<p>Seems in today's society, being politically correct follows you everywhere. Even to the depths of an online board. I urge you guys to take a step back and get real for a second. Now forget what has been beaten into your heads by the world today. Boarding schools are looking for as you say a diverse community which means that where you come from does matter. So depending on what they are looking for, it will increase or decrease your chances. If they are looking for a possibly wealthy family who attended ivy's then the parent statement will help that student. If they are looking for a lower class family who may not have attended the best schools then that will help that student. Neither one is any better then the other, but they both serve their individual purpose. Depending on what the school is looking for, it will hurt or help your chances.</p>
<p>"You can't accurately predict one's success by looking at their family members' backgrounds." </p>
<p>Now while I decide to leave the safe threshold of politically correctness bare with me. Whether or not you choose to believe it, we are most like our parents. If our parents are democrats then most likely we will be democrats. If our parents are muslim, they guess what, there is a pretty good chance we are going to be muslim. Now I'm not saying this is true EVERY time but I will say it holds in most scenarios. Whether or not you guys again want to be politically correct, the lower class generally stays in the lower class and the upper class generally stays with the upper class. The school is simply trying to figure out what kind of student they are excepting or denying. It is simply research.</p>
<p>Viola, I don't think you that you have the authority to make the claim:
Admissions officers are a lot more snoopy than you think, and a parent statement is a lot more important than you think. It is intangible to a certain degree. I agree with you but remember these guys are really smart. I think they will take it at face value that everyone values education but many take a dynamic approach. Really depends.</p>
<p>All the admin officers I talked to were not incredibly intelligent. They were people people. They could really disect what I was saying(I think) and I think they were quick to pick up on my "beat".
Unless you are an admin... Really the only accurate thing you said was "It is intangible to a certain degree".</p>
<p>"the lower class generally stays in the lower class and the upper class generally stays with the upper class."
In 100 years, 60% of the Upper Class(I believe this was defined as the top 2.5%) will stay the same.(This is using a historical stat analysis. Malcolm Gladwell is accredited with that bit of research.)</p>
<p>Your post sounds so incredibly arrogant. Who are you to judge the intelligence of someone who will be judging YOUR future? I am sorry but give credit where it needs to be given. The people at Exeter will be some of the top people in the world. Different admissions officers will have different ways of checking applicants. </p>
<p>On a logical front: If everything I said was incorrect, you disproving everything I said (on the same level as me, applicant) is just as incorrect.</p>
<p>I won't lie. They didn't seem nearly as intelligent as the professors. They seemed like people's people. Meaning, they can look at you and talk to you for 20 minutes and tell if you're a jerk. </p>
<p>That is their skill set. The skill set of a bouncer is different than a body guard. Even if the jobs are related.</p>
<p>the people at exeter will be some of the top people in the world? I don't get what you are saying. Are you refering to my fellow students if I attended? Or the admin officers?</p>
<p>I wasn't trying to disprove... I just meant that I don't think that you are an admin officer... I really doubt that you discussed how they view parent statements.(Maybe you did?)</p>
<p>Exeter and a lot of top schools. I just do not think we as HSers have the right to judge them... Obviously the professors will be smarter in their subject area but adcoms foster some qualities that most other people don't. My humble opinion.</p>
<p>I'm saying that I think that being smart almost hinders an adcom... The reason being? Smart people tend to favor smart people. They are almost NEVER looking for the smartest, just the right ones(I've been told that 100 times by everybody that I know). All the adcoms I met had 1 thing in common: Well rounded. They played basketball in HS, they played football in college or they were aspiring artists. They seemed like they had their "hands" into alot of different activities. Most of my adcoms really related to at least 1 of my activities on a "more than casual interest" level. Meaning they played it/knew it to the degree that we could have a conversation.</p>
<p>italianboarder, I'll have you know that my mom used to be the dean of admission at Cate School and that my mom is certainly very smart. She graduated from Andover and went on to Brown, and to put things into perspective, she (like you?) scored a 99th percentile on the SSAT and ended up a National Merit Scholarship finalist. You've got no right to judge admissions officers whom you've spent maybe 30 minutes at most with, especially using your hypothesis that a well-rounded officer means a less intelligent officer.</p>
<p>You always go on about your athletic achievements (which, to be frank, nobody on CC gives a flying **** about) and we don't use the fact that you are athletic to fuel some belief that you are less intelligent, or "a people's person." And, for goodness sake, for your other remark that smart people tend to favor smart people, look at HADES student bodies. Are they not smart? Intelligence is what HADES schools are about, if you haven't noticed, but they also place heavy emphasis on extracurricular interests and attributes that form the whole student. But don't think for one second that these officers will knowingly let in idiots who happen to be athletic. Except GWB.</p>
<p>They are well rounded so they can have an interesting conversation with every applicant. Its kind of tough to talk about your basketball career if your interviewer was a mathlete.</p>
<p>In an effort to get this discussion back to the original question, I'm going to add my two cents.</p>
<p>Although I have no inside information or hard data to back up this statement, my educated, and somewhat cynical, guess is that the colleges attended by an applicant's parents do have a minor impact on admissions. First, schools must think this information is somewhat relevant or they wouldn't ask it. Second, as is evident from a number of the threads on this board, applicants pay close attention to how many students at a particular school end up being accepted into the Ivy League or other top colleges. Schools that seem particularly successful in getting their graduates into the most competative colleges definitely enhance their own prestige. Third, being a legacy of a top college does have a measureable impact on your chances of getting into that college.</p>
<p>Based on the foregoing, my suspicion is that having parents who attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. probably helps, and certainly doesn't hurt, your chances as an applicant.</p>
<p>And what kind of a person are you to redefine the term "intelligent"?</p>
<p>Intelligent means that you think quickly, you think thoroughly, you think perceptively. It can mean a lot more, but I'm generalizing for the sake of emphasizing my next point; if YOU think that admissions officers are unintelligent, then you are being irrational. </p>
<p>And even if, for argument's sake, they DIDN'T seem like "they can look at you and talk to you for 20 minutes and tell if you're a jerk.", you are being extremely impolite. Tell it like it is, whatever. I'll tell you like it is, YOU'RE a jerk to say that on a public thread. Do you like that I said that? Forget that nonsense on "I don't care what you think, it's your opinion and I say out of it." OF COURSE YOU CARE. And so would they. And I'm sure you're above the "what they don't know won't hurt them" phrase.</p>
<p>You can say that you didn't like them. That's really more of your opinion. You never said they're not likable. But really, demeriting another person's intelligence without any substantial evidence is something that children do. </p>
<p>I'm sorry if I offended you, which I probably have, but I'm very irritable today and posts like these set me off.</p>
<p>"Admissions officers are a lot more snoopy than you think, and a parent statement is a lot more important than you think. It is intangible to a certain degree."</p>
<p>To reuse Ringting's phrase: I don't think you know a flying **** more than anyone else on here, so stop assuming you know exactly how important every things is and that you know more than the admissions officers. You don't, you can call yourself smart, but in reality all you are is an arrogant troll on a public chat room trying to intimidate other people in your exact same position by feigning superior knowledge. Give it up.</p>
<p>As far as the are adcoms "intelligent" thing.. I second what viola,westcoast, and RingTingTing said.</p>
<p>Who is that "rant" aimed at lol. What I said earlier</p>
<p>"'Admissions officers are a lot more snoopy than you think, and a parent statement is a lot more important than you think. It is intangible to a certain degree.'" is almost word to word from a prestigious school adcom. </p>
<p>Maybe you are right and they do not matter, I was just restating an Ivy adcom. I am not assuming anything when I said that nor was I trying to feign any "superior knwledge". I never said I knew more than adcoms, as a matter of fact I stated earlier that they know a lot more than us. </p>
<p>Edit:
I just reread Italian's post and realized he was quoting you... I never said the parent statement didn't matter. I think I responded to the quote out of context. I didn't know that the quote in Italians was in fact viola quoting an ad com. <--thats confusing </p>
<p>Anyways Italian has made posts like this before where he claims to have some sort of insider knowledge about the whole process, as you can tell I'm in a pretty bad mood and wanted to go on a rant about it lol</p>