It seems that, based on multiple examples (both media-reported, and personal accounts of CC posters), the “common denominator” for successful college admissions stories is education and commitment level of their parents, rather than minority or socioeconomic status…
Which begs the question: Why not?
Since all public schools require taxpayer support, and all these kids are required to take standardized tests (even overseas my kids had to take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills), it’s not as though these counselors or kids can’t be briefed.
Reality check- guidance counselors spend hours on the phone each week with Children’s Services dealing with a HS kid being abused by mom’s BF. Guidance counselors spend time testifying in court as to why a teenager should be emancipated. Guidance counselors meet with social workers at a local homeless shelter to figure out how to get an established school bus route to alter its schedule so the child who gets on and off there is first (and then last) on the route so the classmates don’t know the kid lives in a shelter. Guidance counselors work with local law enforcement figuring out how a strategy to convince the principal to provide space in an overcrowded building for the DARE officer. Guidance counselors are meeting with a local group trying to pass a law capping property taxes to force the school system to downsize, explaining that the free breakfast program will go away if the city can’t match the state and federal funds which finance the program.
I guess the memo from Questbridge falls to the bottom of the paper pile in some high schools which don’t have a dedicated college counselor.
Any wonder that kids who are already behind the 8-ball educationally reach senior year without knowing about these other resources?
I don’t understand why a student who is low income, who is accepted to Harvard SCEA then applies to ALL the IVYs RD.
Unless it is just to see how many he can get into.
Hunt said:
“And here’s exactly why it would have been better for this kid to decline the PR coverage.”
It would have been better to decline the PR coverage for a whole variety of reasons.
“How many people actually apply to all of the Ivy League schools? There may not be that many-”
There are that many. Lots and lots of my students do. It has become the standard to do so in my neck of the woods. Usually they get massively rejected, and justly so, as almost none of them are Ivy League material, but they think they should “try” anyway.
Ohh… Kaayyyy.
“I don’t understand why a student who is low income, who is accepted to Harvard SCEA then applies to ALL the IVYs RD.”
It might be that he didn’t have the actual financial aid comparisons yet (naturally), and/or that he hadn’t visited and compared campus climates (I don’t mean meteorology). It would have been logical, for example, to examine what other immigrants/ immigrant groups or associations existed on campus. It’s normal to want to fit in.
My daughter applied to other Ivies after being accepted EA to Yale (sorry, Hunt) and ended up not going to Yale but to another Ivy based on her hosting days visits. And actually, financial aid was one of those determiners. Both the “emotional” fit and the FA were better.
A student I was counseling got accepted SCEA to Stanford but applied to Ivies and went to one of those, because she realized during the application process that she wanted the resources that the Ivy had and she was changing her academic and career direction in a profound way (but needed another adult to validate that and couldn’t get that validation from her parents, who were pushing Stanford).
Families earning less than $65,000 contribute zero to the cost of a Harvard education. Stanford, Yale and to an extent Princeton are equally generous. Cornell for example is not as generous ,and also cannot offer merit scholarships.
I still don’t see why a low income student after getting accepted to Harvard, would apply to Cornell.
If, however, he is not low income but middle income, yes, he would need the financial aid comparisons.
I know this is shocking to some people, but Harvard is not universally loved – nor is Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Stanford…
Even assuming the same level of financial aid, they are not “equal” (or “desirable” to all to the same degree).
I can give you 2 reasons:
- If the kid is interested in Architecture, Harvard does not have that major while Cornell has one of the best , if not the best, AR program in the nation.
- For Eng'g, Cornell is better than Harvard.
Some kids–especially if they were entitled to a fee waiver–may have completed and submitted their RD applications before hearing from the EA school. While I think it’s better for a kid to withdraw applications from any school that he wouldn’t attend over the EA school (after admission to the EA school, I mean), I can understand why somebody would be very tempted not to do so. Curiosity can be very powerful all by itself.
Let’s not kid ourselves here! We all know that the GC do plenty of things beyond college guidance, and are not always the sharpest tools in the box. This has been reported ad nauseam on CC.
Yet, there is a world of difference between an applicant who is graduating from one of those underserved schools and an applicant who is in the running for UN Model and Intel competitions.
You do not need a GC to find out about programs such as QB, Posse, or the Gates Millennium. All it requires is a few keystrokes on a computer. That someone who is totally oblivious to the competitive nature of college applications and ready to enroll at his or her local college does not know or care about such programs is one thing, but quite another for any of the students discussed here.
That makes perfect sense. One applies to his or her clear first choice and enjoys the better statistical odds. With that in the bad, he or she looks at a couple of schools that are in the same ballpark and might have resources that are hard to overlook. No problem whatsoever! Brown might be a better fit and have better resources for that student who wants to graduate in East German Folklore Dancing or Prussian Scientic Lit.
However, where the wheels fall of is when a student adds ALL Ivies in the RD round to the SCEA of Stanford, or something along those lines. THAT scenario makes no sense whatsoever because it shows a lack of concern at the SCEA level and a total lack of concern for that best elusive best fit.
The way I see it, unless one has very specific financial needs and a complicated Profile, I think that people who are pursuing such strategy are indeed curious, But curious about one thing: their capacity in the trophy hunting contest and the ego-flattering it generates.
Not everyone is interested in Questbridge or Posse. Obviously the kids who got into all the Ivies didn’t need them.
Obviously, the trophy hunters who hope to brag might find the program lacking. But why would a low income who targets highly selective schools not be interested in the College Match program? Because not all Ivies are participants?
Regardless of the above, I addressed the issue of not being aware of the programs, and NOT that it applies to everyone.
Because they don’t want to be restricted to the one school they are matched with?
The original student, the one from Elmont, is not likely to be truly low income since he has 2 working parents.
Trophy hunters really?? Some kids dont know where they want to go until April 30 and they want to keep all options open as they should. Visiting days can often be the deciding factor in late April
Funny how things work. I am afraid that it is exactly the point I made several pages ago … when people pushed Harold’s low income envelope. There is a quasi certitude that he did not qualify as low income but that he would qualify to receive generous aid through the HYPS middle-income plans. Again, I do not think he will be a Pell Grantee, and this by a solid margin.
Florida26, pay closer attention to what I wrote. The comment was about SCEA successful students adding all Ivies to the target lists of RD.
Well, I suspect that there is a little bit of uncertainty and a little bit of trophy hunting in a lot of these kids. I don’t think the trophy hunting–or call it curiosity if you are more generous–is such a terrible mortal sin. It’s human nature. I have to confess that when my kids withdrew other applications when they got SCEA admissions, we all felt that our curiosity was seriously thwarted. They withdrew mainly because they thought that holding those other applications open might negatively affect some other kids in their own high school–something that may or may not be an issue for some of the kids we are discussing.