<h2>epiphany: In our school, National Honor Society & student government are entirely driven by administrative decisions & are NOT based on merit. As to student government, LOL, you don't even get to be SB Prez if you're the most popular. Even social standing doesn't help you. If the Dean loves you, you're in. She "recounts" the votes after the students vote, and "corrects" their decision. Thoroughly corrupt. She often installs her own relatives.</h2>
<p>They are selecting for a certain "je ne sais quoi". "It is often confusing to parents of students who seem to have achieved so much, yet still do not get" selected. Maybe the selectees had similar stats to the rejects but had to overcome greater obstacles. Maybe the dean's relatives get selected because they value education more in that family. Also, leadership isn't always determined by how many votes you get. Some people might say Ralph Nader is a better leader than George W. Bush although Nader got crushed in the presidential election. </p>
<p>Does anyone have proof that the National Honor Society selectees have less merit than those rejected? Or any proof that the National Honor Society selectees go on to achieve less than those rejected? I didn't think so.</p>
<p>^^ Yes, Proof galore! Clearly, collegealum, you have not been around much on CC, because the variations in this "award" are astounding. There have been many threads about it; do a search. In some cases the awards are logical & the methodology followed just as the NHS dictated it. In other cases (many, it seems!) the awards are strictly political & not related to the merit of the candidate. You need to do some research & get your facts straight. </p>
<p>NHS has morphed considerably from a generation ago. You are not up to date.</p>
<p>In short, "Does anyone have proof that the National Honor Society selectees have less merit than those rejected?" Yes, many student & parents on CC. </p>
<p>Nobody brought up the hypothetical about NHS "going on to achieve less," except you. "College achievement" + NHS was not something I ever brought up, nor did others on this thread.</p>
<p>It was Bay who brought up the je ne sais quoi concept. If you have such disdain for this concept, take it up with him. He wasn't relating it to National Honor Society. There is no direct parallel between NHS appointments (when no methodology is followed, which is apparently quite often) and college admissions -- unless you think the entire admissions process is arbitrary when not entirely quantitative.</p>
<p>I was just playing devil's advocate. My point is that someone can always point to the "je ne sais quoi" reason to justify any selection process. My school didn't have NHS; from what I've heard, it doesn't seem to be worth very much.</p>
<p>Anyway, it's interesting how badly the National Merit Scholars from my school did in college admissions at HYP and especially Stanford. Once you make the cut-off for the PSAT to become a semi-finalist, the selection of national merit scholar from finalist is just as holistic as college admissions. They require the transcript, class rank, essay, resume' (accomplishments), and recommendations. At the time I applied 2000 were selected from across the country, about the same number of people in the freshman class at Harvard. No one who got in had any special hooks btw.</p>
<p>Anyway, the 11 national merit scholars were pretty much shut out of Stanford admissions--1 guy got in and they let in more than 10 other people that were nowhere near the top 10 academically. One guy even had straight B's and less than 1400 on the SAT. 2 out of the 4 people who got into Harvard did not make the national merit scholar designation. The sample size for Princeton was pretty small-only 2 got in, but 1 of those wasn't very smart at all. The other guy definitely was one of our best. The Yale people were very strong academically. And it seemed like the people who got in to all the ivies and stanford had the same profile: excellent grades and SATI, not really good at thinking but founded organizations and community service programs for their resume'. They weren't the people who were getting the top scores in the class. I mean if you hit a wall in calc I like one of the guys who got into HYPS and HPME, you aren't one of the top people at one of the public elites (as Newsweek called my school.)</p>
<p>The national merit scholarship foundation and HYPS cannot both be selecting for academic merit. Otherwise, the results would have been different. Anyway, I'm sure your D was a great candidate. From your description, it sounds like your D was one of the academic people rather than "community activist" type. Probably the smartest guy who ever went to our high school (won gold medal on U.S. math olympics team) went to Harvard. But there were a lot of questionable choices which were obviously wrong especially seeing what the rejects have done in the past 10 years compared to those who got in, and the fact that the rejects had pretty phenomenal academic stats and achievements coming out of high school. In fact, the younger brother of the kid who won the gold medal at the math olympics was only slightly less smart at math and was also a wonderful musician, and he got rejected at HYPS. Among other things, he was in the top 100 in math and physics in the country (USAMO and USAPHO qualifier) and a good enough violinist to end up playing in a professional orchestra after getting a masters at a top 5 electrical engineering grad school. (His undergrad was at a school out of the top 30.) Yet he was rejected for a guy that couldn't get an "A" in calc 1 and wasn't anywhere near the top guy in our high school in the discipline he was going to study. All I'm saying is that even without the hooks and AA, the student body at HYPS is more of a heterogenous mixture in terms of academic ability and that it is beyond what you would expected if they were selecting based on academics. You might say there is a diversity of intelligence.</p>
<p>No process is perfect. My primary intent for posting this stuff is to keep people with outstanding ability from getting discouraged by admissions decisions and subsequently changing their strategy and/or career.</p>
<p>Is it arrogant to say that a guy with a 11 second 100 meter score shouldn't be recruited to join the olympic team? Or even a top 5 collegiate track team? </p>
<p>btw, at least the girl the op is referring to was valedictorian and class president. I think most people wouldn't have a problem losing out to her specifically (although I don't know why we would be excited about it if they outscored her by 400 points on the SAT and outdid her in the classroom.) It's the principle that we are discussing.</p>
<p>"btw 1980 is a great score. its not like it makes you unqualified for harvard. the people on here are so arrogant its unbelievable"</p>
<p>I would agree that 1980 is a great score, I don't think anyone ever said it wasn't a great score. and YES as this post shows its certainly still possible to get into Harvard with a 1980. However, rude and incorrect stereotypes aside, the majority of people accepted to Harvard have SAT scores 2200+. It is a very competitive college to get into, and in terms of other Harvard applicants 1980 is not a "great score". And I believe that was the purpose of the thread, to show that you don't need amazing SAT scores to get into Harvard.</p>
<p>BTW congratulations to that girl! It seems like she earned and standardized testing is certaintly not a fair measure of ability, in my opinion.</p>
<p>And je ne sais quoi is a common expression, i'm pretty sure they didn't use it to try to fancy up the term.</p>
<p>Congratulations! I've heard that the essay is EXTREMELY important, about a 1/3 of your application. Though, if it just makes you stand out like no other, it might be the determining factor.</p>
<p>My friend knows someone who went to Cornell with a 1950.</p>
<p>My best friend got into Harvard - and she didn't really want to go there, she wanted to go to Columbia. But she was waitlisted. In fact, the only OOS school she got into was Harvard.</p>
<p>2100 SATs, 8th in Class, ASB President, but mostly; a beautiful, amazing human being.</p>
<p>In all honesty, I find that many of the comments posted on this website are worrisome. There seems to be an overly elitist attitude (especially among the students themselves), as shown with the posting, or rather, boasting, of statistics and scores. As a student who is not a legacy case or a "faculty brat" or a graduate of a chic prep school, I hail from a community that does not furnish its residents with economic prosperity or opportunity. This is just one of many communities in the nation - a nation whose per capita GDP is among the highest in the world. With this in mind, how many children from Eastern Europe, Central Africa, or South America, can afford to attend a college or university? Who are the leaders of these nations? Who are the leaders of our nation? Many of these so-called leaders are individuals whose fathers, grandfathers and children have attended or are attending Ivy-League universities and exclusive private colleges in the United States. Are they offered admission based soley on merit? No. Private institutions are dependent on the donations of legacy cases. Without adequate funds, such schools would lose credibility and caliber. This is why schools such as Duke, Harvard, Brown, Amherst, Bowdoin, Cornell, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford recruit and admit "development cases" (students whose families are prospective donors), celebrities and children of celebrities, and bare bones legacy cases (children of alumni and donors).
There is another sort of affirmative action lurking behind the publicity of minority admission: white upper-class legacy and celebrity. And although the test scores and GPAs of this particular demographic may be sub-par, they are guaranteed success! Why? Because an elite school is not only a bumper sticker or a silk-screen on a sweatshirt, it is a network of individuals who hold great power and economic means. A C-student is president of the United States, his daughters trump our more-qualified and, think Asian, more qualified peers, and hundreds of other celebrity progeny loiter in exclusive eating clubs, graduating without honors yet earning high profile investment-banking positions or political posts. Our minority students and students from less means are so often ignored in favor of legacies and prospective donors that it is hard to muster any respect for our Ivy schools. Perhaps we should adopt a different angle? All global citizens deserve equal opportunity. There are other institutions that embrace meritocracy and not aristocracy. Apply to those schools. Caltech or Cooper Union, to name two.</p>
<p>With this said, is it fair of you to assign a pedigree to fellow students? Are we not all deserving despite our individual achievements, given the opportunities offered to some students and denied of others?</p>
<p>What is your point? First you say that people who don't have opportunities because of economic hardship should get in despite lack of academic accomplishments, and then you say you are fine with development cases and legacy admits. </p>
<p>Neither legacy cases or development admits are necessary to have a thriving research community. MIT and CalTech have neither development cases or legacy admits and they are top 5 schools in research.</p>
<p>To answer your question, if everyone is deserving despite lack of individual accomplishments, then just hold a lottery to see who gets in.</p>
<p>I see where the wording on that last statement may be misleading. </p>
<p>What I stated in the final sentence or two was that legacy students, etc. have been offered opportunities that other less-fortunate students have not had. By opportunities I mean an exclusive secondary school education and access to resources (for example, a child of a faculty member to whom laboratories and so forth are readily available). What institutions of higher education must do is admit soley on merit and take into account adversity as well. Several schools do practice this methodology when selecting students (I listed Caltech and Cooper Union as examples). </p>
<p>I merely wished to point out that money talks in higher education and much louder than merit, which is why Asians and Asian Americans, for example, who outperform many of their peers, are set to higher standards when applying to such schools. A majority of these students come from poorer families and are not as appealing as other applicants for this reason. I personally believe that all students, when given the opportunity, can rise to the occasion if they choose. Therefore less fortunate applicants should be given a fair trial.</p>
<p>Also, MIT does favor legacies. These schools depend on legacy donations to flourish. Caltech rebuffs legacy applicants and has stricter requirements for children of faculty. They receive a great deal of their funding through federal grants (from organizations such as the NSF) and from donors not affiliated with the school. Alumi also contribute but when the children of alumni apply, these donations or prospective donations are not taken into account. This is why I added Caltech as a school who practices meritocracy, not aristocracy, and is deserving of its noteriety.</p>
<p>Well, MIT has stated that children of alumni do not get any preferential treatment. The one caveat is that an admission officer said the legacy rejects get one additional review to make sure they didn't make a gross error, but the same admissions officer (Ben Jones) claimed that they have never overturned a decision. Based on what the admissions office said, there hasn't been any preferential treatment for legacies. (I was not a legacy, so I have no stake in the matter except that I hope mit has maintained its integrity.) </p>
<p>Unless the admissions office at mit is lying, there is no preferential treatment for legacies at mit.</p>