NPR College Admissions Story

Parents Forum
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<p>You can neglect this post. I was rejected from the only one I applied to.</p>

<p>I think my essay was probably too conformist. I even use the standard smilies. :slight_smile: ;)</p>

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<p>Deborah T, please write us a college application essay!</p>

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<p>I think we’re all in violent agreement. The last few pages are full of posts from people saying that yes, adcoms do indeed value out of the box interests and ECs. That’s from posters whose kids have written about OOTHI&ECs in their essays (and been admitted), or posters who’ve read those essays as adcoms and responded positively. No one is saying that all applicants must take part in 5 ECs, or they must do ECs out in the community, or anything else implying that there is only one true path to an adcom’s heart.</p>

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but this time make the punch-line be, “Hostess Ding Dongs!”</p>

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<p>We live on a fish farm. My son didn’t do a lot of ECs at school or elsewhere, but he did work long, hard hours on the farm. He wrote a “slice-of-life” type essay about doing tractor work in the fields and then another essay about harvesting fish at 5:30 in the morning. They were very insightful and beautifully written.</p>

<p>He was accepted at Pomona and the UCs!</p>

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<p>LadyDi, I really do not understand where you are coming from. Your complaints about the application process make absolutely no sense to me, no sense at all.</p>

<p>Admissions officers value non-conventional ECs, and often will accept students like that INSTEAD of the students with conventional ECs. Where on this green earth did you ever get the notion that unconventional ECs were a problem for college admissions? In fact, it is the kid with conventional ECs who often gets rejected!</p>

<p>As for off-beat essays, out-of-the-box thinking – that is also rewarded. It’s the conventional “I scored the winning goal” and “I built a house for the poor in Costa Rica” essays that admissions officers don’t like. </p>

<p>You are arguing against a system that doesn’t exist, and promoting a system that is already in place!</p>

<p>As for kids who live in the middle of nowhere on ranches – anyone remember curmudgeon’s daughter? Ranch kid. Got into Yale and a bunch of other top-notch schools, went to Rhodes on a full scholarship and is now at Yale med school.</p>

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<p>Yep, people want a “TBD”–to be done —list. They want to be guaranteed that if their kid does every item on the list, the kid will be accepted. No such list exists. If someone came up with one, 99% of kids who want to enroll in these schools would complete the checklist and the colleges would have to find a new way to choose which kids get in.</p>

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<p>i am new here mother of junior high school international,and i read careful all post and try to understand how works the admitere policy,so sory if i ask some think is obviously for you/
I will say that a lot of children applying to 20 university to maybe have a chance due to<strong>But that hurt was due to the large number of wonderful kids chasing limited slots, and the fact that some do a better job of putting together an application than others.</strong>they applied in the same major to all university?</p>

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<p>Most US universities do not consider the major at the time of application, except in rather broad terms, such as science and engineering vs. humanities. A few universities admit students directly to a major, but that is comparatively rare.</p>

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<p>@fireandrain – Considering that several folks have PMd me to agree with my assessment (which resonates with their experience), I would say that I can’t possibly be that far off the mark.</p>

<p>I am questioning the entire system. Why the inordinate emphasis on ECs and “leadership”? What does all that stuff have to do with learning, which I thought was the purpose of higher education?</p>

<p>And as for “cathartic” essays: There are * many *schools which do not offer alternative prompts – schools that demand the emotional-catharsis approach. DS applied to some of those, and his “personal statements” for these schools were not half as good as his NON-personal essay for UNC. Just our experience.</p>

<p>Again, DS got into his colleges (with that one wait-list), so no beef there. My personal beef is about scholarships at our in-state publics (including publics where DS’s stats were way above 75th percentile), but that’s water under the bridge at this point.</p>

<p>I appreciate that growing up on a fish farm is a great “hook.” But, in our experience WRT scholarships at least, just growing up in the NC backwoods (no fish farm, ranch, or whatever) was apparently not hook-y enough. Neither was being home-schooled by one’s dad, a Harvard-trained Byzantinist. Or making National Merit Finalist. Or knowing both Latin and Greek at a pretty advanced level. DS did not have the scads of ECs, and that put him at a disadvantage vis-a-vis kids with the same or even lower stats. (Sometimes much lower stats.) Again
this did not affect admissions. (But then, we weren’t aiming super-high.) It did affect money, though, and in this economy, for many people in the Real World outside CC ;), that can make the difference between attending college and, well, not attending. </p>

<p>I mentioned “home-school cooties” before (and several home-schooling parents wrote privately to agree with me). I know more and more colleges are opening their minds WRT home-schooled kids. But our in-state publics still seem to regard such kids with suspicion, fear, and loathing. Home schooling is seen as a threat, or something. It’s assumed that, if you’re home-schooled, you’re a benighted, backward flat-earther and ultra-fundamentalist. You have to waste a lot of time and energy proving your bona fides. After a while, it gets old.</p>

<p>But again, it’s all water under the bridge now. We’ve learned our lesson, which we’ll impart to our younger son: Apply only to schools that are visionary enough to use stats and smarts as bases for both admission and merit aid. It’s just too bad that none of those schools is in our state.</p>

<p>Diane</p>

<p>P.S. BTW
sarcasm is petty, childish, and uncalled for. It creates a hostile posting environment in which one fears to post lest one be subjected to attacks (veiled and not so veiled). I’m as entitled to my opinion as the next person. If you don’t like my posts, there’s a very simple solution: Don’t read them. (I am directing this to one or two posters who shall be nameless. ;))</p>

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<p>I think you don’t understand completely what colleges are for and what they want in students. They want to produce the next generation of leaders which is not the same as the next class of rocket scientists.</p>

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<p>So true
in general yes colleges look for the most capable students in terms of grades/test etc. but they are also looking for kids that will graduate, for kids that will add something to the mix on campus, that will hopefully go onto contribute to society as a whole when they leave the campus. There’s more to it than simply presenting a set of credentials and colleges tend to look at the whole campus so each year as a graduating class departs a freshman class opens with an entirely new set of needs.</p>

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<p>I beg to differ. The TBD list – if you are capable of actually achieving it – is in Amy Chua’s book, Tiger Mom. Her kid got into Harvard. Follow the path and you get there too.</p>

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<p>LadyDianeski, I of course can’t speak to your state schools or the scholarships for which you hoped, but I homeschooled my own kids and was very involved in homeschool communities and issues, and wrt private colleges I have seen time and again that a homeschooled student who has the academic strengths required can be at an advantage.</p>

<p>In fact, just a couple days ago I had an experience with two students with whom I was working. (I work as a volunteer college advisor at the local high school and also to homeschooled students.) Two girls, both intelligent, talented, very similar high stats
 the homeschooled girl was accepted to Princeton, the traditionally schooled student was not. It is much easier to put together a compelling application package for a non-traditional student. It does take much more work and planning, but the result ends up being a stronger presentation of the student.</p>

<p>My own homeschooled kids ended up at the schools they most wanted to attend --one public, one private-- with much aid (need-based in the case of the private, merit-based in the case of the public).</p>

<p>We have found that for local scholarships the homeschooled kids seem to be a disadvantage, although I can see why that happens and don’t have a major beef with that. I think when you choose to homeschool you make some trade-offs by getting off the main highway, if you know what mean, although the benefits so far exceed those trade-offs.</p>

<p>Your son sounds like he would have been an incredibly interesting kid to build an application for to some very elite schools. I would have relished that task.</p>

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<p>Lady Dianeski: American colleges are about BOTH “learning” (more precisely, scholarship on the one hand and training on the other) and leadership. And they care about their students’ aptitude for both. Not necessarily the same students for everything, either.</p>

<p>Now, it may be the case that home-schooled kids have fewer opportunities to develop their aptitude for leadership, but that’s part of the decision to home-school a kid. Maybe you took it into account, and maybe you didn’t; maybe you cared and maybe you didn’t. However, if you cared about getting scholarships to your state university, you probably should have checked out the criteria – they aren’t secret. </p>

<p>Anyway, it’s clear that your values and the values of mainstream higher education are not perfectly aligned. You should be proud of having educated your son according to your own values, not whining about how the rest of the world doesn’t agree with you. If you think it’s obvious that you are right, you are mistaken.</p>

<p>Also, I think I can say categorically that there is no college anywhere that “demands the emotional-catharsis approach.” That is a straw man of your own projection. Hyperbole like that tends to undermine the credibility of your testimony about your experience.</p>

<p>Finally, given the sarcastic tone that permeates your posts in this thread, it is a little annoying when you launch a diatribe against sarcasm, too. Personally, I don’t mind a little sarcasm. You’re right that it probably doesn’t create a totally friendly posting environment, but sometimes it’s funny. I’ll think about giving it up if you do.</p>

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<p>Because the elite schools aren’t looking just for the book-smart kids; they are looking for the creative leaders of tomorrow. And they have to have some way of slicing the applicant pool beyond just “line 'em up by their SAT scores and admit the highest 2,000” (or however many). These schools are appealing to you partly because you KNOW that – that they aren’t just “brainaic” schools but contain many interesting, fascinating kids.</p>

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<p>Again, no one is saying the essays have to be cathartic. There’s nothing wrong with a kid who writes about how he likes to do jigsaw puzzles, or thoughts he had when washing the dishes, or whatever. One parent on here had a kid get into Stanford with an essay about picking socks up off the floor. It doesn’t have to be the “look at the deep life lessons I learned on the soccer team / while building houses in Guatemala for the poor” and frankly such essays are often trite.</p>

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<p>LadyDi - my kids got into very good schools, and they did not have scads of EC’s, at all. I was told by someone whose opinion I trust greatly that the “thicker the app, the thicker the kid” and in fact my S left some activities off his common app. It wasn’t “thick” with a billion clubs at all. </p>

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<p>Have you searched the forum for the thread on Chelsea Link? You might find it interesting.</p>

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<p>We are all on CC because we have some connection to colleges that drives our interest- whether as a parent or student, GC or admissions person, or in multiple roles, whatever.</p>

<p>It is important to remember, some have had positive experiences and some have had disappointments. And, some have insider experience and some have a well-worn copy of USNWR handy. Or some other media baby.</p>

<p>Anecdotes- what happened to me or my kid or my neighbor or what I heard from one rep- or what I am most deathly afraid of- are not universal truths. They can be illustrative. That should raise discussion, not lead to assumptions.</p>

<p>The Common App is a multi-page document. There is no saying what will win or lose your kid an admissions slot. You can’t blame it on x, when it could have been y. You don’t know. And, you don’t know what the competition’s CAs looked like.</p>

<p>Anyone worried about the essay demands on the Common App should simply take a look at it. Another poster listed all the prompts.</p>

<p>Learning is not the sole purpose of college. Otherwise, it could be done online or at home. For me, college is “completing a higher level of one’s education” and “transitioning to young adulthood.”</p>

<p>Colleges are not assembly lines. They are vibrant, organic entities. Some have a higher academic bar, more competition for a slot, different financial policies, etc. In the end, each wants kids who will fit and thrive there.</p>

<p>It would have been interesting if this thread had discussed what “fit and thrive” actually “seems to” mean at various colleges. What any one college values has a lot to do with its “perception of itself.”</p>

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<p>Pizzagirl, first of all, right now, I am not remote, I’m in Germany, which is very small. I have lived in a town where it took two hours to get to the nearest grocery store that stocked fresh vegetables, yes.</p>

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<p>The first post, I thought, was pretty on-topic but after that people kept saying, “No, really, it’s just not that hard if you’re a rural student blah blah” then I was responding to them.</p>

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<p>To be honest, I didn’t think that internet listservs would be an impressive hobby, but that’s just me. And FYI, the Internet is much slower in many rural areas, and people are much less likely to have it at home, but HEY. Who’s counting?</p>

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<p>Absolutely! And I completely agree that the poster I was responding to agreed with that. Any personal hang-ups or qualms would be the issues of the applicant, not of the committee. I really think my first post was pretty basic, but apparently not
 taken in the context of this thread, it was taken as an attack on the very notion that each applicant could achieve the same as every other, if only s/he was creative enough.</p>

<p>And again, my original post was that OUT OF SCHOOL activities sometimes quite simply don’t make sense when you can achieve so much more at school. No, really, driving an hour or two does not make sense.</p>

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<p>Yes, absolutely! Honestly, I thought my first reply–simply that out-of-school is not necessarily more ingenuous than in-school–was also fairly measured.</p>

<p>Yeeeesh. And I never imagined you, lookingforward, to be vetting for kids who didn’t audition for the local symphony. I was just thinking the overall tone was unreasonably biased in favor of opportunities that happen when you do have a car, transport, and a little bit of cash.</p>

<p>I do however object to this:</p>

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<p>There are many kids who live in small towns who do not work on ranches, and for whom such employment would would be very hard to get.</p>

<p>Farming and ranching are very romantic and of course they’d make a good essay. But again nobody’s talking about my kid who worked at the local liquor store illegally. Because again we are still talking about kids who have a measure of privilege.</p>

<p>Now again, I am not saying, “Therefore, the adcoms are horribly prejudiced against rural kids!” There are disadvantages in every environment. I was just thinking that non-school activities for one kid may be significantly easier to get into than school activities for another, especially in very small towns.</p>

<p>And FWIW I’m not complaining about my own experience. My own town was small but large enough to have a grocery store that sold lettuce; I didn’t have the other credentials to go to the Ivy League and nobody applied out of state anyway; I was happy going to a state school and I did fair enough and had my happy life.</p>

<p>I have no grudges here despite what people seem to be reading into my posts. I write on message boards for an hour or two after kids go to bed to rest my feet as I do my chores; this is not something that is like, consuming my life. I just relax a bit. Sorry if it sounds like I am upset over this or trying to impugn the whole process. I really, really did not mean it to sound like it must, as if it were this huge deal that were messing up the entire admissions process. Really it was a post about a detail of one person’s thought process
 I do think it was relevant but not as a post against the WHOLE system. Only about one particular point, as to non-school activities being a sign of something.</p>

<p>Really feel jumped upon as I am sure that every single person here, including yours truly, holds at any give time a number of somewhat false beliefs or over-generalizations in mind, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing them out.</p>

<p>“Yes, but” seems to me a normal response
 as opposed to the bizarrely defensive posts here. As if it MUST be equally possible for urban, rural, vehicled and non-vehicled pupils to do out-of-school activities, for the purposes of demonstrating creative potential. I just don’t, sorry.</p>

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<p>While not representing an attempt to grab your attention away from the theoretical discussions on how to change the world of admissions, it might be important to note a few points about Amherst in 2011. </p>

<p>For the Class of 2015, Amherst seems to have under-admitted as they only admitted 1,077 students. On a speculative basis, they are either forecasting a higher yield (unusual in a year known for an explosion of multi-applications) or expected to good deep in the waitlist.</p>

<p>Given Amherst amazing (in comparison to others) commitment to disclose the admission information by making their date public, it is easy to compare to the prior results. There is a lot of information open for consultation at </p>

<p><a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/glance[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/glance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Here’s a very detailed report to the secondary schools.</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/274324/original/AmherstCollegeSSR_2014.pdf[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/274324/original/AmherstCollegeSSR_2014.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Year Applied Accepted % Enrolled Yield %</p>

<p>2000 5,352 1,041 (19%) 434 (42%)</p>

<p>2005 6,281 1,176 (19%) 431 (37%)
2006 6,142 1,144 (19%) 433 (38%)
2007 6,680 1,175 (18%) 474 (40%)
2008 7,745 1,144 (15%) 438 (38%)
2009 7,679 1,227 (16%) 467 (38%)
2010 8,099 1,240 (15%) 490 (40%)</p>

<p>2011 8,438 1,077 (12.76%) TBD <=== Class 2015</p>

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<p>Looking back at my graduating class, while there certainly was a very strong correlation between traditional (non-EC) measures such as grades/tests and grades in school, and maybe even some correlation in the entry level jobs after graduation, I find little such correlation of the students’ accomplishments in the career peak. One observation may be that the kids who were good in traditional measures tended to go more to advanced education and ended up as professors. But success in the real world been totally all over the spectrum when you look at these students’ traditional measures. </p>

<p>My feeling is that the elite schools are (justifiably) not content to just producing a bunch of people “who’ll just be good”. Hopefully, they are most interested in cultivating leaders - movers and shakers - and grades/tests serve the purpose of doing a broad screening, while they use other methods, such as EC to gauge who will make it big versus who’ll “just be good”. This perhaps is one reason for the emphasis on ECs and “leadership”, but of course, there could be others too. I personally think schools should look beyond just scores, but what they should look at and how is surely not in some simple equation.</p>

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<p>My small town kid wrote his essay for Amherst (several years ago, now) on an odd little bit of local history and then extrapolated to why it resonated in his own life experience. His short common app essay was about a shadow (a literal shadow) he was very familiar with and where it lead his mind when he saw it. His third essay, in response to Amherst’s own prompts, was about experiencing fundamental principles of physics in an ordinary day.</p>

<p>Nothing about leadership, ECs, exotic travel or catharsis.</p>

<p>There are countless interesting essays that are neither about traditional leadership or remarkable achievements. In fact, in my opinion, those are never the most interesting essays.</p>

<p>I think the reason his essays were strong is because they revealed what colleges want to see: who is this student? how does he/she look at the world? Without that it’s hard to distinguish between one kid with excellent stats and the other kids with excellent stats.</p>