@QuantMech That was my (somewhat limited) experience. But then, there’s this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDhf9qwiA34
@roethlisburger, #99, in fairness to the student, I think that the scientists at Lawrence Livermore are having the same problem with their laser fusion devices. And in terms of “bang for the buck” . . . I believe that it has been reported that more than one MIT applicant has built a nuclear reactor of some variety. I have never known that “accomplishment” to lead to MIT admission. I think the problem is more an issue of the student’s judgment and common sense, as opposed to lack of technical know-how or net energy production.
Taylor Wilson took a Thiel fellowship and skipped college, according to an article in The Atlantic.
^ college is so for average people.
Just wanted to add a comment about the students who fit seamlessly with the colleges’ expectations for self-presentation in the application: I believe that the great majority of these students have been fortunate to have contacts of some type, with people who actually understand what particular colleges are looking for. For some, it is basically in the air of their social climate. For others, it is a result of outreach programs, or a few very well informed adults in their circles.
At 17 or 18, the majority of students are parochial in their own ways. Over the weekend, I read a newspaper article about a couple of colleges that had stepped up their recruiting of students from rural backgrounds. (The article was in the Wall Street Journal, I think.). The students were reported to feel out of place at the colleges, unsurprisingly. However, there were also reports that they were being called derogatory names that I had never heard of (and won’t repeat here). I think this is indicative of the parochialism of the name-calling students, who were presumably acculturated to [most of] the dominant intellectual culture.
At 17 or 18, even students who have had wide-ranging international experiences just haven’t experienced a lot.
The fit between one’s local culture and a college’s expectations is a blessing and not a virtue . . . or perhaps not a blessing, but certainly an advantage in terms of admissions.
Quant, I was for sure an outlier on my Freshman hall- lots of prep school kids, lots of kids who “summered” in places I’d never heard of (I had heard of Martha’s Vineyard but not the others), lots of kids with parents who had jobs I never knew existed (I couldn’t quite fathom why a kid whose father was “in banking” seemed to be so affluent- the only people I knew “in banking” got jobs as tellers which was a nice, predictable, but not terribly lucrative profession).
Why is that bad? The adults I knew growing up were teachers, nurses, librarians, owned small businesses (carpet store, not early stage Apple or Microsoft.) Does that mean that kids with backgrounds like mine should all stay home and commute to the local college to repeat the cycle of teacher/nurses/librarians?
My saving grace with the person on the hall whose parents were missionaries and had grown up overseas. Nice to meet someone more clueless than I was!
But by Christmas break I had actual friends, and by March or so of Freshman year I “fit in”. Not because of anything having to do with socio-economics. But friendships based on whatever it is that makes people friends at age 18.
Why must there by “fit” with one’s local culture? If that’s what you’re looking for- a kid can stay home. Like my best friend from HS, who commuted by bus to the local college. Turned out just fine but why does not fitting in become a bad thing?
I am not arguing against fit with one’s local culture, nor against not fitting in to the dominant college culture! My main point is that it is not appropriate for college admissions staff to attribute special virtues to the students who “get it” in terms of college admissions.
Essentially every 17-year-old “gets” some things, and does not “get” others. The students tend to understand their own local cultures. It is just that some of the cultures are more aligned with Harvard admissions than others. That doesn’t mean these students are more clued in overall. They are just clued in more advantageously.
I think it is very desirable for colleges to admit students from a very wide range of local cultures!
I don’t understand what kind of admissions screening lets in students who would make fun of students from a rural background. That seems like a bad kind of privileged cluelessness. (The article wasn’t about Harvard.)
I don’t totally dismiss socio-economic influences, though, even after one has been admitted. I had a Harvard friend who inadvertently hurt my feelings by asking why my parents were making choices of restaurants and lodgings that seemed odd to him (read “cheap”), when they came to visit me. It was a quite a few years ago. It is not so easy for a young person to explain the effects of limited financial resources to someone who has not really experienced them. When my family returned home, one of my mother’s friends asked, “Wouldn’t you really rather have the money you spent on the trip?” The answer was probably “no,” but it was not an unambivalent “no.”
For that matter, QMP was very well-traveled by my standards when she started college; but she observed that the majority of her college friends had traveled much more extensively. Small snags, not important overall, but the socio-economic influence is not zero, even when students from affluent backgrounds are not touting their wealth. That’s no reason not to go to a college with many wealthy students, just perhaps a reason to be prepared before one goes, for the circumstances that may arise.
I am late to the thread but I can definitely see the downside of encouraging kids based on scant information. Very hard to properly chance someone when you really have no direct knowledge of what is happening in the admission offices. All we can do is tell them what is readily discernible from public stats.
Where are you going with these last posts, QM? Colleges don’t seek kids without the manners to welcome others, which can run through any level of class. And, what’s the WSJ article?
Part of holistic is looking for kids who do engage well, who climb out of their narrow “boxes,” whatever those are. Show, not just claim they will.
I suspect this is more of an unique situation than the norm at HYPSM… type colleges. My experience at Stanford was quite different. I had no idea what was the SES status of the overwhelming majority of students. For example, after graduating I later found out that a guy in my dorm I knew was the son of a CEO of a Fortune 500 type company. At the time I didn’t know his background, and I didn’t see anyone treat him differently in a way consistent of his background. He also didn’t do anything to show off his parents; wealth. Similarly I’m sure there were also lower SES students, but I could tell you who they were and didn’t see anyone treat students in a way suggestive of being lower SES. I knew a few people who came from mid-western states, but I don’t know if they were from a rural background or not, and didn’t see anyone treating students in a way of being insulting to persons with a rural background.
I have a relative who grew up in a deep rural community and also went to Stanford. It was the type of community where nearly everyone farms, the vast majority do not graduate HS and stay in the community, no honors or AP classes offered in HS, etc. She felt like her HS background put her at a disadvantage, particularly in regards to computers. However, she had nothing but positive things to say about the students at S.
There was a minority that treated certain groups differently, generally groups that were more publicly known. For example, some students treated celebrities or star athletes differently, in a very obvious way. Occasionally someone would treat a minority group negatively. Once a rainbow flag was torn off the exterior of a dorm door. This led to a long email discussion, with many upset students. Another time, a couple of maintenance workers asked if I was from Europe since I had a unique appearance. When I said “No”, they replied saying something like, “Good, we don’t like Eurotrash.”
The Wall Street Journal article was this one:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-colleges-a-rural-reckoning-1512159888
Unfortunately I think it is behind a paywall. The colleges in question were not quite HYPSM category. Somehow, some of the students were not especially welcoming to other students from rural backgrounds.
The article reported a study that showed that participation in 4H or Future Farmers of America reduced the odds of admission at the colleges substantially, other qualifications being equal. I strongly suspect that this results from the admissions staff feeling that these students just don’t “get it.”
My point is that the rural students “get” plenty; it’s just that what they get is different from what a 17-year-old “gets,” if the 17-year-old has grown up in a local culture that is beneficial for top college admissions. In my opinion, essentially every 17-year-old is parochial in some way–it’s just that this is more apparent in some than in others.
My background is not rural. But I would like to see 4H and Future Farmers of America respected in college admissions, so that students with these activities are on a level playing field. They are not going to strike anyone as “savvy,” I am willing to bet.
You can read it if you go via Facebook. Search for “Wall Street Journal rural reckoning”.
My D’s bestie in HS had extensive 4H experience and it was featured on her apps. She did well. I thought it was probably refreshing for admissions folks to read about the animals she raised (and sold).
Nothing wrong with 4-H, which has programs involving leadership and some program management. And it’s not exclusive to farm kids. Ime, it’s not dismissed.
Nothing says a wealthy kid or one from a toney neighborhood “gets” anything more than any other kid. They aren’t applying to a local country club with its secret handshake. It’s about the college.
The key question is what “other qualifications being equal” includes. For example, perhaps rural applicants take less rigorous HS course loads on average. So if you look at a variable that is highly correlated with being a rural students, such as 4H, then you get students who on average take less rigorous courseloads. And the admissions decisions more relate to taking less rigorous courseloads than listing 4H on their app. The same book also found that there was a 50% decrease in chance of admission for taking a SAT/ACT prep class. The admissions decisions were not based on taking the SAT/ACT prep class. Instead they were correlated with something negative about the types of students that choose to take such test prep classes.
Regarding 4H, if you look at admissions decisions among posters on this forum, the few 4H people I’ve seen do fine. For example, the poster at http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/16184021#Comment_16184021 mentions her unhooked daughter got in to Stanford with a 1890 SAT and 1 AP class. It sounds like her key out of classroom activity was 4H, it which she won multiple state level awards, so I’d expect this was a key factor in the admission decisions, in spite of the relatively weaker test scores.
The WSJ article speaks to students with high GPAs and high SATs, who appear to be disadvantaged in terms of admissions by participating in 4H, Future Farmers of America or ROTC (presumably some form of junior ROTC). “Correlation is not causation,” and “this have I written on the tablets of my heart, and not in wax,” to quote A. E. Housman’s hysterical parody of a really bad translation of a Greek drama.
Sure, it could be that the schools are rejecting these students for lack of rigor in the high school curriculum. However, the collective wisdom on CC is that the rigor of the high school course load is assessed in the context of the possibilities available to the student. So if the school offers few or no APs, it should hypothetically not be to a student’s disadvantage that the schedule did not include multiple APs.
The article mentioned a 2009 study by two Princeton sociologists (I didn’t catch their names, if they were mentioned), and a 2013 study by Caroline Hoxby at Stanford, both showing that there were quite talented rural students who were being overlooked. It further mentioned recent efforts by a number of universities to recruit these students. Princeton was included in that group, as well as Columbia, UNC Chapel Hill, Swarthmore, Franklin and Marshall and several others.
Course rigor was an arbitrary example. There are many other good/bad application criteria that are likely correlated with 4H or growing up in a rural community. Sure, it could be that elite colleges react negatively to students participating in 4H, but I think the more likely explanation is 4H/rural is correlated with a different application criteria.
I’ve quoted the Hoxby study in several posts. It found “the vast majority of low-income high achievers
do not apply to any selective college”. That’s a different issue than colleges looking down on 4H. The 2009 “study” the WSJ article is referring to the book at https://www.amazon.com/Longer-Separate-Not-Yet-Equal/dp/0691141606 by Espenshade and Radford.
Yes, Data10, I’d guess that appearing “savvy” is negatively correlated with a rural background.
It’s an example of urban parochialism.
It’s also possible that the students from rural backgrounds are more likely to apply to over-subscribed majors, and that explains the difference. In my view, however, the onus is on the people who think this is a harmless reflection of other features of the application package to show that their interpretation is actually correct. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how far the authors dug into the data.
“Elite” schools are comparatively unlikely to have agriculture (of any sort, including agribusiness) programs. Could it be that the better/more focused/devoted 4H students are therefore less likely to apply to highly-rated-on-CC schools?
Not so much correlation≠causation as looking for a potential confound here.
^^ Cornell does. I wonder if those “reduced odds” apply there