@NateandAllisMom In Seattle, a lot of the protesting for BLM was done in Cap Hill/Downtown. Campus may have had protests, but not like you would see on TV (that’s Cap Hill). UW is similar to our PNW version of Berkeley. There are always some sort of gathering on campus, but I always thought it made our campus culture. Many times, I’d just walk past the protest.
@MorseLewis I understand. If your son hasn’t been exposed to big cities broadly and a big campus, UW may not be a good fit for him. Our friends live in San Francisco but they know their son would do much better on a small campus and smaller class sizes. They chose to apply to smaller colleges vs. UCs for their son and that’s also a great decision. UW class sizes for GE classes can be big. My Gen Chem lecture hall had 350-400 people. Psych 101 lectures in Kane Hall had probably 700+ people. I never thought it was bad at all but I was fine with a lot of people around me and I made sure to go the help center and office hours. For me, I actually benefited from the larger class sizes because the curve always helped me get an A. Big sad when I got into our smaller 50-60 person department engineering class. LOL. I’m much more aware of mental health now and I think if my kid would not thrive in a bigger setting, I’d encourage him to go to a smaller campus. In the past, I know I wouldn’t have taken that into account.
Right, we stayed in Capitol Hill on our first trip, so we know the area. I think it was just those powerful images of violence on tv when CHOP was breaking down that worried him, but they went back and saw it again recently. Seattle U neighborhood was the part they weren’t sure about. U Dub if he got off the WL, I think he would be totally great with that area/campus.
UDub is definitely big and might be a struggle for a shy student. Does he know anyone else attending? Hopefully he has some good options and will make the best choice for himself. Good luck!!
Wow that is very disturbing indeed. We just watched varsity blues, the college admissions scandal struck on Netflix. Crazy stuff and a really good distraction right now!
Hopefully AOs will see the lie because she can’t speak to any experience as a Native American. S21 has a friend who is half Native American and half Mexican and grew up on a reservation, there is no way a fake Native American will seem legit compared to a kid like this.
I do alumni interviews for my college (one with a very low acceptance rate), and I believe I have interviewed two candidates who lied to me. The first made a claim I knew to be untrue because I happened to have specialized knowledge in that obscure field. He had Googled me, but nothing in my background would indicate I would have such knowledge. The second claimed to have been in love with the school since childhood and had saved up her entire life to tour it; it later became clear she had no awareness of a very obvious feature of the school, so obvious it is difficult to believe she had visited it at all. Both candidates were unusually competitive. My husband also does interviews for a different low-acceptance college, and he had a candidate who said she was living in an unusually difficult financial circumstance, yet said/did things that seemed to contrary to that circumstance.
In all instances we tried not to come to definitive conclusions - we just passed on what we observed in our reports.
All three candidates were rejected, though the vast majority of candidates are rejected anyways.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Colleges and universities are pretty sophisticated with their BS detectors and it’s not like she was trying to scam some scholarship dedicated to Native American students or some such.
Honestly the bigger problem in my mind are all the high-priced consultants who write and massage admissions essays for affluent students. Or, for that matter, parents who write them. That is equally or more dishonest.
My daughter never even let me read hers. So I’m not sure what she wrote about. I did ask her to at least have her AP English teacher read and edit them which I assume happened but I’m not even positive about that. She did get into every school she applied to, and into the Honors Colleges at all the schools that offered them. So she must have known what she was doing and I probably just would have messed things up!
It’s hard to have faith that an AO could find fake ECs and life stories when Jessica Krug passed as an African American professor at GWU, earned a Phd from U of Wisconsin, was awarded $45k Fulbright, and was supported by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for over a decade. She was only caught because she switched from saying she was Algerian to Puerto Rican.
Pretending to be a protected minority could definitely have an impact, especially to the kids trying to compete from the same high school. She applied to UVA, I’ll report back if she gets in. It’s so disgusting.
I hope you are right and I hope she gets caught, but I’m not optimistic. The family has a way of always gaming things to their benefit, I’ve seen it before.
I would say in the essays and the complete app. I read my sons essays and those of some of his friends and If I didn’t know them, I would know they are URM by the things they wrote.
Although maybe your are right and they just don’t bother since Rick Singer would also check the URM box for his clients.
IMO claiming to be part of a tribe would be the easiest of a the URM categories to debunk. You can’t just take a DNA test and say Hey I’m Cherokee. I mean, I guess you can, but I think AOs would be very knowledgeable about it. So I’d say your chances are good to see her get caught.
Does an AO ask for proof? I doubt it. When would that even happen in the process? I know people like to say that AO’s have these great BS detectors and can see through everything, but that can’t possibly be true. This girls has decent grades, but mediocre rigor and no scores. Also, some athletics but no significant leadership or other ECs. It will be very interesting to see where she gets in.
I think I remember reading something years ago about tribes asking universities to be more vigilant about this kind of fraud. They could also ask because she could be entitled to benefits/scholarships she might not know about. Maybe they won’t ask at all, who knows.
Totally! We are sitting now at Charlottesville airport after visiting the gorgeous UVA campus. We had a student through a friend of ours take us around and she was awesome and even she knew all about the legendary @Dean_J ! What a treasure UVA has in her and the transparency is second to none. Great visit here although ofc as usual with our luck bad weather and delayed flights!
