<p>But Marite, your S and no doubt the other kids who were steered towards Wes and other schools of their ilk were no doubt qualified for them. I’m talking about guidance counselors who can push kids who are less qualified into schools that wouldn’t take kids with those same credentials normally.</p>
<p>I’ve acted as my kids’ guidance person, and this book IMO is the most depressing book about college admissions that I have come across.
On the one hand, all the players are acting in their best interests, which should be no surprise.
But two applicants in particular resonate for me.
One was an African-American young woman who clearly had the stuff for Harvard, and who the admissions officer tried to entice to Wesleyan. Happily the young lady did indeed end up at Harvard, in spite of the admissions officer’s shenanigans and some inside help toward Wesleyan from her high school guidance folks.
The other was a young woman applicant with a long, drawn out tug of war between the high school guidance counselor, admissions officer, and the admissions officer’s boss about whether or not the applicant should be rejected or placed on the waiting list. Completely a power struggle among the “professionals” involved. Nobody bothered to let the young lady know that she wasn’t going to get in regardless.
I don’t think Wes is any worse than most schools at this.</p>
<p>How do we know that admitted kids are not qualified? Stats alone don’t tell the full story.
Students get rejected by H but admitted by Y (or vice-versa) every year. Does the Y rejection means they’re not “qualified?” I’d be leery of suggesting that less qualified applicants get in because of special connections. We simply do not know. What I do know is that adcoms put some weight on experience with certain schools and certain GCs, whether they know them personally or not. In other words, if students from a specific high school have performed well in college, it gives that college confidence that future applicants from the same school with similar stats will perform equally well. If a GC has been reliable provider of information in the past, if the GC pushes for a particular student, the adcom will take that seriously. But the book also highlights the risks colleges are willing to take in order to give a chance to students from very different backgrounds.
So some may exclaim at the connections with private schools while other readers may focus on the kid from an Indian reservation. Objectively, it was the latter who was less qualified.
More than his stats (which were not stratospheric), I believe what got my S into Wes was his essay. He did not pretend to have cured cancer or to be able to walk on water. But when I read it, I thought he sounded like a great fit for Wes.</p>
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This makes sense, but I have not observed it to be true in the places I’ve lived.</p>
<p>I think that this discussion about “leadership” is interesting. Many, many high school kids want to do something interesting and they want to influence their peers to participate but the vast majority do not have the executive functioning to do it. This is because executive functioning develops later than many other cognitive aspects. Many young people do not develop enough of it while teenagers to really have what we consider “leadership”, but develop it in their early twenties…and go on to be leaders in college. Just because someone develops it earlier does not mean that he or she will have more of it eventually. Kids do not develop in a straight line! That being said, I think that some (not all) of these kids who display “leadership” simply have a lot of support for the details from adults, and therefore are able to carry out projects.</p>
<p>In and of itself the concept of “leadership” can have many connotations. I don’t typically think of “leadership” in a narrow sense and I’m guessing that college admissions officers don’t view it in a narrow sense. For instance, the kid who “stuck” a sport all four years but wasn’t first string, showed up for practices, partipated in sport-related activities in the off season. At the senior athletic banquet this year one of the coaches gave an impassioned speech about one young man and his leadership qualities and sure 'nuff as the audience was thinking about the “main man” the coach introduced a young man whose name was never heard by the announcers. That is but one example of “quiet” leadership. These are the type of leadership qualities that are illuminated in the references more than on an activity list attached to an application. There are dozens of these types of examples.</p>
<p>One of the interesting questions is how the admissions people identify the qualities they are looking for. In some instances - like those in The Gatekeepers. it seems they are pointed to them by a guidance counselor with whom they have a relationship. In a case of an anonymous application arriving (the vast majority of applications) the book really did not get into what made certain ones stand out from the rest. Of course, a book needs a story-line, best served by following the kids it did over the course of time, but I would have liked to have seen a few “surprise” applicants whose application made an impression. In the few cases mentioned, it seemed like the essays were everything.</p>
<p>Love that story, momofthreeboys. However recognizing a child who stuck out a sport/activity for 4 years, worked hard and was not a star would NEVER happen at the HS here. The powers to be at the school seemed to acknowledge only the stars. Many of our kids caught on early and found leadership opportunities outside of the HS (club sports, scouts, religious groups, etc.)</p>
<p>S1 took karate lessons outside school for many years and achieved a brown belt. Perhaps that showed “leadership” to the adcom. The karate lessons were organized by a few parents who wanted their kids to some discipline along with athletic skills. Originally, the lessons were held on school ground; eventually, they went off-site.
There are many ways of being a “leader,” as I keep on repeating.</p>
<p>Diggi: As I wrote, I think the essay probably did it for S.</p>
<p>“Many, many high school kids want to do something interesting and they want to influence their peers to participate but the vast majority do not have the executive functioning to do it. This is because executive functioning develops later than many other cognitive aspects.”</p>
<p>I’ve seen little evidence that most high school students want to create some kind of activity and influence their peers to participate in it. I think that most teens and people in general are very happy to follow the crowd, and aren’t interested in organizing things.</p>
<p>I think that for the relatively few people who are interested in creating something, they’ll find a way to do this. When the tsunami happened, younger S was a high school junior, a shy kid who had never been in any real leadership position. While we were watching tsunami coverage on TV during Christmas vacation, S called up his best friend, and told his best friend that they needed to do a fundraiser to help.</p>
<p>Somehow S and best friend came up with the idea of a faculty talent show. They pitched the idea at school, but for some reason, the principal shot it down. Best friend got discouraged and stopped trying to create a fundraiser. At my suggestion that S needed to have an organization behind him, S pitched the idea to NHS, and the president was enthusiastic, and together with the help of NHS members and the advisor, they managed to organize a school-wide fundraiser – the first in recent memory – that raised $1,000 for the tsunami victims.</p>
<p>What allowed S to do this was passion, not his leadership skills, which at that time didn’t really exist. He cared about the victims, though, and was persistent about finding a way to help them.</p>
<p>By helping organize that project, he developed leadership skills including learning about collaboration, persuasion, persistence, marketing, and other things that he put to use in future projects.</p>
<p>“At my suggestion…”
Well, isn’t that exactly the point levirm was making?</p>
<p>“Well, isn’t that exactly the point levirm was making?”</p>
<p>I don’t think so. I think there’s a big difference between parents doing something for kids who are trying to organize something and parents making a suggestion. Most leaders – young and old – talk to people about their projects and solicit suggestions and information from lots of sources.</p>
<p>Leaders don’t do everything by themselves. They use good advisors, mentors, and collaborators.</p>
<p>It is, though, up to the leaders to take effective action on the advice that they receive. That depends on their own initiative and passion.</p>
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<p>I feel this way about academics. While some kids are able to sit down and get their work done all the way to a 4.6 GPA, others aren’t ready in high school- they nail down the work ethic and working memory cabablity as they mature. I wonder sometimes, like you, if the academic superstars are intrinsically motivated or if they’ve been punished, prodded or rewarded by adults for their grades.</p>
<p>“if the academic superstars are intrinsically motivated or if they’ve been punished, prodded or rewarded by adults for their grades.”</p>
<p>I think they are intrinsically motivated because punishing, pushing, prodding, rewarding can only do so much. Speaking from experience as the mom of high school underachievers.</p>
<p>One blossomed in college. It had nothing to do with anything H and I did. S just finally caught fire.</p>
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<p>Actually, she ended up choosing between Stanford and Yale, and went to Yale (I think she got into Harvard but didn’t like it as much? Or it didn’t give her enough money). And I don’t think her guidance councilor tried to make her go to Wes – indeed, the GC just pointed her out to the Wes adcoms, and probably to others as well. It worked WELL for that student, who ended up with many wonderful choices, from a full ride at her safety (Goucher) to Yale. </p>
<p>I don’t really understand this anyway, though. Why WOULDN’T Wes, or any other school, try to get the best candidates they can? I know I’m a biased Wes student, but I don’t think it would have been a tragedy, or a bad thing at all, if this student had chosen Wes (or some other non-HPYS school) – it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for her to prefer a LAC, or a more “hippy” school, or a school that gave her more money, or whatever. Plus, I think you’re misconstruing the situation – this student seemed very into giving every school a chance, visiting her safety as well as all the other schools she got into.</p>
<p>I’ve been quite busy so my response to Epiphany’s post #75 (commenting on my post #74)is a bit late.</p>
<p>Of course , I understand that there are many Harvard alums who step up to the plate for their communities. I described my particular experience in response to the generalizations expressed by Northstarmom. And these generalizations continue.</p>
<p>NSM post #118:“rare that Harvard alums I know aren’t involved in a leadership way in some organizations in their communities” and NSM post #115; H alums"proportionately involved in PTAs than grads of public and other universities"</p>
<p>re the demographics in my Ivy community: the percentage of Ivy alums involved in the leadership of my very active high school PTA (can’t speak to the elementary level as I am new to the district in high school) is much less than the percentage of Ivy grad parents in the high school. I was surprised to learn this. It would be interesting to analyze the data with respect to the other organizations in my community.</p>
<p>“re the demographics in my Ivy community: the percentage of Ivy alums involved in the leadership of my very active high school PTA (can’t speak to the elementary level as I am new to the district in high school) is much less than the percentage of Ivy grad parents in the high school. I was surprised to learn this. It would be interesting to analyze the data with respect to the other organizations in my community”</p>
<p>But how does the proportion of Ivy alums who are involved in your PTA compare to the proportion of public school alum parents who are involved in the PTA.</p>
<p>Where I live, most parents are alum of our flagship public or of the public that’s in my city. Very few parents are alums of Ivies. Yet, most of the few Ivy alums seemed to be involved in their kids’ PTAs. That didn’t seem true of the public school alums even though they were the majority of college-educated parents. I also was surprised that some of the public school alum parents thought that the school should be giving financial assistance to the PTA instead of the inverse. Some got into a big dispute with the principal about this.</p>