I suggest this article to any anxiety-prone students thinking about applying to an Ivy.
“But now I’m done with all that. For a long time, I believed in the admissions process. I thought that I could use my position to help regular smart people with great test scores and impressive extracurriculars break into an elitist system. After eight years, though, I’ve learned that modest goal is more or less unreachable. Ivy League admissions are a complete racket, rigged in favor of the privileged and completely impervious to change. So I’m quitting the business.”
The source is Gawker, the author is anonymous- and a “low-level” alum volunteer- and I’d bet money he didn’t have the access he claims to applications. His message is mixed- as an interviewer, he’s frustrated, including by the students, themselves. Well, interviewers are “eyes and ears,” not decision makers, not gatekeepers, for heaven’s sake. They have only a slice of a view of the admissions process.The colleges are grateful for their efforts.
“On the other hand, we’ll take the person who has an A-minus GPA but spends most of her free time in a research lab breeding generations of flies for genetic tests, thank you very much.”
[from op of article]
"Which is exactly why the process is bull*. Because as a grad student, I can tell you that high school students mostly do jack * in the lab except waste my damn time. At least the ball washer is doing something useful for someone.
And keeping with the theme of this post, more often than not the high school kids that do work in labs are privileged/connected as ****, not Mary Sues struggling against the odds trying to cure cancerbolAIDS."
[from anonymous]
Alumni interviews are much more about Alumni Relations than Admissions. They are intended to make graduates feel like they are important contributors to the college. If a kid has 2300 SATs, a 3.9 GPA, and three great recommendation letters from teachers and a counselor how have known him for years, what difference does the impression gleaned by some random alum over a 45-minute coffee shop discussion make? Conversely, if a kid has a 3.5 and sub-2200 SATs, there’s no alumni recommendation in the world that’s going to get him in.
The author of this article seemed to be full of the same vainglory he accuses Harvard of. Why does he need to ask the kids’ SATs and GPAs? They’re already being officially reported to the Admissions Office - they don’t need an unconfirmed corroboration from an alum. And if Harvard accepts roughly 5% of its applicants, then why should he expect more than 1 of 20 of the applicants he interviews to get in? I guess his word should carry much greater weight than that of another alumni interviewer.
The anonymous volunteer would never be considered a “gatekeeper” or an “admissions officer” – that’s just BS to conflate his assertions. I’ve been an alum volunteer for +25 years for a Harvard peer school and would NEVER equate my role to that of an actual admissions officer. Alone, those statements STRAIN the credulity of the rest of the article…
Nice to pre-judge – but whatever. He’s again, full of it. In my 25 years, I’ve NEVER held an exaggerated view of my role. I’m the eyes and ears for my school. The fact that +30K “regular smart people” apply is the issue – not the admissions system. Again, zero points.
Now this is complete BS:
Unless he was a fully vested admissions officer or employee of the university or a student workstudy employee of the admissions office, what is just described is IMPOSSIBLE. Buddy, didja ever hear about FERPA? Harvard has. All you ever had was the kids’ HS and test scores and maybe a list of ECs. He never read any entire applicant file. Later when he discusses his prep in order to interview kids, he betrays the full extent of his “knowledge”.
Later, he’s decries how the interview is a pageant and the advice to “be yourself” in the essay. While tens of thousands of equally banal essay writers trying to be unique are submitted – that’s exactly why the “be yourself” advice is there – most kids ARE UNREMARKABLE and why it’s useful to Harvard et al to see this. Sorry, but I think that’s perfect advice – I want the school to really know who this applicant is – 80% are simple AVERAGE in the greater pool of top school applicants. This is a surprise?
My interviews have mostly followed his experiences – from banal, to canned, to even weird and creepy — but then there have been those few who I left feeling that: “This kid will change the world”. Just like people I attended college with – ambassadors, Attorney’s General, professors, pastors, news journalists, artists, physicians, writers, Best Actor multiple nominees.
Maybe in Cambridge but not where I attended school.
The sad fact that in his six years he only interviewed on lower SES kid is a demonstration of what? Tons of kids, low SES or not, are simply AVERAGE in the competitive pool. His one experience sours and he damns the whole system? Nice sampling size, Einstein. What he should have done was to VOLUNTEER MORE – to get the word out to the the low income high achievers – to speak the truth of Harvard and other schools that there are great options out there. (I trek yearly to my desolated inner city school district – carrying my Ivy banner – still looking for the flicker in the eyes of that special student or two).
And the writer is nuts if he thinks Harvard’s world topping endowment “lives off of those students’ money” Harvard could cancel undergrad tuition tomorrow and would barely hiccup given its portfolio’s performance.
The writer cites some common rigamaroles that parents and kids and schools that the keen observer of even this site, will notice. But his rant is skewered by his 1) embellishments of his duties, 2) misplaced conclusions based off of small samples and 3) his over-conflated belief of his ability to affect his interviewees’ chances.
He interviewed between 3 to 6 kids per year for 8 years. That’s 24 to 48 kids, with a Harvard accept rate that’s averaged about 7% during that time. So, statistically, between 1.7 and 3.4 of all the people he’s interviewed should have been accepted to Harvard during that time. Not sure why he thinks he was such a super-special interviewer, that these numbers shouldn’t apply to him.
This article–and thread–again? Perhaps someone will see this time why censuring this East Coast athletic conference (whether the claims are wrong or not is irrelevant to me) yet neglecting to critique every other college is stupid.
No. The OP will scurry away, and no one will learn anything. (As in Tolstoy’s novels, or Dante’s Inferno–no one learns, no one progresses, except for the observers of the spectacle.)
People will continue to pretend that their Carletons and Smiths are safe and far from the “atrocious decadence” that these eight schools embody.
Singling out the Ivy League schools as “corrupt,” or whatever, legitimates and continues the silly fixation on those schools. Someone should write an article on how schools with high PhD productivity are creating tonnes of dainty and heedless sheep who forget that the corruptions and corporate undertones of the Universities they decried as undergraduates still exist at the graduate level, or Reed’s and Sarah Lawrence’s “gaming” of college rankings.
“Yet for the last few years, it’s felt like the normal, inquisitive, relatively unfiltered teenager of the early 2000’s [when the author was applying to Harvard] has been replaced by dozens of little Russell Wilsons. Gone are the hard edges and the unintentional flashes of personality that made it seem like I was actually getting something accomplished in the course of (most) of these interviews.”
Essay author
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
@Exodius, “Perhaps someone will see this time why censuring this East Coast athletic conference (whether the claims are wrong or not is irrelevant to me) yet neglecting to critique every other college is stupid. No. The OP will scurry away, and no one will learn anything.”
Errr, not really sure what your point is. I don’t think anyone in this thread has made the point that LAC’s, or any of the many super selective schools in the US, are undeserving of vast and unwavering systematic criticism and reform efforts (particularly in light of the vast problems our country faces due to growing economic inequality). And if they had made that point, I would have been the first to vigorously argued against it.
I mean, maybe you have a point in arguing that directing criticism primarily towards the Ivy league simply serves to fetishize these schools further, but I don’t think so. If you’re going to criticize a large, centuries old, and seemingly intractable system, generally you start by pointing out those areas which are the most obvious.
It’s not that Ivy league schools are uniquely deserving of criticism, it’s typically just that they’re the most successful beneficiaries of a system that itself is very much deserving of criticism.
I feel like I have to point out that the fact that he only got “liberal upper middle class” is probably more of a result of the location of his home than the applicants who applied. I’m a high school senior, so I probably (likely) don’t know much, but I know that on a chart with categories “required” “recommended” “considered” and “not considered”, the interview falls under “considered” because they can’t possibly interview everyone. Whether or not you get an interview is solely reliant on your location and volume of applications (and maybe test scores, if they actually see them. I was under the impression that they didn’t have access to them). It’s another recommendation letter from someone who’s spent 45 minutes interviewing you, and barely knows you. Job interviews are more in-depth. It’s just to make sure you’re not totally bat**** crazy and have good hygiene.
I agree with the fact that most high schoolers are unformed in the their opinions. I have goals in my life, but no dramatic epiphanies. I want to get into college, but I’m not anything special. I’m just going to convince him that I am-- but if the admissions office decides they still didn’t want me, the fact that I understand the meaning of life and I’m the most special person to walk the earth won’t mean anything other than I’m self absorbed.
College interviews really are just alumni relations. A family friend went to Harvard medical school and has the worst opinion of interviews. “They don’t help you, but they can hurt you” were her words.
@baltimoreguy, “Not sure why he thinks he was such a super-special interviewer, that these numbers shouldn’t apply to him… The author of this article seemed to be full of the same vainglory he accuses Harvard of.”
In defense of the article’s tone, the author graduated from Harvard within the last 15 years–of course he’s sure that he’s special. The arrogant assumption–which permeates every letter of his article–that the author is innately special, powerful, and validated in his wants, doesn’t really undercut the piece’s larger thesis.
In my opinion, his messiah complex doesn’t preclude a reader’s ability to embrace criticism of the Ivy League, it actually strengthens it.
Take, for instance, @T26E4’s post in this thread. Which, despite being (very accurately) critical of the article, shares many of the article’s assumptions and much of its tone.
"I’ve been an alum volunteer for +25 years for a Harvard peer school… My interviews have mostly followed his experiences… but then there have been those few who I left feeling that: ‘This kid will change the world’. Just like people I attended college with – ambassadors, Attorney’s General, professors, pastors, news journalists, artists, physicians, writers, Best Actor multiple nominees… "
“I trek yearly to my desolated inner city school district – carrying my Ivy banner – still looking for the flicker in the eyes of that special student or two…”
You did not flee for the woods after posting this thread (unlike the others). That’s noteworthy!
While I would like to find out why these “areas” are the “most obvious,” what “most obvious” means, and how one prevents the inquiry into the “most obvious” things from becoming a jeremiad and an irrelevancy, I’ll leave those questions alone.
“Start?” Such criticism is not new. It has lingered for long enough to become a parody of itself: those from “non-elite” schools say that they are freer, that they have more individuality, that they are more interesting than those from “elite” schools, reminiscent of the men who hasten to the highest point of a ship sinking in the ocean (c.f. Alberti–Dinner Pieces, “Fatum et Fortuna”), and instead of solving the problem, they become the monsters. Whether or not those Freethinkers are “correct” is trivial–they are chair à canon as much as anyone else, and Hobbes makes a clever argument in the Leviathan about the folly of similarly small distinctions among humans in strength and wit.
I have not seen anyone transgress the usual and trite “elite-bashing” threshold and say, “These ‘non-elite’ schools were founded by graduates of the ‘elite institutions,’ they run on money, they hire faculty and administrators who graduated from the ‘elites,’ they admit students who lived with the students that went on to attend the elites, they send students to the graduate schools of the elites, they use textbooks written by professors of the elites, their graduates breed with the sons and daughters of the elites… Perhaps the (intellectually honest) solution is to question the value of college itself.” College is a financial necessity, I have heard some say. What a farce! I trust that your school or your child’s school is the best compromise between financial necessity and institutional indoctrination.
The focus on the Ivy League reminds me of those non sequiturs and obsessions with odd details with which Gogol stuffed his stories.
I’m sure the author of the Gawker piece meant to point out how highly qualified all the applicants he interviewed are, but it struck me how underqualified most of them were (at least by Harvard CC standards). When he lists the percentiles of their SAT scores, he masks it a little. And he makes a big deal that they’ve take 2 or 3 SAT II’s when, in fact, Harvard requires two SAT IIs. Do a quick “Chance Me” on each of his examples:
White female, 4.0 GPA (unweighted), 95th percentile SAT (700, 710, 690,) three APs, double legacy.
White male, 4.8 GPA (weighted), 92nd percentile SAT (670, 690, 660), four APs. All-State Debate
White female, 3.9 GPA unweighted, 92nd percentile SAT (670, 690, 660), three APs.
White male, 4.25 GPA weighted, 720, 720, 700, two APs.
White female, 3.9 GPA, 700, 710, 690, three APs
He seems surprised that only the first 2 got in – I’m surprised any of them were accepted, and attribute the first one’s acceptance to being a legacy.
I don’t see how this is going to help anxiety-prone students. I’m having trouble parsing any value that might be in the article from the writer’s personal issues.
The article is not credible based on my experience. I don’t even know where to begin. The only thing that is true is that many alumni interviewers do get bummed because a 6% admissions rate means that unless you are interviewing 20 applicants per year, likely all of those you interview will not get in. I was very happy when someone I interviewed got a LL and they told me - it was a bigger achievement that she decided to attend! (I do alumni interviews for another Ivy)
to send out applications to volunteer alumni interviewers. FERPA is very serious and it would be a violation to let anyone not officially employed see an application summary, let alone the full application. That’s why you see many people on the Harvard forum saying “my alumni interviewer asked my AP scores” or “asked my SAT scores”. Among other college forums.
It is very sad that “Anonymous” can “write their experiences” without any kind of rebuttal from a real alumni interviewer. Then again, it is gawker…
Also very odd - dad’s a postal worker, mom’s a homemaker and zero comment about FA or owing debt?
Conversely, if what they said is true, violation of FERPA can lead to ineligibility for Federal funding, so Harvard better watch out. (by the way, I double-checked, and applicants to universities are covered under FERPA at least until an admissions decision is made, so it would be nigh impossible to rationalize hundreds and hundreds of Harvard alumni interviewers having access to applications).
Finally, the author says this:
“Let’s be honest: Harvard and its affiliates will inflict some kind of damage (academic, emotional, occasionally physical) on everyone who lingers there. It is a place where everyone is out to get everyone else. In a place where no one can be the best at everything, everyone takes any chance they can get to measure up to their peers. It is a mob of ruthless young overachievers with a taste for blood.”
Yet for some reason the person wanted to be an alumni interviewer for a place that “damaged” him or her?
""Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!’
In my opinion there are no definitive conclusions to be drawn from this piece. Nothing from our experience that speaks to the Harvard admissions process. I absolutely believe that an applicant had better be genuine and authentic and non contrived if they wish to have a chance of admission. How else can they distinguish themselves from so many applicants with the top possible academic credentials.
That article? An anonymous writer, venting about Harvard (“out for blood”…“jerks”) and complaining that applicants are almost all at least upper middle-class?