On what planet am I seeing the resumes of those who are competing with me for a job? How do I have any access or knowledge whatsoever as to how well they did in an interview situation? And as an applicant, who would I “report” this to?
Run your own race in life.
People who you “envy” because they got the job/college/boyfriend/salary you thought you deserved … You never know what’s going on in someone else’s life. Ever. I spent way too much time when I was younger envying people who had something I didn’t have. Not only did I never have the complete picture I thought I did, it kept me distracted from improving the parts of me that I did have control over. Happiness is internal, not found in just one college/job acceptance.
My company checks resumes. When something slips past us- but is discovered once you are hired, you are terminated that day. We had a senior vice president exit the building with a security guard when it was discovered that he claimed something on his resume which wasn’t true.
To all the folks out there who attended a seminar at Wharton on “Negotiating Strategies” and now claim a degree from Wharton- guess what- U Penn is on to you. They have more at stake than employers of protecting the integrity of their degree programs. The days when you could claim a non-selective conference or series of classes as being comparable to a competitive degree program are over. If you speak at a trade show and your bio goes up on the internet - you’d better believe that someone out there in cyberspace is going to read it.
I knew the GPA (sort of) of DD’s bf. But really, I have better things to keep in my mind than stats of other people’s (do people keep spreadsheets of this information?) kids, never mind the significance of their summer EC. I cheer my friends’ and neighbors’ kids when they get recognition for their accomplishments; other than that, I leave well enough alone.
My daughter knew, in general, other kids’ GPAs - both the top students (because they didn’t keep very quiet in her school) and some friends. She never thought to compare grades because she knew “I am not my GPA (or test score)”.
I got the feeling there was a group of parents and students who were in each other’s business regarding grades and test scores - they were the top students from a particular community (top students from outside that one community didn’t necessarily participate). D stayed far far away from those kids; she thought they were a bit nutty (the feeling was mutual).
Er, yes? Seriously, whenever I applied for jobs, it never once occurred to me to think about other applicants. Never. (I usually got an offer, but I’m very picky about submitting resumes to organizations where I may work).
@GoNoles85: IF this were a case of actual fraud, the OP might have a point. But it is not. In his/her opinion and that of her kid, the student that was admitted lied about the charity work she did. The OP states that the family did some sort of charity on their trip, so where is the fraud? Did the OP read this kid’s application? Does she know for a fact that this kid portrayed this as something other than it was? Even if the successful applicant embellished a bit, most here point out that college admission officers are used to that and are not easily fooled.
Life is not fair, but if you spend your life thinking that you didn’t get into college or didn’t get the job or promotion because everyone else is lying on their application, you are not going to be a happy person.
OK this example ruffles my feathers a bit. There are helicopter parents who will direct or do much of their kids’ projects or build their kids’ pinewood derby cars that look like some engineering masterpiece that will break the sound barrier. There are parents who will demand their kids continue with a musical instrument and practice many hours, or participate in {XXXX fill in the blank XXX} activity. But while not impossible, its pretty hard to push a kid through eagle scout. There is a lot they have to do independently, leadership they have to assume and demonstrate, they have to document, track, write up and present their project before the board, etc. Sure, like any activity, they can have a pushy parent cattle-prodding them from behind, but this isn’t, IMO, the best example to use of an activity that a parent pushed a kid to finish. Sure the degree of complexity of projects vary-- some build a bench and others build and maintain a computer lab in a homeless shelter. But whatever it is, it has to pass muster with the scouts before the project is approved, and at its completion.
"Around here (almost) everyone knows( almost) everyone else’s scores. In fact the local paper has a story every year on the kids with 36’s on the ACT. "
I bet there are “quiet achievers” that the mommy-gossip group knows nothing about. Because you know something? It’s the exact same way when it comes to adults and their financial successes. There are always people who “think they know” who does well because they see this person with a luxury car and that person with a new diamond ring and that family go on a fancy vacation - but meanwhile there’s the millionaire next door who could buy and sell all of these people a dozen times over and they wouldn’t have a clue. Same principle, really.
I still don’t get how if you read an article that says that Bobby Smith and Susie Jones got 36s on their ACTs, and the only thing you know about Bobby and Susie is that they go to high school with your kid, that you would retain Bobby and Susie’s names in your memory cells.
There were 2 other kids who got into the same school as my son and also attended. I know they happen to be girls. I don’t know their names, where they lived, I have no clue what their ECs or GPA or SAT scores were. Couldn’t care less. I reject the assumption that there is some “high school bond” where I’m supposed to care about these kids, other than in the generic sense of wishing people well. I know where my kids’ friends attended and that they were generally “the smart kids.”
I have a weird memory for numbers so if I happen to learn someone’s score I will likely remember it. Like if one of my kids mentioned that a friend got a good score it would probably stick in my brain. No doubt taking up space needed for something more important:)
But other than a couple of times when the kids mentioned other kids, or a friend mentioned being happy because they did well, I don’t know other kids’ scores. I suspect the kids and their friends talk about it a bit among themselves.
I don’t consider my interest in the friends of my children (or children of my friends) to be nosy gossip. I LIKE these kids. I like to know where they are going to college, what they are studying, how they are doing. I don’t need to know their IQs or their gpa, but that doesn’t mean I’m uninterested in their lives or that I’m so centered on my own kids that I take no interest in others. When they were seniors I’d ask them what colleges they were looking at, what they wanted to study, what EC they were hoping to continue (marching band, theater). How is this gossipy? One of my daughter’s old teammates plays for another college, and I look up her games, sometimes watch a little, follow the statistics. I hope she does well and is having fun. I read the national magazine for the sport and I like it when I know the kids and can relate to the struggles and successes.
My kids went to a catholic school for 6 years, basically with the same 40 kids in their grade. I love hearing about the college choices, the fields of study, the successes. It’s not a contest of whether they are better than my kids (how silly of you to think they might be!), it’s just taking an interest in people I’ve known for a long time. If someone made the honor roll, or won a tennis match, or won a prize for a poem, why shouldn’t I be happy for them rather than just ignore the notice on the bulletin board because my child’s name wasn’t on the list?
My H is Mr Chatty Pants and if he has a patient with a child who is at that age he will, in the course of chatting, ask what colleges the kid is looking at and how they did on their ACTs. I’ve told him several times the latter question is rude, but it hasn’t sunk in
“I still don’t get how if you read an article that says that Bobby Smith and Susie Jones got 36s on their ACTs, and the only thing you know about Bobby and Susie is that they go to high school with your kid, that you would retain Bobby and Susie’s names in your memory cells.”
I don’t know what to tell you but a surprising number of people do remember. I volunteered with our HS college counseling office and people would talk to me about kids at school that their child was interested in and could rattle off those kids names and scores even though they never met them.
As for “quiet achievers” it’s very hard to be that here. If you’re doing the kinds of things that get you into an elite school, your name and achievements make both the daily school bulletin emailed to parents as well as our (suburban) local paper.
The kids here are VERY academically focused and who is smart and doing well is very much a constant topic of conversation among the “smart kids”.
The school paper publishes where everyone is going to college and there are no real surprises.
The millionaire next door phenomenon though that is very real. As I personally know. We live in one of the smaller homes in our well to do area and I can’t believe how many people with homes 5 X ours size, cars that cost way more than our and are replaced every few years ( we keep ours fir 10) ask me about loans for school and they are surprised when I tell them we don’t have any.
In my experience, I know of a few parents that did much of the leg work for the eagle project - come up with the idea (or the troop did), help write the proposal, fill out forms, get the funds, etc. The kid did have to do the actual project and get other kids to help (along with parents and other adults). Not saying that it is typical, but this is first hand knowledge - the parents explained to me directly what they did to get their kid to the end. I also saw what the Eagle projects entailed - some required much less effort than I would have thought would be required to make Eagle. It depends on the troop, the council and the leaders. Our troop was very good at getting all the boys involved in leadership. I am not saying this to downgrade the experience. It requires a lot of years and all boy scouts are required to be active, involved, do service, mentor younger scouts etc. But the reality is that if there is a way to game a system, some families will (again, not the majority but some). You can only be sure that you and your kids live their lives with integrity.
This thing about purposely not knowing anything about other kids is fine, if we mean not actively snooping, comparing and relentlessly pushing our own to compete. But in some groups, info does get around, one way or another. Then you can decide to congratulate some kid or ignore it. In a community, I think neither extreme is “the hill you want to die on.” Just be nice. That’s on you.
People are starting to defend why their kid did a trip. It’s fine, for whatever reason you choose. But understand that just doing some trip or founding some “charity” and raising a few dollars (likely with adult support,) is not an “it.” You have a full application to submit. Since, even on CC, there’s so much confusion about what adcoms look for, why so much assuming some line or two is what pulled a kid in?
Especially considering most “doing a trip” is generally not a competition (you sign up, pay, and go,) not some sort of glossy win, not the culmination of years of working in some way.
Adcoms are trying to get a wholer picture of the kid. Say you did a trip to some 3rd world nation and, for the high tiers, they’ll want to know how you used your other time, what else you did, at home. The whole is more indicative of how you think, what your energy is.
Want your kid to see how the other half lives, want them to grow in understanding and feel good about efforts? Aren’t people aware of what’s needed in their own areas and how their kids can do good over a time period?
Here’s the thing- in the universe that kids (and by extension, their parents) live in, someone getting 20 extra points on an SAT is a meaningful accomplishment. In the world of an Adcom- especially one plowing through 30K applications, once a kid is over a particular threshold, the statistical significance of 20 or 30 points is meaningless.
One of my kids was a Presidential Scholar nominee. In our state, that means a perfect score on a single sitting SAT (or an arts nominee, which anyone who knew this kid would instantly know was not possible.) Three people at my kids school knew he was a nominee- his guidance counselor, who got word from the PS folks, the teacher that got nominated to attend the White House reception in case he won, and the principal. I’m assuming the principal since we had no indication that he knew but it seems like the kind of thing a principal would get a note about…
That’s it.
Did he get more awards at graduation because of it? No. The “award” kids got whatever it is they duke it out over- sal, val, honor society, whatever. Did it matter for college admissions? Only in the sense that getting an 800 is “better” than getting a 680, if applying to a school where the entrance threshold appears to be around a 700 (as in- kids who don’t get over a 700 are admitted at a very tiny rate).
Were there people who wondered why the kid got the admissions results he did if they sat through awards night and noticed that he wasn’t “cleaning up”? Maybe. Who cares. Did he have a few interests and hobbies and EC’s that made him stand out in a field of other perfect scorers? Absolutely. Did other kids parents know about these? absolutely not. Interests don’t get you Sal or Val or Honor society in HS.
Any parent who asked me if I was surprised by where my kid ended up in college got a chipper smile from me and a “Gee I hope the kids find time to stay in touch after graduation! You must be so proud of little Charlie!”
Being invested in someone else’s stats… you need to accept the fact that you don’t know the entire story. You really don’t. Unless you’ve set up a google alert on every single kid in your HS, someone may be winning a national or international award- this very week- and you’ll never know about it.
“for “quiet achievers” it’s very hard to be that here. If you’re doing the kinds of things that get you into an elite school, your name and achievements make both the daily school bulletin emailed to parents as well as our (suburban) local paper.”
Both my kids did major extracurriculars that were outside their school. My S’s was with a political organization and my D’s was with a major cultural institution downtown. No articles in any local-yokel papers. Nothing their classmates would have known about. Doubtful their teachers knew (maybe my S’s history teachers might have known). Nothing a GC would have known unless she were staring at their resumes. Under the radar.
Two elite (top 20) acceptances.
I think the suburban mommy-gossips vastly overstate “everyone” because people like us are invisible to them in the first place.
“there people who wondered why the kid got the admissions results he did if they sat through awards night and noticed that he wasn’t “cleaning up”? Maybe. Who cares. Did he have a few interests and hobbies and EC’s that made him stand out in a field of other perfect scorers? Absolutely. Did other kids parents know about these? absolutely not. Interests don’t get you Sal or Val or Honor society in HS.”
Being interested and happy isn’t the same as passing judgment on their college applications. Even with the kids you are close to, would you really think that you know the full picture of their college applications, from ECs to passion to finances to essays?
It depends on what the achievement is. If it is a personal achievement or something kept private, you will never know what you don’t know. The achievement could be a spectacular essay and nobody would ever know that, it could overcoming a challenge that you don’t know about. It could be something not of interest to a newspaper or not reported TO the newspaper. Some people are private, and some achievements are admission-worthy but not newspaper worthy. My D had the chops to write her amazing essay because throughout high school she had been employed as a writer with a famous organization. She had done this for three years before her applications were done, and it looked great on her application, it showed long-term dedication, it was an actual paid job, and she then had professional pieces to show (she didn’t major in anything even remotely related to writing). People didn’t know this because it had been a long-term thing that wouldn’t jump out to be in the newspaper, but it was a serious achievement. I’m sure there are a lot of kids who have off-the-radar achievements that even the parents of their friends would be surprised by.
to the OP, I understand why you might feel betrayed. You have been friends with these people and that, to me, means you probably thought that you shared values. Now it seems that you don’t. Possibly be glad that your kid is not going to Duke and getting exposed to more fakery.
The angel on my shoulder says: Be gracious, let it go, move on.
the devil on my other shoulder says: Write a check to the charity, in the name of the charity. Ask them for the EIN for your tax purposes. Watch for potential squirming.
Not proud of my shoulder devil, but gotta admit, she exists…
it could be possible that the duke admissions office saw thru their “charity” ruse, but also realized that if they were wealthy enough to shell out the $$$ for this goofy “charity that’s really a family vacation” scheme, then they probably have enough $$$ to be full-pay or Duke and not require need-based aid.
