<p>“I bet it’s waaaaay easier to get into Oberlin, say, if you are a male STEM type who is vice president of the local Young Republicans than if you are a woman who is interested in contemporary poetry, indie rock, and sustainable agriculture.” -------------------------</p>
<p>That’s oxymoronic. Oberlin doesn’t allow the type you describe above, nor would they apply there.</p>
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Okay. I know what you are trying to say - with all the allowances for various hooks and things. My beef is with the word “underqualified.” I think a better term might be “slightly less competitive”.</p>
<p>I know the admissions process is not numbers based, but I think it is strange to state that a person with higher academic “stats” than 75% of the attending class is somehow “underqualified.” By that logic, over 75% of the class is underqualified to attend.</p>
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<p>Exactly. And the fact that the girl who is interested in contemp poetry, indie rock and sustainable agriculture REALLLLLLY wants to go to Oberlin isn’t really the point - because Oberlin is trying to craft Oberlin’s ideal diverse class, not just please people who like “stereotypical Oberlin.”</p>
<p>There are multiple institutional priorities. Some of it is “attract the highest quality student there” (as measured by scores / grades). Some of it is “attract the bright-well-rounded kids”. Some of it is “attract the highly angular kid.” Some of it is attract the kid who demonstrates leadership, keep alumni parents happy, keep the athletic director happy, and help some kids from less privileged backgrounds achieve success. It’s quite possible that on Tuesday everyone is in the mood to admit bright well rounded kids, and on Wednesday everyone’s in the mood to admit quirky kids, and on Thursday everyone is tired of upper-middle-class-suburban kids who were born on third base and think they hit triples. So? This is life. I think it is the height of stupidity to pretend that there is some kind of magic formula, or that if there were a do-over, the exact same class would be picked.</p>
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<p>A) Oberlin most certainly admits such kids; and B) if such kids aren’t currently applying there, maybe they should.</p>
<p>The first mistake is to assume academic “ability” in the traditional sense is always the top priority at highly competitive colleges. Obviously not true. I think it is actually something they work to avoid as it might create a very boring and harshly competitive atmosphere.</p>
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<p>Thanks for that, JHS, that is a very good point that I hadn’t thought of. My DD and her friend have very similar “stats” but have quite different ECs and interests, and it may very well be that something about the friend was very appealing to Middlebury, or perhaps she wrote a phenomenal common app essay, or who knows? I am just so happy that this is all almost over. We have to see what happens later today, but I’m really thankful that my DD, who is a very cheerful and adaptable person, is feeling a lot of love for the LAC that accepted her and is saying things like, “they like me for who I am” and “I like them for not playing wait-list games with me.” So I think it will all work out.</p>
<p>I can’t believe my “born on third base and think they hit a triple” line has now appeared twice in this thread. I’m almost as proud as the person who came up with “love the kid on the couch” all those years ago.</p>
<p>I wonder where I heard that line. Probably my dad and his country wisdom.</p>
<p>Back to your regularly scheduled prgramming …</p>
<p>PG,
I think that was a joke (but then, what do I know about jokes?) ;)</p>
<p>lookingforward,
I’ve liked just about everything you’ve written on this thread until this:
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<p>Do you really advise applying to certain colleges just so kids can crow about their acceptances?</p>
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<p>Ann Richards said it about George Bush. But she may have heard it from your dad.</p>
<p>^^ the quote is often attributed to Barry Switzer, and Ann Richards borrowed it for her speech. Of course, maybe Barry Switzer was YDS’s father…</p>
<p>Simpkins wrote: “who knows?”</p>
<p>Exactly. We really don’t know why certain decisions are made and so it’s not worth it to lose a lot of sleep over. It’s difficult not to take it personally, but we can’t possibly know they’re thinking.</p>
<p>As an aside, when ds was a junior he earned his Eagle, and this was printed in the daily newspaper. A number of teachers and students came up to congratulate him and said they had no idea he was in Scouts. We really don’t know all we think we do about our classmates. Adcoms have more information to work with than we do.</p>
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<p>Of course, we can safely assume that the priorities are better established at the large academic factories that admit more than 50 percent of their applicants based on simplistic combinations of grades, rank, and test scores. And, of course, a closer look at the “statistics” of the enrolled students at the highly competitive colleges reveal how such schools fail to attract students with academic “ability.” That is why they compare so poorly with less competitive universities, especially since they have to manage their pools to please the parents of all the little Susan and John who only get accepted because of a holistic review. </p>
<p>Hard to avoid being sarcastic, but … pluzzhe!</p>
<p>NEVER Barry Switzer (UT fan here). But I loved Ann Richards so that’s what I’m going with. 
In that case, I’m surprised more people hadn’t already heard it.</p>
<p>OMG, the thought of Barry Switzer being a relative is too much to bear. ;)</p>
<p>I think the predictive value doesn’t always lie in admission to one school, but at a range of schools. At my kid’s top lac, there are kids who were accepted and denied in all sorts of combinations: in at Cornell/ not Dartmouth, in at Cornell and Dartmouth but not at Williams, etc.</p>
<p>OK, now this is perverse I admit. But D really enjoyed a campus visit to a small-ish Univ. Not as elite, but good programs, very friendly. Completely engaged with the students at the orientation. Admissions folks were super on customer service. They wanted her, merit scholarship ensued, etc. She got accepted by more elite “dream” school. Will in all likelihood attend the dream.</p>
<p>So am I the only one who feels a weird kind of sense of loss around the school that got rejected? How weird is that? I’m feeling a bit sad that D will never attend there, and that she could have been a great student there, and helped them while they helped her. </p>
<p>Ok,i’ll shut up now. Too strange.</p>
<p>Actually I felt strangely the same way last year. Two very similar top-LACs, both very accommodating about working with us on FA. S had to choose one and I felt badly about the other.</p>
<p>. . . apparently “amazing and spectacular” is no guarantee, either . . . folks, the system is broken . . . huge numbers of applications are worth lots of $$$$ to these “selective” colleges-- so why should they change their practices? We have the power to not buy into constantly pushing our kids in herd-mentality-fashion to compete for a handful of perceived “best” schools . . . how many kids will come out of this process, 4-years later, with a super degree and no job? The bubble needs to break.</p>
<p>I felt that, too. Ds felt particularly bad about one LAC, where he had really hit if off with the adcom, they were FB friends, etc.</p>
<p>So many posts to this thread since my comments only a few days ago. Yes, mathmom, I know that they said that the institution may have certain preferences for students based on things like sports. I am well aware of all of that. I just was commenting (or trying to) that there is much that goes on at these meetings that is not or cannot be portrayed on tv or on the radio. Generally my big objection to this entire process is that there is no transparency. If Amherst has a particular sporty culture and history of competing in its Div. III league, that’s all very well and good - they are a private institution. But are they really? Once a school accepts money from the federal government for work-study or even research grants for their professors, they are no longer “private” and I think they owe all of us transparency of process since they are, in part, playing with our money and charging us an outrageous amount of money to educate our kids. I think “holistic” is just another word for PC and quotas and as some have pointed out has been used by the Ivies to exclude Jews and homosexuals in the past. Fact is, the process is what they say it is. Seems to me to include some social engineering at times, loaded with presumptions and assumptions as education is one field where there seems to be precious little good research. So the current fad is for “passion” and “leadership” and kids will contort themselves to be whatever they think the adcoms want to hear. All this teaches our kids is that so much of life is BS. The BS doesn’t stop there. It follows them into the job market or graduate school. Faced with the fact that most institutions like business schools, law schools and medical schools really don’t know and can’t predict who will become a good whatever, false admission criteria are created so the decision makers can pat themselves on the back and reward themselves for doing such a fine job - more BS. They’ll face the same thing applying for work, the same stupid questions about passion and leadership or whatever the latest fad is. So now we have kids clamoring to get a job at an investment bank, that we all bailed out by the way, and their admissions process will include the same BS and will be equally opaque despite the fact that we own large pieces of them. As for my S, he moved on. He’s a 3rd year at UcHicago, Dean’sList, loves the city, the culture and will probably benefit from a larger career network at Chicago than at a LAC such as Amherst.</p>
<p>I would submit that it is not always about what you all describe above. </p>
<p>My H and I have let our kids be themselves, in circumstances that are different, I would guess, from many of yours. They have very very high IQ’s. They are very talented in certain areas (from arts to sports to languages to people-skills…) They each have enough deep yet varied interests to have filled their schedules very full, each to a bit over what they personally feel comfortable with. They are maturing and developing self-awareness at their own rate. They respond to the pressures of performance and competition in their own ways, one rises to it and enjoys feedback, and the other is a bit of a stress-avoider, though I feel that is a sign of her personal integrity that she is developing an awareness of how much she can take and starts with less, not more, while her sib starts with too much and then reduces. But the stress-avoider is a natural leader and super-mature and very good with people. This has manifested itself in her having friends who are in the grade above- that is another story, with good and bad implications in the college process. Both embrace a wide-range of friends from all sorts of backgrounds with all sorts of interests. Both are more tuned into their school and peer communities than the outside world. These are underlying stylistic temperaments, coupled with talents, innate ability, interests. And then you can add the environment: the parents (same but less involvement with one at BS), the community, and the schools they go to- all are very different.
One lives at home and has much more parental involvement and guidance day to day, and is also able to “go out of the box” (into the community, for instance- in my car! after school!) for interest pursuits. The other is at boarding school which has classes and sports/rehearsals 6 days a week- no, I repeat NO opportunity to do much outside of the box, in the way of community work, creating new activities, interacting with non-school types, at least during the school year. Each type of school works for each kid. Both schools are private/high-achievement, selective and holistic admission high schools with plenty of FA: diversity of interest, socio-economic background are strived for in creating these classes- sound familiar?! The academic bar at both is very high (maybe a little higher at the BS which is also almost twice the size of the local private HS), and there is a strict (cannot very too much from the basic path) non-AP type curriculum at BOTH of the schools.
The child at BS is ending up with a pretty bland profile, at least in terms of what these colleges are looking for. It is really hard to be at the very top of such a nationally-derived (Hey-like colleges!) class in such a high-achievement HS. Yet, the courses are not AP’s. She has an almost perfect GPA. And she milks every opportunity she can to do what she loves and contribute to the community there, but it is not out of the box or creative- that is not a possibility. P.S. the BS has virtually no day students- which we liked for other reasons. Furthermore, at her BS, there is absolutely no group test prep offered or available- self-study in a crazy schedule is the only option- a much harder situation than most kids who live at home, who do have the means. Her scores are lower than they would have been if she lived at home. But they are hers! Yes, we have the means, and we are lucky, and not entitled, I promise you. Even with the means, we let our kids set the tones of how much they want to do in the way of grooming and prepping.
High achievement BS are very special- the kids do not have M and D around every day to bug them about getting this and that done, getting organized, not breaking rules, doing an interesting EC, etc. Her accomplishments are her accomplishments! That is fabulous to us, and just what she needed.
I confess that I am disappointed that AdComm offices do not understand this a bit or give any of the BS kids (from all of their varied backgrounds) credit for such… but that is the subject for another thread. It just drives my point home here even more. It would be fair (apples to apples) to give them this credit in comparison to the kids from local private schools (like that of my other child), at the very least.
Again, we chose this type of experience for that D (led by her interest!!) because we felt she would grow most with that type of independence, that she needs to do it on her own. To me, this is intrinsically an attribute that I would think AdComms would be looking for. It is sort of like being “under-privileged” in parental monitoring and out of the box curriculum and EC’s, but over-privileged in independence opportunities for personal growth. Take note of the higher than average Naviance acceptance numbers at the BS - the BS kids are competing with each other on a higher bar, even including the recruited athletes, legacies and URM’s. Yes, I still think BS was the right choice for her as an individual, but these are the realities and possible imperfections we see better now.</p>
<p>I am not telling you this story to get advice about my kids. I am doing a bottom up story, to remind everyone what it can feel like as it is happening, as we all go along, to find ourselves where we are at the threshold of this whole goofy college app process. </p>
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<li><p>I kind of think the AdComms really can not fully understand each kid and their circumstances. Is it dangerous for them to even try? Which is the risk of the noble effort of holistic admissions and creating an interesting class.</p></li>
<li><p>Point of our story is: we have let our children be themselves, and seek colleges that are good fits for their lists. Our goals in this process and in life do concur: Having options and growing into a mature survivor with good values who can also achieve.
And I fully understand that having options means being realistic and open-minded, in this case about a college list.
But I do feel, when I am thinking top down and looking back, and as a new member of CC, wow, have I, as a parent, who could have thought all this through ahead of time and guided/pushed them, done them a disservice? Should we have “groomed” them a little more so that they would have more “options”? Are they really “under-qualified”, or just “under- groomed”, or see #3, temperamentally unlucky? Should we have not let one D go to BS?</p></li>
<li><p>There are days when I do wonder how these top college’s classes really come out… Are these classes really “balanced”? or made up of kids at one end of the curve in aggressiveness, pressure-tolerance, competitiveness, extroversion, self-promotion, quirky, driven? Do these classes feel disjointed? Are the schools full of gamers? Is there a very high-pressure atmosphere?? Are the AdComms inadvertently favoring these characteristics?? Maybe not. Maybe so. Maybe that is good. Maybe that is bad. Maybe that is fair. Maybe not. I am torn.</p></li>
<li><p>As to “gaming” and being “strategic”: Learning how to market oneself, to groom oneself for success are certainly important when one is looking for a job, managing a career, selling, maybe even getting into grad school.
BUT is this what our kids should be learning in HS??? I just do not know. I worry that the kids that are asked to groom and market and be strategic (and are compliant!), and the ones who are naturally precocious in this area do get selected at the elite schools. Is this healthy for our society? </p></li>
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<p>In sum, please understand that I am worried about my kids having fewer options in all directions. Again, that is a lesson and a good challenge for them to deal with. So maybe it is meant to be. But I do worry that I may have failed them a bit.</p>
<p>And I do worry that there are plenty of kids out there who are “misread”, who did not happen to do the things that AdComms look for. </p>
<p>Yes, it is pretty much too late for me to worry about my kids’s college choices- they are who they are, (al will appear to be whatever they do on paper in their apps!).
But the process does deserve to be scrutinized and questioned.</p>
<p>p.s. I do believe that we are be-deviled by the constantly increasing number of apps- this makes it more and more of a lottery, which then encourages people to send in more apps. Maybe the answer is to limit the number of apps, and to rank colleges in terms of preference. And eliminate ED/EA.
How do the app readers on this board feel about that? Do they feel that their ability to fully read and understand applications is being challenged by the high number of apps? Would they enjoy reading fewer, knowing where the school lies in the applicant’s interest? Or do they feel that would limit the applicants to the school too much?? To me it could work, as they could continue to market and they to capture the attentions of all HS students. </p>
<p>Anyway, this is an awfully long post. I am obligated to look at things from the point of view of my individual kids- it would be horrible for them if I did not, so it is not about entitlement. The colleges look at things from the point of view of making a class from a very large pool of applicants. I like understanding better what it is the colleges are doing. I hope they are interested in how we families are doing in all this!</p>