<p>^Pretty much describes me… but without the girls and the highly academic environment.</p>
<p>@ Quantmech, I think that my DD is probably a “stealth achiever.” Her friends and classmates in hs know her as an ‘A’ student, but are probably unaware of how good her marks are. They know of her commitment to choir and musical theater because many of her friends are also involved. However, they don’t know how good she is at her sport mainly because there’s little turn out to watch varsity sports other than football. Most of her workouts take place year round outside of school anyway. Her teachers and close friends are aware of the some of the travel she does for her sport but only a fraction because we try to minimize missing school and various rehearsals. She certainly doesn’t intentionally keep her activities quiet, but she is a quiet and unassuming person and will generally talk about things that she thinks her friends will find interesting. She doesn’t view her accomplishments as particularly wonderful, perhaps because she compares herself to her older brother and some of her older friends. Missing 3 weeks in the summer is easy! She can generally only get together with her friends a few times (4 or 5) anyway. She has been taking summer classes so that she can fit in all the courses she wants to take at school, she travels for her sport and she was interning with a local firm. Her friends are also busy and take it for granted that they won’t always be able to get together to see a movie or go to the mall. When they do get together it doesn’t occur to her to blow her own horn! I sometimes post photos of her accepting trophies on FB for her grandparents to see, but she never posts them for her friends. </p>
<p>I assume that there are a number of students flying under the radar!</p>
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<p>In addition to be deliberately condescending, this question is neither worthy of an answer nor very helpful because that “edge” was not established by factual evidence but by game theory. Inasmuch as the early exercise by E+C was entertaining and slightly informative, the conclusions derived from that precise exercise have been much far-reaching (not to mention entirely erroneous) than the original work warranted. </p>
<p>Fwiw, the “game” was based on a basic faulty proposal, namely that removing preferential treatment of a sub-group of minorities would result in higher admissions for a different sub-group, and not benefit the main group that maintains inherent preferences. </p>
<p>To be clear, the basic proposal that removing the preferences of say, blacks and hispanics would cause the “lost seats” to be captured by Asians is entirely non-sensical and unrealistic. Just as the ancillary claims of discrimination (invented by uneducated observers) that Espenshade had to dismiss over and over. </p>
<p>Carry on!</p>
<p>I’m used to learning things in class. Kinda shocked when some of my classmates told me how many hours they spend studying.
I didn’t even have time for that.</p>
<p>Also, my friends and I discussed grades (no bragging), tests and complained of teachers. My school was competitive.</p>
<p>texaspg–re your link to the Columbia professor: Yikes! Nope! Not common! It looks like he’s gone off the deep end. He is right in one regard, that quantum mechanics is quite unlike macroscopic experience. Niels Bohr used to discuss quantum mechanics with incoming students while the students sat on laboratory stools with rotating seats, and Bohr walked in circles around them. His explanation: If you don’t become dizzy the first time you learn about quantum mechanics, you haven’t understood it. I do try to get my students to stop patronizing Einstein (with regard to his non-acceptance of quantum mechanics, and “now we know better”), while not accepting his hidden-variable world view. The hidden-variable theories have grown increasingly untenable.</p>
<p>Back to my earlier question: Here are a few accomplishments a student might have. (I have just made some of these up, so please do not object that “there is no such thing,” just modify them until something sort of comparable exists.)</p>
<p>Junior Olympics pole vault qualifier
National Scrabble champion (by age group?)
Chess Grand Master
Finalist on Teen Jeopardy
Student’s dog wins in the “Bred and Shown by Owner” category at Westminster
Star of Broadway musical at age 11</p>
<p>Would you know if any of the students in your local high school had these accomplishments? If not, how could they keep them under wraps?</p>
<p>Beliavsky : Espenshade and Chung is outdated. (C’mon some data must be at lest 20 years old). It also included athletes which skewed the results. Also a standard deviation of plus 100 means the confidence level of the results are by no means guaranteed. To it’s credit the report did smooth out the results, but only resulted in a change of 2-3% percentage points (Hardly a game changer). Also need based financial aide has changed the population landscape. The elite schools are no longer the home of rich kids or those willing to take out loans. This factor alone has changed the population from a lemon to an orange.</p>
<p>Lastly the SAT has become so specialized, resulting in such consistent high scores, I believe new data would show very little difference among the races. It’s certainly a different game than 20 years ago. A game than minority students have learned to play.</p>
<p>Twogirls, there is no “universal” in recs. Some are very general- nice kid, pleasant, does well in my class, asks questions. There are cases where a rec describes a kid fully and brilliantly, with academic detail. Those can turn around an initial lukewarm impression. But it still leaves the question of why the applicant didn’t present this same picture. (Not so good.) If there is any bottom line, it’s that an applicant should take care with the portions of the app he can control. Not assume stats, rank and rigor are all it takes and the rest of the CA is just random questions, to be answered any old way.</p>
<p>ps. Yes, Alexissss, there is so much not-so-subtle you-know-what still going on. As much as I have seen it on various threads over the years, it still stuns me.</p>
<p>No the questions should not be answered any old way - that is very true.</p>
<p>Xiggi said:</p>
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<p>I found this to be the best post of the entire thread.</p>
<p>@quantmech - interesting question.</p>
<p>I think only the Teen Jeopardy one is something that people would know about unless the kid decided to talk about their accomplishments. There is a girl in our school who is an accomplished horse rider, but I have no idea if that means that she qualified for the Olympics or is “just” the best in our area.</p>
<p>for the chess GM, people would probably know that she is great at chess, but wouldn’t know the difference between a GM and a FIDE Master for instance.</p>
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<p>Not the data I have seen:</p>
<p>[Falling</a> SAT Scores, Widening Achievement Gap - Brian Resnick - The Atlantic](<a href=“Falling SAT Scores, Widening Achievement Gap - The Atlantic”>Falling SAT Scores, Widening Achievement Gap - The Atlantic)</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t necessarily know. I feel I’m busy enough with my own family, my career and my friends that I really didn’t pay much attention to neighbors and my kids’ classmates. So, yes, it’s quite possible that a student could have accomplished those things and I wouldn’t have a clue. I read national newspapers, not the local ones. I don’t really know what’s going on in my community, because it’s not a priority of mine. </p>
<p>As for my own kids, they had accomplishments / activities that were outside the school, that only their closest friends would know anything about. And I’m just fine with that. In many ways, I’m always a little suspicious of the kid who is known by <em>everyone</em> as being big man on campus, because I find some of that to be phony at times. </p>
<p>With something as unimportant as the fellow classmates of your kids’ high school – whom you’re presumably never going to ever see again in your lives – why not just fly under the radar and get where you need to go? I don’t know - I think for both my husband and me, high school was a way-station to get to the real prize – college – and we imparted that attitude to our kids.</p>
<p>My kids’ high school is huge. When my son graduated last year I couldn’t believe how many honors and high-honors students there were, and how few of them I was familiar with despite thinking I knew who all the “smart kids” were. Likewise, I knew who the fastest runners were because my son participated in cross country, but I couldn’t tell you who played varsity tennis or was the best wrestler or the reigning chess champion.</p>
<p>QuantumMech, some things are easier to downplay than others. For example, the Junior Olympic pole vaulter would probably be the star of the track team, so that one’s difficult. But for something like the Chess Grandmaster or whatever, it’s trivial with the reasonable assumption that no one you speak to is actually interested in chess. You say things like “oh, I like playing chess” instead of “I spend 40 hours a week training for chess competitions” and “sorry, I’m busy at a chess convention” instead of “Yeah I just won BigBad Chess Comp 2013 and I’m still in Europe” when you’re asked to hang out or whatever.</p>
<p>I still think geo diversity is the one to worry about.</p>
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<p>There is one family in my town where the father, brother and sister (the sister is the same class as my kids were) all swam for Stanford. There’s another younger kid coming along who is apparently a really good swimmer as well. Apparently the father was Olympic-caliber or something like that. Anyway, I have no clue whatsoever whether she was best in the school, best in the county, best in the state, best in the country. It’s just a level of detail that’s completely extraneous to me. </p>
<p>EDIT: I just looked up her profile and, well, apparently, this girl is quite good – US Junior Nationals team, Olympic Trials qualifier, named swimmer of the year for our state, blah blah blah. I had no idea. All that pierced my consciousness was “oh, she’s apparently a really good swimmer and the family has ties to Stanford.” So how could I possibly “evaluate” or Monday-morning-QB whether her accomplishments were deserving of Stanford admission? That’s Stanford’s problem and her problem, not mine.</p>
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<p>Haha, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel here! Who is behind FairTest who might have the slightest qualifications to offer a valid analysis on standardized tests. Quoting that group is giving too much credit to that bunch of self promoting profiteers. Next Belia will be quoting Clegg and the Princeton Review Foundation. </p>
<p>Too funny.</p>
<p>Mods- I think this thread is devolving into an embarrassment for CC. I’m not sure why the racist comments earlier on did not result in closing down the thread, but when parents have to boast about how much their kids love their AA friends I think it’s time to say goodnight. Before the rest of us have to chime in about how our cardiologist is Jewish and we love him to pieces. </p>
<p>Misguided topic from the git-go IMHO but embarrassing to all of us now.</p>
<p>Beliavsky: Wrong! The Atlantic is not an elite school report and shouldn’t be used in conjuction with Chung. At elite schools all scores have gone up. Arguably, first generation minority college seekers are driving down SAT scores, but those students are striving for third tier and second tier Universities. Not the elite schools! Is anyone really complaining about not getting into a third tier state University?</p>
<p>If we could stay away from the AA arguments for just a while so that the thread doesn’t get shut down, I’d like to return to the issue of the “stealth achiever.”</p>
<p>First, two personal comments. Once, as a college student, I received a moderate level of recognition, but did not mention it to my then-boyfriend, now-spouse. He asked if I had not mentioned it because I did not think that anyone else would have good news, too. Later, as a young faculty member, I was advised by my department chair not to be so modest in writing up my accomplishments, because I “wasn’t that great.”</p>
<p>I am a wretched chess player, and couldn’t tell you the difference between a GM and an FIDE master, for instance. (What is it, collegedad2013?) Still, I have greatly enjoyed reading articles about Judit Polgar. If we had a really excellent chess player in our area, I would be very happy to hear about the person’s accomplishments.</p>
<p>I have known a few Olympians, and I am always interested hearing about their accomplishments (at least, those of the steroid-free athletes).</p>
<p>To me, it seems that it’s a bit disingenuous to disguise one’s accomplishments (e.g., “oh, I like playing chess,” when one is a very competitive chess player). Why would a student do that? Speaking for myself, oh, I kind of dabble in quantum mechanics.</p>