Some high schools, like Stuyvesant, strongly suggest that student’s not taking an AP course in a subject take the SAT Subject Test at the end of each course. And if student’s cannot afford to take the test, the college office (through generous donations from the Parents’ Association) will pay for the cost of the test. Ditto with AP tests. That’s why student’s like my son and daughter ended up applying to college with 8 AP tests and 6 SAT Subject tests – and they were kind of at the middle-50% in terms of applying with lots of SAT Subject tests. Stuyvesant’s reasoning is that the more data-points you can provide an admissions committee, the better off you will be. And FWIW: Stuyvesant makes their policy very clear to Admissions Offices, so college’s understand why student’s are taking so many tests.
Except for Gibby’s exception, I concur with JHS. If I were hiring two people for a job – both meeting minimum criteria – the over achiever with an attitude of accumulating test scores and certifications (like counting coups) – vs. someone who sat on his condo complex’s board or played on a bowling league or was the volunteer girls HS basketball asst coach or played guitar at cafes part time – I can think of very few jobs where I’d want the former before I’d want the latter.
I think there is some strategy involved in putting together an application, and the OP asks an interesting question, whether to emphasize debate or music in hers. I think there are a few factors to consider, including:
- In which did you excel more? If you had a solo concert at Carnegie Hall, but were just a member of the debate team, emphasize music.
- Which one fits better into the story you’d like to tell of why the college should want to accept you? That is, which one better represents the traits that the college says it’s looking for?
- Which one better counteracts potential negative (or at least unhelpful) stereotypes about people like you? In the OP’s case, that’s probably debate (although plenty of Asian kids do debate).
- Which one shows more independence?
According to Kevin Lee’s LinkedIn profile he took 5 subject tests not 7 which I have seen many kids do (like gibby’s). I do agree that getting a 2400 on the SAT and 36 on the ACT is unnecessary although I know many kids feel compelled to validate an ACT score with an SAT score because there is still a lingering perception that the ACT is viewed less favorably than the the SAT. (Or perhaps he just took the tests because they came super easily to him and because he could, who’s to say?)
I, for one, am not going to dimiss him as test-obsessed or certainly not diminish his other accomplishments because he chose to take a bunch of tests (and get perfect scores). Just becoming a Grand Prize winner at Intel STS is a monumental feat in itself. As an Intel finalist, you have to survive a grueling round of interviews, not just in your research field, but on a wide range of subject matter as well in order to eventually be named a Grand Prize Winner. I just read up on his project in which he modeled heart arrhythmia using differential equations and may have come up with some truly life saving contributions to the field. He did not even compete with the project in quantum computing that he worked on at the Simons program before senior year but rather on one he had started a few years earlier. Before people are quick to dismiss him as “too Asian”, they should research his long list of academic and non-academic accomplishments. He was president of clubs, a third degree black belt, played sports such as basketball etc. The fact is, as near as I can tell, he has a genius intellect and is fairly well-rounded.
Update: I have been reading over Chance threads and I see that the majority or kids are now taking both the SAT and the ACT exams, In fact, I just read about a non-Asian kid who is about to take the SAT for the fifth time and the ACT for the second. In the current environment, I don’t concur with view that Lee having taken both the ACT and the SAT as well as a bunch of subject tests as any sort of red flag to admissions that he is an “effed up” Asian.
The fact is, the world needs more kids of his caliber whatever the color of his skin.
Falcon1, I didn’t call Lee an effed up Asian, and I didn’t really call the actual Lee anything. I’m sure the real Kevin Lee is a total winner. 100% of what I knew about him was the material in the post up-thread, and that didn’t have a good deal of what you are admiring (and it did list 7 SAT II scores – for someone who went to school thousands of miles from Stuyvesant). I said that the over-testing made me wonder about his values, and it does, but more information of the sort you provide could (and apparently did, in every case, ultimately) overcome whatever negative implication that testing created.
And, sorry, I understand that lots of kids now take both the SAT and the ACT. That’s to see if they can do better on one than the other, which is a relevant question for the overwhelming majority of kids interested in selective colleges. But when you have already gotten a 2400 (or a 36) on one, you’re not taking the other to see if you can do better. You’re bragging . . . about test scores. Ugh. (OK, maybe he was a National Merit Semifinalist and took the ACT first, but had to take the SAT, also, in order to get a National Merit Scholarship. Sure . . . )
Your last sentence was not related to everything that came before it? I guess I misinterpreted what you wrote then. My bad.
We don’t know the rationale of why he took both exams as you point out. He could have actually gotten a 36 ACT composite score but with an English score of 34 and a writing score of 6 for a combined English plus Writing score of 29 which is low for a school like Harvard and felt he needed a better showing so he took the SAT. We also don’t even know if he sent both scores to his schools but I imagine he would have since most kids who do well on both exams will proudly send both scores.
My beef is that there seems to be rush to judgement that certain races are test obsessed and that this overshadows whatever else they may have achieved (in this case something fairly monumental). In the case of the non-Asian kid I mentioned above, he’ll end up taking the SAT five times and the ACT twice but could choose to send just one or two scores to Harvard and they would never be the wiser. He could also send 2 or 3 subject tests but actually may have taken them each a couple of times. So Harvard could see only one SAT score and 2 or 3 subject test scores but he may have taken 13 exams to get those scores. Why is Kevin Lee “over-testing” with a head that may be “screwed on wrong” and this kid and others like him are not? The point is we don’t know what goes on behind the scenes but I see time and again the stereotypes being thrown around.
Another beef I have is the constant advice to all newcomers to “Apply Sideways” with a link to the infamous article. In essence, “be a good person” and “do what you love” even if is just being a couch potato (it’s actually in the article). What happens if some of the Asian kids just “love” doing things that are considered stereotypically Asian? The hypocrisy is in the advice that they should not play piano, tennis, etc or should hide the fact that they do these things (as per this and other threads) to avoid being stereotyped. What happened to applying sideways? It no longer applies? Frankly, I feel sorry for these kids.
Falcon, I was not saying he was an effed up Asian; I was saying that maybe he was an effed up person. There’s a difference. I was also suggesting, by the way, that Asians may have a better excuse for being effed up in that particular way (if they are in fact effed up in that particular way) than other groups, or at least than white kids. If it were a Jewish kid, my contempt would less qualified and a lot less restrained.
And I think that you are really misinterpreting the “Apply Sideways” slogan. As far as I can tell, there are plenty of Asian kids who do cliched Asian things because they love to do them (among other reasons), and what’s more lots of them are interesting, valuable people, and a considerable number of them are accepted at highly selective colleges, too. They establish their individuality in other ways, or maybe they don’t establish their individuality at all, but they establish their excellence. It certainly isn’t poison to be a piano- and tennis-playing STEM-focused Asian student. It’s only a problem if you are the 200th or 300th most attractive such student in a particular admissions pool, and by the time they get around to you they are looking for people who might be willing to major in anthropology.
@Falcon1 Sorry for the late reply – I don’t visit CC very often.
Don’t quote me on this, but I do believe he was waitlisted and later accepted to Harvard… which, ultimately, he chose to attend.
Anyways, as Falcon stated, it’s probably not fair to put Kevin in the typical “overachiever” category, given how his accolades go far beyond the norm. I understand @T26E4 and @JHS are speaking in generalities, but in a high-skills job, I would take Kevin over your typical high school volunteer basketball assistant coach any day.
To the OP: Sorry for taking over your thread.
Well, duh. But that wasn’t remotely the issue here. Basically, the issue is whether the fact that Harvard (and only Harvard) effectively hesitated before admitting someone who looks as great on paper as Lee is emblematic of discrimination against Asians.
I was speculating that maybe they hesitated because amidst all those great credentials there was a factor that made one think he might be something of a jerk. And Harvard wasn’t choosing between Lee and “your typical high school volunteer basketball assistant coach.” It was choosing among Lee and dozens of other candidates who were the biggest stars anyone in their communities knew. And ultimately Lee’s record stood out even in that company, so Harvard came to the same conclusion every other college had: There’s not really enough evidence to brand him a jerk, and anyway maybe he belongs in that small, elite group who are so smart and so productive that no one minds if they also happen to be jerks. In that light, his ethnic background may have helped him, not hurt him. People could say, “Oh, he’s just Chinese. You can’t blame him. His parents probably made him take all those tests.”
@JHS In saying that, I was responding more directly to T26’s post above that he/she would rarely take the “overachiever” over the “volunteer girls HS basketball asst coach” in a job… and merely pointing out that it is probably unfair to arbitrarily group Kevin into this “overachiever” category given his background.
Anyways, the role that race plays in college admissions has never been clearly defined, now more than ever – although it is certainly interesting to speculate about the role that ethnicity plays in how an admissions officer views an applicant.
There is some blatant misinformation coming from @InquisitiveMom2 and others, and since this thread is getting some attention I figured I would correct it. STS results do come out before decisions are out (and every top 20 college sends out congratulatory letters to all finalists, and another friend who got in to Stanford RA and won at this year’s competition got a call from them about it). Davidson’s and his last ISEF (which was his worst placement, 3rd place) were the only things on his laundry list that weren’t factored into admissions.
@JHS I get what you’re trying to say about how it’s odd to take 7 tests, but the truth is that Kevin literally took them just because he figured that he could get 800’s. I got the chance to read his common app essays (one of which was literally about taking a dump in the morning, lol) and they were stellar. He’s basically a genius, at least in terms of raw intellect, and proved it in every way imaginable on his app.
All of this being said, I didn’t want this to devolve into an analytical dissection of Kevin’s app, especially considering that none of his essays are posted online. I posted those stats literally only because I wanted to use his (truly outstanding) application to highlight that it is very possible for top candidates to not get in ‘everywhere.’ Almost nobody has Kevin’s stats. Eric Chen, another STEM asian kid in his year, was the only person I’ve ever met with a possibly stronger app, and he got in everywhere. Thing is, there are a lot more Asian/STEM applicants like Kevin and Eric (maybe not on their level, but at least above the other 99%) who fill out the niche.
The most obvious racial bias I’ve seen in this context is in Cal Newport’s frequently mentioned high school superstar book thing: he highlights the story of a girl who got into a bio research lab through her parents connections. He lauds her despite the fact that she didn’t actually DO anything to show that she was at the top of her field compared to the rest of the applicant pool. In a blog post that was written around the time the book was published, he talks about how an Asian applicants with extreme international distinction and field recognition as a result of their research is ’ only so so,’ and not great because it’s stereotypical. Sadly, I’m starting to feel like I can’t accurately chance Asian applicants, even in the abstract ‘oh you’re doing well’ vs ‘oh maybe try to win something at x,’ on the site because of how heavy the biases are in admission.
tl;dr sucks to be Asian if you’re into STEM
You don’t get what I’m trying to say if you don’t get that attempt to defend your friend winds up being something of an indictment of his character. I’m not saying it’s such a serious character flaw that it should outweigh all of his good qualities, but it makes me think less of him. It’s a waste of time, and an arrogant, show-offy move, and disrespectful of kids for whom those tests are serious things. It’s like an NCAA champion runner entering a Special Olympics race and then strutting around bragging about how he won.
Anyway, it’s silly to be debating minor flaws of someone who is ultimately an example of how the process is rational, not how it isn’t. He was absolutely a top candidate, and he got top results. (I even wonder if the Harvard waitlisting wasn’t a little gamesmanship on Harvard’s part: Someone may have decided that playing hard-to-get was a good strategy with Lee, and the waitlist let them call him up and make certain he would enroll before he was accepted. That way, if he came to Harvard, fine, but if he turned Harvard down . . . well, Harvard turned him down first.)
That’s ridiculous. Admissions for STEM-oriented students are competitive at every elite college (other than URMs, maybe, of which there just aren’t that many). They’re all getting overwhelmed by applicants who want to study STEM, and most of them have a commitment to fostering education in the humanities and social sciences, too.
The essay was about his morning BM? Ok…that is just ridiculous…watch out Harvard, bc I’m middle aged, am generally constipated, and starting to see a chin hair or two I am constantly pulling…chance me?
Lol. Seriously, what was the context? A morning BM almost seems like an FU to the adcom.
@HRSMom It was like the “Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?” essay and he wrote about how his bathroom during his morning poop is perfectly tranquil.
@JHS Actually, I do see what you’re trying to say. I had almost exactly the same reaction when I heard about the tests and everything before I met him. Almost every other student or parent that I talked too about him had the same reaction. I think that it’s just a result of the massive inferiority complex that everyone on this site experiences. There’s a reason that, while there’s ~300 people that get a 2400 each year, there are significantly more people with 2400’s on this site (as in, orders of magnitude more).
@berkinit2021 Not sure why you’re pointing me out as being “misinformed” when your post about Kevin contains several inaccuracies, as pointed above… Perhaps I poorly chose my wording when I stated that some of his awards came “after college application season,” but what I meant is that – as I stated above – colleges received some his biggest awards “as a last-minute update or not at all.” For example, STS winner results (by far his biggest award) come out mid-March, which is obviously long after EA results and only a few weeks before RD results are released. This means colleges would indeed have received the news as a last-minute update. Also, do you have any proof he was a USAMO/USNCO/USAPhO multi-year camp attendee?
Either way, his profile is still outlandishly strong despite the inaccuracies, and I actually agree with your point that very very few candidates are a shoo-in at the top universities.
@InquisitiveMom2 On the camp stuff, nope. I didnt mean that he did all of those, but I do know that he ranked highly enough on some of the olympiads that he attended the camp for at least one of them (and I think it was for two years). ***** getting so hard it’s not even funny.
I think it’s sad how competitive our society is. “Accomplishments” so often translate into competitive accomplishments: won 2nd prize at Intel STS, won an ISEF grand prize, won a Scholastic Arts and Writing gold medal, was All-State in sports and captain of a state champion team. I know that it’s sometimes hard to assess achievements outside of this framework, but I think that in some respects it diminishes from the pure joy of doing something for its own sake and developing proficiency.
Like @T26E4 and @Falcon1, I went to a top school decades ago, and got in to several. I’m not Asian, but as a middle class white male applying in the late 1970’s I came from a mainstream demographic group. I never had any fear of rejection, and I also pursued ridiculous classes with “reckless abandon” - I scorned the idea of a perfect GPA, believing that I wouldn’t be challenging myself enough if I could achieve perfection. I never studied for or retook any standardized tests, and didn’t care about class rank or how I looked. And I didn’t try to pad my application with lots of activities. Music was my EC passion, and I put 30+ hours a week into it, so I didn’t have time for a lot of other organized things. I played tennis and bridge well, but I was careful not to clutter my schedule with commitments to things that were lesser priorities. Music was relatively non-competitive: I had to audition to get into top programs, but I didn’t win a lot of awards or prizes, or participate in many competitions. I just played at a very high level, and participated in programs where most of the participants were conservatory students (and some professionals).
In today’s über-competitive environment applicants 8 APs is considered “average”, some schools recommend taking as many APs and subject tests as possible, and pursuit of an activity without “leadership” or awards is considered mediocre. I don’t think it’s particularly healthy.