<p>
Or they could have gotten a Chinese-speaker who still didn’t care. Presumably, that would be even worse. Anyway, that’s a really sad quotation.</p>
<p>It seems to me that what’s true for STEM PhDs may not be true for all PhDs. I wonder if a lot of potential STEM PhDs go to med school instead–perhaps this is less true in other countries.</p>
<p>The whole topic of “hooks” is depressing, because it is so darned shortsighted.</p>
<p>There are hooks that can not be massaged: Famous father, very smart student coming from deprived circumstances, the extremely rare young person who has accomplished something astounding (Olympic medal, famous actor, best selling author, brilliant scientific mind…). These hooks simply are there or they aren’t.</p>
<p>Then there are those interesting people mentioned upthread. Those people who (to use a term I don’t really care for) <em>leaned in</em> to <em>something</em>. People who found an activity or a hobby or an idea, and followed that path to wherever it took them. It may have become a “hook”, or not, but it was something the person was interested in.</p>
<p>And those hooks just can’t be recreated at the whim of someone who is <em>looking</em> for a hook. </p>
<p>And really, it is so much more healthy to simply follow the path you are drawn towards. Maybe that path will lead to an elite college. Maybe it will lead to nowhere in particular. Or maybe it will lead somewhere spectacular someday but in a nonlinear sort of way.</p>
<p>Whatever, I love talking with my son’s friend about her experiences raising and showing pigs, and working as a 4H leader, which lead her to a DC internship, and ultimately her first post college job. Or another friend, who took a love of film (particularly editing) and an in-depth knowledge of sports, added a journalism major and an internship filming sports for our flagship university. He just got hired in a dream job with a major sports network. Or my SIL who followed the path that began with of a single trip to an out of the way corner of the world, and turned it into a passion, then a major and then a Ph.D., from which flowed an amazing job. </p>
<p>Those kids leaned in and followed a path to fullfillment. Did they have hooks? Did it matter? The important thing was not the hook to a particular college, but the path and ultimate destination, which is NOT college, but life beyond college.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think all PhDs are potential STEM PhDs, in one sense or another. We tend to give bright students a broad set of choices about what to study. In most of the world, I don’t think that’s really true. A few years ago, I was talking to a friend who is a research-oriented cardiac radiologist in a European city. He had known since he was a boy that he wanted to be a scientist, probably a medical researcher, but his education was very broad and included lots of arts, literature, and history. His daughter was completing academic medical studies at the time, and he bemoaned the fact that starting in high school she had studied nothing besides STEM. He was proud of her, of course, but he thought his country’s educational system had shortchanged her generation by driving them exclusively to STEM at an early age. And this was Western Europe, not one of the places where for bright students it’s really STEM or nothing (unless maybe it’s economics).</p>
<p>Here, it’s not just medicine that attracts students. We compensate doctors and lawyers – some doctors and lawyers, at least – far more than the rest of the world does, and we really compensate investment and finance professionals more highly. Plenty of STEM-oriented students find their way into law and finance, and now commercial internet exploitation. In recent years, I think those fields far outpace medicine in peeling off people who once upon a time might have become physicists or chemists.</p>
<p>Thanks for your replies. Feedback and debriefings in the business world are always appreciated. Just wish an admissions officer would offer the same. Darndest thing …an AO ignored our requests for a face-to-face meeting …but then offers us an academic ride when we got close to decision day. I get one more chance at this and will focus on LACs instead of universities. Another AO scoffed at CC; and i made no mention of CC. I felt like replying “CC offers frankness.”</p>