<p>I'm sure we have all seen chancing threads that end with an amazing internship working under the CEO of a Wall Street firm, or delivering the mayor's speeches to thousands of people. I'm also sure that the majority of these claims are often preceded by "my family is close friends with the mayor", or "my father, who is the CEO of xxx company". My question to you is: do colleges understand that certain, extremely difficult to attain positions are generally the result of family connections? I have seen that admissions offices do take factors such as location into consideration when determining what resources the student most likely had available to him, but do they also downplay internships/work experience when it is clearly in a family business or in a company that a family member happens to have a very high position in?</p>
<p>I think that colleges do take this into consideration. I remember a read a Q&A from the Princeton dean of admission in a newspaper. One of the questions was whether or not Princeton expects its students to have research experience before attending college. The dean said that even though research is looked at favorably, students who didn’t conduct research will not be penalized because most students simply do not have the opportunity. </p>
<p>If it is obvious a student got an opportunity from his parents, I do not think that the opportunity will be looked at as favorably as a student who had to work extremely hard to get noticed. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.</p>
<p>foolish: basically you’re asking if admissions offices are stupid enough to not recognize the benefits of privilege and wealth differentials in their applicants.</p>
<p>I would tend to think they aren’t so dense and easily fooled. Do you think otherwise?</p>
<p>Well, it’s not always so blatantly obvious. </p>
<p>Consider this situation: Person A and Person B are both of the same income bracket and have no noticeable different in privileges. However, unbeknownst to admissions offices, Person A’s family has strong ties to the mayor while Person B has no such luck. Through these connections, Person A’s parents secure him an internship working for a council member. At the same time, Person B must go through a rigorous interview and screening process that requires recommendations, school records, etc. just for the chance to possibly get the same internship. Through his great records and recommendations, Person B does get the internship. However, while Person A had to do nothing more than ask for the position, Person B had to spend hours preparing his/her resume and had no guarantee that his/her effort would even pay off.</p>
<p>What I am trying to show here is that although two people may end up with the same position, colleges truly do not know what each person had to do in order to get the position. I doubt that they would know that a certain person has certain familial ties, as income and location are often inconclusive predictors of this type of opportunity. </p>
<p>I realize that I have strayed from the original purpose of the thread, but am I correct in saying that an admissions office would not be able to differentiate between the two situations without actually asking how each person earned/got the position?</p>