<p>We’re getting an edited glimpse into the process, Cubsfan. Who’s to say the McNuggets kid isn’t also a superstar, just with a more memorable essay?</p>
<p>I sure wish the McNuggets kid would post on here!</p>
<p>Some valedictorians can be incrediblly boring…</p>
<p>This thread is good. What I LOL at is that it started in 2004, and hasn’t changed one iota. It supports the book “The Gatekeepers” as well. In that the admissions officers and VP’s actually think that they are doing the Lord’s work…and are sincere…but in the end the process breaks into “grades/testscores” and “PC admitants”. My D luckily got through to her top choices (except for one) and we’ve had the discussion numerous times that to be rejected is simply a dart throwing game. The college that rejected her missed the dartboard that time. It’s not about the applicant…it’s about the process. No animosity here…just a reality check…don’t get too emotionally involved, and certainly don’t take a rejection personally. Half the kids that the Amhersts of the world reject will be the bosses of those doing the rejecting. LOL</p>
<p>
I would just note that this is not what you would want one of your kid’s recommendations to say.</p>
<p>I think it is a big shock to a lot of kids and their parents when they learn that being the top student, both academically and as a leader, in the local high school does not necessarily translate into admission into the most competitive schools.</p>
<p>Don’t these admissions people know that studies show that success in college is directly related to GPA and SAT scores? “Quirky” isn’t.</p>
<p>These schools have great success with their picks, which is why everyone wants to go there. It seemed obvious to us going into this last year that you had to take the acceptance percentages seriously, and realize that at many top schools 10 or 20% means 10 or 20% of an applicant pool that is virtually indistinguishable on objective criteria. If you don’t have sufficient “quirkiness” you better cast a wide and deep net.</p>
<p>
I disagree. I think it’s the quirkiest people I know or know of that have been most successful. The guy who put on a Greek play in a swimming pool is now a well known opera director. The guy who was more interested in computers than school - led to Microsoft and Facebook. It’s often the single-minded people that go the furthest - not the teacher pleasing valedictorians. The trouble is distinguishing good quirky from bad quirky. Scores and grades are more straightforward.</p>
<p>Re chicken mcnuggets and quirky…</p>
<p>My son wrote his common app essay about co-founding a Star Wars club at HS. Their major fund raiser is selling Darth Vader toast (ever seen that toaster in the airlines magazines?) covered with Nutella. He has some semi-profound observations about how the club cut across social strata/cliques in ways they had not anticipated or intended, but his conclusion was:</p>
<p>When spreading Nutella on Darth Vader toast, choose the dark side.</p>
<p>The NPR story makes me think that that ending may have been more helpful than I originally thought (and were the choice up to me, I probably would have cut it.)</p>
<p>Quirky is no substitute for accomplishment, but perhaps it differentiates your application from the other 4000 very serious equally accomplished applications.</p>
<p>Mathmom: Those people are the exceptions. If you survey those who flunk out or do poorly in college, there would be a correlation to those who were admitted with lower GPA’s and SATs.</p>
<p>How do you define success? I don’t know anyone who has flunked out of a lottery type school. The quirkiest students I know have tended to be the top academic students in college because, by and large, they are studying subjects they are pretty much obsessed with and go way beyond what is actually required for any particular class.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>yes, how can parents do it? how can admissions officers do it? I don’t think anyone self-consciously sets out to be quirky themselves or to create a quirky child. You just try to deal the best you can with what you’ve got. ymmv</p>
<p>@TatinG^^^Depends on what you mean by “Success in college”. These data are skewed because poorly performing students ( those below the mean), do so terribly worse in college and sometimes never graduate.</p>
<p>For those that score above the 75th percentile (of all test takers of the test- so anyone with a 75th percentile score), the difference in performance AT ANY SCHOOL, is not statistically significant.</p>
<p>With regard to the students admitted to Amherst, you are splitting hairs; you cannot say that my kid with a 680 Sat in Math will not do as well as your 780 in College, or beyond. I am sure the Adcoms have seen that time and time again.</p>
<p>Of course graduating can be considered success, but learning how to think is actually a more important predictor of success in your career. Lots of smart people wonder why no one will work with/for them.</p>
<p>I think I will share some of our research findings, just to set the bar here, take em or leave them it’s just a research study.</p>
<p>
I’m assuming the LOL signifies this is a joke. Becuase you have no way of telling whether this is true or not. </p>
<p>Obviously if these schools suddenly announced that they were going to accept students based solely on SAT scores, it would completely change the landscape of secondary education. Schools would suddenly teach nothing but test prep, parents would not allow their high school students to waste valuable SAT study time on things like school plays, music, debate, scientific research, or community service.</p>
<p>Much like the election process in this country - everybody knows going in it’s a state by state contest, and they spend money and time based on that knowledge.</p>
<p>And they would certainly have to change the SAT exams, they would be wholly unsatisfactory for an admissions process like this.</p>
<p>When I applied to school way back when, I was rejected by my first choice and had to attend my safety school (although we didn’t call it that). Based on reading in “The Chosen,” anecdotal evidence of people I know who attended this school, and publically available information on the SAT score spread at the school at that time, I am fairly certain I would have been admitted based on objective stats alone. Of course I’ll never know for sure. But regardless, they chose the class “holistically” even then. And I’m fine with that.</p>
<p>I think it’s fairly apparent that the admissions process at top tier schools is nearly indistinguishable from “random” in the sense that the number of qualified applications so exceed the number of slots that only using objective measures like SAT, GPA, Class Rank, etc would still yield far too many candidates, and using such an objective system would leave no room at all for non-traditional / disadvantaged students with less-than-stellar objective stats. (Not to mention, legacy admits, and so on.)</p>
<p>So, for most, it falls into subjective reviews, and that introduces human factors and random chance. Maybe the essay your kid wrote would’ve floored adcom “Smith”, but they were assigned to “Jones”, who had a headache the day they read it, and found it just irritating, or inexplicably had the identical subject as the essay they just read, so into the “probable reject” pile it goes. </p>
<p>Can’t really blame selective colleges <em>too</em> much, but you do have to wonder why such colleges still spend so much time, money, and effort soliciting <em>more</em> applications, far more than they need or could ever admit. </p>
<p>In terms of strategy in resume-building, it seems you have to take an Economics approach; do the polar opposite of whatever the conventional wisdom is at the time - you can’t stand out in a group of thousands by doing exactly the same things as everyone else. </p>
<p>Funny thing was – Amherst was a top choice destination for DD until we actually visited, after which she declined to apply.</p>
<p>When I was in high school I went out on a date once with a guy who later attended Amherst, I do believe. Years later I went out on a date with a different guy who was an Amherst grad. Neither guy had the greatest sense of humor, or was especially nice for that matter. Must have been different folks on the admissions committee. Maybe the Chicken McNuggets admit is a good thing!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not to beat a dead horse, (but I will because of the magnitude of the impact of this one-liner), but I still don’t think it is funny enough to warrant an admission to a top university. This is why:</p>
<p>Anyone who has ever had scheduled surgery knows that typically the first thing on your mind when you resume consciousness is how unbelievably hungry you are (per the “nothing by mouth after midnight” rule), so the applicant’s reference to food is not remarkable. All of my children outgrew their desires for Chicken McNuggets, and in fact found them to be repulsive, by the time they were about 10 years old, so the fact that Chicken McNuggets were the first thing on this applicant’s conscious mind made me think s/he was rather immature, or might have a problem with junk food addiction. Neither of those impressions seems worthy of an Amherst admission.</p>
<p>I don’t think I am being over-analytical of the statement, because this appears to be exactly what the adcoms are doing: Analyzing each line of an applicant’s essay and drawing conclusions about the applicant from it. The statement just seemed incredibly banal to be highlighted as an example of what it takes to get into Amherst.</p>
<p>Bay, I disagree. I don’t think adcoms have time to truly analyze each line of an applicant’s essay, which is why when something is “different,” it jumps off the page and makes an impression. Hopefully, a favorable one.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Have no fear. With such a listing of achievement, your daughter will have her shares of offers, especially if she submitted a well-rounded list of applications ranging from safeties to high reaches. The reality is that some people measure success only by gaining acceptance at every school they apply to. As we know, or reasonably can assume, a student can only attend one school. a fact reflected in the yield numbers of schools such as Amherst and other highly selective LACs. </p>
<p>Another reality is that highly selective schools do accept angular and “all-star” students, and they do get a lot of the publicity. However, the same schools ALSO accept the kids who compiled a remarkable list of achievements on the way to do everything that is asked from them. When it comes to “boring well-rounded kids” I am afraid the definition has changed because today’s kids are much more than “bright and … average.” There is NOTHING average about near-perfect SAT scores and scoring 5s on a bunch of APs. </p>
<p>One expression I have used over the years on this forum is to “Trust the system.” While the brutal selection process is inescapable (with single digit admit rates) a student with an exemplary record WILL end up with a number of great choices. If we can trust the statistics published by NACAC, the overwhelming majority of students in this country attend their first or second choice. Even in the rarified air of CC, such statistics seem to hold true. </p>
<p>Fwiw, despite all the shots this community likes to take at the “selection process” almost accounts of parents of first-year students reveal how happy the kids are and how well they like the schools and … their peers. In a way, it seems that those much maligned adcoms do pretty darn well in selecting classes of students, even if they have to annoy and irritate 80 to 90 percent of all families. </p>
<p>It sounds simplistic, but in the end, it is hard to deny that the system does work pretty well, and that we should trust the officers to do what it is best for their school, and by doing this ensure that the school maintains or improves his reputation and greatness.</p>
<p>^^^ OMG@Bay , that’s what you think tickeled thier funny bone? Just by context you can see, after a serious surgery, the student realized he/she had a chance to say something memorable, historic, ingenious, and realized it, yet felt silly that in the real world that did not happen and marvled at the banality of what was said, very funny indeed…</p>
<p>“One expression I have used over the years on this forum is to “Trust the system.” While the brutal selection process is inescapable (with single digit admit rates) a student with an exemplary record WILL end up with a number of great choices. If we can trust the statistics published by NACAC, the overwhelming majority of students in this country attend their first or second choice. Even in the rarified air of CC, such statistics seem to hold true.”</p>
<p>I have to agree. While there were a few initial surprises in our S’ odyssey last year, looking back on the experience it all seemed to make some sense in the end, taking all the CC wisdom into account, and he landed right where we thought and hoped he would. I think you can, in extreme cases, just be unlucky, but with a balanced approach I’ll bet things work out well nearly all the time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Bay, count me in the group of people who did not “get” the nugget reference. However, it is not a banal insert. After all, how many students would decide to write such a line in an application sent to one of the most selective schools in the country. Fwiw, someone could easily conclude that the line was brilliant because of its simplicity and … impact. Obviously, the adcom noticed and that kid will be remembered in Mr. Parker’s office as the Chicken McNugget kid for a long time.</p>
<p>Mission accomplished!</p>