<p>"Nah, your kids know what they CLAIM their admissions are. Once they commit to a school, you know that they got into that one school. Otherwise, you don’t know. People put up fronts on this topic all the time. "</p>
<p>There might be some out there faking it but it is too far out to assume that a bunch of people are lying. Not willing to tell the truth about where they applied or got in is different from announcing I got into so and so school and be untruthful.</p>
<p>My kid’s friends announced where they got in early or regular and most attend the schools they announced on their FBs. YMMV.</p>
<p>Every year or so, somebody at my kids’ school claims that he got into Harvard as a “joke.” It always backfires, because people believe it’s the truth, and he (always a he) has to tell people he was kidding. Nobody thinks it’s very funny.</p>
<p>I think also there is a link to school workload. No matter how smart you are, no matter how many interesting connections you can think of, if you have teachers that assign tedious outlines, repetitive worksheets and excessive numbers of “creative projects”, it will take a long time to do your homework. And if you go to a school where multiple types of these classes are the norm to gain the “most rigorous” designation, you will not get a lot of sleep. </p>
<p>That being said, social media/the internet are massive time sinks.</p>
<p>One of the great things about being nice IRL is realizing how easy it is and how grateful the other guy can be. So go ahead and coo over the ugly baby. There must be something nice you can say.</p>
<p>Ime, my kids and their hs peers (very small classes) didn’t share everything because it simply wasn’t relevant to their friendships. And, when that “something” wouldn’t register in the other kid’s mind, anyway. Kids at that age had more going on in their lives than that Susie went to that highly competitive writing camp. Tended to be more interested in the next dance or whether some girl friended him on FB.</p>
<p>Maybe if high schools paid as much attention to the language scholars and chess champs as they do to sports (rallies for the teams, announcing schedules, touting wins,) this would evolve.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I knew so much TMI about everyone else’s kids because the moms would tell me. And since they were talky types, they’d tell me other kids’ business, as well. Jeeps. Often stuff below my radar, but so be it. But, what I found is that these info pushers’ kids were not the ones who ended up with the college admit responses to match all the broadcasting the moms had done.</p>
<p>Oh, Beliavsky, rest assured that I am aware of those numbers. Just as I am aware of how grossly irrelevant they are to the work of Espenshade and admissions at the schools usually discussed on CC. Perhaps with the notable exception that it places the scores of black students in a different context and perhaps more appropriate concept. </p>
<p>As an example, if the scores of URM are indeed 100 points lower in average, would it not be acceptable to expect the scores in the upper-range to also be lower? But still allow schools to identify students who overperformed their peers? And, above all, why would this be wrong? </p>
<p>PS As far as the reference to Fair Test (and Clegg, PR Foundation’s “leader”, or Lloyd Thacker) please note that I rarely miss the opportunity to send a zinger in the direction of those cancerous and underqualified parasites who use dubious qualifications to line their pockets and mislead the public at large.</p>
<p>^ Really. The Gospel According to [fill in the blank- Hernandez, NYT, idle chitchat, the “link of the day,” etc.]</p>
<p>To some extent, those numbers represent the growing number of minorities taking the std tests. In many hs, even underperforming ones, it’s no longer that only a certain college bound cohort is encouraged to test.</p>
<p>The damage done by figures like those is the general non-inquiring minds will go out and spread their little-considered assumptions. I don’t really care if the “average” is x. The chances a white kid would get into my school with a 527/536 are less than slim to none. Same for a minority even at 527/536. We should be talking about the higher-end-kids over 600 who make it through college well and go on to productive lives.</p>
<p>Everyone at my school seems to ask this question, and quite frankly is does get annoying, but since everyone does it, you learn from the rejections and acceptances of the older classes that college acceptances can be random.</p>
<p>Not necessarily that they are “random.” BUT that they are based on more than the stats and activities you know about each other. And after that, the institutional needs, such as geographic diversity.</p>
<p>The issue of the stats gap between URM and non-URM students, both on average and at the high end, has been been beaten so many times on CC that there is no dead horse left to beat. I have not read any new points in the discussion in at least three years. If the subject fascinates anybody, you can read numerous lengthy old threads about it.</p>
<p>I didn’t say that! Sheesh! And I didn’t say I went out of my way to tell mothers their babies are ugly! I just don’t have this overwhelming level of concern with most kids in my kids’ high school – who were just names to me. I wasn’t friendly with their parents. I wished them all well, of course, but I just didn’t have the brain-space to monitor that Susie is the track star and Janie is the swimming star and Bobby is really great in history when my total knowledge of Susie, Janie and Bobby is that they are my kids’ classmates. Not friends, but mere classmates. If you all do have this brain-space, more power to you. Ironically, my best friend is exactly as some of you describe - they know all this stuff about other people, are super involved in the community, etc. It’s just not me. I know my strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>And, ironically, that was my kids’ attitude, as well. No time to run tallies of who was doing what and at what levels. No need to be encyclopedic. They knew some things, didn’t know others- and what mattered was their closest friends and their own goals. They might tell me something they learned at school about someone’s triumph. But it was in their minds one moment, out the next. So, it’s okay.</p>
<p>Btw, we had some pretty accompished kids at the hs, incl national level sports. And what mattered was whether they were likeable, got along well with the group. These iciing things- 800s, published in a teen journal, chess master, CTY, etc, were secondary, if on their radar at all.</p>
<p>“There might be some out there faking it but it is too far out to assume that a bunch of people are lying.”</p>
<p>I didn’t assume that. I said that you don’t know whether it’s true. And you don’t. Even if 5% of the kids exaggerate their claims, that means that you do not know the truth of any data point.</p>
<p>“It also occurs to me that the school itself announced certain types of achievements, and not others. Thus, for example, everybody may know about athletic achievements and certain academic achievements, but not others.”</p>
<p>Exactly, and the schools are as guilty as anyone. Football team has a pep rally and everyone knows if the team won or lost on Friday night. But the mock trial team wins the state championship and the collective school response is “who cares”.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, it’s not just you. Of course you don’t tell Moms their babies are ugly. Mostly they aren’t, but I’ll have to admit, my best friend from high school had the world’s ugliest baby, really! (She’s a perfectly reasonable looking young woman now, but still not conventionally pretty.) There have been lots of posters on this and other threads who seem to assume that every question about what your kids are up to must have some nefarious reason, because most people just aren’t that interested in anything outside their immediate family or closest friends. Maybe I’m a Pollyanna, but I choose to assume that most people are nice, and that they don’t have some ulterior nefarious reasons for being nice.</p>
<p>Some people ask about others’ kids simply to find a point of connection. We live in the same area so it’s not out of the ordinary for there to be overlap in lists, so people could find that point of connection and have something to chat about.</p>
<p>I have a good friend whose son is friends with mine. She has another good friend with an older daughter. When we met, she mentioned that her daughter was a junior, so in order to break the ice, I asked her where they were looking. She was receptive to a chat, read nothing into it, and it came to pass that my D gave her family a tour on a Sunday when they were visiting her campus and then allowed her daughter to sleep on her dorm floor when she was visiting for an interview. The two young ladies have become quite friendly as a result, and I didn’t learn anything truly private about the family, nor would I have wanted to.</p>
<p>If the baby was really ugly, you could say something about the wonderful baby smell or how good it feels to hold a baby. There is almost always something nice that could be said. Of course, people like me with perpetual baby lust are always plotting to steal the baby, so you have to be on guard for that.</p>