<p>Well, the concept of the video doesn’t work if the premise is “Eh, I like Yale well enough, but no more than schools X, Y and Z.” Of course she has to be “obsessed” and have lots of Yale gear, dress the dog up, etc. and be disappointed when she gets the deferral letter. That’s what makes the storyline. Sheesh. That doesn’t mean she’s REALLY obsessed in real life. </p>
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<p>You don’t know that being a legacy at an elite school means either pressure or expectation to attend the same school. My kid, who could fairly fall into the category of wealthy legacy kid, received no such pressure from us. That’s a huge assumption on your part that is not borne out by any information at hand.</p>
<p>Desperate measures. It reminded me of TV’s Carmella, wife of the Sopranos don, who baked and hand-delivered a casserole of manicotti to the Columbia U Adcom. Knowing it must be delicious, he declined. That was fiction, but in the next TV season, the daughter was enrolled.</p>
<p>I told my older legacy Harvard kid that he had to apply, because I thought he had an excellent chance of getting in and if he did he should certainly consider it over his safeties. He did get in, but we didn’t make him attend.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, I think there are way more University of Chicago t-shirts in our house than Harvard ones, even though neither I nor my husband (nor either kid) attended Chicago.</p>
<p>Some of you probably go too far the other way. A spoofy music video doesn’t mean that one is obsessed in real life. And arguably she is “showing without telling” what she will bring to Yale in terms of her musical talent and creativity. But I still believe she went about it all in too public a fashion if Yale, not a record deal, is the goal.</p>
<p>I agree with oldfort that it can be hard on well-to-do kids from high achieving families. I know two boys, the sons of uber successful Harvard-Yale-Princeton grads, who attended the finest prep schools where they lived, had every educational/cultural opportunity available etc. Neither got into HYP. Both went to very respected, selective colleges. Yet many of their parents friends regard these boys (well, now young men) as something of a disappointment since neither equaled their parents’ intellectual or career achievements</p>
<p>I don’t really know, obviously, but it seems like she doesn’t have an all-that-great reason for wanting to go. That’s the #1 thing people here on CC say NOT to tell Ivys as your reason for going. Obviously the academics are great, but they already know that.</p>
<p>I don’t know; the fact that she did this publicly just confuses me, I guess.</p>
<p>I think it was a fun video, I actually ended up loving the song, and I think many posters are taking her humor way too seriously. Who cares if its been passed around? What, like as if this will ‘expose her’ as a student applying to X who really dreamed of HYPs and is obsessed with a ‘dream’ school, and can’t say why her dream is different than the rest? Unlike most other applicants? Funny. </p>
<p>What it demontrated was creativity and initiative. And great free advertising for Yale! It’s also original and entertaining enough to go viral, which should work to her credit. Would she get in and not be qualified because of the video? No, but it might help just like a million other mindless factors (e.g. her legacy status).</p>
I mostly agree, though I think that the way you write this essay can be as much of a plus as what you actually say. For Chicago, my son wrote a very funny essay about how he thought his parents were crazy for suggesting it as it wasn’t on a coast, he didn’t want to be a lawyer like his uncle (a graduate) it’s over serious reputation and a couple of other reasons, but that how after he looked at the location (Lake Michigan - almost a coast!) and recollecting the great collection of silly t-shirts we had, he realized we might have a point. That was the essay they mentioned in his holiday card after his early admittance so I assume it got someone’s funny bone. His Tufts essay was similarly light hearted. He figured everyone writes the same international focus! active citizenship! essay, so he wrote that he liked all the chalk advertisement for activities on the sidewalks.</p>
<p>" If she has such strong legacy connections yet still got deferred, chances are it’s because she’s not a strong applicant whatsoever."</p>
<p>I don’t think that is true at all (at least statistics don’t say that is necessarily true). I was going to say that I was too lazy to look them up but I did anyway. </p>
<p>Here is a story from last year which first talks about Harvard’s legacy rate, and then addresses Yale’s.</p>
<p>"Harvard’s acceptance rate for legacies has hovered around 30 percent—more than four times the regular admission rate—in recent admissions cycles, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 told The Crimson in an interview this week.</p>
<p><i>Fitzsimmons also said that Harvard’s undergraduate population is comprised of approximately 12 to 13 percent legacies, a group he defined as children of Harvard College alumni and Radcliffe College alumnae.</i></p><i>
<p>Fitzsimmons’ comments came the week after a discussion at New York University on legacy admissions between Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel, senior fellow at The Century Foundation Richard D. Kahlenberg ’85, and Bloomberg News editor at large Daniel L. Golden ’78.</p>
</i><p><i>According to a New York Times story on the event, Brenzel said that Yale rejected 80 percent of its legacy applicants. Brenzel reported that Yale legacies comprise less than 10 percent of the class, according to Kahlenberg.</i></p>
<p>In other words, she had an 80% chance of getting rejected, which might actually mean that getting deferred meant she was stronger than the average applicant.</p>
<p>@TV4caster I guess I could see that being the case.</p>
<p>But, eh, whatever. I didn’t apply to Yale so I don’t know much about its application process. For her sake, hopefully she gets in. I just hope that merely making a video isn’t what tips her over in the place of another student with better stats. For bigger schools, accepting one kid usually doesn’t mean another gets the boot, but when you’re talking about Ivies, that is sometimes the case. Oh well, hope everything works out for all involved.</p>
<p>I think Yale would be lucky to get her. It was a fun little video and express her intense interest in attending her college of choice. I wish her luck.</p>
<p>I agree that the best “Why X University?” responses do go both ways - what the school can do for the student and vice versa. By going the public route, I think a risk is that admissions reps will ask themselves what her real goals in all this were and what Yale can do for her that she can’t achieve without them. Hopefully she made that clear in her essays.</p>
<p>Katliamom, the parents’ friends are the ones with the problem, not the boys. And really, what young adult cares what his parents’ friends think?</p>
<p>I honestly want to know who has “many” friends who discuss their friends children’s intellectual and career achievements with each other. I have “many” successful friends and have not been in one conversation about anything like this with anyone, except to note something really outstandingly positive in passing. As in, “did you hear that blah-blah’s kid was drafted by the Raiders,” or “So and so is staring in X on broadway, how cool. Remember when she was in that carpool to the musical? What a great kid.”</p>
<p>Plus, the jury is still out on the “career achievements,” frankly.</p>
<p>^ I wondered the same thing, not only on the positive, but <em>especially</em> in the negative. I can not fathom being part of a conversation where we parents are talking about someone’s else’s kid in the negative. Sure makes me thankful I don’t live in such a community.</p>
<p>Anyone remember GraceOberhofer with “Dear Harvard” video on youtube last year?
Here is the update: “UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who supported me during the wait list process-I am truly touched by your thoughtful words and kindness. I was recently rejected from the Harvard wait list, and will be going to Tufts University in the fall.”</p>
<p>What can I say, starbright and poetgrl, clearly you guys run around in nicer and less competitive circles </p>
<p>I can just imagine what this group of people thinks about my son. He’s at Montana State! Not even a flagship. And in flyover country.</p>
<p>In defense of said group, they’re not nasty or terribly negative. Just have a frankly limited way of thinking - the proper way of doing things involves an elite education that leads to a successful career in an elite field, preferably law, medicine, investment banking or academia (at an appropriately elite school.)</p>
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