<p>This fits with what i read on the Questbridge website:</p>
<p>“The moment you are identified as a QuestBridge applicant, you are prioritized in a way that very few applicants are. When you’re a QuestBridge student, you’re in a priority bin. They’ve got a leg up in a way that perhaps an athlete or legacy would have a leg up.”</p>
<p>Tom Parker
Dean of Admission
& Financial Aid
Amherst College</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Remember, Questbridge kids start in the EA or ED rounds for the College Match part. The biggest common denominator of QB’s applicants is that they were ready with the applications months before most students, and this demonstrated organization and dedication. Further, the extra information shared in the QB applications tend to minimize the “misunderstandings.”</p>
<p>Xiggi, my random and lottery comments were not aimed at the entire process. Obviously, the group of students being discussed met all the “basic” requirements that are measurable, e.g. GPA, test scores, class rank, decent EC’s and essays, but when it gets down to the nitty-gritty I believe there is a randomness. It may boil down to exactly how articulate or influential the committee member is who loves you or hates you.</p>
<p>MmeZeeZee, your defense of the URM selection is superb.</p>
<p>Same story from 2009, but with an image of Mr. Parker’s room:</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> look beyond grades and test scores - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/03/22/looking_beyond_grades_and_scores/?page=3]Colleges”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/03/22/looking_beyond_grades_and_scores/?page=3)</p>
<p>Fwiw, I found the NPR story to be far from being memorable, with plenty of opinion from the reporter. A yawner!</p>
<p>“Amherst is claims on its website to be need-blind, but if you listen to the broadcast, they actually give a bump to kids who are lacking in socio-economic areas …”</p>
<p>Need-blind means the opposite in college admissions, that an applicant won’t be passed over because of needing financial aid. Most schools value diversity of all kinds, including economic.</p>
<p>“Amherst is need blind, so how do they know what each applicant’s socio-economic status is?”</p>
<p>The submitted high school profile and the applicant’s zip code provide such info. Recommendations and essays are often additional sources. If there’s interest, the adcom can call the HS counselor for background. It’s just not that hard to figure out in most cases.</p>
<p>“Every successful candidate has to show intellectual passion, supposedly.”</p>
<p>I have come to hate the word “passion.” Along with the word “holistic,” which, as Andrew Ferguson notes, is code for “completely subjective.” :D</p>
<p>*ok so help me understand. through this process the adcoms admit urms with lower gpa, lower scores, fewer ec’s - and these individuals are supposed to strengthen the educational environment of the rest of the class? *</p>
<p>This is not a case of admitting near-failure slackers because they are URM or 1st gen. The URMs I saw get admitted were all highly accomplished- yeah, maybe they didn’t write an essay about their dad paying for them do do vol work in Africa. But they were high in their class rank, had taken slews of APs or were in IB schools, had plenty of good ECs, LoRs that showed their accomplishments and promise, etc. </p>
<p>Too often, folks knee-jerk assume URM means lesser- that’s actually predjudicial. I have seen kids from poor-community high schools, with unemployed, under-educated parents, who score high on standardized tests, take the most challenging classes in their high schools, go lead some worthy projects, etc.</p>
<p>In general, when a kid has high stats and decent ECs, the game is his to lose- and, boy oh boy, they do. In additon to writing things like that they only get excited about music, some admit: I am disorganized; I put off my schoolwork until the last minute; my favorite thing is to tease the neighbor’s dog; I am not sure I want to major in x- I find it boring…" They write essays about dumb things that show they are not clear thinkers. They put on their EC list things like: “help mom cook dinner” and skip that they were a national math competition finalist (sometimes, the GC or teachers mention mind-boggling things the kid omitted.) These may be the supposed high-performing kids everyone loves to rail about getting rejected, in favor of someone without their stats. These are the kids readers moan out loud about. </p>
<p>You can’t convince me this “real picture of who I am” portrays their potential in such competitive circumstances. I’ve said here before, about applications, “you are what you write.” That means the full app package. Most people who are stunned at who gets rejected versus admitted, have not seen that kid’s full package, much less those of the competition. And, btw, LoRs can be killer, even for kids who look good in terms of grades and scores.</p>
<p>As for QB, it is no guarantee. That application leaves many important questions unanswered and not many GCs and teachers doing the LoRs write more than a short blurb, which leaves questions about the kid’s performance and potential.</p>
<p>I wish we could all turn on the colleges and tell them just how bland they all are: they all TOTALLY sound completely identical.</p>
<p>Ain’t that the truth!!!</p>
<p>gadad, I’m not sure I buy the analogy completely, but since Guys and Dolls is my absolute favorite musical of all time, I’ll overlook my objections. :)</p>
<p>I downloaded the NPR story so I could listen to it on my iPod, and iTunes had put it under the genre of Blues.</p>
<p>Well, at least it’s the most appropriate musical genre! Very clever!</p>
<p>Re the dread Personal Essay: I agree with Andrew Ferguson in Crazy U. Our culture used to prize reticence; now it demands narcissistic navel-gazing confessions. It’s insane to expect an 18-year-old kid to retail shattering personal epiphanies, life-changing turning points, and similar Oprah-ish blather. Many kids are uncomfortable writing about themselves – and why not? </p>
<p>One thing I’ll say for the UNC Chapel Hill essay requirement: It allowed kids the option of writing about something other than themselves. DS wrote about an obscure Depression-era folk singer named Blind Alfred Reed. It was one of his best essays ever, far better than his awkward “personal epiphany” essays for other schools. UNC must have liked it, because they admitted him! (Without merit aid, though, so he’s taking Bama’s full ride instead.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, but is his novel a valid reference?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am afraid you agree with someone who really, really did not understand the purpose, scope, and content of the essay. Contrary to AF’s delusional stance on the issue, it is NOT about narcissistic navel-gazing confessions, personal epiphanies, life-changing turning points, and similar Oprah-ish blather. Not at all!</p>
<p>Many kids are indeed uncomfortable writing about themselves, but they should have no problem whatsoever in writing coherently about how they function in the world that surrounds them. Coherently and truthfully!</p>
<p>We’ll have to agree to disagree, xiggi. I found AF’s analyses to be spot-on at least 99.99% of the time. And I agree with him completely that VERY few people do autobiographical writing really well. (Which is why most autobiographies end up consigned to the proverbial Dustbin of History.)</p>
<p>I think my son revealed more about his passions in his essay about Blind Alfred Reed than he would have by simply going on about his love for folk and protest music, blah blah blah. Just my 2 cents’ worth, fwiw, which ain’t much. :)</p>
<p>What “need-blind” means is quite technical: they will review apps without considering whether a candidate needs financial support to go to the school. A need - blind school is stating that they make up a class without worrying about whether they can extend financial aid to any and all students who attend who might need it and ask for it.
The statement in the broadcast was an AA statement in the review and selection process, showing how the bar can be lower for disadavantaged students.
As I see it, these are like separating church and state.
To be “need-blind”, as school has to be confident in their endowment.
A school uses AA to achieve diversity and spread educational opportunity.
Being “need-blind” allows the school to do that ad infinitum.
My understanding is that the bar can also be lower for development, legacy, celebrity and athletic recruit candidates.</p>
<p>I agree with Bay that the chicken nuggets line was not very funny ^_^. But I suppose as a WashU admit and a Northwestern waitlistee, that is to be expected from someone like me according to people from this board.</p>
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</p>
<p>Well, it is easy to agree to disagree on this issue. </p>
<p>As others have done, I have agreed that AF offered a humorous and sensitive account of the journey that landed his son at UVA. I have also shared that his book was eminently readable in the genre. However, when it comes to the “analytical” part, AF could not have been more wrong. As long as AF confined himself to self-deprecating humor, the book was fine. When it tried to “lecture us” about his newly found knowledge, it was as horrible a failure as his “understanding” of the process. </p>
<p>I wonder what represents the 0.01% percent of the book you felt was not spot-on. Does that not amount to 2 percent of a page in his book!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree. I had one who did a (very risky) personal epiphany story – and one who wrote about a common household object, with no grand moral story or life lesson learned.</p>
<p>^My son’s personal essay was pretty good, but I liked his EC essay which was as much about the hilarious lack of historical memory in our neighborhood as about himself. (But he showed himself thinking like a historian in the way he described his activity - archiving the neighborhood association papers.) My son also had unexpectedly good results at the two schools that have supplemental essays that allow one to write a non-personal essay - Chicago and Tufts.</p>