^^Actually, we are discussing somewhat paranoid, unsubstantiated claims about admissions speak. Which was my point.
No, the OP did not assert that “admission speak” is paranoia. You are doing that. Start a new thread about how you think CC posters are paranoid and resentful (“my kid didn’t get into that school,” as you concluded). I’m sure that you’ll get many affirmative responses.
I am surprised at the negative comments about Sally’s article. It seems that we all agree, just in different ways. I did not at all feel that she was trying to write an article about race bias. I felt like she was trying to speak plainly about reality. @intparent , I agree 100% with your observation that they want someone who stands out, regardless of race. Truthfully, not that many kids really stand out, as your daughter clearly did, and as @lookingforward notes. She is without question a remarkable student, but most kids with high stats aren’t remarkable. My kid certainly isn’t. So I think that is where the race factor becomes important. There has to be some way of narrowing down too many good applicants.
Actually, a college can be need-blind for individual applicants, but still design its admission criteria and processes to produce an admissions class skewed toward students from wealthy families without directly considering financial need of individual applicants. Typical examples:
- Using legacy preference.
- Favoring expensive or high-SES-associated extracurriculars over working for pay to help support one's family.
- Requiring more application items (SAT subject tests, recommendations, CSS Profile) that students in high-SES high school are more likely to be aware of through counselors, teachers, other students, etc..
- Requiring CSS Profile to screen out students with uncooperative divorced parents.
- Using binding early decision to admit a large percentage of the frosh.
- Filling much of the frosh class with recruited athletes in high-SES-associated sports.
Of course, a few applicants from low-SES backgrounds do get past these hurdles, and they provide the small amount of SES diversity that these colleges want.
A trip to Costco is afterall the most weighty experience in a 18 year existence then (or how the kids can spin it in a elite college essay)? I beg to disagree. 90% of overachievers are sincere, honest kids that DONT know how to spin a Costco trip to snag a elite admission.
Well said Quantmech and whatisyourquest
I think all this stuff perpetuates the craziness that applying to college has become. Please let the kids take courses that they are interested in and participate in outside activities that make them happy. They are 17 fgs. There will be plenty of colleges they will be accepted to.
And if the kid doesn’t stand out – should they get one of the limited spots at the very top colleges? I say no. So many people out here wish they did. But why should the colleges admit students who don’t stand out when they have such a large pool of accomplished applicants?
Congratulations to your daughter, intparent! I have read a study that indicated that students in 4H were less likely to be admitted to “top” colleges than students with other extra-curriculars. It was a while ago, so I can’t recall how extensively they matched students for comparison. We are not a 4H family, so it was just an observation from outside, based on reading.
I don’t think this is true at all. I think the test scores and grades are there in abundance. The admissions officers end up admitting holistically by looking for markers of real intellectual vitality, unusual skills, a unique way of looking at the world. This doesn’t mean you have to have cured cancer, but you do have to bring something to the table beyond good grades and good scores.
I’ll offer some counter arguments to some of the OP’s broad assertions and generalizations with some of my own…
Completely at odds with holistic evaluations. Can there be two or more completely similar applicants? Sure. But if the file has advanced to the later rounds, you can bet the “spark” or lack of one will be what’s hashed among the decision makers – not one ACT composite point’s difference.
Completely at odds with holistic evaluations. Can there be two or more completely similar applicants from one school? Sure. But if the file has advanced to the later rounds, you can bet the “spark” or lack of one will be what’s hashed among the decision makers – not the fact that the students happen to attend the same school. In my 25+ years (and now at a very high level) of college recruiting for my alma mater, I find the “quota” fear to be completely unfounded. A quota exists only if the college wishes to “set aside” slots for other schools; to spread the wealth. For what reason? To curry favor with whom? Colleges don’t care what some counselor or principal at some high school thinks (save for a few feeders). They admit whom they want, when they want.
Not the case for all schools. Two notable exceptions were MIT & Yale who actively reduced their marketing footprint because they realized that more and more applications would not enhance their admitted pool. The caveat is that they’re in the catbird seat – to not worry about yield or USNWR rankings.
On the other hand, let me add this one:
AdmissionSpeak: Follow your passions and tell us about them honestly.
What’s NOT said: Most of your so-called passions are pretty run of the mill. We’ve seen it a thousand times before. Don’t tweak your “passion” essay – we like it just as it is – it makes our job easier to reject you. If by chance, you have a unique story/passion/pursuit, then by all means deliver. What we don’t want are posers. And the less you try posing, the easier we can sift through your essay in order to find the few that actually stand out.
Seems we even interpret Sally’s comments differently.
Mathmom, if only kids could id what they bring to the table, beyond their hs role in that egg crate. (As well as what the table is, at their targets. Not as clouded as some think… And elites get such an overwhelming number of apps.)
For me, the issue is as much the 9-12 experience, what’s encouraged in thinking and actions, how that hierarchy is built.
Btw, the Costco essay, afaiac, is an aberration. Something else must have been attractive. A lot of something elses. So watch what you take from media reports about it.
While putting essentially no other explicit constraints on the choice of colleges to which he applied, our son stated that he wanted to attend a school “where it’s safe to be a thinker.” A few of the colleges to which he applied were placed on his list (by us, his parents) b/c we knew he could satisfy that goal there. This was HIS primary concern.
How could he convey that criterion without seeming to be a poseur? For one by writing original, non cliche-ridden essays. For another by demonstrating through his EC’s and other interests that he wasn’t a grade-grubbing prestige-hound. I don’t mean that he flaunted his flaws, but he showed through his EC’s and hobbies and writing that he had a mind of his own. Although I’m sure that for some of the colleges, admission was 99% a grades-and-test-scores process (large state universities), for a few the adcom might actually have read the essays and the short-answer questions in those little boxes to glean what was in the kid’s head, what motivated him, whether he might be an independent thinker.
He only needed a couple of adcoms at institutions that met his criteria to end up with a real choice in the end. He chose the one that was best for him.
@QuantMech, to be fair, we were a “suburban” 4H family. We lived in a community that was a mix of suburbs and farm country, and our 4H club was a mix. Other than taking our guinea pig to a county fair pet activity, my D was not involved with animals. Unless you count the hundreds of insects that spent time in my freezer over the years for her 4H collections. 
And she had a lot of non- 4H interests, too.
Wow… This thread is super depressing, especially since it’s two days away from early decision deadlines for most schools… As a student about to apply to an Ivy though, some of these definitely seem right. I remember when Penn visited our school, they mentioned that SAT Subject tests were recommended, but she said it in a way that meant it clearly wasn’t for us, since we live in a fairly affluent suburban area on the east coast. Another adcom from another competitive college that came to speak with us mentioned that their SAT subject tests were optional, and then stressed that they’re ACTUALLY optional, not “optional”.
Funniest page ever
On the one hand, I agree with intparent that students need to stand out, to be admitted to a “top” college. On the other hand, I don’t see “standing out” as having a distinctive extra-curricular activity, or even crafting an entire application package that grabs the jejune admissions reader/staffer. I know Harvard says that they admit 200 students or so who are the academic superstars of the future. That’s about 10% of the admits, or a bit less.
a) That seems like a comparatively small fraction to me.
b) I’d like to know how accurate the predictions about that are.
c) I’d like to know how the actual academic superstars of the present fared with Harvard admissions, if they applied there.
The Siemens/Intel/IMO/IPhO/etc winners tend to come from a relatively small cluster of schools. I don’t doubt that they generally have high potential for the future in science and math. However, other things being equal, going to a school with a history of winners is a great advantage.
I think that the idea of setting a relatively low academic bar at the “top” schools, with academic stand-out status pretty strongly dependent on living in an advantageous locale, and then using other criteria to determine the admits is not a good way to match science and math talent with high-level instruction (my opinion, you may not share it). There is a significant difference between being at the upper end of the non-superstar group academically, and just making it across the bar. On the other hand, maybe Harvard wants to have only a single section of Math 55. Okay.
I have no personal quarrel with Harvard admissions, since I didn’t apply there, none of my relatives applied there, and none of QMP’s classmates whose admissions outcomes I cared about applied there.
"AdmissionSpeak: I hope you will consider applying …
What’s NOT said: … so that we can keep our acceptance rate in the single digits when we regretfully turn you down … along with thousands of others whom we’ve incessantly emailed and encouraged."
“Not the case for all schools. Two notable exceptions were MIT & Yale who actively reduced their marketing footprint because they realized that more and more applications would not enhance their admitted pool. The caveat is that they’re in the catbird seat – to not worry about yield or USNWR rankings.”
Both Sally and T26E4 are correct. While the printed marketing materials from MIT and Yale are minimum, my S did repeatedly received a lot of them from a few other top 10 schools last year. I bet that is how these other few enhance their “selectivity.” As a matter of fact, my HS sophomore D has already received 3 set of printed marketing materials from a top 20 school over the last few months.
@prof2dad -My son, who went through the application process just two years ago, actually got a fair amount of unsolicited info from Yale (where he never planned to apply and did not apply and probably would have been denied if he had).
What surprised me was that–unlike most of the propaganda he got from other stalker schools–Yale’s stuff usually arrived via snail mail. It even included one lovely book that couldn’t have been cheap to publish or send. But the funniest thing he got from Yale was a postcard inviting him to learn more about the university at an event in a Boston suburb, a couple hours from where we live. Yes, we are in Massachusetts, but we are only an hour and a quarter from the Yale campus itself. I thought that the regional rep should have looked at a map!
As I said in my original post on this thread, you really have to bring a sense of humor to this crazy process.
Any angry comments about race and URM really belong in the thread, Race and College Admission.
But I agree with this comment from Sally, " I don’t think that there is actually a “bias” against Caucasians or Asians or against any other racial or ethnic group. But what IS true at the most sought-after institutions is that there are simply far TOO MANY super-qualified students from those demographics to admit all who apply. So the admission officials must do some real hair splitting when making tough decisions. Thus test-scores can be tie-breakers, along with a number of other factors that help admission committees distinguish one stellar candidate from the next."
But rather than concern about similar ECs, I’d add the need to balance majors among admits.