<p>"Then, on the other hand, allow me to return the favor of a comment about College Confidential. While it is TOO LATE for your friend to learn anything from CC, she would have been one of the best candidates to learn a few things when starting the process. Had she read the COUNTLESS threads on writing an essay, she might have avoided sending "that" essay to her schools."</p>
<p>Or she would have applied to schools that better fit her to begin with.</p>
<p>
[quote]
We have students every year who get into Ivies and other top schools taking only 2 APs per year.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>People from other regions may not appreciate that, relatively speaking, Massachussetts is not particularly "AP-crazy". The state public schools have a tradition of "honors" courses that predate the AP fad.</p>
<p>If I recall, the "honors" and "AP" courses at my daughter's high school carried the same weighting for weighted GPA calculations...a weighting system based on the UMASS recommendations.</p>
<p>Gawker has chimed in....</p>
<p>The comments there are more succinct and a bit more snarky but generally follow the flow of the commentary here.</p>
<p>I have to agree with those who ask "what were the parents thinking?" by allowing their children to participate. I would have held even the NYTimes suspect if they had asked my child for an interview.</p>
<p>Elleneast:</p>
<p>I would say that there is some seriously funny stuff on that blog entry, but I've reformed. I'm kindler and gentler and now believe it is just mean to make fun of a NY Times expose on the challenges of being rich, smart, and pretty in Newton. And besides, the essay was really pretty good.</p>
<p>Interested, you are such a softie!</p>
<p>Gawker is a daily read and often makes me laugh - but I wouldn't want to be in one of their entries and bare the brunt of the comments. </p>
<p>Every article on the trials and tribulations of upper or upper middle class life is going to end up this way - a snark fest. These young girls have a lot to learn and it is certainly alright to say so. I suspect that they are in shock at the response to what they thought would be a pretty cool experience....being featured in the NYTimes.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Gawker is a daily read and often makes me laugh - but I wouldn't want to be in one of their entries and bare the brunt of the comments.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I thought that this comment was hilariou....er...I mean really uncalled for:</p>
<p>"Charlie Rangel is right. We need a draft soooooooo badly it isn't even funny. If there's any justice in the world Esther will find herself shacked up with some homeschooled Iraq vet from Kentucky who suffers from PTSD and a rabid hatred of "book learnin'"."</p>
<p>^awesome^ but soooooo mean.</p>
<p>Interested, are you the guy who sat next to me in English class senior year and got me into trouble by making me laugh
all of the time?</p>
<p>Oh, wait - I married him.</p>
<p>Several of the comments here about Newton North, Esther and her friends are not only mean-spirited, but they reveal a basic ignorance about how colleges look at students from a specific high school. Colleges routinely rank applicants from the same high school first before comparing them to others. This places all but the top Newton North students at a disadvantage to top students at less competitive high schools around the country (including those in "AP" classes) who apply to the top eastern schools. If Esther failed to be admitted to Williams or Amherst, it probably has more to do with the caliber of the other students at her high school who applied and the location of her high school, than with the caliber of her essay.</p>
<p>
[quote]
To this day, I think the best college essay I've ever read on CC was a story about an afternoon of taking photographs at an anti-war rally in the streets of NYC. Just a stream-of-consciousness type recounting of the afternoon, moving through the crowed with flashes of imagery. No thesis, no conclusions, but an essay that left the distinct impression of an interesting kid.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Haha, I-Dad. I'd have to agree that the essays of IlCapo turned out pretty good. However, how can we forget the extensive and collaborative effort of dozens of members in showing the ...way. This said, I think that the account of a day of protest the Republican National Convention was one of the essays that needed the fewer revisions. It was simple and powerful, and it also worked nicely for a student with extensive ECs in art, as it pointed out the talent of an aspiring photographer in action. Obviously, it was also memorable. :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Several of the comments here about Newton North, Esther and her friends are not only mean-spirited, but they reveal a basic ignorance about how colleges look at students from a specific high school. Colleges routinely rank applicants from the same high school first before comparing them to others. This places all but the top Newton North students at a disadvantage to top students at less competitive high schools around the country (including those in "AP" classes) who apply to the top eastern schools. If Esther failed to be admitted to Williams or Amherst, it probably has more to do with the caliber of the other students at her high school who applied and the location of her high school, than with the caliber of her essay.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So basic ignorance it is! Thank you for setting the record straight, and sending us to the bookshelves to quickly reread our dust-laden copies of The Gatekeepers. Or should we try to locate a bootlegged copy of Opal Mehta's journey?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Or should we try to locate a bootlegged copy of Opal Metha's journey?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hah. My daughter bought a bootlegged copy from a bookseller when she was in India. She said it was good, but reminded her of something else she had read!</p>
<p>
[quote]
If Esther failed to be admitted to Williams or Amherst, it probably has more to do with the caliber of the other students at her high school who applied and the location of her high school, than with the caliber of her essay.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, I would bet that Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury all accepted at least one tipped athlete each from much farther down the Newton North class rank listing.</p>
<p>Interesteddad-</p>
<p>You might be right about the lower-ranked athlete, but I would guess that he or she might just as well have come from a school other than Newton North.</p>
<p>Well reading those Gawker comments, I definitely feel a weight lifted off my own shoulders as I don't think it will be my comments, if any, which will send the girl in question off the deep end, as was suggested here. :)
(Not being sarcastic.)</p>
<p>I just came upon this thread and my mouth is hanging open. For heaven's sake, stop it! </p>
<p>I read the print version of the NYT article (sans essay) and wondered if Esther, who came across to me as an intelligent, thoughtful, and sincerely religious girl, would take a hit in the admissions process for not following the conventional wisdom : taking as many AP's as possible irrespective of interest and time demands that might make it impossible for her to pursue her faith-based community service, and of course, because she didn't avail herself of SAT tutoring and ended up with excellent but not stellar scores. I was glad to see that she was accepted at Smith and Centre, colleges that could serve her intellectual and social proclivities well. And I must add that at the crest of the baby boomlet, in a year of strange and unpredictable admissions results, it is difficult to know to what rejection from Williams should be attributed.</p>
<p>What is bothering me here is what seems to be the underlying assumption that the admissions packet, the constellation of AP's and scores, and the tone of the perhaps ill-advised Kentucky essay, somehow sum up the true essence of the applicant; that the admissions committee here, God-like, could see into Esther's soul through this partially-formed young person's application packet; and that she was correctly found wanting as a human being and therefore justifiably rejected both as a student and a person.</p>
<p>Come on, CC grown-ups! This is a 17 year old girl who, as depicted, has fine relationships with her family, friends, and teachers; studies hard; and does a lot of community service work consistent with her faith. She was used as part of an article the thrust of which was to show that even excellent female students feel pressure to be perfect in every way. Why she is being reformulated as an arrogant, rich, self-important straw-girl who deserves to be rejected and reviled is beyond me. What gushing artery has this article struck?</p>
<p>This latter might be interesting to explore, if we could do it without trashing each other.</p>
<p>CCsurfer, you expressed my feelings exactly.<br>
I thought the essay did not showcase the many qualities that Esther clearly has. To that extent, Idad and Xiggi are absolute right. I thought she was too negative about Kentucky (a state I have not visited and have no opinion about), not realizing perhaps, that the slowness of life there is her own: she only visits presumably when she is not in school, and that the more pressured pace in Newton similarly is due in no small part to her being in school there.
But while she came across as naive and perhaps ill-informed about Kentucky, she did not come across as someone who thought the world owed her anything.<br>
The article, which adcoms obviously did not have available to them, paints a much more go-getting personality, a young person who is sincere in her faith and committed to doing community service, and who enjoys reading. To me, she came across as a rather attractive if somewhat unformed 17 year old. In fact, she reminds me of myself at her age.
I remember reading Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and pondering the meaning of life and wishing to plant roots somewhere, even as I was preparing to go off to college thousands of miles away from home. Thank goodness CC did not exist when I wrote my college essay!</p>
<p>could we please let marite have the last word in this discussion, please? before it gets any nastier?</p>
<p>I agree that many kids have a wealth of interesting stories to tell buried in their ECs and other passions (which may not rise to the level of an EC, but are strong, deep and life-changing nonetheless).</p>
<p>As I mentioned previously, to me, it seemed like Esther had several interesting threads in her life that she could have woven into a wonderful essay that expressed who SHE is. A teacher or someone <em>who knows her well</em> could have helped her recognize and seize that opportunity. </p>
<p>Whether this would have helped in the admission process is irrelevant. It just would have made for a stronger, truer piece of writing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For heaven's sake, stop it!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>May I possibly underscore that the remarks that offended a few posters were part of the early goings of this thread. On the other hand, what keeps coming up are mostly posts asking for the offensive "piling on" to stop. </p>
<p>Astute readers will have few problems making the distinction between the various types of posts in this thread. My take is that many posters who cried wolf did not really read the posts carefully. </p>
<p>Would one of the offended party please identify the LAST post that was deemed insulting to the 17 year old? </p>
<p>But who's keeping score anyway!</p>
<p>How about 226?</p>