^^Nope, publics use it too. UDel uses it exclusively.
I suspect it is in part (or completely) for redefining affirmative action as a “holistic” process so an autopsy of the parents helps fill in some of the blanks. Of course, the information about parents on a college application is irrelevant and intrusive. If an applicant has something important to say about his upbringing/parents then the essay is an open forum.
I, too was concerned about the biographical information. I have heard that if you have two professional parents, then they discount your application due to the perceived advantages that you child has had. Does anyone have experience with this?
Also–why do they need to know the last two jobs? I’ve been a homemaker for 17 years–is it really important what I did before that? Argh.
Did nobody read the post from @intparent ? Schools want this information because parents’ educational and professional backgrounds provide important information about the kid’s background and their relative advantages and opportunities. I have a BA from Wesleyan, an MA from UChicago and 2 law degrees from NYU. My husband has a BA and an MBA from Columbia. I was a lawyer in big NYC law firms before I became a SAHM. My husband is an executive for a giant advertising and media company. My kid starts way ahead of the child of a janitor and a mail carrier, neither of whom went to college. I don’t think it’s even vaguely unreasonable for AO’s to take that into account when assessing the accomplishments of applicants. And no, I’m not worried that his privileged background is going to keep him out of a good school.
Why would you not be worried if the information is likely to be used against your child? Why work hard to provide for your children if an unwritten formula systematically holds it against them? Why even allow your child to apply to a selective school - just have him start at community college on principle.
I would not describe your children’s background as “privileged” based on your description. It sounds like they were raised well by caring parents who worked hard on their children’s behalf. That is great but should be irrelevant to the college admissions process. If not, then simply apply numerical handicaps to the applications of students considered “privileged.”
Knock off a few ACT points, especially for those Asian males frittering their youths away studying - studying is a well known unfair advantage to test taking and as such a “privilege.” Knock off a few tenths of GPA points for two parent households, another unfair advantage. Should the parents have the means to pay full tuition, then simply reject them from the start in order to level the playing field. To really level the playing field we should disallow selective schools from being selective in the first place. Require the Ivy League to go 20 years with an ACT cap of 20, which is average. Why should they get all these top scoring kids? Or we could impose an ACT bell curve on all colleges who accept any federal funding. Certainly we have a plethora of omniscient social engineers who could devise a formula.
Again, all the relevant info anyone needs for “family educational background,” could be gathered by a check box for, “first generation college applicant.” They certainly don’t need to know what we do for a living. So is an applicant whose parents went to a state public viewed as more “disadvantaged” than one whose parents went to the Ivy League? Beyond checking a box for level of education, why does it matter where parents went or when, other than legacy info, which again, could be collected on a volunteer vs. required basis. If an applicant wants that considered, then they choose to click that box, or include it in their essay. Why they need to gather this information from every applicant, regardless of the school to which they are applying, is what seems so intrusive.
Judging from all the CC threads asking:
“Am I First Gen if my parents got their PhDs in India?”, or
“Am I a legacy if my 4th cousin’s BIL went to X school?”,
there is not universal understanding of what these terms mean.
^^ Eyeroll. So define it per school, since they all do it differently. Or provide a check box for parent’s highest level of education. I am quite frankly so surprised that so many of you are so okay with just rolling over and providing this kind of information to a huge behemoth of an organization for your child’s college application process.
"Why would you not be worried if the information is likely to be used against your child? Why work hard to provide for your children if an unwritten formula systematically holds it against them? "
Yes, there is such a shortage of children of college-educated professionals at elite schools. You can barely find the kid of a doctor, lawyer, or executive!
Hint: there’s no “formula.” It’s not “systematically held against them.”
If the information neither helps nor hinders, why include it at all? One assumes that the Common App knows what it is doing and is not asking random, actionless questions.
I absolutely HATE giving out this information, but PICK YOUR BATTLES.
Knowing the context does not necessarily mean “held against someone.” Given how well to do the student bodies are at elite schools compares to the population at large, it’s nothing but paranoia to suggest that well educated / well to do families are at any kind of disadvantage.
My college applications were 1 page long 30 years ago and they were 100% about me. How much do we all complain about how this process has evolved? Big picture, this is a battle worth picking, in terms of at least letting the powers that be know that providing this information is intrusive. Or, we could just roll over and do it and say nothing because what’s the point, and the creep will continue. If everybody who hates providing this information were to speak up, maybe someone would start listening? Feedback to Common App on the way their platform is structured is not the same as complaining to the college to which your kid is applying.
You can rebel all you want against this. But colleges have the right to consider a student’s family background when assessing students for acceptance. Until fairly recently, those of you with prestigious educations and/or jobs would have benefitted from these questions – schools liked to admit students from similar high end backgrounds. Now they take what I consider to be a more nuanced approach. I personally think it is fine. I know my kids have had a lot of advantages, and so do they – their parents both have graduate level degrees, make an upper middle class living, and have spent a lot on private schools and enriching summer experiences for our kids. I feel no need to hide that info from colleges, and would expect that my kids SHOULD perform better than kids without those advantages.
It kind of reminds me of people who think they built a business all by themselves without taking community resources like roads, railroads, air traffic control, public health monitoring, and public education for their employees into account as factors that also played into their success but aren’t actually something they provided. My kids have had the equivalent of all those community advantages, and some other applicants haven’t. I don’t begrudge those students a leg up in the process. People who do are somehow thinking their snowflakes would do just as well without the advantages their family background bestows. And that is probably wishful thinking. And if your kid hasn’t taken full advantage of the advantages from their background and produced stellar results, why would anyone expect that they would get the most out of an elite college education?
@intparent, you still haven’t answered how requiring detailed information on parental education and employment is more helpful to the process you describe than providing general information (e.g., don’t ask where each parent went and when they graduated and what they do for a living now, but ask for highest degree earned). I don’t begrudge a school using information in whatever way they want … I do think it is overly intrusive for the Common App to require the detailed information they require from every applicant.
I don’t see what there is to hide. Shrug.
Maybe it isn’t “systematic”, but the parents’ biographical info does create bias in the reader.
In this PBS Frontline story, you can read a series of UC Berkeley student application profiles and see how the AdComm reacted. Granted, this is a 1999 news story, but AdComms today are still human beings…
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/who/
Here’s the parent bio for Applicant 3:
Here is what the AdComm wtote:
My takeaway from this story is: the higher the parents’ education/income, the higher the admissions bar.
It’s not about hiding anything. It’s about the principle of sucking up information for the sake of gathering information, as a required part of the college application process. I’m so sick of having to provide information for no reason other than someone or some corporation wants to do data mining, when it has nothing to do with the task at hand.
None of my grandparents went to college. When I went to college, neither of my parents had finished a 4 year college. I did not expect, and certainly would not want, an upper hand because of that. I did not consider myself a charity case. I went to a state school and did well. Now my child has more “advantages.” This used to be called upward mobility and the American Dream that subsequent generations would eclipse the previous through hard work and merit.
Now there is a presumption that “advantage” or “privilege” is simply an ill gotten gain and that those without are victims in need of a remedy. That political philosophy is now hard wired into the college application process.
It’s pretty simple: Don’t use the Common App if you don’t like it. You don’t have to. Such sensitive snowflakes 