<p>Have no clue what you are referring to, maize. Dereciewicz berates the schools and students at the schools he attended and taught . Not any one particular student-- just the general populus. You know that. But as for his not getting tenure, I do think its personal.</p>
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This is where it is important to understand the difference between truth and truthiness. The quote above has some truth in it, but it also includes a lot of words like âonlyâ and âmostlyâ and âoften,â etc. He over-generalizes wildly. And to the extent his conclusions are based on his own observations, what am I to make of the fact that, based on my own direct observations, many of his observations are blatantly false? In other words, since I know for a fact that he doesnât know what heâs talking about for a substantial portion of his argument, why should I think any of the rest of it has any merit?</p>
<p>Or, to repeat one of my favorite quotations, from evangelist Wilfred Meloon: âThereâs good food in the garbage can, but I wouldnât let my children eat there.â</p>
<p>Purple Titan â I agree with that completely. I am not whining about the fate of any of those kids. There are plenty of great colleges for them to attend, and plenty of great opportunities at good colleges. Itâs just that they canât all go to Harvard or Stanford if they want. </p>
<p>I was responding to a suggestion made by maize2018 to the effect that students with a 34 ACT and 3.9 GPA or better and good ECs are rare. They ARE rare . . . but nowhere near as rare as a Harvard admission letter. There are plenty enough of them to create a crowd at the water holes where they hang out.</p>
<p>Deresiewicz has some valid points to make â his discussion of the anxiety of those who have never experienced failure rings true for me â but on the whole his portrayal of the intellectual climate at Yale and similar schools seems tinny, bitter, and off-key. The atmosphere he describes bears little or no resemblance to that of the Yale I attended, and as far as I can tell, based on my childrenâs experience and that of their friends, it does not fairly represent the current atmosphere at elite schools, either. Maybe there are some kids like that, but they are far from representative, and are probably more like objects of derision. (Elite universities are, in fact, complicated, diverse institutions. They do not provide some single, shared set of experiences. If they are lucky and really well run â as many are â they do manage to communicate some core shared values to most, if never all, of their students.)</p>
<p>Nathan Heller, a young New Yorker writer (and fairly recent Harvard grad) wrote a pretty good review of the book a few weeks ago, addressing both its misprision of elite college experience and its internal logical contradictions. <a href=âhttp://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/poison-ivy[/url]â>Are Ălite Colleges Bad for the Soul? | The New Yorker;
<p>Despite our protestations, our kid founded the debate team, was class vp, president of gsa, started a philosophy club, all-league varsity tennis, destination imagination, shakespeare club, acted in dramas and shakespeare, improv troupe member, poetry club and those are just what I remember off the top of my head. </p>
<p>He had 9APs and 22 college credits coupled with a 2200 sat score. But all the ECs+rigor resulted in his GPA slipping to a 3.6 at a top 2% public high school.</p>
<p>He was consistently passed over at the elites for kids from his high school with 3-5 APs and 3 strong ECs. Most shocking (to us at the time) was carelton, where he had a fabulous interview but they took a great kid from our HS with s 3.9gpa, 100 point lower SATs, 3APs and 3 strong ECs. He was waitlisted at the usual suspects, received a lot of merit from his matches and in the end, is very happy at Umich.</p>
<p>To the authorâs point, he really didnât have the grades for an elite and Iâm sure adComs thought he was either lying on his app about ECs or wasnât really passionate about his ECs. Iâve come to believe what adComs really want to see is about 3 really strong, deep ECs. </p>
<p>There is no real quirkiness test because the last thing we coach our kids to do in an interview is act quirkyâŠactually, itâs just the opposite, we coach our kids not to be quirky and my personal experience interviewing 1000s of job candidates over the course of my career is that people say they like quirky but they donât buy quirky.</p>
<p>My theory about quirkiness is that colleges like to see a random quirky element in a kid with lots of pretty unquirky achievements. One of my sonâs roommates was a very accomplished guy who played piano well enough to appear on From The Topâbut who also plays the musical saw. I donât think he took up the musical saw in order to impress colleges, but it wouldnât at all surprise me if that detail was something that admissions people noticed.</p>
<p>Please, donât anybody think that this means you need to push your kid into finding some specific weird thing, like the musical saw. What it does mean is that the most interesting kids will follow their own interests, often in directions that are not expected or directed by their parents and teachers. This is what should be encouraged, in my opinion.</p>
<p>^Yes. It bothers me that some kids are so professional, so resume building at such an early age. They are trying do hard to do the right things to get into the best colleges and not necessarily doing what they love and taking real chances. </p>
<p>But there are some genuine ones out there who play the saw becauseâŠwell, because they also play the piano and why not!</p>
<p>"My theory about quirkiness is that colleges like to see a random quirky element in a kid with lots of pretty unquirky achievements. "</p>
<p>I think quirky can encompass a wide range, from âunexpected / out of the box, but wow, pretty cool, tell me moreâ all the way to âuh, um, thatâs, um, pretty unusual there, sonâ and backing slowly away from the weirdness. </p>
<p>âhis portrayal of the intellectual climate at Yale and similar schools seems tinny, bitter, and off-key. The atmosphere he describes bears little or no resemblance to that of the Yale I attended, and as far as I can tell, based on my childrenâs experience and that of their friends, it does not fairly represent the current atmosphere at elite schools, either.â</p>
<p>This. My world was the singing world, and at both Harvard and Yale, thatâs a place where kids from many majors devote themselves to the music and to each other, sometimes to a nutty degree. This gets you absolutely nowhere after college, but nobody in the groups cares about that. Itâs an obsession.</p>
<p>I remember spending a whole van ride home from an a cappella road trip arguing with a freshman baritone over social responsibility vs. artistic integrity. (The spark was Alanis Morrisette; it was the 90s.) I thought people who make money off the adoration of teenage girls shouldnât praise smoking; he thought artists need to tell their own truth, warts and all. Fifteen years later, Iâm a counselor to teenagers and heâs an artist (actor and director). Weâre still friends. Those college debates about our ideals brought out who we were meant to be. Where is this Harvard in WDâs telling?</p>
<p>@JHSâ Youâre literally making stats up as you go. And now youâre claiming kids make stuff up to get into elite schools. What exactly motivates you to hate elite colleges?</p>
<p>âItâs just that they canât all go to Harvard or Stanford if they want.â Thereâs well north of 20,000 freshman seats between the elite colleges. If you were shut out, youâre just not <em>that</em> impressive. I donât get why thatâs so hard for students and parents to acknowledge. Is your life over? No, nobody has ever said that. Are you then less likely to rise to an elite level? Absolutely. The data makes this obvious.</p>
<p>@Huntâ âAnd to the extent his conclusions are based on his own observations, what am I to make of the fact that, based on my own direct observations, many of his observations are blatantly false? In other words, since I know for a fact that he doesnât know what heâs talking about for a substantial portion of his argument, why should I think any of the rest of it has any merit?â</p>
<p>Youâre an alum or parent of an Ivy student on a message board with anecdotal experiences -vs- a former prof with credentials, multiple times the exposure to both Columbia and Yale</p>
<p>maize, I think you need to read JHSâ posts a little more carefully. And if the 2018 in your handle means high school class of 2018, a lot more carefully.</p>
<p>"@JHSâ Youâre literally making stats up as you go. And now youâre claiming kids make stuff up to get into elite schools. What exactly motivates you to hate elite colleges?"</p>
<p>YEAH, JHS. Thatâs your rep all over College Confidential - the guy who hates, despises, detests elite colleges. </p>
<p>(Pssst, maize â JHS will take it as the compliment I fully intend it to be that if anything, heâs pretty more on the elitist snob side when it comes to colleges. He is HARDLY an elite-school hater, good grief.)</p>
<p>You oughta know, Hanna. (Ba-da-bing.)</p>
<p>âThatâs probably true (havenât read his book so canât say for sure), and I think itâs a stupid argument. There are at least as many people today spending time thinking about grand ideas and perspectives about the long-term interests of society as there ever have been. People are paid to do this â itâs no longer just Erasmus up in his tower â and I canât go on Facebook without seeing a link to a blog post where somebody is working through their own larger ideas and perspectives about society, whether through the lens of Ferguson, the Middle East or sexual assault on college campuses.â</p>
<p>Actually I think kids today are MORE likely to think about the big problems of the world than we did 25, 30 years ago. I donât remember kids at my elite college caring all that much about the wages of the cafeteria workers, or the whys and wherefores of ensuring that poorer kids felt welcomed and included, or worrying about whether campus initiatives were sufficiently compatible with caring for the environment, etc., etc. </p>
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Actually, Iâm a Yale alum, and a parent of a Yale graduate and a current Yale student. So youâre saying I should believe him over my own eyes? Of course, youâre free to believe whoever you want.</p>
<p>I think heâs addressing the girth of these finance/law/consulting gunner students and never claimed thereâs not any genuine, authentic and curious students at elite colleges. Whether theyâre 30 or 40 or 60% of the Ivy and elite LAS student body, itâs too much (in his eyes). And when say 95% of the kids on campus are upper middle class, at least, he sees that as an issue. Itâs to the point that lower and middle-middle class families canât create an elite college kid, because it costs too much and if you lack the savvy or the connections, youâre a commoner excluded from the club.</p>
<p>If the exact numbers donât matter, donât include them.</p>
<p>ânever claimed thereâs not any genuine, authentic and curious students at elite colleges.â</p>
<p>Really? Look back at the language he uses. I donât see a lot of qualification. Furthermore, he needs to know or say something about the alternatives if heâs going to claim that you should send your kids to public schools instead. How many poor kids make it to flagships like Indiana or UVA? Do the classes mix more or less on those campuses? Whatâs the balance between intellectualism and professional focus? What happens to his argument if it turns out these problems are worse, not better, farther from the Ivies?</p>
<p>maize2018 â What stats do you think I am making up?</p>
<p>CollegeBoard publishes data on how many kids get what combined scores on the SAT, and also SAT/ACT conversion. So I know exactly how many kids in the class of 2013 got top-percentile scores that equate to a 34 ACT (about 21,600), and I assumed (based on the fact that for the class of 2013 the number of kids taking the ACT was almost the same as the number taking the SAT, and the conversion table), that there were a similar number of kids who got 34-36 on the ACT. Then I discounted it to reflect the fact that a number of those kids are the same kids (yes, that part I made up). I also suggested an adjustment for the effect of superscoring, based on a CC discussion years ago where a poster with far more statistical sophistication than I convinced me (and others) that superscoring had the effect of raising aggregate 1600-scale scores by no more than 20 points (my proposed adjustment was based on a 10-point difference).</p>
<p>30,000 U.S. high schools comes from the Census Bureau (rounded a bit), as does 3 million high school graduates. I stand by my claim about Exeter/Harvard-Westlake/Stuy/TJ (and quite a number of equivalent schools).</p>
<p>The number of class places per school is well known (and it adds up to about 17,000 for the schools I mentioned). Itâs something of a commonplace to say that only half their classes are filled on an academic basis by domestic applicants, but I think itâs a lot closer to 2/3rds, so I used that. (Other places go to foreign applicants, URMs, athletes, and other special cases.)</p>
<p>And what ever gave you the idea that I hate elite colleges? I love elite colleges; I am a major-league elite college apologist here. I have degrees from two of them, and so does my wife (one in common), and our kids both went to another one. And none of those is Harvard (which I turned down twice), but my mother sang âFair Harvardâ and âWith Crimson In Triumph Flashingâ to me in the cradle. Literally.</p>
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<p>Actually, if maize is a freshman in high school, I think s/he is doing extremely well in this conversation so far! </p>
<p>Maize appears to be a college freshman at UMich.</p>