<p>There are prep schools in the Midwest. I know people who went to them.</p>
<p>Not that this has anything to do with its being a prep school. It seems pretty obvious that whoever did this was operating from a personal grudge OR thought that they were playing a clever prank. That can happen anywhere. This is just getting publicity because it is Horace Mann.</p>
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<p>Could be, but IMO…that’s a ton of energy/effort expended for what amounts to a tiny “payoff”. Especially considering the high risk of it backfiring on oneself in admissions and moreso if one’s caught.</p>
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<p>A clever prank would be something like setting up Mayor Bloomberg’s office so when he walks in, there’s nothing but super-sized big-gulp containers filled to the brim with soda assembled to look like his office furnishings or loosening all the screws on a principal’s/teacher’s desk so when he/she does the usual of dropping his/her bag on top of it, it collapses into pieces.* </p>
<p>What happened at Horace Mann is seriously weak in comparison.</p>
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<li>This actually happened at my HS sometime in the '80s according to folklore from teachers and alums who were there to see/hear about it.</li>
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<p>okay lets rephrase that - rural midwest. In 57 years I’ve never met anyone except a friend from Vermont who went to a prep school that is from here.</p>
<p>I guess I am confused how this became such a big deal if there was not an element of truth in the allegations. I would have thought if college admin office received letter, it would call HM, and if HM said no, that would be the end of it. I do know a few years back, the principal at a prestigous NJ public high admitted that he did not put suspensions on school report, and that created issues. I get it that HM indicated that the allegations were completely false, but it seems strange to me.</p>
<p>And here I thought we might have gone to the same school, located in Mickleham, near Dorking. (That is actually the official address.) :)</p>
<p>Kayf, I think it is a big deal only within the Horace Mann community.</p>
<p>Sabotaging another student means there is a lot of anger there. It seems to me that a college would have to ignore an anonymous letter completely. A person always should have the right to face an accuser (not sure what the incident was but accused of cheating perhaps?). Admissions doesn’t have the time to investigate nor should they. i haven’t been an admissions officer but if I were I would chalk it up to sour grapes or a vendetta.</p>
<p>Iadorking, I agree likely anger there, but we don’t know WHY the anger. We have certainly seen documented situations that would be relevant.</p>
<p>“IMO…that’s a ton of energy/effort expended for what amounts to a tiny “payoff”.”</p>
<p>How is it a ton of energy/effort to send a letter to 5 or 10 universities? And how is it a tiny payoff to see somebody you hate get the biggest disappointment of his/her life? In teenage terms, this is as serious as a stroke.</p>
<p>Do you know that it is another student?</p>
<p>Nope. I’m arguing that someone who did this wouldn’t necessarily be trying to improve their own chances. Could be anybody.</p>
<p>How would we feel if the letter in question said “He raped me.” And it was true.</p>
<p>Consolation – agreed. But what if letter even said, someone else took his SATs for him, and college went back and saw anomolies. </p>
<p>Zooser, I dont think anyone knows who it was, which raises even more interesting questions. Could it be a teacher, who knew the kid cheated?</p>
<p>"A clever prank would be something like setting up Mayor Bloomberg’s office so when he walks in, there’s nothing but super-sized big-gulp containers filled to the brim with soda assembled to look like his office furnishings or loosening all the screws on a principal’s/teacher’s desk so when he/she does the usual of dropping his/her bag on top of it, it collapses into pieces.* "</p>
<p>How old are we to think this is clever? Five years old? </p>
<p>And once again, cobrat, this thread isn’t about Stuyvesant. No one cares about Stuyvesant except you.</p>
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<p>It’s not only the matter of writing a convincing anonymous letter, but also planning and writing it in a way which conceals the writer’s identity within the student body as much as possible…especially one as small as Horace Mann’s or even larger student bodies like the ones at my HS.</p>
<p>Considering all of the other stuff going on in most Horace Mann students’ life such as academic coursework, ECs, college applications, SAT prep, outside activities, tutors(if needed), etc…it is a ton of added energy/work for a dubious and tiny return. </p>
<p>And there’s much downside from negative consequences…like getting caught and/or having the anonymous letter boomerang so the entire senior class’ admissions chances are negatively impacted…including the student perpetuating this stunt. </p>
<p>IMO, too much effort exerted for too little return…and a dubious one at that. </p>
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<p>PG,</p>
<p>Might I recommend taking a chill pill accompanied by a glass or few of l’eau d’humor. :)</p>
<p>"Considering all of the other stuff going on in most Horace Mann students’ life such as academic coursework, ECs, college applications, SAT prep, outside activities, tutors(if needed), etc…it is a ton of added energy/work for a dubious and tiny return. "</p>
<p>Gosh, like they are so different from high schoolers everywhere! They have coursework, ECs, college apps, SAT prep, etc. Imagine that! Pardon me while my eyes roll out of my head at the pretentiousness of it all.</p>
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<p>The academic-level, rigor, and quantity of workload is likely to be greater than even your average well-off American K-12 high school public or private.</p>
<p>It’s a reason why my Mississippi relatives opted to send one of their sons to a comparable NE boarding school after finding the local public & private high schools to be exceedingly below-par academically for him.</p>
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<p>I don’t think he was saying students at other schools don’t have the same load. He was just describing the load at HM.
I wouldn’t read any more into the sentence. </p>
<p>I also agree. If a student has all this work, why bother with the letters if this is about college admissions? Far better to put the energy into one’s own work. </p>
<p>Like Hanna and iadorking,I think here’s more to this than just trying to get into the Ivies. This is personal aimed at a particular student.</p>
<p>Right, which is why it’s not newsworthy. I guess for some reason we are supposed to care more about it because it’s Horace Mann rather than Average Public High, but I can’t figure out why. These schools aren’t as important to other people as their attendees seem to think.</p>
<p>For me, the story plays on the fears of parents who already have a sense of the sometimes capriciousness of the college admissions system, whereby aspects of the high school experience outside the child’s control can impact his chances.</p>
<p>Talked to a parent recently whose son had straight A’s all through high school except for one B in physics. According to an MIT coach, MIT admissions was balking on her son as an athletic recruit because of that one B in science. </p>
<p>Now I can’t confirm this person’s story or whether the coach is using that as an excuse or not, but it did bring to mind one of our high school’s own beloved physics teachers. This man brags that his AP Physics C class will be the hardest class the students will ever take in their lives, and in fact he has had students who went on to MIT tell him that even at that university, they never had a harder class than his. So student A has an ordinary high school AP physics teacher and earns an A. Student B has this nut, and gets a B and the B costs him admissions to MIT. Totally random.</p>
<p>I was thinking of this whole issue recently because at our back to school night, D’s physics teacher, who is not the same guy, nevertheless claimed that he is confident there is not one Physics 1 class taught in any high school in the US that covers more material than his. Again, may be true but probably isn’t, but still suggests his class is probably a good bit harder than the sections taught by other teachers there. D is not a STEM kind of kid, so it’s unfortunate she has to have the most comprehensive class in our high school, if not the country LOL, while her peers get a regular old class. Random, but the pace of instruction could negatively impact her GPA.</p>
<p>In this case, the accused student could be a wonderful, nice, humble, and completely innocent-of-wrong doing kid but who sparked jealous in another, perhaps less fortunate student. Bad luck, random.</p>
<p>I can easily imagine situations in which other students (or others) know negative things about an applicant that may not appear in the application–indeed, I am aware of such situations, in which (apparently) the high school turned a blind eye to cheating. The difficulty is for the college–what to do with an anonymous allegation of this kind.</p>