For any specific college (and perhaps major at the college) where admission is competitive*, a “winner” is one who gets admitted (with enough FA or scholarships if needed). A “loser” is one who does not get admitted, or gets admitted without enough FA or scholarships to make it affordable.
*As opposed to open admission, or admission through meeting baseline GPA or test scores (but not class rank).
That’s a straw man argument. The competition is just not the single ‘other kid’; the competition is the hundreds/thousands of other applicants applying to that same school.
And no, it does not have to be the most selective college on the list. It can be any college that is not open admission or auto admissions once one meets the GPA+Test scores, if required as noted above. Competition is also for any merit money at a college that is a likely ‘match’ for admission.
I will admit that I struggle to understand this post from midwest mom:
If athletic recruiting ain’t competitive, I don’t know what is. (A coach is not going to be able to tip 3 QB’s for next year…) Ditto for merit money.
Of course selective college admissions is a competition. Since there are more applicants than spots available, and the adcoms will choose who gets to fill those spots based on the performance and attributes of the candidates, the candidates are most certainly competing with each other to put forth the best package of performance measures and attributes in order to be chosen.
The best analogy of college admissions to athletic competition I can think of is the example of the Olympic Trials. In track and field there are three spots per event available on the Olympic team. In the Olympic decathlon trials for example, each of say 20 guys entered in the decathlon puts together their best performances in 10 separate events over the course of two days that are added up to a total score. The three with top total scores are “admitted” to the Olympic team and get to go to the Olympic games. They won the competition. They were ranked 1, 2, and 3 by their scores, but those rankings among the top 3 don’t matter too much at that point, because all three achieved their immediate goal of making the team. That’s why you often see the 3rd place finisher at the Olympic trials act just as deliriously happy as the first place finisher.
The other 17 candidates? They were not “admitted.” They lost the competition.
@bluwbayou – My next line in that post was something about, recruiting camps were competitive, in that an athlete wanted to shine and so did the other players, but all an athlete could do was their own best and see where it led. A player (my kid plays soccer) wouldn’t necessarily know a team’s specific needs, style of play, team culture, and where they would fit in all that – much like holistic admissions. It was tough not to get that interest or a spot from a coach at a favorite program, but it was what it was, kid moved on and found other schools. Sure, the athletic recruiting process was tough, and he had some disappointments. But he approached it in terms of finding good matches where he would flourish, and at the end, had choices among a number of programs. If instead, he’d said to himself, “I have to get an offer from Chicago or Conn or Messiah or my life is over” (the current top ranked programs), then sure, it would have been a blood bath and everyone who did get an offer from those programs would have been a source of jealousy etc.
Since we approached it in terms of finding schools which fit, rather than “the best,” he was happy with his choices and beyond happy at his school.
With all due respect, @Scipio, the decathlon analogy doesn’t consider the differing diversity goals that schools have. If schools only looked at equal “scores”, that would feed the “get the top GPA/standardized test scores” frenzy. But fortunately as you know, as schools build classes, they look to fill other needs that applicants do not all possess equally. They may want/need an oboe player, or a person from South Dakota or someone for a collegiate math competition. So while these applicants will also be “otherwise qualified” (as many applicants who are denied admission are), the may get the not because they have a desired attribute that other “competitors” don’t have.
At least he was honest and didn’t write a mediocre LOR. Maybe he sees the application process as competitive because it really is?
I worked with a guy who used to recommend the military to all his son’s friends. He saw it as a way to lessen the competition his son would face when applying to college.
When touring LAC I frequently ended up talking to other parents who seemed to cover the whole spectrum from those obsessed with stats, those with the most amazing kids any college would be lucky to have attend, the guy who just talked about how much this was all going to cost him, to other parents like me who never attended college who walked around amazed at the opportunities potentially available to their kids. I experienced much the same at large universities.
Admissions departments need to assemble a puzzle. In the case of Harvard, for example, it’s a 1600 piece puzzle. If they had their druthers, each and every piece would be unique - in every way.
If the only similarity among 5 applicants is their high school (and of course, perfect grades and scores), but they are unique in every other way, all 5 have a good chance and they are not necessarily competing head to head. IMO
The manager has a conflict of interest. He’s being honest in disclosing it. He’s trusting the student not to use it on his own daughter’s target school. He could have just flatly refused to write any LOR at all. How will his D feel if she is rejected and the employee who received Dad’s glowing recommendation gets in?
I think that when applying to highly selective schools, students are being directly compared to the students from both their own high school as well as to students from their region. I have heard this from admissions officers. However, it remains a complicated, mysterious, and yes, holistic process with no cut and dry rules.
My friend had a kid at a highly regarded private day school who had their heart set on Brown University. She heard that many other classmates applied there as well. When 2 athletes were recruited from their small class of around 120, the others figured that there was no chance of them getting in, because in ED Brown takes less than 750 students from all over the world. Brown took 5 kids from that small class ED, and 2 more regular decision, so you just never know how it will play out.
I think one point of confusion on this thread is the difference between being aware that admissions are competitive and that there may have been a legitimate conflict of interest for the coach, and being cut throat about the competition.
All the kids I know were nothing but encouraging and supportive of one another throughout the whole stressful college application process. And at both their high school and the college where my kid is now, everyone helps one another out in school, with study groups and collaboration and enjoyment of the shared experience of learning. Nothing cut throat!
But yes, many colleges do not allow alumni to conduct interviews when their own child is an applicant, because there is a bona fide conflict of interest. I think most people root for all the children they know, but their own child’s happiness is the single most important thing in their world.
When my older child (my son) was applying for college, there was virtually no discussion or sharing of information among parents of students in his class about college intentions (wishes). In some ways this may have hurt some students who weren’t well informed about colleges or the application process. At the same time, the high school did nothing (that we were aware of) to steer students. They did not make this appear to be a competition among their graduates. But we knew the process was highly competitive on a national basis.
In the one general (all-parents) meeting that we attended organized by the guidance counselors, we were told that we should not apply to more than two or three colleges – or we might be hurting the chances of fellow students. And yet there was no coordination or cooperation – or even much sharing of information – among parents or applicants. I suspect the counselors’ advice was based on their goal of reducing their own paperwork.
Our kids were advised by parents who knew the national college scene pretty well, though less about the current application process or, in particular, the process for applicants to art school (which is what our daughter sought). I’m not so sure most parents were equally well informed. We bought several college guidebooks, familiarized ourselves with the testing regime, and helped the kids to determine the lists of colleges. In no way did we see this as a competition against fellow students at their school. But we decided to keep the application list relatively short – ca. half a dozen colleges in each case, well spread across the “difficulty of admission” spectrum. The kids did what was needed to prepare their applications. Tests, essays, and (in one case) an art portfolio. We were fortunate to have saved the money (with some support from our own parents – enough to pay for about 30% of the total costs for each kid) to afford any college that might admit our kids. End results were very good.
There’s a lot of conformity expected, it isn’t all about being “unique.” After all, they’re building a community and have an idea of what attributes they want to find. “Unique” can be trumped by having those attributes the college wants.
I just choose not to see everything, including college admissions, as a competition. While my own D was applying to college, I was also helping a number of other students with their applications and gave them the same quality guidance and support I gave to my own D.
Of course it is a competition, otherwise you could just sign up for classes. The issue is who is the competition, just others from your high school, town, or state, or the entire world? I don’t think it is head to head for every spot, but there are general pools and the competitive schools are not going to take the entire pool from your high school or the entire pool from your town.
Columbia tells the NYC students from the test in high schools that they aren’t all going to get accepted even though many of the will have close to perfect scores and gpa’s. Yes, they are competing against each other.
A few years ago when my older child was drawing up a list of schools to which to apply, we asked the guidance counselor for recommendations. One school in particular she said would be a likely for him, not a reach or safety. We toured it, he liked it and applied EA, but was denied. We were surprised, because he got into other, more selective schools. It just so happened the number of applicants to that school from my son’s class doubled from the previous year, and the GC explained they couldn’t accept everyone who applied from our high school. So the greater number of applicants from our high school was cited as the reason for his denial. I can’t think of any better evidence to support the assertion that college admissions can be a competition between classmates for seats at the same school.
“One school in particular she said would be a likely for him, not a reach or safety. We toured it, he liked it and applied EA, but was denied. We were surprised, because he got into other, more selective schools.”
I suspect the GC recommended this school to a number of students from your child’s school thus the reason the number of applications doubled. I would also suspect that the applicants were of a similar level of student.
Lexington is kind of an anomaly in that the professors/admins who work at BU, Harvard, Tufts and Brandeis tend to cluster there due to the relatively easy commute. That then attracts others with an academic bent…
Back to the original topic of the thread. College is a competition in some, but not all cases, and it is also a very different type of competition than, say, a race. There are open admissions, schools with very high admissions rates, etc, which are definitely not competitions of any type.
Even highly competitive places, like Harvard, aren’t a competition in the full sense of the term. They are competitions in that many are trying to get in, but only a few can, so every acceptance is at the expense of other people. However, unlike a “regular” competition, there is no set measure for “winning”. In a race, it is about speed, in a game, it’s about scoring. Even in, say, a writing competition, there is a rubric with different levels. Some schools do try and set up a “rubric”, but even there, the scoring very subjective beyond the initial culling. So there is a strong element of selection as well. So many students are chosen, not because they scored high an any particular elemental in the school’s rubric, but because they fulfilled a specific need, , checked a particular box, or simply made an admissions person say “wow, that’s cool”.
Even the competition part is more like figure skating than like a marathon or a soccer game.
Sure they could. They probably wouldn’t, but there is no reason that they couldn’t.