<p>Poetgirl: How can you write that the blogger was “slaughtered” in the admissions game? Are you out of your mind? Did you read the list of schools to which she was accepted? (UCLA, UC- Irvine) What - do you have CC on the brain?</p>
<p>Her writing is okay - but I think the problem is that her posts do not sound very genuine Additionally, the attitude in her first post was extremely negative, making her sound almost emo- especially in congruence with the video.</p>
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<h1>1, not all top students apply to Universities. #2, SAT 75th% for MIT is 2320. 75th% for Pomona, also 2320.</h1>
<p>iliekturtles – I thought that the acceptance rate at Pomona was probably about 16%, I wasn’t sure, that doesn’t surprise me. That is a 1 in 6 chance of being accepted, in my opinion those are difficult odds.</p>
<p>The relationship between the odds of getting into Pomona and the odds of getting into Stanford is completely irrelevant. I don’t care if it is 10 times harder to get into Stanford than Pomona. It is absolutely immaterial. A one in six chance makes it very difficult to get in.</p>
<p>@glido…yes. I’m clearly out of my mind. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Pomona isn’t a “safety” – it wasn’t even in that category a decade ago when my son was applying to colleges. It is on par with Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, etc. in terms of selectivity. Maybe easier to get into than an Ivy, but there is no set of stats that would guarantee admission – especially as compared to Stanford, with can be quirky in their admissions decisions and has a particularly strong athletic recruitment program. I am sure there are plenty of Stanford admitted students each year who get turned down by Pomona. </p>
<p>The more interesting change is Pitzer – back when my son was applying to colleges, Pitzer definitely was a safety for him – it is amazing how much more selective Pitzer has gotten over the years. (Pitzer might still be a safety for the very top students, but it is a match at best for most).</p>
<p>And anyone who thinks Pomona is a “safety” is an idiot. (5 minutes spent online checking the admission rate for the school would easily prove otherwise). There may be individuals who are actively recruited for various reasons, but in general the combination of strong stats + interesting EC’s makes the school a match for good candidates.</p>
<p>I must not have gotten the memo that says UCLA and UCSD are less than good schools .I think they are outstanding schools. Dont see how anyone could be disappointed going to these schools.</p>
<p>GA2012MOM:
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<p>Pomona takes 1/5th the class size of MIT. If the class of MIT applies to Pomona then there is > 90% chance that it will be accepted.</p>
<p>Can you say the same about class of Pomona?</p>
<p>poetgirl – you are fine.</p>
<p>Pomona and other top LAC’s have a more self-selecting applicant pool. ONLY high end students interested in top level academics apply there, precisely because the rest of the pack either hasn’t heard of them or is so blinded by their prestige hunt that it doesn’t occur to them to look into the academic offerings of small colleges. The Ivies, Stanford & MIT are deluged with apps from wannabes who have an inflated opinion of their own chances and mistakenly believe that if they simply apply to a whole bunch of schools it increases their odds of getting into at least one. (The blogger in question may or may not fall into that category – we don’t know).</p>
<p>But the top LAC’s don’t get any apps from the riff raff. No one applies to Pomona because they want to play on its football team (what top athlete wants to be a Sagehen?) – and no one applies simply to impress the neighbors. </p>
<p>Also, there are a lot FEWER spots open at Pomona than at schools like Stanford. Pomona admitted 992 student in the last admission cycle – Stanford admitted 2426. That means that there were 1,434 more open slots at Stanford than at Pomona.</p>
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<p>Not at all. There may be a high correlation between MIT admits and Harvey Mudd… but Pomona is a LAC looking for an entirely different metric.</p>
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<p>Check you inbox, maybe it is still there.</p>
<p>The stats of Pomona and Stanford students are very similar, and there is a lot of randomness in admissions, so can’t conclude too much there. However, the fact that she didn’t get into USC is much stronger evidence of weaker stats.</p>
<p>Re post 128: Are you saying that a Pomona applicant’s 2320 composite is automatically worth less than an MIT applicant’s 2320 composite? Why on earth would more than 90% of the MIT class be accepted to Pomona? The two schools accept students with different interests, preferences, and needs, but roughly the same academic credentials.</p>
<p>why is this news? stuff like this happens everywhere in the United States. Bright-Eyed students everywhere need to realize that it takes more than good stats and a cliched essay to get into the best institutions for higher learning in the world.</p>
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<p>So much more impressive to go to boarding school in the Swiss Alps and set your sights on achieving dental school, Turtles. Pomona can fend for itself; I’m sure it has its share of students equally as … special … as you.</p>
<p>wjb:
For comparison purposes you need to use Harvard instead of MIT for Pomona.
The student with 2320 at Pomona and that at Harvard will certainly be different otherwise the one at Pomona would have gone to Harvard.</p>
<p>Point of the statement was that it is possible that an applicant with 2320 SAT can be rejected at HMSPY but will guranteed to be accepted at Pomona.</p>
<p>That is why it is safety for the top students.</p>
<p>@hope2getrice–It’s news cuz the NYT decided to make it news, really. And, probably a large part of the reason they are doing these student blogs is to assist students in understanding just this exact point. But, mostly, kids this age do not read newspapers, in the traditional paper form at all anymore, and they are attempting to get an audience they lost a few years ago in the habit of going to thier site to read the news…So, it’s news because the New York Times (the gatekeeper of the media in this situation…communications 101) says it is news. Not because the blogger says it’s news. fwiw.</p>
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<p>But she did get into UCLA–which argues for very good stats. At our school, a person is much more likely to get into USC than UCLA…that’s what makes this all a head scratching puzzle.</p>
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<p>I don’t think the ability to be a deep or insightful thinker is valued as much as the ability and ambition to get yourself in a professional publication such as the NYT. </p>
<p>There was a girl whose main EC was newspaper writing who had her Harvard acceptance rescinded for plagiarism a few years back. (I forget her name, but she was discovered primarily because she sued her high school because they were going to make her a co-valedictorian instead of sole valedictorian. I think she was homeschooled and the lack of P.E. class boosted her average.) Anyway, even with the interjection of other people’s professional writing in her columns, I found them to be, in your words, “cliched, trite, and reflective of superficial thinking skills.” </p>
<p>We don’t know anything about the author of this blog. For all we know, she could have mediocre grades or scores. I think it is more likely that there was some other reason that this person was not accepted other than that an admissions read her NYT blog and didn’t like it. Or perhaps she just lost out because elite admissions is a crapshoot for outstanding candidates. My feeling is that if someone has published professionally, the admissions committee won’t be poring over this work to see if it truly is outstanding. If the grades and test scores are high, they will get a checkmark in that area. </p>
<p>Do you think anyone in Harvard admissions read that Kaavya girl’s book “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life” to see whether it was “cliched” or “trite”? It wasn’t exactly Hemingway (even though, again, several parts were plagiarized.) My feeling is admissions saw she scored a major bookdeal and decided she must be doing something right.</p>
<p>Both people’s work is easily accessible by google, and you guys are free to disagree with my assessment of their work.</p>