<p>I'm sure there were kids who were more "perfect" than him.</p>
<p>Maybe he was more tosseled? ;)</p>
<p>Hi, any views on which are the best colleges in the US currently?
Trying to get more info on admissions and financial aid.</p>
<p>Have been using thetopcolleges.com which has a lot of info - what do others think?</p>
<p>Cur:</p>
<p>I totally understood. I was only amplifying on your post; I actually had Prada bags in an example I edited out.:) But it was the same idea.</p>
<p>sjmom:</p>
<p>I actually don't think adcoms look for the "perfect" applicant. If his love of physics came through, that must have been the major selling point.</p>
<p>On the subject of ecs...I think this is an area which can help define who the kid is...the problem is that now instead of trying different things in high school like art, singing, car club, etc., one now has to become an expert BY high school in one particular thing. Perferably a nationally recognized expert. Or a nationally recruited athlete. Childhood has now become a training ground for cultivating one particular talent (quite Soviet, actually). The personal trainers, the weekends spent in different regions or states playing in tournaments, the total focus on one specific thing. If one doesn't have that kind of talent, there are the substitutes: Intel for the scientifically minded who have the right mentors and resources, an African mission to provide health care to the poor for those who can pay for such an experience, the fancy summers at foreign campuses (or US college campuses...they've caught on that it's revenue enhancing). Gone are the days when one could enter the school science fair, volunteer for a few hours on Sunday, play flute in the band and write for the school newspaper (not as an editor, but just as a staffer). Gone are the jobs at ice cream parlors. Good old days...and very age appropriate. I think those ecs showed who the kids were probably much more than the ones today....</p>
<p>epiphany, I do hear what you're saying, but let's remember that adcoms have made it known in information sessions that they are very interested in "passion". In other words, they've explained that they are looking for a progression and expansion of involvement in a beloved area of interest. They have expressed that they prefer this pattern of EC involvement to that of a larger number of scattered commitments. These are very smart kids we're talking about, so don't think for a second they're not planning to demonstrate the "ongoing, present connection with that same activity" you cite. They are smart enough to plan for such continuity and consistency. This doesn't imply necessarily an elaborate orchestration, but it might mean that a star soccer player will choose to be a volunteer coach for an inner city soccer league and proceed to start an organization which collects and distributes used soccer equipment to the disadvantaged, rather than decide to volunteer at an inner city boys and girls club and then organize a used book drive to benefit the youth center--an activity which he might actually prefer to do instead. I agree with symphonymom about what this concept has done to childhood.</p>
<p>And curmudgeon: brilliant post above.</p>
<p>And the tragedy will be that for the child in my example, neither course will be original or "tossled" enough to impress the desired audience. He could just as well have made the less unified EC choices in symphonymom's example. Free from the expectation of having to be passionate about one interest or having to become an expert with national recognition in one area, he could have experienced the joy of exploring many different things. And because of that tragedy, curmudgeon's point is important. If the rat race is inevitable, then at least students deserve honest and clear communication from colleges. I agree that currently admissions reps are speaking out of both sides of their mouths.</p>
<p>What's that I hear? Could it be the whispering chorus of "transparency"?</p>
<p>lol, I'm sure singing!</p>
<p>The rat race is NOT inevitable. You don't have to cover that Louis Vuitton bag. You don't have to limit your choices to only a handful of colleges with a selectivity index hovering at single digits. There are plenty of great colleges that do not expect their applicants to have performed at Carnegie Hall, been Intel finalists, broken speed records, cured cancer or what have you.</p>
<p>The USA is the last country about which the word "tragedy" should be associated with the college admissions process.</p>
<p>I agree with Marite. Why not let kids be who they are and let the chips fall where they may? There are an awful lot of great schools out there--a good student will have choices without playing those games. Heck, outside of CCland and UMC-ville, many don't even know the rules of the supposed game. Yet they still get to college. </p>
<p>At the risk of getting hooted down, and in agrreementwith sjmom, my kids didn't have any of those necessary acouterments for admission--wrong high school, pedestrian ECs, no big awards, no sports beyond JV or intramural, no research, not much community service, yet they ended up at good schools. Perfect kids? Hardly. Genuine kids? You bet. And anyone can be that.</p>
<p>Academic controversies tend to have two major attributes:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>a huge amount of heat generated... </p></li>
<li><p>about very little of substance</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So what, kids are stressed and many are asian overachievers</p>
<p>Next problem</p>
<p>marite, re your post 778:</p>
<p>I don't deny that the effort is (even increasingly) intense. I just don't have evidence that results are proportional to that increase in intensity. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many posts about the "unfairness" of it all, the "bigotry" of it all, how, because "my" S or D did not get in, it must be that people "less qualified" got in, yadayada. (Because of course no one could be as qualified as my S or D, or my friend's S or D, etc.) </p>
<p>What I've tried to convey in my previous posts is that, for those reviewing excellent candidates, as I have recently, you think you've seen the pinnacle of excellence in mind & soul, until all the candidates are viewed. (And the other candidates know nothing about each other.) What the admissions committees are presented with, are caseloads of students with suprising sets of assets -- excluding those who are mere academic grinds ground to "perfection," too. It's a meaningless statement when a parent comes on PF and whines about "more qualified," because he or she has zero basis for saying that. This is a comparative & competitive situation. And if you think <em>you're</em> tired of repeating yourself (LOL), I've truly lost count of the number of times I have said the latter. I don't think it's a lack of understanding that makes some people have to listen to the repetition; I think it's a refusal to accept that there is no such thing as predictable college admissions. When any parent puts a burden on a child to "get accepted to College X or else," that parent is being completely unreasonable. Much is out of the student's control -- much more than that parent must realize.</p>
<p>Epiphany,</p>
<p>I think there is a difference between predictable and understandable admissions. I have no problem with admissions that are unpredictable due to the existence of many qualified candidates. I have problems with admissions that appear downright arbitrary. There may be a slight difference between predictable and understandable but, in my view, taking steps to make the process more understandable - which I translate as being more transparent - would in the long run help both colleges and applicants.</p>
<p>Having said that, I know we've had this discussion before and I don't want to make you repeat yourself. Been there, done that, right? Plus, I know you have several valid reasons for your opinion.</p>
<p>"<em>appear</em>" downright arbitary": appear. (You said it.) That would be an appearance based on a few frames -- not the entire panorama. No one has the entire panorama in front of him or her, except for the admissions committee. The fact that a parent or student may know Student A who didn't get accepted but Students B and C, who did -- & knows all 3 students equally well -- or 13 or 30 students well: these are not the thousands of students applying to each of the highly selective colleges. And since colleges have so very much to choose from -- a veritable French pastry tray -- do you think they are so stupid as to limit their options? If they choose someone that even a consensus of outsiders would consider "less worthy," you can believe that the candidate has something very worthy TO THE COLLEGE. And while I don't agree with mini on necessarily the amount of "special categories" to be filled, I do agree that there are some of them, & that a predictable minimum number of them reduces the availability of spots for the non-hooked applicants. Where I disagree with mini is in my analysis that there are more spots than some would believe that are characterized as both special categories and traditional merit, overlapping. Which is why it continues to be a buyer's market for the college, with only an occasional compromise or tradeoff "necessary" (desirable on their end).</p>
<p>I know you have valid reasons for your opinion. I think the subject is worth discussing, especially at a place like CC, but I accept that you feel otherwise.</p>
<p>--"There are an awful lot of great schools out there--a good student will have choices without playing those games."--</p>
<p>Well, yes and no. I certainly don't want to venture into a discussion of the relative merits of an Ivy league education and whether it is really better/worth the expense. But what has become scary here in NJ is that the intense admissions competition which had once been the province of the most elite schools, has now trickled down to the mere very good and good schools. Folks here are surprised at what over-achieving Asians, and the rest of the kids trying to keep up with them, are having to do just to get into the University of Delaware. Maybe not in the realm of EC's, but definitely GPA and SAT scores.</p>
<p>Epiphany:</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't deny that the effort is (even increasingly) intense. I just don't have evidence that results are proportional to that increase in intensity.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I totally agree with this. But the intensity has little to do with transparency.</p>
<p>It has to do with the limited availability of a particular commodity, in this instance education at certain schools. This aura of exclusivity is what makes it so desirable. In the case of Louis Vuitton bags, exclusivity is deliberately cultivated for the sole purpose of driving up sales by limiting the number of bags available even if the company could double or triple production. In the case of specific colleges, it is not possible to increase spots available owing to space constraints and because expansing the size of the student body would drastically alter the quality of the college experience for these students. It is true nonetheless that colleges do their share to whip up frenzy through their marketing.</p>
<p>I think, however, that much of the increase in competition has come from the democratization of higher education. When it seemed that only the Lowells and the Cabots felt comfortable applying to Harvard, students with excellent profiles but undistinguished last names did not apply there, nor did they feel cheated of their birthright if they did not have a Harvard education. Nowadays, more students are encouraged to apply to Harvard, but the college has not grown in a commensurate manner.</p>
<p>This imbalance between supply and demand will remain, no matter what the admissions criteria are. So it does not matter if HYPSM suddenly decide that character trumps SATs, as long as HYPSM continue to represent the pinnacle of higher education for aspiring college students. And so long as that remains true, the results will not be proportional to the efforts expended in trying to get in.</p>
<p>TheGFG--well, as we've established before, I think, we live in different kinds of NJ. The students where you are who are struggling to get into Delaware, would be going to Montclair or Rowan or Stockton from our HS. I'm actually not a big Delaware fan (too much of a party school according to students I've known who went there), but that's another story. And Delaware, like most state schools, is going to be numbers driven. So you're right in that the student who had the numbers to go there five years ago might not now, but neither will the students who share those numbers who also might have gone there five years ago. So won't those students be then looking at the same level of schools, and attending with the same cohort as before? And is that such a bad thing?</p>
<p>Well garland, I guess what worries parents is that the caliber of student who once might have been a candidate for an Ivy, is now a candidate for, say, Bucknell. And the type of student who once might have attended Bucknell is now attending an out-of-state public like the Unversity of Maryland perhaps. Yes, their cohort of fellow students might be similar, but will the quality of their education be the same?</p>
<p>Regardless, in my opinion the issue is that the intensity of the admissions process has expanded the field of competition from day-to-day school-based academics (your grade in math class, for example) out into extracurricular academic endeavors (national level math competitions), EC's and other non-academic accomplishments and personal qualities (character demonstrated by tutoring underprivileged youngsters in math). The latter are often quite dependent on parental involvement and financial resources. In our town, there's no way a student is even making it onto the school-level math team if he hasn't been receiving outside math tutoring for some time. I could also argue from what I've seen at our high school, that the ability to maintain a schedule chock full of advanced classes and time-consuming EC commitments may be partially a function of how much sleep a student can survive on! If genetically a kid is predisposed to needing 8 hours, he simply will not be able to achieve what the student can who can live on 4 hours of sleep a night. I would love to see a study of how many hourse Ivy-bound students slept per night in high school compared to everyone else.</p>
<p>Thus, while a child might very well be intelligent and motivated enough to benefit from Princeton or Harvard and excel in that environment, he will not have the same chance to be admitted that the very same caliber of child would have had years ago before kids needed to be fully evolved and accomplished young adults by age 17.</p>
<p>The admissions sifting process may not be selecting the students it should be selecting because the process has been so clouded by gaming, tutoring, packaging, and cut-throat conniving.</p>
<p>GFG There's much truth in that, unfortunately, but again, only in some places. There's just not much of that in our town. the majority of our students just want to graduate. The very small cohort of selective school oriented students (maybe about twenty a class ) never seemed to see themselves as competing with each other. With a couple exceptions, they are not applying to the same schools, so they don't see each other as rivals. It's kinda cute how excited they get when someone gets into a good school. Last year's val got accepted to Yale (most unusual hereabouts), and my H who works there said that everyone was very, very happy about it.</p>