<p>I love the new list. It would look like a balanced list for just about any applicant, but is especially good viewed in the context of what yanimated has shared about the D's wants and needs. </p>
<p>yanimated, I hope that your D is less worried with this newer list.</p>
<p>btw, I think "yanimated" is another of cc's classic and great screen names, right up there with ellenemope, momnipotent, et al.</p>
<p>The new list does look nbetter - but, wow, 14 applications! Good luck on the ED.</p>
<p>Since Vandy has come up (I'm always glad to hear that CC kids are considering it) I thought I'd post a bit of newish info. Here's a link to the 2010 student profile:
<a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/admissions/07VUFromHere.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.vanderbilt.edu/admissions/07VUFromHere.pdf</a>
It shows a somewhat different Vanderbilt than its reputation as a Southern rich kids' school would have it. There's some nice geographic as well as racial/ethnic diversity (24 percent of the freshman class are from URM categories, including 111 Asian students, who constitute 7 percent of the class). It's a need-blind school, and sixty percent of undergrads receive financial aid. Some might interpret that to mean that 40 percent of the kids are indeed rich - but many are kids from middle class families who don't qualify for need-based aid but aren't rich, either.</p>
<p>For the OP's daughter - the political science and economics departments are highly regarded (I don't know about international relations); no Chinese or Arabic major, though there is an East Asian studies major, a Chinese minor, and a very active, well-connected study abroad program.</p>
<p>I think the admissions committee would find the OP's daughter's ECs very compelling. There's a new admissions director and a major commitment to increasing ethnic and geographic diversity, both of which this student could offer in addition to her other accomplishments and talents. The profile does show that Vandy has become increasingly selective. The 25/75 SAT breakdown is 640-730 CR, 660-740 M, and 630-720 Writing (29-32 ACT). The admit rate last year was 33.7 percent, and 33.8 percent of the class were ED admits. </p>
<p>I love Nashville, which is a much more diverse community than the one I live in. Davidson County, where Nashville is located, actually voted democratic in 2004, and a recent poll found Vandy evenly divided between liberals and conservatives. We were enthusiastically sold after our first visit on both university and town.</p>
<p>Yanimated--
My son is a senior at Emory majoring in Middle Eastern Studies--he has taken a good number of courses in Arabic and Hebrew and is now fluent in both languages (has also taken semesters abroad in the middle east). If you want any information, just pm me , so we don't hijack the thread. He loves Emory and loves Atlanta.</p>
<p>On a related note: earlier in the thread someone said that Garfield had 44 valdictorians last year because they used unweighted GPAs for class rank. Is anyone else bothered by this? A student could take the most difficult courses available, get one B, and be ranked 50th in the class while those who take the easy way out could be joint valdictorians. And what value does being "number one" have when there are 44 of them?</p>
<p>Most knowledgeable colleges will be aware of this and go right to the transcripts, but some are extremely stats oriented. For instance, Dickinson offers merit aid to students who score over 1360 on their SATS AND who are in the top 10% of their class. They do not budge on this, even if you graduate from a class of ten (making only the valdictorian the top 10%) or have your class rank based on unweighted GPAs or come from a school that refuses to rank its students. Likewise, certain honor colleges require a top 10% class standing. What if yanimated's daughter is rejected from some of her schools because it appears that she has not done nearly as well as her classmates? </p>
<p>Thoughts? I know this really should be another thread, but since the topic was brought up here, I decided it might be appropriate.</p>
<p>momwaiting.... some schools are numbers-driven... that's just the way it goes. I know kids who were rejected from U Michigan (OOS) who ended up at schools which are statistically much harder to get into than Michigan.... but if you're applying from the NY Metro area where there are thousands of Michigan applicants, you need to know what you need to be a viable candidate.... the adcoms aren't going to be sitting around pondering why you took photography and band junior and senior year instead of US History and English, and what a B- in Mrs. Potter's Calculus class really means given that everyone knows that she's the hardest grader in the school.</p>
<p>Colleges are knowledable about a variety of HS's, and kids need to do their due diligence when it comes to colleges. Some are going to admit by the numbers; some are going to be very forgiving on the numbers if you represent a strategic admit for the school; some are willing to relax certain requirements but are pretty rigid on others.</p>
<p>There was a mom posting last year who was livid that her son was admitted to their Flagship State U's college of Arts and Sciences (where he did not apply) and was rejected from their engineering school (his number one choice) to which he did apply. On further probing from the sleuths at CC we determined that: Kid hadn't taken the required math and science classes; kid had not performed at a very high level on the ones he had taken; GC had assumed that because the kids gpa and composite scores were in the top 25% of the overall U's admits, he'd be a shoe-in at the engineering school.</p>
<p>hey, they get to make the rules and engineering is tough enough for kids who have taken all the pre-req's, and done well, let alone for a kid who opted out of senior year math and advanced science courses to pursue other interests in HS. Nothing wrong with that.... but woe to the kid who applies willy-nilly without reading the fine print.</p>
<p>I also applaud the additions to her list.
Does UW have rolling admissions? That was going to be my suggestion as a possible solution, with a rolling admit to her safety in hand, having a list that is a little top heavy begins to make more sense. The only problem with that approach (for anyone out there "listening") is if she had an overwhelming desire to go east or to go to a smaller school, or any strong preference that the rolling admit school glaringly lacked. We are fortunate here in the South that there are some good small LACs that have rolling admissions.</p>
<p>I dont know which schools are numbers driven- perhaps large schools in other states?
I know the UW is NOT numbers driven- they look at every transcript- same wReed.
This how I see it- neither one of my daughters schools weight- not my older daughters private prep and not Garfield an "inner city" public
I feel that a student who works hard in their classes and goes above and beyond the minimum expected deserves an A. Whether that is in auto shop or APUSH or algebra based physics.
I also think that they have as much right to be acknowledged as getting straight As for four years as someone taking AP classes.
Garfield has students who have come up through the districts advanced placement program- who have parents who are highly degreed- professionals, and have been able to provide a lot of opportunities. Garfield also has students more like my daughter and her friends, whose parents are less educated, who didn't attend the APP program, and who may have had less challenging classes in elementary and middle school, because that was all that was available, but at Garfield they attempt perhaps honors and one or two AP classes rather than 4, then there are students, whose parents are afraid of the rumoured amount of work in AP, and have their kids take the regular classes, or students for whom the regular classes even in senior year are plenty challenging.
Colleges will look at their transcripts and see how well prepared they are.
If they are applying to colleges that don't have time- then those colleges are probably instate schools- which the students in the first group are not even going to generally be applying for.</p>
<p>BUt... since the UW has in the past indeed BEEN #s driven, this is probably the circumstance when local students with higher GPAs have been turned away- I had forgotten that this is a very recent switch.</p>
<p>Yanimated, As a "nominally chinese" father (who learned chinese at his university days), whose D has just gone through the process the past year, I wish your D the best of luck. Much of the posters here mean well and have had extensive experience in the college admission process. Nontheless, you need to keep in mind that few of them are Asians, and rarer still are those who understand "non-traditional" Asian families. </p>
<p>Many of the elite colleges in this country work through the first batch of their applications by a scoring system that automatically adds a "negative number" to an Asian applicant, irrespective of the individual's degree of "Asian-ness". (There had been hilarious mistakes where whites bearing Asian-sounding names got eliminated in the first round by this process). Thus, it is important to consider elite schools where your D's stats will be sufficiently strong to pass the first round where her strengths in EC's can then be evaluated. Again, the very best of luck.</p>
<p>padad, that huge chip on your shoulder must make walking around pretty tough.</p>
<p>?????????????????</p>
<p>Wow Stickershock, how do you go through your day being so hostile?</p>
<p>I dont' understand any of that either
I don't know enough about elite admissions to know what their sorting process is-
But I also haven't read all the admission type books that others have- I don't really see where you got the idea padad had a chip on his shoulder- I think he was just relating his viewpoint in a way that the OP could take it or leave it.
I know we all have varying levels of credibility- and while those of us who have been debating here for years- have a better idea of whose opinion is helpful, it must also be pretty confusing for those who haven't reached that level of "experience" yet.</p>
<p>I hope the Op isn't scared away by our intensity of posting everyday- it can really be a helpful and supportive place- & you can only read if you want to :)</p>
<p>I had never heard of the "negative number" first-cut for Asian students at elites, as padad mentioned. But isn't it relatively well-known that being Asian can hurt at the elites because they feel they have more than they "need?" I believe the OP subscribes to that theory, as he mentioned in one of his posts. It may not be right, one may like it or not, but that is how it seems to be. So I don't know how we can accuse padad of having a chip on his shoulder.</p>
<p>I'd like to see the proof/documentation for the "negative number for Asians" idea. I can't imagine that colleges would do that, especially since it smacks of racism and would open them up to enormous law suits. I can see why admissions officers would not consider Asians to be URMs - because they are not - but to penalize them for their ethnicity? I think not. </p>
<p>I have heard on this board that it "hurts" to be Asian, but, when really, there's simply no advantage. It's the same as being a white female: you are qualified, but they might pass you over for also qualified African-American males or Latinas (or whatever) to make a more diverse class.</p>
<p>I absolutely do not believe Padad's obviously specious "negative number" claim and I would challenge him to find any evidence whatsoever to support it. And I think it is racist and inflamatory for him to make that claim.</p>
<p>I don't believe the "negative number" idea, either. And I've expressed skepticism in recent threads that ethnic Asian kids are treated any differently that similarly situated "white" kids (i.e., non-football players, non-billionaires).</p>
<p>That said, I think this thread illustrates the persistence of some subtle cultural biases that may work against some ethnic Chinese kids. At the beginning of the thread, a number of posters reacted negatively to the OP's description of his daughter's extracurricular activities. They cautioned her not to mention that she had been working with her mother, lest colleges see that as lack of initiative and leadership, and going along with artificial projects set up by her parents. The OP, however, saw her involvement with her mother as laudatory, and a selling point -- not only did she show loyalty and realism, but she worked harder and more creatively than she would have in any alternative job.</p>
<p>I wouldn't want to belabor the point too much, but this looks a lot like a classic cultural conflict. WASP hero narratives tend to lionize those who overcome their parents' limitations, reject what has been programmed for them, forge their own way. (Even better, in the case of many Horatio Alger protagonists, they start out with no parents at all.) Hero narratives from a Confucian society are noticeably different. Heroes support their parents, work together with them to strengthen the family. If they overcome their parents, they do so by continuing in the same direction their forebears were already headed, and building on what came before. Perfecting what has already been started has more value than starting something new.</p>
<p>Of course, in the real world neither group fails to see what's good in each others' values. Independence and filial piety are not mutually exclusive; nor are innovation and apprenticeship, leadership and training. But I suspect that from family to family the way we tell our own stories and express our aspirations differs in subtle ways like these. Those differences have a lot to do with the Myth of the Controlling Asian Parent as well as the Myth of the Undisciplined White Kid Who Was Less Qualified.</p>
<p>In the new book by WSJ writer Golden, adcoms admit Asians need 50 points higher than white kids to be equal candidates.</p>
<p>Although I have not read Golden's book, I thought it said that Asians need 50 points higher than the super-wealthy whites and the famous. The emphasis of the book is on privilege - "buying" one's way into an elite university - and most of us here, whether white or Asian or any other heritage, are not in that class.</p>
<p>Doesn't he also say that the ones who are being squeezed the most are the middle class students? </p>
<p>(Please note, I'm paraphrasing from what I've heard as well as second hand sources about the book. I don't know any of the above as fact.)</p>
<p>I also have not read the book. In the excerpt I read, he calls Asians the "new jews", saying that top schools discriminate against them as they did jews in the past. This jibes with what I saw in terms of college acceptances at one of the most competitive high schools in the Country, the bar seems higher for Asians. I don't think he was comparing them to the wealthy.</p>