<p>
I agree with this. Any one can write a good application if they really put their mind to it, though some schools supplemental materials make it easier than others. My younger son did best at schools that allowed him to shine a light on what he’s good at. (Not that he was good enough for Harvard!)</p>
<p>Yes there are plenty here that might ask (for example) should my kid play trombone or scuba dive? The answer SHOULD be based on the kid’s passion or skill. Usually the question is asked not because of those, but rather which looks better on an app. IMO that is deliberately trying to deceive the school into believing the student has some great interest in the activity. Clearly, if the student chooses one activity over another because it looks better, then the interest isn’t there. Those students are trying to trick a college.
For those that consider “liar” too harsh of a word for such a student, I’d recommend they substitute “deceiver”. That wouldn’t give me much comfort, but plenty here (not necessarily posted in this thread) want to use euphemisms so their own behavior doesn’t sound as bad.</p>
<p>Eh, I think there are fine lines, though. I’ve certainly encouraged my kids to do certain things, both because I thought they would truly enjoy / learn from them, and because they might stand out from the crowd a little bit. For one kid, the activity links in with her academic interests; for the other kid, it doesn’t, but that’s just fine.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, I couldn’t agree with you more. I know kids like the ones you describ</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with ‘posing’ to like certain volunteer activities for the sake of a college app- I do have a problem with lying- or just signing in and leaving, then putting it on your app. </p>
<p>Most of us at work sign up for projects and committees sign on to them not because we’re passionate about them, but because they’re visible, they’re special to upper mgmt or because our bosses ‘ask’ us to. Same thing. You do what you’ve got to do.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I sort of agree- I think that for a certain caliber of school, yes, you have to be academically ‘better’ than everyone else, that’s a given. Using grades and sats, that’s fairly easy to quantify. I do think, though, that those schools are looking for kids who stand out, who have something special- and that is not being better, it’s more like being different or unique in some appealing way.</p>
<p>I know of at least one kid who got into Harvard this year with negligible extracurriculars. Got in on the strength of his phenomenal intellect. Nice kid, too. But really, no serious ECs. Other kids too, who were in at Yale with minor ECs.</p>
<p>I don’t buy this. Spend a couple of days on campus at Harvard or Yale. The places absolutely vibrate with activity. Cultural, political, artistic, literary, athletic and community service projects literally spill out of the buildings and overflow the poster walls. With the exception of a small number of future professors who live in their labs or library, it’s unheard of at these schools for students to skip out on involvement. Nobody just goes to class and gets their work done and spends the rest of their time drinking and playing XBox. It doesn’t happen.</p>
<p>Most of these ECs will mean little or nothing to the students’ graduate school applications or future careers. There isn’t any kind of grad school (or any set of employers) that cares about achievements unrelated to the applicant’s primary pursuit the way top colleges do. In other words, working on the Crimson will help you get a job at the New York Times, but most of the people on the Crimson have no plans to enter journalism, and most of the Crimson editors who DO want to go into journalism are also involved with peer counseling or dance or something else that the Times won’t care about.</p>
<p>All this tells me that the schools are doing a damn good job of filling the class with people who truly like to be busy, and who love their South Asian cultural festivals, field hockey tournaments, a cappella groups, et al. with real passion. Living a lie, my foot.</p>
<p>coureur: What took you so long to realize that “Perception is always better than reality” or “First impression is the lasting impression”.</p>
<p>But even with the above reality, students who work hard on presentations after working equally hard on projects are really the one who deserve to go to colleges. </p>
<p>The work is of no use if you can’t present it to others properly. These are skills not lies.</p>
<p>In the real world presentation is the key. Many times a popular product is not popular just because it is the best in its class but merely because it had the best advertisement from the products in its class.</p>
<p>So don’t underestimate the skills required to present, communicate whether thru oral presentation or written expressions.</p>
<p>What is the use of having passion if the student doesn’t have the work ethics. It takes quite a lot of effort to be organized to properly log your experiment data, tabulate it and then write a paper about it.
Some students just want to get away by doing the experiment because that is the interesting part but give up on the tabulation or writing paper about it as it tends to be boring.
Those student’s passion is of no use as they are just trying to pat themselves by assuming all those who put effort in writing a good paper or coming out with a good presentation are lying.</p>
<p>OP: How do you know that the author here is not doing the same, what she has done at the high school level, even at Dartmouth to launch her career into journalism by putting forward made up contents?</p>
<p>People always paint everyone with the same brush based on their own experience. Maybe the author actually did fake most of the EC’s, research or what ever got her into Dartmouth and so think that most other students must have done the same.</p>
<p>Generalization on the basis of one person perspective of life is insane and is not true journalism.</p>
<p>POIH-- Your point is relatively valid. If semiotics and critical theory teaches nothing else, it teaches that the only thing criticism actually reveals is the point of view of the critic. </p>
<p>I would argue that kids don’t have much choice but to pursue outsized ECs if they want to be considered for acceptance at certain schools, simply because those outsized EC accomplishments are what the schools are looking for. Whether there is passion involved or not, there is a tremendous amount of hard work. To be able to accomplish these things while maintaining stellar GPA’s and achieving fantastic test scores, this is a part of the profile of the applicant they are looking for, anyway.</p>
<p>My kids aren’t really interested in that particular academic placement, but they are equally interested in other very difficult pursuits. Each of these things had politics to it and they all require outside work…it just looks a little different.</p>
<p>I don’t fault the kids who want these things. I don’t fault the author, either. She is at the “reflective” who-am-I, who-do-I-want-to-be age. These seem like appropriate questions for her to be asking herself right now. fwiw</p>
<p>The author sounds like the young girl she is. Not everyone has a “passion” or is “passionate” about their activities. Maybe 10% of the population, at most, has this driving force inside them called passion.</p>
<p>In the middle of high school, the author suddenly realized that she was passionless right at a time when students her age are urged to demonstrate deep involvement and dedication in a signature EC as evidence of their “passion.” Our kids are being told that everyone has a passion within them, and that if it hasn’t bubbled up already, that they need to work harder to access it, to find it, to connect with this life force. What pressure this perspective puts on high school students. It’s hard enough to balance one’s regular academic life, friends, family, love life, personal time, and EC’s that have evolved over several years. Now suddenly 16 and 17 year olds are told that all that is not enough. And we blame them for trying to pull together the various threads of their lives, for trying to find a common theme, in response to the formatting of college applications? Of course a high school student with significant involvement in soccer or Boy Scouts will conclude that “soccer must be my PASSION!” or scouting is my passion. Never mind that scouting lost its luster in 10th grade but the kid is expected to take on time-consuming leadership roles in the troop regardless of whether his heart is in it anymore. Who has time for this deep self-analysis amid everything else going on during junior year? </p>
<p>True passion bites us at a very early age. Lucky are the few who can align their interests and activities and live a fully integrated life, at any age. Those who live their passion from age 10 - purely and authentically and enthusiastically - are in the minority. I have one “passionless” BWRK son and one son whose passion found him at age 4. Interestingly, at age 17, one of his other EC’s captured him and he is now trying to balance two strong and authentic passions. He could be described as narrow and deep, and he needs to make hard time management choices every day regarding the balance of his passions, school work, personal time, social time, and family time. Which is better, to be passionless or have passion? Neither, they just “are” and the difference makes the world go 'round. The son with passion probably has it a little easier because he is more internally driven. The passionless son had more self-doubt.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I spend a couple of days on difference campuses every month or so. Every single one seems this way to me. I don’t think this is special in anyway (not saying the kids there aren’t distinctive, but this particular artifact of their distinctiveness is not meaningful to me).</p>
<p>I concur, starbright.</p>
<p>My son has a lot of interesting EC (mostly music, but other stuff too). He didn’t pick these things for college app purposes, but when I pulled together a resume for him I was impressed and really did expect it would help get scholarships since he has rigorous academics and stellar stats too. In the end his EC may have helped for some of the acceptances, but not for the scholarships we’d hoped for to make those schools more affordable. </p>
<p>Although we are dealing with short term disappointment, I realize the main point long term is that he really had FUN during his four years of high school. He worked like a dog to fit it all in, but he had a blast. If he had gritted his teeth and devoted time to things he disliked to play “the game”, the outcome might have been the same… except he would not have enjoyed his high school years nearly as much.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m not saying you should never sign up for something if you can’t win awards at them. My point is that the bar is a lot harder for math team accomplishment helping in admissions than it is for community service and other activities. Right now, signing up for the math club doesn’t help you at all. But equivalent levels of accomplishment in community service or other activities can help your application.</p>
<p>I am on all sides of the fence on this one. Brilliant S #2 loves Dungeons and Dragons and board games. He spends hours on them and is amazingly creative – but I don’t know that those translated well in the EC list. It sounds more like fun than creative artistry (and it is both!). </p>
<p>At the same time, I recall a mom enthusing to me that my guys should take up debate because “admissions officers just love debate as an EC.” Both my guys did do debate – mostly because our HS has an awesome coach. The coach worked the kids hard as do the other coaches in the conference. A third place finish in our area is something to really celebrate. Anyone choosing debate around here is not getting a glossy EC in an easy fashion. </p>
<p>I’m glad that admissions continues to have letters of reference. These, too, are an inexact yardstick, but I think the flavor of the letters helps to separate the passionate applicant from the cynical, well managed one.</p>
<p>“My point is that the bar is a lot harder for math team accomplishment helping in admissions than it is for community service and other activities. Right now, signing up for the math club doesn’t help you at all. But equivalent levels of accomplishment in community service or other activities can help your application.”</p>
<p>It’s a myth that the relatively few colleges that factor ECs into admission are very impressed by the amount of hours that students put into community service. What impresses such colleges is results: Organizing a successful fundraiser; organizing a service project; creating a webpage for a nonprofit and serving as webmaster; volunteering for a couple of years with a disabled child, and having a letter from the child’s parent that says how the child’s life has improved as a result.</p>
<p>All of these things would take more effort than, for instance, winning math team awards in my area, in which it seems that most applicants to top colleges have won regional, state and even national individual awards for math team achievements.</p>
<p>Northstarmom: My daughter has created a very nice website for a church (non-profit) and has created a few for profit. She is the school’s webmaster and maintains the sites she has created. I don’t think these activities, which are only a few of her interests, helped her a whole lot. She did get into all of her schools, but UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke were the only high reaches on her list. Neither school offered merit money and she accepted a full-ride elsewhere that was based on being a NMF, not a webmaster. She hoped she would be recognized by Clemson to interview for the National’s Scholar Program but she didn’t make it to the semi-finals round. She called to ask why and was told that she was at first considered because of her scores, GPA and class rank, but nothing else made her shine above the others. </p>
<p>From our experience being a web developer and webmaster isn’t as big of a deal. I think there are too many kids doing this anymore. My daughter has astounded me with everything she has accomplished throughout her K-12 years, sans 1st grade, which she skipped, but it wasn’t enough for certain committees. We feel we have been very blessed that she was a NMF, because the right school choice means a lot of money.</p>
<p>"From our experience being a web developer and webmaster isn’t as big of a deal. I think there are too many kids doing this anymore. "</p>
<p>It matters where you live and how the student went about designing the web site. I am fairly sure that doing this helped a student whom I interviewed get into Harvard a few years ago. However, this is because the student had been specially selected (due to character, not due to parents’ pull. I know this because I was one of the people who selected her, and I had never met her before the interview) to be in a countywide youth leadership organization.</p>
<p>Then, she not only excelled in that program by going above and beyond what the participants were expected to do, she also – due to character – was among the small group of participants selected to be on local nonprofit boards. The other students just showed up to board meetings and basked in the glow of being kids on an adult board. This young woman, however, saw a need in her organization – a woefully outdated web page – and on her own created a new prototype web page.</p>
<p>She didn’t do this to impress colleges. In fact, the only reason that she mentioned it in the interview was that by coincidence, I had met her years earlier when she applied to the leadership program, and asked her what activities she was doing as a result of having participated in the youth leadership program. She didn’t think that her designing a web page without being asked to was a big deal, but I did. She demonstrated proactive thinking and that she wasn’t just a student doing things for resume dressing.</p>