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But the icing on the cake was that she endured surgery on both knees.
[/quote]
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<p>;)
A definite "icing".</p>
<p>OK.. I kinda laughed a little. And if she had not had surgery on both knees she would have been less of a candidate for admission to college? How many parents will now take a ball ping hammer to their kids' knees to give them that added edge to their application?</p>
<p>Egads!!!</p>
<p>Yeah, it is ironic. My D was rejected by Tufts. She wasn't up there with the "shoo-ins" and was too average, middle class, good student for the second wave of admissions. I guess she needed more adversity in her life. She's very happy where she is now.</p>
<p>I think people are undermining adversity. The fact is that these kids are getting a boost because they have had to overcome something so their accomplishment are more impressive. It is not that those who have not faced hardship are less or disadvantaged it is simply that it is not as impressive. And I don't think it is a sob story meant to exploit the process, some people go through some really hard things and still get top notch grades and are accomplished and those people should be rewarded.</p>
<p>'rentof2 - you sound like you have a great kid. Hope she gets the scholarship.</p>
<p>I can attest to the fact that Tufts does indeed take normal kids who haven't overcome any obstacles in their lives. My D was accepted to Tufts - high scores, high gpa, good but not ridiculously amazing ec's, part time job, very good parochial high school. I truly believe her essay is the reason she stood out among the many kids just like her. She wrote about a turning point moment in her life, which came when she realized that her political leanings were out of place at a religious rally-concert she was attending. It was a relatively short, yet very powerful, essay about her conflicted feelings and her desire to continue searching for a resolution. So ... two taboo subjects, religion & politics ... with terrific results. Without such an unusual essay, I suspect she would have been yet another "we have so many just like her" toss-outs.</p>
<p>I mentor a young man who was quite surprisingly accepted to an Amherst-like LAC a few years back. His parents are poor, uneducated immigrants. He attended a so-so public high school. He did challenge himself in his courses, participated in sports & clubs, and got good grades. His test stats were on the low side for this particular school, and his essay was a bit rough. However, he was able to convey his desire to be everything he could possibly be - and his belief that this school would allow him to accomplish his goals. This was the only school of the several elites to which he applied that took a chance on him. It was tough for him at first, but after almost 3 years his hard work has paid off tremendously. You cannot imagine how far this young man has come! He has learned to write very well, he holds his own in his challenging courses, and his future is very bright. Without the opportunity this school gave him, he truly would not have come as far as he has today.</p>
<p>There are many ways to put together a college class. Different schools use different methods, and a student who applies to a few well-selected schools will find a successful placement somewhere - even if it's at a safety, which so often turns out to be the best place for him, after all.</p>
<p>
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Is it just us, or is that supplement the most pretentious out there?
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</p>
<p>What? As a student, I loved the supplement. It allowed a student to express him/herself as much as he/she wanted!</p>
<p>My D didn't do the supplemental essay! :) She didn't like the prompts & had already used her own idea for the common app essay - so she took her chances on the optional being truly optional. For her, it was. Of course, I don't know if a student who wants Tufts-or-nothing would be wise to take that chance ...</p>
<p>Re: " FM ignores the noncustodial parent in cases of divorce or separation; IM expects parents to help pay for education, regardless of current marital status."</p>
<p>FM includes the financial status of the spouse of the custodial parent - even though he or she has no financial obligation to the child and even when the non-custodial parent provides child support.</p>
<p>I have a son who can go to any school in the world based on objective numbers (scores etc) and holds a short end of the stick for the admission game due to the uneventfully healthy upbringing in an upper middle class intact family and an ORM status to boot (a combo of a Jew and an Asian - couldn't be more over-represented than that!).</p>
<p>Yet, I fully and enthusiastically support the affirmative action principle applied to the college admission process that favors minorities and those coming from adverse environment who may not have high scores, GPAs, and glamorous ECs (let's face it, a lot of these ECs still require family resources one way or the other).</p>
<p>How my son will do later in life will not be unduly negatively impacted because he went to U Chicago for instance, rather than Harvard. After all, we are not comparing HYP education to community college experience. However, the policy by elite universities that gives aspiring minority students a shot at real upward mobility results in positive outcome on a societal scale. I do admit, though, that the middle bracket is being squeezed from both directions - as a society, we need to think hard about this. Because of some life style choice decision we made last year, this has become very much our issue also now. </p>
<p>I have always told my two sons that the reason why I care deeply about social justice is mostly for THEM, more so than the disadvantaged people it is supposed to help. Society that gives no hope for upward mobility is a society full of permanent underclass who have nothing much to lose and everything to gain by severely disrupting status quo. As a rather privileged member of a society, it is to their interest to keep the status quo as it is and maybe even improve in a direction that makes sum total satisfaction of the entire society higher. Think about French Revolution. </p>
<p>It sounds overly cynical, but I would like to call it enlightened self-interest. </p>
<p>I am very familiar with nations and societies where upward mobility is practically shut off, and it makes these societies very unpleasant places to be even for the truly privileged class unless their definition of happiness revolves around how many destitute and desperate house servants/maids they can lord over.</p>
<p>I too thought Amherst's supplement allowed a kid to explore pretty much any subject/passion he/she wanted.</p>
<p>As for adversity: I don't think anyone has suggested that adversity is somehow being besmirched. It's just that promoting it for entrance into college seems a little calculated.. and nothing adverse about it.</p>
<p>I think what I find interesting is that in my culture, one does not talk about adversity. You suck it up and hold your chin up. You do not glorify your hard knocks. For example: While it's a HUGELY long story, Junior year for my s was HUGELY difficult from a personal standpoint. He never told anyone about it and yet, S took on a lot of added responsibility and discovered a resiliency that he never had to tap into before, but he would no sooner mention that time in our lives than he would want to be shot in the kneecap. Seriously, it's just not the WASPy way. And if we actually do respect cultural differences, we wont leap to conclusions about what it means to be a white anglo saxon protestant, but not being chatty about hardship and money are but two things that remain true to both sides of our family.</p>
<p>"Very much knock on wood - our kids have had very uneventful childhood. Whether by luck or our hard work, they haven't had to worry much or be distressed about anything. They are not spoiled kids. We also have very good relationship. Overall, happy and well adjusted kids. Frankly, when time came for my D1 to write all of those essays she had no real major adversity or great insight to write about. What's wrong with happy, hard working, well rounded kid? Why is it more desirable to have over come some horrible experience? The fact I have done my job in providing my kids with a safe, happy environment is putting my kids at a disadvantage when it comes to college process? (D1 did get into Tufts) I didn't like the article."</p>
<p>I think the reasoning behind it is that if you take two relatively equal candidates in terms of grades, scores, and extracurriculars, and one has been through significant hardship and the other has not, it is clearly the former who is either more highly intelligent/resourceful or has worked harder. Consider a race where one runner has 20 pound weights on each leg and the other does not. Most people would likely conclude that if the race ended in a tie, then the person with the weights was probably the better athlete, not that they were equally good athletes because they tied.</p>
<p>This statement stands out:</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <blockquote> <p>fierce competition makes instinctive judgments all but inevitable>>></p> </blockquote> </blockquote>
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<p>People go by their instincts and then use objective data to justify the selection. This is true when you buy a car, buy a house, hire an employee....and choose a student.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Consider a race where one runner has 20 pound weights on each leg and the other does not. Most people would likely conclude that if the race ended in a tie, then the person with the weights was probably the better athlete, not that they were equally good athletes because they tied.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But just because one keeps the weights in plain sight on his ankles doesn't mean the other kid didn't have a belt of equal or greater weight around his waist and never let it show. </p>
<p>But I have to agree with hyeonjlee to the degree that there has to be hope for all to achieve regardless of disadvantage. But as for those expensive EC's, there is a reverse discrimination at work when a family sends their kid to a private school or lives in a advantaged zip code, but cannot or chooses not to afford all the other monied perks and/or expensive EC's or maybe even SAT tutoring. Yet ADComs will assume they have access when in fact, they very well may not. Instinctive judgements or prejudiced assumptions? Middle Class squeeze? It's actually more of a chokehold.</p>
<p>Wearing weights to run is a training tactic, so if the runner is wearing them in a RACE then he's stupid! Should we reward people for creating their own adversity through stupidity and then overcoming it? Seriously, how much adversity do people experience as a result of their own immoral or unwise choices? Should we reward that? As for adversity that is not the student's own fault, I can see some appeal in that, but I agree with Modadunn here. It's hard to understand what it's like to walk in someone's shoes, and what's on paper doesn't tell the whole story. For example, I can attest to the fact that my D has experienced a lot of adversity which isn't evident to many people. I'm not worried she won't get "credit" for it; my point is just to second what Modadunn is saying.</p>
<p>The more I read about how admissions decisions are made, the more I wonder if those objective measures like SAT scores aren't nearly as evil or unfair as we've come to believe they are. Certainly, there are other criteria being used which are even more fraught with inequities.</p>
<p>These admissions policies should constitute some sort of contract to provide adequate support or accommodations for some of the kids who have "overcome obstacles." Changes in admissions over the last decade or two, in order to achieve diversity of various kinds, have consequences for those applicants, once on campus, for which the colleges should take responsibility.</p>
<p>Our daughter has had various chronic health problems, since the age of 3 (she had one knee and one ankle surgery in 5th grade, with months of PT etc., and it does not even make our list of problems- a finite, solvable health issue like that seems minor to us and to many, many others). She did not mention any of this in her essay, but wrote about her happy childhood- so she is not one to "use" her history. However, the guidance counselor mentioned it, because she lost a lot of school time and had to teach herself, and still excelled. She also has an artistic talent that helped her get through some hard times.</p>
<p>It is wonderful that she got in to a top college, but we have found that, although admissions accepted her with full knowledge of her problems, the accommodations for her there were quite inadequate. This varies from school to school, since the Americans with Disabilities Act does not legislate accommodations as thoroughly, and is not interpreted as strictly, on the college level. We have heard the same thing from a family whose daughter is legally blind, and actually a few others. It warms the heart to hear about certain kids who have gone through so much and still done well, but there is no follow-through to continue the heart-warming plot. Our daughter is currently on medical leave due to the deficiencies in the disabilities office at this college. She will go back in the fall, and we will be lot smarter and tougher with them, but there is no guarantee that she will have the accommodations she needs- even though they admitted her knowing all about her problems.</p>
<p>A parallel occurs with kids whose preparation for the rigors of work at a top college was not really adequate. I read a great book about a kid from an inner city (I think it was, I forget the title)who got into a good college years ago, and he went through a lot of very tough semesters before he could function even close to comfortably at the school.
I kept thinking that so much more could have been done to make things easier for him. But he sure looks great in a catalog photo.</p>
<p>Social mobility, and leveling of the playing field, does not happen with admissions alone. It happens when the kids graduate!</p>
<p>I would certainly trade my daughter's top college for any community college, or for no degree at all, if she could move forward without having to overcome obstacles every day. Be grateful if you can, even if your kid does not "get in."</p>
<p>Excellent and new point of view Compmom... and is why I mentioned retainment statistics earlier. How do these students fair over the course of four years? Also, one of the reasons that many top schools moved away from loans is that despite having a great education, being riddled with debt is not exactly an advantage for anyone.</p>
<p>compmom, I agree wholeheartedly with what you wrote. I remember reading A Hope in the Unseen and wondering whether the protagonist-- an inner-city boy who was admitted to Brown and wanted to triple major in math/science/engineering fields-- would have come closer to achieving his goals at the University of Michigan or UVA or UMd. He ended up going into education because he wasn't able to make the grade in his intended major at Brown. </p>
<p>By the way, I also want to add that plenty of wonderful, bright, engaging kids who overcome adversity are denied admission to both Tufts and Amherst every year. There are just too few spaces and it is subjective. I am saddened that so many of the comments on those articles talk about affirmative action when, in fact, the subjective nature doesn't seem to favor minorities per se but rather kids who come from poor or rough upbringings. To that end, those of us whose kids may well have been poor or middle class but who moved heaven and earth to provide them with opportunities (or to place them in private or magnet schools) may well be getting rid of our kids' "admissions advantage" but that advantage is so subjective and the high school years so formative, that I can't imagine trading in the bird-in-hand (better high school) for the admissions advantage in the bush.</p>
<p>As MarathonMan and VeryHappy point out, the article states in the beginning that the majority of spots have already been taken, and probably in good part by non-disadvantaged students with high stats. </p>
<p>With so many applicants vying for the remaining 1,000 spots, it sounds like they're willing to look beyond grades and give some of these kids a chance. Someone asked earlier how they get so much background info on these students-- I'm guessing it probably comes not only from the students' essays but also from their GCs(?) I'd also think the admissions staff
must take care to choose strong students who have a real shot at succeeding, since it's in no one's interest to choose ones who will not, no matter what their hardship may have been.</p>
<p>Our S was also a 'generic' well-rounded good student from the suburbs. No particular hook, and not the type to write a very personal essay, although that's what schools seem to be looking for.</p>
<p>This might be a good time, perhaps, to bring up something that was posted here a while ago:</p>
<p>Profile:</a> Matriculation 2008 - Feature - Tufts University</p>