<p>kids need to just get the hell over it. honestly, if they can't handle the stress of APPLYING to colleges, they're not going to graduate from them. </p>
<p>just sayin'.</p>
<p>Reading Marilee's blog comments and Ben Jones' responses on the CC have convinced me that they are two 'insiders' in this process that are very 'transparent' in their contempt for the individuals (parents, students, etc) who are their current victims.</p>
<p>Marilee and Ben are so full of themselves that they can mouth their 'concern' and 'understanding' while garnering the worshipful approvals of their current year's 'groupees'.</p>
<p>While they are rejecting over 85% of the overwhelmingly qualified applicant pool, they want our approval of their so difficult task.</p>
<p>Talk about Crocodile tears!</p>
<p>I don't have any children applying nw or in the past to MIT, no ax to grind just annoyed at the way the MIT Admission personnel are so needing the approval of the very persons they are mocking with their false sympathy and phony concerns while they are rejecting so many.</p>
<p>Why don' they get honest and admit that on a daily basis (during their 'approval' process) they coldly reject qualified after qualified student. Sure there is a limit to the selection pool, quite frankly, they could take the top 70 or 80% and take every 7th person and still get a wonderful group of students.</p>
<p>Marilee and Ben and their associates are the ones with the power and the willingness to reject (year after year) this students. The heartache and pain is the students - not Marilee and Ben.</p>
<p>If Marilee attending one session at her daughter's school as a Mother, broke into tears, well that tells us that for the past 25 years, she has been clueless as to the effect her actions have been in the Admissions Office.</p>
<p>We are all entitled to our opinion meganvirg, but if you have no involvement with the school, don't know or have had no involvement with the admissions department or have not been through the application process I wonder where yours comes from. My opinion, having been through all of the above, is very much the opposite.</p>
<p>BTW- The same cannot be said for a number of top schools that our family has dealt with through the admission process. MIT was by far the most open, honest and helpful.</p>
<p>
[quote]
they are two 'insiders' in this process that are very 'transparent' in their contempt for the individuals (parents, students, etc) who are their current victims.
[/quote]
As akdaddy says, I do wonder where this opinion of yours comes from. Having also been involved personally with these individuals as well as many others in similar positions, all I can say is that I know you to be 100% wrong in this assessment. I concur with him.</p>
<p>I think I'll be sorry about anything further I may say, so I will leave it at that. Marilee and Ben and the rest of that staff are not people to whom such vitriol should be directed.</p>
<p>From Ms. Jones, describing her send off for her only child at college:</p>
<p>"So after my husband and I made Nora's bed in her dorm room - yes, we actually made her bed in that ancient ritual of good parents everywhere - we kissed her and left..."</p>
<p>What an overwrought piece of writing! I just laughed at the silliness. I hope MIT applicants are held to a higher standard. (I'm guessing they are, because every MIT grad I know is nothing short of brilliant.)</p>
<p>My d would never speak to me again if I wrote a sappy piece about how I rocked her and rubbed her back and pulled her in under my covers to comfort her anxiety. A bit too personal.....</p>
<p>"If you don't tell us exactly "what you're looking for", kids will stop trying to give it you and then may just "be themselves", do what they want to do for EC's rather than what "looks good" and realize that there is a bit of a crapshoot element to the entire process. Then they can apply and see what happens without turning themselves into neurotic pretzels." (ssory don't know how to do the quote thing)</p>
<p>Chedva -- I think you have made a provocative and important point!</p>
<p>What's a bit too personal for one family is perfectly fine for another. I write about my kid(s) all the time and they have told me flat-out that they don't mind at all. I try not to go all sappy on them, but no guarantees.</p>
<p>What I think is most funny about Ms. Jones's admission that they made their daughter's dormroom bed before leaving is that, at MIT, freshmen arrive to stay for a little over a week in a temporary room, and are admonished not to bother unpacking because they'll be moving to their permanent room a week later. (The official rules say that one may <em>not</em> stay in one's temp room, although it is occasionally but rarely done.) So, at MIT, the parent of a freshman can't do that little parental rite of passage!</p>
<p>my parents still do it. everytime they visit, they buzz around like bees in my little 15 x 12 room picking up "[my] mess" and scolding me about not getting enough sleep.</p>
<p>
[quote]
While they are rejecting over 85% of the overwhelmingly qualified applicant pool, they want our approval of their so difficult task.</p>
<p>Talk about Crocodile tears!</p>
<p>I don't have any children applying nw or in the past to MIT, no ax to grind just annoyed at the way the MIT Admission personnel are so needing the approval of the very persons they are mocking with their false sympathy and phony concerns while they are rejecting so many.
[/quote]
Well, what are they supposed to do? Perhaps build several universities vertically on top of MIT so that every single qualified applicant can attend? MIT is a finite place, and it just can't hold more than 1000 students per year. That's not the fault of the admissions office.</p>
<p>I also believe that anyone who actually knows people in the admissions office at MIT finds it absolutely ludicrous that they are being accused of "false sympathy" and "crocodile tears". Everyone in that office is so caring about the entire applicant pool -- Ben in particular still corresponds with applicants who were turned down by MIT, some of whom are currently sophomores at their colleges. </p>
<p>Don't forget that these admissions officers are real people, too -- and they happen to be real people with extraordinary amounts of integrity. It's just uncalled for to be vicious to people who do what they do because they care about kids and want to make the admissions process as transparent as possible for them.</p>
<p>Ben actually wrote a blog</a> entry in response to an earlier piece of vitriol that should be required reading for anyone who thinks he and the other admissions officers are faking their concern for applicants.</p>
<p>Actually, I don't know that Marilee Jones and Ben Jones can end the "arms race" for admission to MIT and other highly selective schools, no matter how hard they try. And because they cannot, I doubt that competitive high schools will reduce the level of competition and anxiety among their students.</p>
<p>The reason: it would be suicidal for MIT to stop admitting Intel finalists, IMO, IPhhO gold medalists, and similarly stellar applicants just to send signals that MIT is still looking for the blow-things-up in the basement type of student. It will certainly admit some of the latter type (as witness Mollie--unless she is overly modest), but it will continue to want to admit Intel finalists and IMO medalists. And it should.<br>
Nor can MIT's admission committee decide how many APs are enough and how many are excessive. So much depends on individual students capabilities and on what is available in different schools. Many students take APs not to build impressive resumes but because they are the only challenging classes available in their schools. that was the case a few years ago in our school when the honors track was eliminated and there was no middle ground between heterogeneous college prep classes and AP classes.
And so,when it is known that Intel finalists and the like have been admitted to MIT, high schoolers who aspire to MIT natrually seek to emulate them. There is little that the admissions office can do about this.
My feeling is that Marilee Jones and her staff have done as much as they can to make the process more intelligible and humane to applicants. They cannot change the ethos of the school, nor should they.</p>
<p>I was actually more the "read all the science books in the library" type. I did have a chemistry set, but put it away in disgust when I realized they hadn't included any interesting (readily combustible) chemicals.</p>
<p>My fiance, however, has plenty of stories about blowing things up in basements -- and many, many other places, much to the consternation of his mother and the joy of his father, who enjoys blowing stuff up too. :D</p>
<p>A couple of things struck me about this thread so far. </p>
<p>Group and team projects vs. blowing things up in the basement. If there has been a shift to the former, I don't know that the college admissions process is to blame; it's the way teachers are taught nowadays. I took several education classes recently, and almost every class treated "cooperative learning" as the gold standard for lesson planning. The thinking now is that students learn more from working in groups than they would individually. Group projects are also one of the things that have been bandied about lately to make schools more "boy-friendly." </p>
<p>I wouldn't discount the nostalgia effect either. It's possible that the kids haven't changed all that much, but the teachers don't find them as interesting as they once did because the novelty has worn off.</p>
<p>Haven't we all been in situations when no matter what we did, saw, experienced, it wasn't as good enough for the "remember when-ers?"</p>
<p>Marite, I am afraid to have to disagree about what a school such as MIT could ... and should do. </p>
<p>For starters, let's address the Intel boondoggle. In addition of not having been designed to be a criterion in admission, the competition is under scrutiny for its dubious integrity and lack of equal access. Such program should simply be disqualified from even being considered by colleges. It is an absolute shame that the results of the Intel are not withheld until June or July of the senior year. </p>
<p>On the issue of AP--another test that was NEVER designed to be used for admission purposes--the schools cannot preclude students to take an asinine number of them, but they can influence the excessive use by CLEARLY discarding tests that exceed the number of possible credits at the achool. Students who do not take the AP for resume padding purposes should not mind, as they still have the joy of having studied for such a wonderful test. If boosting an admission file was not the intent, then I do not see why there should be a complaining dissent. The same could be said for the Intel competiton: if entering the competition had NOTHING to do with boosting one's chances of admission, why would it matter if the results of the competition are NOT released until after ALL admission decisions are made. </p>
<p>As long as admission officers continue to reward gamesmanship and trickery, I do not see how a return to "normalcy" is possible.</p>
<p>Xiggi: I use Intel as an example. There are some winners who might be undeserving, but it would be slandering all winners to claim that none achieved success thanks to their own initiative and efforts. MIT does not set the date for announcing results, but it would be foolish to ignore them as well. But Intel success is only one gauge used by MIT to distinguish among applicants. There are all the Olympiads and various other opportunities for would-be applicants to shine. By the way many RSI participants end up competing in Intel. Should MIT stop hosting RSI?</p>
<p>I don't really see the point of using only a set number of APs. Had my S stayed in high school, he might not have wanted to take more APs since he had already exhausted the math/science offerings. He would just have ended up taking more college classes. And that probably would be what students who currently take lots of APs would be doing. That would be trading quasi-college courses for real college courses. But it's useless second-guessing why some students want to take college courses when still in high school.</p>
<p>Marite, as I said I am afraid we just have to agree to disagree.</p>
<p>My focus is and has been on the message sent by the schools.</p>
<p>Nothing really has been or should be developed for college admissions' purposes, including musical or athletic performances or math competitions. Bit if a college wants to have a good orchestra, it will seek out those students who can play music at a high level. If it has a football team, ditto. And if it wants good math students, it will ask--as MIT does--about AMC/AIME scores. If a student declares a passion for history, that statement can be reinforced by some achievement in NHD competition or publication in the Concord Review. None of these were developed to give an edge to college applicants. I don't see why colleges should disregard them.</p>
<p>FWIW, our son got into MIT without any significant competitions or research on his resume. In fact, he had a study hall every year of high school. He was a lifeguard during the summer.</p>
<p>Adad:</p>
<p>MIT admits quite a few students with the same profile as your son. My point is that high schoolers wanting to be admitted to MIT will try to emulate the profile of successful applicants. Yet, I don't see droves of high schoolers seeing a summer spent as a lifeguard as being a sure path to admissions at MIT. Marilejones can truthfully point to students like your son or to MollieB, but I doubt that many will take her up on the message to relax and spend their summers at the beach instead of in a lab.
I am not saying that it is more desirable to spend one's summer in a lab instead of at the beach. I am just suggesting that Marilee Jones' efforts to get high schoolers (and their parents) to relax will have limited success.</p>
<p>Marite and Xiggi: In the land of huge, diverse public high schools occupying the space between the coasts, AP courses are the only challenging classes for intellectually energetic kids. They are also the only protection against lazy teachers, as the national exam at the end of the year requires adherence to a standard curriculum. I don't know any kids who take tons of them because they expect to get brownie points at application time. They just don't want to waste their time in class with kids who are doped up, sleeping or throwing things around. When the school runs out of AP classes, some move over to the local university, for the same reason. It isn't a plot, and it isn't a sign of scheming, it's just trying to get through four years in a big public school. I am more than a little disheartened to discover that there are people out there who plan to hold it AGAINST these kids that they tried to challenge themselves.</p>
<p>Given the number of APs and college courses my S racked up, I may sound a bit hypocritical by agreeing with Xiggi that some students do take AP classes for the purpose of building an impressive resume. This can be because the AP class is weighted more than a regular or an honors class; or it can be out of fear that anything less than umpteen APs will not look impressive enough. I gather that was the case of AP Frank in The Overachievers.
And then, there are students who take APs because they want the challenge and other classes do not meet that criterion. Adcoms may be able to discern the reasoning behind the course selection. But it would be unwise for adcom to institute a one-size fit all limit on AP or college classes that will be considered. How could adcoms ignore the fact that some applicants have taken courses way past AP-Calc, for example? Or that some high schooler discovered a new math proof?</p>