<p>Sure, but not in the way the term is used by adcoms. Adcoms would eat Socrates alive, LOL.</p>
<p>Anyway, I was talking about his students, not about the man himself. ;)</p>
<p>Speaking of all this stuff…here’s another word I take issue with: “leadership.” What adcoms mean by “leadership” is: Do these things we like and look for, like starting a club or captaining a sports team. Those activities are great, but are they necessarily “leadership” in the grander, broader sense? If you do exactly what the adcoms are looking for, isn’t that, in part, conformism – playing the game? The true leader goes out and does something new and extroardinary for its own sake, not simply to impress adcoms. Perhaps he/she even does something adcoms might sneer at.</p>
<p>I’m certainly NOT denigrating the kids who found clubs and captain sports teams. They’re wonderful kids, and God bless them – they have way more energy and initiative than I ever had. I’m just saying that conforming to the expectations of a bunch of very powerful grownups is not necessarily an infallible sign of future greatness. (And now I will be pounced upon by everyone who has ever founded a club, LOL. Hey, I co-founded a human rights club in 12th grade…but all we ever did was picket supermarkets that sold California grapes. Ahhh, the '60s…)</p>
<p>It felt like the first opinion moved those on the fence.</p>
<p>That happens in focus groups, too. There’s always a blowhard who pummels the others until they come around to his/her opinion. That’s why focus groups are pretty much worthless. And the food stinks, too. But it’s fun going out for cocktails later. :)</p>
<p>LadyDi-I just love your posts. You tell it like it is!
Yup, this decision process is made by humans, fo’sho!</p>
<p>I am so sick of all this c—p about leadership, passion, being unique.
It sure does seem like that are an awful lot of kids who are trying to be unique, and trying to be leaders! And who are incredibly self aware at a pretty young age.
This is so much pressure. </p>
<p>I guess the game is being played very well by many kids!
(Sorry to those who are being genuine- I know you are out there.)</p>
<p>Is this really the message we want to give our kids? I guess it works for applying to jobs, getting ahead in a career, too. I am really kind of torn. </p>
<p>oh well. Maybe the world or America will benefit from all this somehow…</p>
<p>If you’ve ever read Consumer Reports, you know that when they do their rankings, there’s generally a statement that says something like “ranking differences of 5/7/10/13 points are immaterial.” The iron/camera/cleanser that scores 3 points lower than the #1 iron/camera/cleanser is, for all intents and purposes, just as good an iron/camera/cleanser. Pick the one that is cheapest, or feels most comfortable in your hands, or that smells the best. </p>
<p>If we were in the room with the Amherst adcoms, looking at that too-large pile of tentative yesses, we’d feel the same way about all of those applicants. They’re all excellent. Apply some sort of CR-esque merit ranking, and they’re all in the same range of highest caliber. But since they are humans, not inanimate objects, we can draw on a a far larger number of criteria to try to make some kind of decision. I don’t envy those adcoms their job one bit, but the heck if I can think of a way to do it that would be considered “fair” by every applicant.</p>
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<p>No idea what adcoms are sneering at these days, but it’s clearly not chicken nuggets. Anyway, one of the admissions memes of the moment is that kids should get part-time jobs as a way of learning responsibility, teamwork, and all that other stuff that’s part and parcel of leadership. So, mentioning that you serve or cook chicken nuggets should work, too.</p>
<p>That wasn’t my experience with my kids – who didn’t start or lead clubs or sports teams. My d. got into a lot of very selective colleges despite weak test scores (for those colleges). I don’t know if “leadership” came into it or not, but certainly my kid was NOT playing the game of doing the things colleges like and look for. </p>
<p>It seems to me that kids who go against the grain often do very well in college admissions, bearing in mind that they’ve also got to have the basic in terms of GPA, etc. </p>
<p>Again, I think it has to do with “standing out” in one way or another. I think that those who view phrases such as “leadership” one-dimensionally, as referring only to occupying a leadership role within some sort of structured group – are misconstruing what the colleges want.</p>
<p>I also don’t think “standing out” needs to be doing something “extraordinary”. I actually think that many kids who present their college apps in an honest fashion, sharing something of themselves, do better than those who try to accumulate some laundry lists of accomplishments.</p>
<p>My D didn’t have “leadership” in school related ECs, other than playing a sport and being on a scholastic team. She did have an out of the box EC and the letter to all the admitted students said “our class has a this, a that, and a that” and her activity was mentioned. It is all about standing out and getting noticed, and I think a bunch of you are naive for not getting that that’s how life works, whether it’s college admissions, job interviews or who you date. </p>
<p>I think the essay needs to brand the kid as the “xxxx kid” (it could be the chicken mcnugget kid). I don’t know why so many of you seem not to get that the grades and scores are merely the first cut and then it’s – who seems interesting? Who stands out?</p>
<p>I think adcoms see right through starting faux clubs, just as they see through trips to Guatemala to help the poor and the resulting gaggy essays.</p>
<p>The recent discussion reminded me of an article on college admissions I read many years ago. An applicant to one of the Seven Sisters was described in a letter of recommendation as a “follower.” She was admitted on the grounds that they were taking so many “leaders,” the leaders would need to have someone to follow them.</p>
<p>LOL, Quantmech! That’s what I always wonder – if everyone’s a leader, then whom do they lead? If everyone’s a general, then where are the foot soldiers? </p>
<p>I didn’t mean to pitch it so strong last night…I recognize that there are many genuinely passionate, unique leaders out there, LOL. Seriously…sweeping generalizations are dangerous, I know. It’s just the overall trend that scares me. As Andrew Ferguson said, the college-app processis turning our kids into Eddie Haskell. (That totally cracked me up.)</p>
<p>If you won a free dinner for ten in a fancy restaurant, which ten of your 30 dearest friends would you invite? I think it’s like that at the end of the process, when they have to winnow down the “accepts.” At that point, it’s not surprising that very subjective criteria start to matter more–including how the overall group will fit together. I think that’s probably a bigger deal at a small school like Amherst.</p>
<p>The valedictorian with a bunch of different clubs (clearly a superstar as one admissions officer noted) gets waitlisted while the chicken mcnuggets kid gets in. That is ridiculous.</p>
<p>I’m with pizzagirl on this. Why are people surprised that adcoms want interesting/quirky/risk-taking people at their schools and not just 4.0 valedictorians? And, of course, I’m not saying that’s mutually exclusive. ;)</p>
<p>No, because Amherst is not just looking to fill the class with valedictorians, 4.0’s and 2400 SAT’s, otherwise that’s how they’d make their decisions. They obviously don’t want that as their only criteria. If that bothers you, don’t apply to Amherst – apply to any number of fine state schools that admit based on numbers.</p>
<p>You keep thinking that the valedictorian is more “worthy” than the kid who is #25, the 2400 kid is more “worthy” than the 2250 kid, the kid who is president of student council is more “worthy” than the class rep. I don’t know why you think that, but the schools get to determine who they think is worthy, not you.</p>
<p>“I’m with pizzagirl on this. Why are people surprised that adcoms want interesting/quirky/risk-taking people at their schools and not just 4.0 valedictorians? And, of course, I’m not saying that’s mutually exclusive.”</p>
<p>How did you all objectively pick your spouses? Did you walk into a party or bar and ask them to line up based on their IQ scores, their income levels, their overall attractiveness and then objectively pick the smartest / richest / most attractive? Or did you look for some general criteria as a baseline and then see where you had spark or interest? </p>
<p>Have some of you actually never hired people? This is the hiring process. You look for general criteria as a baseline (a degree in a given field, maybe a certain GPA or evidence of certain proficiencies) and then you see how the person does in an interview and whether there is spark or interest.</p>
<p>I just can’t imagine a bunch of fortysomethings on this board are so gobsmacked by the fact that Amherst (like any elite school) has a bazillion qualified applicants and so therefore they have to start making decisions on who attracts their eye. How is that any different from how students look at colleges? THere are tons of great colleges with pretty campuses and good reputations, and students narrow them down because this one seemed to have nicer tour guides or a better fitness center or they just felt more comfortable in a given setting.</p>
<p>A while back a student I know applied to depts not schools. He had figured out which schools had the top researchers in his area of interest, a rather narrow field in the humanities, something in which he had become interested (or more accurately “obsessed”) at around age 10, with his studies becoming more and more focused and serious over time. During junior and senior year of high school, instead of taking AP science and math, instead of taking any higher level science or math at all, he took courses at the local university in his area of interest. He managed to get himself into some of those courses which are cross listed for senior majors/graduate students. His parents warned him that he could give it a try, but that he was probably taking himself out of the running for the most competitive universities and that he needed to be sure he was going to be satisfied with less competitive options, which would, however, provide him the undergrad background he needed to go on for a PhD, that he would need to look at the depts where the students of “the biggest names in the field” were currently teaching. He was in the top of his class (he could have been valedictorian if he had arranged his schedule differently) with fairly good test scores (he couldn’t always be bothered to grid in the answer sheet correctly), commended student not NMF. He wouldn’t do a sport after freshman year, had no leadership positions.</p>
<p>His parents tried to help him put together an application that made some sense of his background. As it went off, they said to each other, “I bet they haven’t seen anything like that before. I sure hope they don’t think we wrote that statement of interest for him” because they didn’t think it sounded anything like the “authentic” voice of a hs senior, even though in this case it actually was, but after months of trying to persuade him to write a more “normal” kind of undergraduate application essay they eventually just thew up their hands.</p>
<p>Lo and behold he started getting likely letters (which his parents had never heard of before and prompted a google search which led to cc) and then he started getting phone calls from profs at those schools.</p>
<p>So this student had a choice of lottery type schools, probably because of a very unusual profile. But it is not a profile anyone could have sat down and planned out in middle school or earlier with the intention of getting him into this type school. It was a course of action that went against the common wisdom of what it took to get into these schools. It went against the advice of high school GCs and Adcoms at info sessions.</p>
<p>I think there are a lot of this type student out there ;)</p>
<p>I have no opinion on whether it is fair they get in and someone with higher grades/stats doesn’t.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to Amherst and I feel 100% sure now that she won’t be admitted. She’s just one of those boring well-rounded kids who is the valedictorian and had nearly perfect SAT scores, all 5s on a bunch of APs, varsity sports, editor of the school newspaper, president of various clubs, served meals to the homeless, loved by her teachers, an all-around nice kid, but no quirky “passions,” no all-consuming devotion to a single thing, no hilarious essay about Chicken McNuggets, did not start a foundation or make a documentary or cure cancer; she only did everything that was ever asked of her and has worked so hard for the past four years, and no I don’t think she is more “worthy” than anyone, I just love her and want her to have what she wants, and this whole process is so incredibly stressful and upsetting. She’s getting wait-listed everywhere, ugh. I just want this week to be over already.</p>
<p>Yes, call me crazy, but I do think a valedictorian is generally more worthy to go to a top academic instituition than the kid who is number 25. Sure, I would agree that there are factors which should give a kid a bump up (top violinist, debate champion etc) to overcome that, but those factors are talent based. </p>
<p>One chicken mcnuggets line in an essay seems to me an inane reason to accept that applicant while waitlisting a superstar (their term not mine).</p>
<p>To me your kid is exactly the type of kid who should be admitted to the top schools. She has great academics and will be deeply involved in whatever school she attends. Hope tomorrow goes well.</p>
Anyway, one of the admissions memes of the moment is that kids should get part-time jobs as a way of learning responsibility, teamwork, and all that other stuff that’s part and parcel of leadership. So, mentioning that you serve or cook chicken nuggets should work, too.</p>