Would Yale take a flier on a kid?

penandink
Sat, 03 Nov 2018 20:11:58 +0000

I said (above) that I didn’t mean to imply that most students in these schools were soulless overachievers. In other words, they are not, so lighten up. But I know and have known some who attend, have attended or are hoping to attend a school like Yale and who – to me – seem obsessed with grades, scores and resume items. It’s what they talk about; sometimes it seems like all they think about. Which is FINE. And sometimes they do get great recs because some teachers value that striving for academic perfection more than anything else. I don’t begrudge them that; I’m only saying that is one type of good student, and perhaps even this type is a minority. There are lots of others, though.

There doesn’t seem to be any way to ask the original pondering question and discuss it without making some people think this is just bitterness or regret or envy. It isn’t. It was really just about how broad a net Yale casts, not about how undeserving the other fish in the net are.