<p>For the record, not everyone in the Foreign Service serves overseas, and not everyone is a diplomat. Last plane trip I took I sat next to a young analyst in the Foreign Service. He works in DC and is responsible for “doomsday” planning for a chunk of the world. Every month he updates the US “playbook” on what happens when Castro dies, if Iran launches a chemical weapon, if Greece has to withdraw from the EU due to currency destabilization, etc. (He only has a small part of the world- but the group that he’s in covers the globe.) I am not a neurologist but I suspect some sort of autism spectrum disorder, or perhaps he’s neurotypical but has OCD. My guess is that this type of meticulous analysis which requires assembling huge packets of data… but then repeating the exercise again and again, is a very good fit with the way his mind operates. Reasonable conversationalist but no eye contact and a few apparent tics.</p>
<p>Assuming that our entire diplomatic corps is made up of people who socialize in embassies overseas is likely incorrect. Someone has to be figuring out who will succeed every dictator on the planet and identify who could possibly take over the electrical grid or phone system if there is a civil war, and it’s not someone swilling cocktails. And if our government has decided that people with OCD have the requisite attention to detail to do this work every month, adding new facts and dismissing the ones no longer relevant, more power to them.</p>
<p>Based on TheGFG comments one can surmise that she has no direct knowledge about the content of the Georgetown student LORs, which she shouldn’t. In addition she has not commented on this students GPA or final test scores which leads me to one of two conclusions- either she didn’t know (most likely) or the GPA/test scores were better than her S. If TheGFG knew her S had better test scores/GPA then I would expect TheGFG to have said so by now.</p>
<p>Very often ECs are the determining factor in deciding who gets admitted to highly selective school. Just because someone is “socially awkward” does not mean a person cannot be nationally ranked in a highly competitive EC. Often the contest for those events are held at places that are very far away and sometime the final rankings may not be known for months. If a student does not tell others about an event it is possible that few people would know. For the Georgetown student it is possible that she won a major national contest and did not feel the need to tell people who felt she was “anti-social” and had “obsessive-compulsive behaviors”.</p>
<p>Both were top ten in the class, but neither was Val or Sal, and both were NMF’s. Any stat differences were probably negligible. S won the senior history/social studies award and was seen as the stronger student in that area and in English and writing. He was a level ahead of her in foreign language. She was stronger in math and probably science, but won neither senior award. She had an interesting EC. </p>
<p>But the splitting of hairs doesn’t matter to the topic of the thread, which is about taking the results PERSONALLY. That presumes a feeling, and feelings aren’t always logical, factual, or mature. This whole attack on me as a bad, bad person started because I said I think it’s easier if the student doesn’t know anything about any of the students who were preferred over him. That way he can just imagine them all as better. But when he knows a preferred student, it can feel worse if he doesn’t see an area of superiority but instead sees an obvious weakness in the other candidate.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I gave an example which is the kiss of death on here because then people pick apart the details and forget the main idea. I am not mean to socially awkward people or think less of them, but I also would not counsel my own D, who has social issues, to pursue a career that would require her to read social clues in another language or culture, when she can’t do that well in her own. And if she manifested certain behaviors that are noticeably off-putting (which she used to), I would not expect that anyone would select her for a position in which she would represent a company or organization. Her rejection for such a position would not hurt or offend me, and nor would I think anyone was mean (or jealous) for deeming her unacceptable.</p>
<p>In post #202 I did not consider another possibility- that both students had similar test scores and GPAs. The Georgetown student was better at math and science and TheGFG S was better at English, social studies and foreign languages. As Blossom has pointed out in post #201 the Foreign Service needs analysts that are proficient in math (the effect of wind on a chemical weapon strike can be a very complex mathematical problem). This may be why Georgetown selected the student that is better at math.</p>
<p>I may not agree with everything she says but I appreciate TheGFG posts on CC.</p>
<p>One more thing on Oddball Suzy and the foreign service:
THe US Foreign Service actually actively strives to hire people with disabilities, largely because there are countries in the world where having an amputation, being deaf, having epilepsy, etc. means that you will never have a professional job or necessarily even receive an education. Having someone with an amputation in a consular position, or someone who is deaf serving as a press attache is an awesome opportunity to show our foreign colleagues what human rights and diversity really look like. A few years ago, the foreign service magazine ran an article about a deaf foreign service officer serving in the embassy in Warsaw. THe man said that one woman cried the first time she met him. She had a deaf child and had been advised by her doctor put the child in an institution. She was just so pleased to meet someone who was deaf who was achieving on the level of this man. </p>
<p>In other words, if what you perceive as odd behavior is actually some form of disability, like Asperger’s, then it would in no way disqualify someone from being in the foreign service. Rather, it might be an important part of overall US strategy in the field of international disability policy. </p>
<p>And as an academic, I resent the assertion that I would ever ‘tweak’ a recommendation letter because I felt sorry for a candidate. The most important thing I have is my reputation. I would never do anything that would cause people to wonder if my word was credible, particularly if I knew that I would likely have dealings with that same institution again next year.</p>
<p>H passed the FS exam (more than once) and the subsequent testing at the State Dept. He had something like 25+ years of good experience in finance at very well known companies. He was NOT called up to a training class, because you have to specify what track you are interested in when applying, and he specified Finance Officer (or whatever they call it). They need far fewer of them. If he had specified the consular track, he’d probably be working for them right now.</p>
<p>I do not have the impression that he Dept of State hires as many “analysts” as other branches of govt, but I could well be wrong.</p>
<p>Isn’t it just barely possible that Georgetown made a poor decision in admitting this person, perhaps because the application didn’t reveal some weaknesses? I agree that it’s difficult to have conversations of this kind if every example has to be picked apart in this manner. Do people really believe that colleges always make the best decisions? Do people really believe that it never happens that a less-deserving person is chosen over a more-deserving person for anything? I wish I lived in that world.</p>
<p>I guess one defense to feeling that a less-deserving person was chosen over you or your child is to convince yourself that in some way, perhaps unknown to you, that person really was more deserving. I envy those who are able to do this in every situation. I would suggest, however, that in some cases there is just a bit too much information known to make that a plausible explanation. I think it’s better in that situation to say, “Sometimes people make bad decisions, and you have to move on from there.”</p>
<p>All that said, I think it’s good to make sure that kids understand that colleges may not be looking for the same things you think they should be. Hey if they were MIT would have taken my kid! And sometimes your kid may be good, but their application may not have been as strong as it could have been. (My younger son understood the process, much better than my older son.) And sometimes surely admissions committees do make mistakes - either because they deliberately take a chance or because an application makes a kid look much more desirable than they really are. </p>
<p>I found it easier to think that there must have been something in the other kids’ resume that was appealing than to think they just mucked up, but I don’t think saying that sometimes you just have to suck up the unfairness of life is always the wrong approach.</p>
<p>mathmom, I agree. When my son didn’t get into All-State Band, I pointed out that he didn’t really practice that much. I sympathized with his disappointment to a limited extent, but we didn’t pretend that there was anything unfair about it. However, when one of my kids was passed over for something else in favor of a person who we thought was really undeserving, we didn’t blame that outcome on our kid’s lack of preparation, but rather on the unpredictable and sometimes unreasonable results of adult decisionmaking. We told our kid to forget it and to focus on some other activity.</p>
<p>Of course, there are sometimes cases in which a deserving person gets something–but you just don’t like that person for some reason or other. In such a case, I know how I should feel–but I have not yet achieved perfection.</p>
<p>I tell ya … I WOULD take results personally and be angry if my kid were “competing” against Richard Sherman for a Stanford spot. 900 SAT? How embarrassing. That’s waaaay different from Susie down the street who was merely VP of a club.</p>
<p>Some of us are brooding by nature and it is indeed painful for any parent to see your child rejected despite our knowing that learning to manage disappointment is a necessary part of life. I’m glad D has a thicker skin than I! Every once in a while I think of the college that WL’ed her and wish they knew that she wound up on a full scholarship at a similarly ranked school, where she has been recognized for academic achievement, service to the university and the larger community, and leadership in multiple campus organizations. Nyah, nyah! </p>
<p>I’m very thankful for the ad com that recognized her potential to contribute to the life of their school, and I know that ad coms have a tough job that they do not take lightly. In the bigger picture, had she gone to the waitlisting institution, who knows what her experience would have been? It has been a reminder to me to be grateful for the good things that happen rather than resentful for what might have been – but admittedly I have the memory of an elephant!</p>
<p>Sherman graduated second in his class with a 4.2 GPA from an low SES school with a 57% graduation rate–a school riddled with drugs and gang violence. He is the perfect example of college admissions AA working the way it should. That said, he is not the most literate of individuals but did graduate college. While he has been outspoken and controversial (some would say classless), he has also been a model NFL player otherwise in his performance and behavior on and off the field.</p>
<p>Plus, nobody with better grades and scores was competing with Sherman for his spot at Stanford in the first place. He was on an entirely different track.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between believing a college passed up the excellent candidate that is our child and declaring someone else’s child is unqualified: antisocial, would never be sent on a diplomatic mission even as an administrator, and got better than deserved rec letters because teachers felt sorry for her. Interesting that the person who posted that also posted (on another thread) that students (as a joke, I guess) elect the least qualified person for class offices. I’ve never heard of such a thing and don’t know how a parent would ever know that unless her son and/or his friends were involved. I would have assumed they elected the foreign exchange student class secretary as an immersion exercise to help with her English, but what do I know? How you’re determining “unqualified” in that instance I can’t imagine. When I was in school the only qualification for being senior class president was to be in the senior class. However, if that’s the sort of behavior that goes on in your school, it’s not the teachers who are endorsing “unqualified” candidates, is it?</p>
<p>ErinMae, it’s impressive that you know more about the facts than the person in the school where these things happened. As I’ve mentioned in this thread and others like it, there are always people who think there is a benign explanation for every decision by people in authority. I guess this is just a difference in temperament or something–I don’t quite get it. Personally, I’ve seen adults make unreasonable and unfair decisions lots of times. Is it really the case that some people have never experienced this?</p>
<p>Hunt, I agree. This strikes me as the same mindset that says that if a person is arrested they MUST have done something wrong. I have too much trouble with “authority” to agree with that kind of thing. </p>
<p>All I have to do is look at the list of pleaser-girls who are annually given the vast majority of book awards at our HS b our guidance dept–while exemplary boys are passed over–to know that the most deserving do not always get the good stuff. (And despite the fact that S graduated a number of years ago, I am aware of this because I attend the ceremony every year to hand out an award, so don’t start giving me a hard time about it, people.)</p>
<p>I had never heard of Richard Sherman before yesterday, but I am rapidly becoming a fan. The over-reaction to his interview is astonishing. What would today’s reaction to Muhammad Ali be? Would they call him a “thug” for saying “I’m the greatest”?</p>
The first conversation I recall with the exact same trajectory involved high school awards–with many of the same posters, expressing the same points of view.</p>
<p>Though I’m happy for the college acceptance version of this to be over, I find it difficult to not take things personally. The school rejected YOU.</p>
and it is indeed painful for any parent to see your child rejected despite our knowing that learning to manage disappointment is a necessary part of life. I’m glad D has a thicker skin than I! Every once in a while I think of the college that WL’ed her and wish they knew that she wound up on a full scholarship at a similarly ranked school, where she has been recognized for academic achievement, service to the university and the larger community, and leadership in multiple campus organizations. Nyah, nyah! </p>