<p>“leadership” and “passion” are buzzwords. Some colleges ring the bell and happily accept the ding-dongs.</p>
<p>To answer mazewanderer, I live in Boston and the volume of applications to Tufts from the good high schools is very high, making it very hard to get in. I was speaking about schools that are good but not nearly as competitive for admission. So yes.</p>
<p>In my experience, the kids that got into HYPSM at my school had both top academics and top ECs related to their interests in college. However, many of us that got into the lesser ivies and other schools of the same level had very mediocre ECs, but decent academic profiles. Take UC Berkeley as an example. Virtually the entire top 10% of my graduating class (550 students) was accepted there, including ALL the “academic drudges.” This leads me to believe that it’s still possible for “academic robots” to get into very good schools, just maybe not the top 5.</p>
<p>OP, I think your S’s school had such results because it’s a top prep–colleges know that the top X students are more than prepared for the workload. At less well known high schools, kids who aren’t in the tippy-top of their class in addition to having, if not stellar, at least focused ECs are pretty much out of luck (at least in my experience).</p>
<p>This is a very interesting topic, and I’m wondering whether the trend is indicative of a desire to wean out passionless kids who perhaps spend too much time gaming or partying or in general just procrastinating. Lots of really bright kids are chronic procrastinators. To be passionate is to be active, to the point of being motivated to get up and do the thing that motivates. That requires focus . . . something too many of these kids lack. Perhaps universities are tired of admitting those who look good on paper but when they arrive just sit around and devote too much time socializing or going through the motions and not pursuing their cause. I think this could result in more than just weaning out those who are academic robots.</p>
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<p>I agree and I think it explains why my local HS had results similar to yours.</p>
<p>Kids at top prep schools are not getting in in the same rate as they used to. </p>
<p>I have read that given a choice between a kid who has achieved something with am educational background that is deficient, and a kid who has achieved something at a top private school, the top colleges will go with the former. </p>
<p>The idea was that the kid from the prep school will do well anywhere, but the kids from the lower quality school and/or lower income background will benefit more from the education provided at a top schol, in terms of opportunities offered.</p>
<p>At Brown and at Harvard, in speeches to parents, “economic diversity” is the buzzword</p>
<p>I also think that kids applying to so many schools is throwing things off.</p>
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<p>I for one certainly hope this is more than a buzzword, and this becomes the norm for diversity. I’m not holding my breath though.</p>
<p>On a different thought, I wonder just how astute the admissions committee (ADCOM? ADCON?) is in assessing “passion”. DS and DD both had their share of ECs in K-12. DS still spends time in some of these activities that have no tangible value any more, while DD has abandoned most of them.</p>
<p>At our suburban public, nobody gets in to HYP. Cornell and Penn seem to be the only ivies kids are accepted to. It would provide no economic diversity anyway. I can’t imagine anyone other than the top 10 in the class would have a shot, and they aren’t successful.</p>
<p>From D’s school, for example georgetown, two years ago, the average acceptance GPA is 3.5 but this year - 3.65.<br>
The one get into Yale, not only has perfect GPA (3.85) but also won several olympic math competition. Another kid with 3.85 GPA, did not get into any ivies, also has great EC’s but nothing like “winner of competition”.</p>
<p>I told my D, just be yourself. Don’t do things just for admission purpose, do what you like. With her average GPA and “so so” Ec’s, although she has very good test scores, I know she won’t has chance for ivies. I just want she find a good match college, still challenge enough but she could enjoy her life too.</p>
<p>I agree about the hope that it is more than a buzzword. There is a faddish quality to the theme, but it is also the culmination of some values that started to permeate academia 30 or 40 years ago.</p>
<p>With the recession, some of the schools had to back off this idealistic path a bit. The year when Brown and Amherst eliminated loans, close on the heels of Harvard’s middle class initiative, was a high point in encouraging this kind of diversity.</p>
<p>If anyone has read the “Gatekeepers,” that book gives an idea of the lengths to which college admissions will go to recruit kids from diverse backgrounds.</p>
<p>From what I can tell, colleges are realizing something that anyone who has taken courses in organizational behavior and such in management programs probably know: That high grades alone don’t quantify success, and that there is a slight negative correlation to GPA and such and how students end up doing in the real world (there are a number of factors, but one of them is often more talented kids aren’t good at doing what the grinds do, putting the effort into pleasing a teacher to get good grades,yet also realize they have something to prove, whereas a lot of high GPA kids come out of school thinking they know everything (and that one has been confirmed by 25 years experience hiring out of college kids). </p>
<p>I think schools, too, are recognizing the fact that pulling kids from top prep schools doesn’t help their rankings or image, either.For example, though it is not really talked about, top tier colleges have been cutting back on their legacy admissions, people who get in because they had relatives go there (used to be about 20% of the ivy league). They call it various things, but even though a legacy has good grades and such, they may feel it doesn’t benefit the school to admit them. Likewise, a kid who has gone to let’s say Scarsdale schools in NY, some of the top achieving schools, which defines the word economically privileged for the most part, has had a lot more opportunities then a kid in a rural area or inner city might have. Prep schools do exactly that, prep kids for high level schools, and though they have scholarship students, the majority are kids of privilege (who at least can afford the 25k-40k many of them now charge [conservative estimate]). They weight that in, as my father told the local principal of our high school when he was boasting about the schools kids went to, 90% going to college, “yeah, but look what you started with, what did you really do to make them reach higher?”, and he was right.</p>
<p>I think too that schools are seeing through the mania for EC’s, where kids volunteer at all kinds of programs, because they think it looks good on a CV, to make it look they really care about the world (and I have been involved with groups, like soup kitchens and animal rescue and the like, where they are reluctant to take high school volunteers, because many of them volunteer, do the bare minimum, spend more time texting and talking and complaining, which is doubly sad because it means the kids who really do feel a need to help, don’t; the head of my local first aid squad for the first time in memory kicked a group of overachievers out, who did very little, complained about the kind of jobs they often were asked to help with (yeah, washing an ambulance or repacking gear isn’t glamorous, but it needs to be done). It is especially bad now that certain groups of the academic grind end of things, the hard studying and video game crowd, have gotten wind of the notion that volunteering looks good on an EC, and they IME are the worst of all…</p>
<p>And given the huge numbers applying, and the relatively small sizes of the entering classes, they can afford to shop around and find what they want, and they seem to be doing that. Yeah, it means kids from top end programs will find that the advantages they have had can hurt them, that in a sense unlike past generations they are finding that going to X or Y school, which seemed an automatic ticket to an Ivy or other top school, is no guarantee, and they might need to either lower their expectations or realize they can’t assume anything and work harder to show they deserve it. It can be argued that isn’t fair, but very few things are, many really bright kids because of their economic situation have to settle for a less brilliant futures. In music, opportunities often boil down to economics and family dynamics, a really talented kid without the support is going to have a near impossible time to make it, it is the reality.</p>
<p>musicprnt said:</p>
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<p>I think that many kids “volunteer” for community service type ECs, because they are required to by their schools or other ECs (like NHS or Scouts). I can think of no other EC that kids are required are required to join. I am sure that many kids like to participate in community service ECs and more power to them, but the concept that all of them should enjoy it and are willingly doing it is impossible for me to accept. Because they have to complete the service, they might as well dress it up for colleges as something much more exciting than it really is, like cleaning the ambulance. The colleges then see these ECs for what they are worth to most of the kids that include them - nothing.</p>
<p>BTW, at least some of the colleges that my son applied to made it seem as if it was the college’s mission to “save the world”, rather than provide a good education. Not everyone needs to save the world to be a productive member of society.</p>
<p>“The colleges then see these ECs for what they are worth to most of the kids that include them - nothing.”</p>
<p>I think that’s correct for being a member of a HS EC organization, but schools are impressed by being, e.g., the president of such orgs. I think schools also look more at non-HS ECs, like scouting Gold/Eagle awards, being a lifelong dancer/musician/artist, etc.</p>
<p>^^ It’s customary in our culture to take up dancing at a very early stage and have a special grand performance generally in the junior/senior year in HS, ie., “life long” dancers. I would say that for perhaps half of them, HS also marks their last dance. At least for me, it’s really hard to judge true passion from an essay.</p>
<p>I personally know 4 kids from my school who got into Harvard this year (might’ve been more, but I know these for sure.). They’re all exceptionally gifted in the classroom and had many ECs, service hours, and started several clubs. They really deserved it</p>
<p>I have to plug the ‘academic robots’ in a COLLEGE forum. The term can be misleading since these can be people who have a <em>passion</em> for, surprise, scholarship, academics, curiousity and finding the truth. </p>
<p>I have sheepishly and a bit self consciously nudged my son to do more activities - since I understand what a lot of the people in this thread are saying - but he manages his time well and he loves to do homework and do his very best at school, without ANY nudging by me. He takes pride in his school work, a job well done. All his teachers , curiously, at the recent conferences said he is a ‘leader in the classroom’ (that language I have usually seen in the context of ECs (“mark if you are a leader or just a member”)). </p>
<p>He is well suited for the most challenging of higher education. It seems absurd that I should try to fix what is not broke to get him into a challenging curriculum in college.</p>
<p>I understand the cynical attitudes toward students and their volunteer work, however all students are not just clocking the hours to check off that box on their application.</p>
<p>My son really does have a ‘passion’ (gasp!). He’s an IT student that is on two robotics teams. He’s not a nut. He has just found something very early on that he really loves and is lucky that he can make engineering a career. He mentors an elementary school robotics team. He loves it. The time spent with the kids is such a break from the pressure cooker of the lab at school. When you’re 10, what’s better than legos, robots, and a high school kid that’s going to teach you how to build and program that cool NXT Brick. He gets to go and be a rock star! The kids love him!! It’s one thing to be able to do something. It’s a totally different skillset to be able to teach it. My son has excellent examples in his own mentors who come from Micron, SAIC, Lockheed Martin, Ratheon, as well as NASA.</p>
<p>Not everything in life is about checking a box.</p>
<p>btw, he’s at a public school… another audible GASP!!!</p>
<p>I think what the schools try to do is sort the poppyseeds from the dirt in terms of ECs versus the authentic student disposition, and I think it’s a hard thing to do.</p>
<p>My son, who although gifted was not exactly tippy-top in terms of stats, was accepted to his reach school last year where some of his cohorts, who were stronger performers, were not. (He was also later admitted into their music program via portfolio under separate application, as he was pursuing a dual degree.) We were delightfully surprised about the academic admission. In retrospect, I think there was one particular reference in one of his letters of recommendation that made the difference - it referred to him as ‘highly unusual in that he was someone who learns for the love of learning, not the marks’, and described him as in the top 2% of students the teacher had ever taught in terms of “character.”
The teacher had accurately identified his “m.o.” – he’s very collegial and doesn’t have a competitive bone in his body, and would always dig deeper at the expense of “perfecting”. Throughout high school, he was always cooking up one thing or another, often to the disadvantage of his comparative grade standing. We were so grateful that someone both noticed this, and that his first choice school seemed to appreciate this, because it is a hard thing to quantify. In this case, you could say that there was outside corroboration in that a second letter from an outside organization recommending him musically echoed the theme.</p>
<p>So maybe the “passion” factor for adcoms has more to do with the identified capacity and inclination to contribute.</p>
<p>I think all of the responses have been very interesting and insightful. I just thought it was an interesting turn of events at my S’s school. I do agree that there has been some sort of a backlash against private college prep schools. There is definitely evidence of it at our school, and the guidance counselor confirms it. My S is actually on scholarship at his school so being “privileged” is not one of his problems. We sacrifice a lot to send our kids to this school and feel it is important to give our kids the best education we can. The public schools in our area are ridiculously horrible. Anyway, that’s a different topic that has been debated many times on this forum.</p>
<p>My S is similar to kmccrindle’s. He has high stats but is a B-B+ student. He stated in 9th grade that he would never do anything just to look good for colleges and he has pretty much stayed true to his word. He is also… as stated by all of his teachers, to be a leader in the classroom and move conversations forward. He is always being admired for his character. He really has no idea yet where he wants to go to college but he certainly is not molding himself to go to an ivy just because everyone at his school is obsessed about the top 20 schools. He hates this mentality. He applied this year to a very competitive semester school in Vermont for 2nd semester next year. You live on a rural farm with 45 other students and teachers. Everyone has chores everyday… it is a true working farm, and go to classes. It is going to be an amazing experience for him. In this process he will not be able to take a few of the AP classes he was slated to take. I really thought that it was interesting that his guidance counselor thought that this trade off would work out hugely in his favor when it came to admissions… although we laughed when she mentioned we better not tell my S this.</p>