<p>Samurai…thanks. As I say, the common app was so long ago for us (beginning of process) that I didn’t remember what the options were. Wish DS had taken the “write whatever you want” option, but, considering that he was admitted to his common app school, I guess there was no harm, no foul.</p>
<p>And now I must bow out and get back to work. We could probably argue this one back and forth all day and all night and end up right where we started. :)</p>
<p>You keep cycling back to the whole test score/GPA claim vs. ‘subjective’ methods. You assume that as a result of the ‘subjective’ criteria, the admitted students are somehow not up-to-snuff with respect to GPA and test scores.</p>
<p>Never said that. Don’t have time right now to argue against a strawman. Later, maybe. :)</p>
<p>I do hate when work gets in the way of fun. :)</p>
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<p>elite colleges are full of students pursing learning for its own sake, so elite colleges must want at least some of that type student</p>
<p>Cambridge/Oxford do require a personal statement which is somewhat more pragmatic than many of our essay prompts.
GPA and test scores only take you so far. Test scores are test scores but there is some economic bias there. GPA is actually a pretty fuzzy measure. There are easy graders and hard graders. There are easy and hard courses. I suspect many of us have Bs that took a lot more effort than As. How would you weight my child’s B in a graduate level math course? Is is better than an A in an AP course? How about the kid who got a B in gym because he annoyed the coach? (And, yes, some schools include gym in the GPA.)
The hard truth is that there are more kids than slots at certain schools and schools would rather choose than use a lottery. But the good news is that there are probably more than enough slots overall at very good schools for all the kids qualified to go.</p>
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<p>I am beginning to think that YES, after making it though the first stats based cut then I would prefer a random drawing for the final decisions. At least this would create an even playing field.</p>
<p>It would make sense that even MORE people would apply to a school if a lottery is held. Even if the first cut removes a large segment of students - whether highly qualified or less so - there would be groups of students who might figure to take a gamble.</p>
<p>Particularly those from underrepresented groups, athletes, musicians, etc. </p>
<p>Instead of giving you peace of mind by taking it out of the hands of applicants, it’s possible that it would end up a more random process than we currently have with college admissions. </p>
<p>I would prefer an essay over no essay with regards to college admissions.</p>
<p>By the way, where does anyone get the idea that GPA as a criterion lacks subjectivity?</p>
<p>In my kids’ schools, and in mine, every final grade in every course had some significant subjective element. And comparing kids’ grades within the same school requires a lot of attention to and (ultimately, subjective) judgment about what the different courses they took mean. In my older kid’s class, the valedictorian was head and shoulders above everyone, universally admired even by those who resented him. In my younger kid’s class, the valedictorian was seen by his peers as smart but fundamentally limited and unimpressive; the real intellectual leaders were kids with somewhat lower grades. By the time you start comparing GPAs of students at different schools, any possible claim that you are doing something objective dissolves.</p>
<p>With essays, by the way, my experience is that if you get a group of people together and they read a set of college essays, there will be a lot of consensus about which ones are the best. I did that once. I think essay-reading in a group context is a lot more objective than anyone is giving it credit for here. (Not all-the-way objective, of course. But not a question of did-the-reader-have-a headache?, either.)</p>
<p>I am an Amherst alum. My son had 2300 SATs and took 12 AP courses and was a National AP Scholar. He was captain of two teams but was not a recruited athlete. Unfortunately (I guess), he grew up in an affluent suburban neighborhood. I don’t know whether that was held against him or whether he had some line in his application that killed his application but he was rejected. I have rationalized that legacy helps if you are a development kid and that the admission process is almost random even if you have a tip like legacy as other applicants have other tips such as socio-economic status, geographic diversity, musical talent for a specific instrument, interest in ancient Greek, etc. There are many constituencies within a college that want to have student representation. Fortunately, my son was accepted to another top liberal arts college and is very happy there.</p>
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<p>LOL! Is that why the UC ended up deciding to … abandon the (formerly known as SAT II) Subject Tests? Or is that what happens when the boss hastily requests “massive studies” to back-up a foot-in-the-mouth opinion? </p>
<p>There is a reason why Atkinson will forever remain very high on the Christmas list of TCB’s Gaston Caperton.</p>
<p>Yes, it is interesting that the SAT Subject Tests have been abandoned by the UC for the Class of 2012 and beyond</p>
<p>And yet, strangely, still recommended by the UC’s, especially for majors that are highly subscribed.</p>
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<p>This is totally inaccurate and unfair. While there are some elite colleges without a core, there are many more that do have one. And I doubt that you have looked at most of course catalogs at elite institutions to make this generalization.</p>
<p>And yes, there has been, over the past several decades, a push to hear ‘other voices’ in the curriculum, but it doesn’t mean that these voices should not be heard, or that the curriculum is watered down. But that, too, is another conversation.</p>
<p>Do you really think that Alabama isn’t offering courses in African-American studies?? Would you really want a survey course in American literature that counts as part of the core curriculum at a place like Alabama to leave out African American writers? Wouldn’t you want a place like Alabama to have academics whose expertise is the African-American experience?</p>
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<p>Gee, I finally realized why you like Ferguson so much and think he is a worthwile source of information.</p>
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<p>Picture a rudderless ship desperately tacking to make it back to shore, and you will have the perfect image of the UC. Unfortunately, every SAT taker is paying in time and money for the foolishness of UC 'leaders."</p>
<p>Xiggi,</p>
<p>Good one. True. Unfortunately, it’s no joke. You are right. So much time and money spent on these tests and this upcoming group of applicants will find it even more challenging to get admitted to the UC’s.</p>
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<p>I think your understanding of this is completely upside-down. I recall hearing an admissions office at Swarthmore say that in his judgment about 80% of their applicants—a highly self-selecting group, to be sure—were fully qualified, in the sense that Swarthmore was confident they had the intellectual tools, character traits, and prior academic background that, if admitted, they were likely to succeed academically and make productive use of their years at Swarthmore. He said when he first started in that job he would lie awake at night, agonizing over all the well-qualified applicants he had to turn away. But then he realized that this is America where there are many outstanding colleges and universities besides Swarthmore, and all those highly qualified candidates Swarthmore was turning away were getting into other good colleges and universities. That not only helped him sleep better, it helped him do his job better, because he realized that his job was not to select which of all the highly qualified candidates were somehow the “most” qualified, but rather to assemble (in conjunction with the other adcom members) the best, most interesting, most intellectually and experientially diverse class, the class that would create the best college experience and the best learning environment for all its members. Consequently, he said, a rejection by Swarthmore shouldn’t be taken as an indication that you aren’t up to Swarthmore’s standards, because you probably are; instead, it just means you’re not the best match for the particular mix of highly qualified students they’re putting together that year.</p>
<p>“Subjective”? You bet. Anything wrong with that? No. Would they have a “better” class if they selected strictly on the basis of GPAs, test scores, and rigor of HS curriculum? Well, no. Their freshmen retention rates and graduation rates would be virtually identical, that is, they’d stay stratospherically high. Average college GPAs might be marginally higher, but they have no reason to particularly care about that, unless it got to the point they needed to practice intentional grade deflation to bring their average GPA back into line with other schools—but I don’t think that would serve their students particularly well. Mainly, it would just make the entering class less diverse—more elite-suburban, more affluent, whiter and more Asian, because those are the groups that predictably tend to have the highest test scores and are most likely to come out of either the public or private high schools that offer the most rigorous HS curriculum. And just how would any of that make Swarthmore a better or more interesting place for anyone to attend college?</p>
<p>The point is, schools like Swarthmore don’t “need” to “resort to subjective methods” to fill their class. They have a surfeit of highly qualified applicants, to the point they can go at least 4 or 5 deep on fully qualified applicants for every available slot. They need criteria that allow them to turn away most of those who are fully qualified and would succeed with flying colors if given the opportunity to attend. So it comes down to assembling a mix of kids from different backgrounds, with different talents and outlooks and interests and life experiences, in the belief that doing so will make Swarthmore a more interesting place and, yes, a richer learning environment for everyone who is there, while also in a small way doing something to give a leg up to a few members of certain historically disadvantaged groups, like URMs and first-gens, and thereby to operate as an engine (albeit a small one) of upward social mobility, rather than merely a device for the intergenerational transmission of privilege and class advantage. To me, that sounds like a perfectly legitimate way for a private institution to expend its intellectual and financial resources. And frankly the fact that it does so makes the college much more appealing to me than one that simply privileges privilege.</p>
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<p>The beauty of the system is that it’s not one size fits all. Want a core curriculum? There’s UChicago, Columbia, Reed (also used to offer underwater basket-weaving during intersession), St. Johns. Want to have lots of science requirements, even if you end up being an English major? Caltech. A strong language requirement? Middlebury, Tufts. Totally open curriculum? Brown, Rochester. If you feel that these schools will give you your money’s worth, then great. If you think there are better bargains elsewhere, that’s fine too. If you the parent are footing the bill, you get to decide how you spend your money. Same thing with applications. If you want schools that only consider stats, there are plenty of those. If you want a holistic school, as we’ve seen there are others like that. </p>
<p>Andrew Ferguson and his disdain for the personal essay: hey, he’s the one with the kid who wants to paint his chest and major in beer. :rolleyes: Hardly some ideal poster child for reticence and anti-Jerry-Springerism.</p>
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I definitely agree with this…but…I don’t think it’s bad to think a bit about how to market those things to colleges when the time comes, and even to do some things along the way with that in mind. For example, let’s say your kid is an artist, makes beautiful paintings–while you can show this in an application by sending an art supplement, you may also want to encourage your kid to do things like entering the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards contest, or art shows, etc.</p>
<p>Sometimes we as parents, teachers, counselors or other interested adults have to remind the kids that they can think outside the box. They aren’t all savvy enough to know what they can do to highlight their strengths. Hunt is exactly right.</p>
<p>As adults we do learn what works in the employment world, and nowadays it is often the little details that gets the job or promotion. For example, a job applicant who doesn’t understand Linkedin may be behind the curve.</p>
<p>Looking forward, I appreciate you taking the time to write about your experience as a reader. I can only imagine what a difficult task that must be. </p>
<p>As to the NPR report when I first started listening I thought they were discussing an applicant to Med School, fgs. Maybe it’s just me but these kids sound so cookie cutter and programmed and simply not like a normal 17 year old. </p>
<p>My son got into a excellent school - though not an ivy - and I think he was accepted in large part because he came across as genuine. He played an instrument in band for 4 years, ran XC and track for 4 years, took honors classes but not one AP, no “awards” except honor roll and he had far from a perfect ACT score and took one SATII which he didn’t submit the score for. We didn’t plot and plan his high school curriculum for how it would look to any college. He didn’t spend his high school years trying to do things which would impress adcoms.</p>