Admissions Horror Show
No more legacy preferences, test-score flouting, and résumé padding! Watch, if you dare, as the merely rich and only sort of powerful attempt to secure Ivy League admission spots without the old bag of tricks.
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Here is a link to the Town and Country page without apple.news in front of it:
“Only available through Town and Country All Access…”
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OY. Article #3,932 on the topic of, “Woe oh woe, the wealthy mourn their inability to attend one of the 20 colleges that they think worthy of their special superior being of a child, who will now have their life destroyed by attending a plebian school, or worse, live with the peasants at a public university”
In all honesty, the article itself seems not to be as sympathetic as some do with the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments over the difficulties of the wealthy and privileged to attend the colleges which they believe to be the only ones worthy of their unique gifts and genius.
Once again, I find that I have difficulty in feeling all that sad because some top 1% by income kid will attend Fordham or Rutgers instead of U Penn or Duke.
One thing - their teaching mission is not financially supported by the federal government. Their federal funds are almost entirely research grants. So the money they get from the government does not pay for students, nor it, in any way, obligate these universities to provide any education services is return for that money, or to modify their education or admissions system.
Their tax status does create obligations in policies, but the article speaks of the money they get from the government. The only exceptions are grants for education, but the amount of money that is given in those is small, and earmarked for specific programs.
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Do the students need to Try Harder! in the face of increasing competition?
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I watched that last night. Sad to see kids under that much pressure.
No, they need to stop thinking about high school as four years of Trying to Get Into An Elite College.
Parents need to do their best to keep their kids from going down the spiral of I Must Be Accepted To a Prestigious College! I MUST! IMUSTIMUSTIMustIMustImustimustimustimust…
I think that parents, students, and high schools should stop considering college admissions as “a competition”. Kids are told that this is “a competition”, and therefore, they expect that admissions is about “winning”, specifically admissions to an “elite” college. That means that whoever is not accepted to an “elite” college is not a “winner”, and consequently is a “loser”.
So high achieving kids are told in upper middle class and affluent high schools across the country (even kids who are not themselves from affluent families, but attend such highly schools), that they will either be accepted to an “elite” high school or they will be “losers”. It’s 10X as bad as “class rank”.
Talking about having “increased competition” couches it in those terms. Other applicants are not “competitors”, who the applicants has to “beat”, by any legal means necessary (or illegal, if you are Varsity Blues parent). They are another applicants, similar to you, some who may end up as classmates wherever the kid attends college. People go on about how schools are better when things are collaborative, yet celebrate competitiveness and celebrate “winning” when these kids are in high school.
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