleges.

Some of that makes sense because the variety of situations is vast and advice that applies to each one of them is rare and general.

550

I worked in corporate HR and have reviewed countless resumes/cover letters. When I first started working in the department, I would spend quite a bit of time pouring over the resume that were sent in. As I became more comfortable with the process, and as I interviewed more applicants attached to resumes, I got a lot faster at reading and sorting resumes. Usually less than a minute would give me the stuff I needed to know about whether an applicant should be put into the maybe/yes pile v. the NOPE! pile.

A computer program did the first cut for me - taking out any clearly unqualified applicants who didn’t mean minimum standards. I was left with then a large pile to go over manually.

One of the first cut bugaboos? Typos in a resume. If an applicant couldn’t send a one page resume in without errors, I found that correlated strongly with sloppiness in other areas (from in person interviews). So, quite quickly applications with typos were sent into the NOPE! pile without a second thought. No more interviews “just to check”.

Another bugaboo? Sending a resume/cover letter that didn’t follow the instructions when applying for a job. Again, after overriding my initial NOPE! to interview some applicants who didn’t follow instructions and not having that work out for the applicants (more issues found in interview) - applications that couldn’t follow directions were immediately put into the NOPE! pile going forward. Biggest one? Longer resumes than requested - you do not send a 3 page resume in if you are asked to send a 1 page resume. Trust me on this.

Cover letters restating the resume often led to the NOPE! pile. Wasting 1/2 of your initial application restating information I can easily access in the resume tells me that you didn’t understand the point of a cover letter. One cover letter that did make the grade was one that had a reference to an applicant surviving a snake attack as proof of his ability to survive and succeed under pressure. He was called in for a live interview and was hired; the cover letter was funny, left us with questions (what had happened?!?) and he was highly qualified in every other aspect. We found that applicant to be just as good in person and he is still working at the same company (20 years later, a lot higher up in senior management!).

Cover letters/resume applying for a job that we weren’t offering, or applying to a job at a different company. While technically not a typo (everything was spelled and formatted correctly) - this type of application often was so generic (on top of the error in company name) as to easily be put into the NOPE! pile.

After skimming obvious NOPE! applications off the larger pile, I was still left with large numbers of application to choose to interview or choose to put into my “maybe another time” files.

I then spent more time on the applications of people who were clearly qualified to do the job being applied for but maybe didn’t have any direct experience. If their application was super impressive on education or some other factor that caught my eye - not having direct experience might not be a stumbling block and they often would get an interview. If their resume was solid but not super impressive, nothing stood out to me and they didn’t have direct experience? Then that resume often went on over to the NOPE! pile.

Job hopping (even if the resume was impressive) was a personal NOPE! for the corporation I worked for. They didn’t want to hire people who jumped from job to job every 1-3 years. While I didn’t have strong feelings on this, my employer did so those resumes went into the NOPE! pile.

After getting my resume pile down to a manageable number (10-15 applicants out of 75-100 initial), I would conduct phone interviews. If someone was rude or arrogant over the phone, inappropriate or just didn’t seem to ‘fit’- they would be put into the NOPE! pile. Another 3-7 applications out of the way. At that point, I would usually take the remaining applications to the hiring manager to see which of the 7-10 applications I had culled should make it to the live interview rounds. Depending on what the hiring manager wanted, there could be anywhere from 3 - 6 live interviews. And from there, a decision would be made on which person would be hired - usually based on the hiring manager deciding if they wanted to work with/be around the applicant 8-12 hrs a day. Likeability or “chemistry” should never be underestimated in decisions like this. Every person in for a live interview was highly qualified for the job on tap…it came down to will this person fit in the department and with the current employees.

Of course, there was sometimes a problem with the hiring offer and in which case we might go back to another applicant from the live interview stage, we might go back to some of the maybe resumes from an earlier stage or we might start over again with a new batch of resumes (resumes were always coming in to be reviewed).

I hope the connection to college applications is clear here. I have not worked in AO so I am sure there are distinct differences, but when you have an overabundance of applicants for a set number of spots - it does often come down to fit and chemistry with the organization, as well as setting yourself apart from the rest of the pack over the basic “is the applicant qualified”?

551

Thanks for the clarification that when you wrote “lots are clueless,” you didn’t mean that the “lots” were enough to winnow down far enough.

Personally, I think kindness is under-rated as a quality. If I were reading applications, and saw an applicant who was kind, that person would be in over the top (for me), as long as he/she had the requisite academic qualifications.

It is possible to decline someone kindly, or to decline them derisively. Not at the college application stage, but in my later career, I have seen both. Kindness is better.

552

Kind. is nice. It’s not an attribute that trumps. You know you wouldn’t press for an unqualified physics grad student if she was kind, but didn’t have the right experiences and successes. In fact, going off track to discuss kindness only distracts.

And kind is vague.

“Also “show, don’t tell” seems to me to be awfully tell-y and not very show-y.”
“This has been a huge pet peeve of mine on these threads. Its one of the reasons I keep looking for concrete examples”

Well, I mentioned earlier that saying you want stem, with limited stem core courses (or course success) and no math-sci activities, isn’t showing adcoms any commitment, nor the strengths. That started the usual hubbub about kids being kids, choosing other activities, being themselves.

It’s like beebee3’s example of culling through apps.

553

@beebee3 It’s interesting to compare the “fit and chemistry” in job hunt and college hunt. Naturally, job ads are usually significantly more specific, including with respect to company culture, than what you can find on a college website. I wish colleges had similar “job ads”. I remember looking on one job ad and telling my husband: “this is my dream job ad, it fits me like a glove”. A month later, I was working at this company, and still there three years later, feels like family.

554

I had been understanding “show, don’t tell” as advice about the written statements, since it is stock advice given to playwrights.

I understand now that it means something different in the current context. However, it appears to me that the “show” part is useless as advice to a rising senior. By the time someone is a rising senior, the situation appears to me to be more like “you must already have accomplishments that connect with your future plans,” that is, "your actions must already have shown . . . "

This would be good for a rising 9th grader to keep in mind, for admission to a top school, probably.

When I wrote about kindness, it was in the context of undergraduate admissions. But I added “as long as he/she had the requisite academic qualifications.” So, yes, I would push to admit a qualified physics grad student on the basis that she was kind.

I don’t find kindness to be a vague quality. I also think it is in much shorter supply in the world than it should be. It would be a really interesting experiment to identify the qualified applicants for a college, and then make the final cut based on demonstrated kindness. The college would wind up short on self-involved narcissists.

555

quant- there are lots and lots of seniors who CAN show but choose to tell instead. I’ve read college applications as a favor to kids I know and you want to nod off halfway through. These are kids who come alive when talking about something they care about- and the application is a laundry list of “stuff I’ve done”.

The Quaker schools do a good job screening for kindness. The Catholic schools used to- but now that their religious orientation is more diffuse, it’s less apparent.

556

If you have the whole package, it includes compassion in action. Toward other humans. In your community or region. Etc. Not just a mandated hour here and there.

Just saying “I’m kind” is telling. Being able to show what you did is better.

Let’s stay on track.

557

Many schools look for kindness, many using community service as a proxy for it. (Doing more than just logging required hours of course.) Harvard’s Education School is trying to get college admissions move more in that direction. https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/16/01/turning-tide-inspiring-concern-others-and-common-good-through-college-admissions Jury is still out whether that will have any success.

I’d say yes, if you are aiming at the top schools you should be ready to show not tell by the time you are a senior. But part of the process is also looking at what you’ve done and figuring out who you are and what your real accomplishments were. So it’s looking at activities and seeing if there are stories to tell there that will give admissions officers an idea of who you are, how your mind works, what you think about.

I loved the essay from the kid who went to Caltech who talked about how he thought about physics when he rode roller-coasters. My older son would rather pull-out his fingernails than write a personal essay. So he wrote a program to write the essay for him. It wasn’t very good, but it made a pretty funny opening for his essay. And it showed him as inventive, creative, and very self-directed in his learning.

558

Maybe another way of phrasing the “show, not tell” advice is that the application as a whole should convey a story.

As I’ve also posted before, it needs to be a simple story - there just isn’t time for the admission readers to dig into complexity. Ideally there are two or three highlights to get across.

The story needs to answer these questions: Who is this person? Why does s/he want to come to our college? What will s/he bring to our college? How is this person different from others who are applying with similar credentials?

And ideally it should answer those questions in an engaging way, because it is aimed toward an audience (admission readers) who are overwhelmed with paper and have limited attentional resources. Engaging doesn’t have to mean Pulitzer-Prize winning… but honestly I suspect that many admission readers probably don’t get past the first paragraph of a lot of essays.

And the “story” is not just in the essay – it is in everything else – the EC’s, the LOR’s, the high school transcript. Best if it all hangs together in some cohesive way.

And yes, by the time the student is a senior, most of the story elements have already been set. So part of the task of the applicant is to put those pieces together for admissions, in a way that conveys what the student wants to convey. If, at that time the student doesn’t already have well-developed interests or activities, then maybe their story has to be one that focuse on their intellectual curiousity and desire to explore… but one way or another, a story needs to be told.

So here’s an analogy: imagine each student has a handful of lego bricks to work with. All lego bricks, by design, can be assembled into something. But lego bricks come in different sizes, shapes & colors and each student has different ones. Maybe some students have more and some have less. The task for the college application is to assemble those bricks into something recognizable – part of that task may be deciding which bricks to use and which to set aside. Because if two students happen to have the same set of lego bricks to work with – and one simply submits them all in one loose pile, or sticks them together in some sort of random, abstract way — and the other uses the legos to build a little model airplane … it’s not hard to predict which one would be chosen over the other.

559

And that story needs to fit that college. Eg, a shy, sheltered kid who presents a ‘consistent’ story of hanging back, solitary pursuits, not much connection to peers, won’t attract attention at a college that values engagement, stretch/ testing your limits, venturing out, etc.

The colleges that want you to run with your intellectual curiosity can not like that picture that all you want to do is study your major, hang with other kids in the dept, etc.

Those are extremes. But you can’t just talk about, eg, your curiosity, if the picture behind your words shows you’re an in-the-box sort. That’s a difference between telling pr just claiming vs showing.

560

I have a few concerns about the new emphasis on “service” or “community involvement” or “caring” or however they want to describe it. As soon as the elite schools let the world know what they are looking for, it quickly becomes a requirement for admissions, whether they phrase it that way or not. When I was in high school, there was no emphasis on volunteering. The people who did community service, did so because they had a real passion for a cause or a desire to help. Once community service became mandated, it lost most of its ability to signal anything about the applicant other then the fact that he can follow directions. If colleges reframe the essay or add new supplements asking about the quality of a student’s contribution, students will just find ways to plug that new hole.

Moreover, despite what they say, I don’t believe that the elite colleges will relax their emphasis on academic acheivement in order to make the teen years less stressful. I believe they will just add another layer onto an already overwhelming process. They will still be looking for students to take the most challenging courses available, and show passion for something AND show how much they care about the community.

In the end, no one is really required to play this game. There are other schools out there, as the great posters here on CC keep reminding me! But I don’t see the elites doing anything to meaningfully address the growing stress level among kids in competitive environments. In all honestly, I don’t think there is a single thing they can do because the math is the math. No matter how kind they try to make the process, there are still too few seats for too many kids.