Rant of a rich caucasian about a lack of opportunity

College Search & Selection
1

<p>The more I understand how competitive the admissions is the more I lose hope and am angered at my not so perfect past. </p>

<p>Upon entering high school I believed that if i get good grades and high act and some extracurriculars then I could guarantee any admission. I did not know that others were taking AP’s in middle school, were doing summer internships and research positions, or were training for national competitions. My lack of knowledge was not necessarily my fault. My family had the same ideas I did and were shocked when I said that my calculated chance(using parchment) at Uchicago was 25% with ideal test scores(34 act+2 800 subject tests) and gpa(4.0). They told me that grades and scores were enough and so did my peers. Even my guidance counselor told me “you can go anywhere with a 34” and “you need to take many extracurriculars to be well rounded”. But it wasn’t just that I got poor information from my parents and counselor. I was repeatedly told NOT to take more that 2 AP’s by my parents, siblings, guidance counselor, and gifted/talented advisor, because then I would get overburdened with stress. I ignored them, but consider how many other students would have taken their advice.</p>

<pre><code>Where would I be if the people around me had told me the truth and had set me on a winning path? Sure it was my fault for not getting the information sooner, but how much can you expect a growing adolescent to learn about the system? The reality is that very few students would be admitted to top schools if they were on their own. 

 A student&#8217;s success is largely based upon his or her environment. I examine my friend. His parents sent his older brother to Cornell, and the parents know literally everything about how to get a child into college. They know how to get specific classes, how to get great recommendations, how to write essays and show passion etc. But my friend is lazy and it is obvious that he would be nowhere without the support of his parents. I look to another top student. His father told me that he would be nowhere without the drive of his mother. But the environment is not limited to the guidance of parents.

Out of all the friends I had last year, only the ones who went to the nearby prep school got into the Ivy league even though my friends at the public school had the same or better merit. The students who went to the prep schools will get in because they were taught how to play the system. Students there are often taught to pursue a specific passion and prep for standardized exams or AP tests years in advance. Teachers understand how to write recommendations that show the character and passion of the students--not a rehash of their extracurriculars. Students there are taught how to make essays personal and how to work specific essays for each school. At my school, I am surprised by how many of my smart friends write essays where they write about achievements or grades. It is not their fault. They were never instructed what to do--or like me--they were misinformed.

I went to a middle school of about 30 students in a homogeneous religion school. The overall culture there was to follow God and pursue education secondarily. All of my previous classmates there are going to the local community college or joining the work force because they blew off gpa and the ACT. When I went into high school, I was a year behind in math, biology, english, and spanish. That was not too much of a problem though. The public school repeated content in every class, and I had no problem catching up. I was much better off in the public school; however the school still hampered me with prerequisites and mandatory classes when I should have been taking AP’s.

After doing research on college confidential into the college admission system, I learned that almost everything I had known was incorrect and that I had been misinformed my whole life. Advice such as “be well rounded” and “take as many EC’s as possible” and “a high gpa and ACT will almost guarantee acceptance anywhere” was incorrect. I wish that my parents had given me the correct information I needed, that they placed me in a preparatory school, and that they had pushed me like so many other parents did.

Life is often about what situations you were put in, and I apologize to any others who did not get the same opportunities as the competition. The reality is that you did almost nothing wrong-- you were just not as enabled.

If it makes you feel better, read this article by David Brooks http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/opinion/stressed-for-success.html

Now, does it really matter what school you attend?

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2

<p>I have had the same exact situation, except I’m not rich. haha</p>

<p>But one day this past summer, with college looming in the future, I took matters into my own hands and researched the heck out of the college admissions process. </p>

<p>It certainly is sad that some people don’t have the same luxuries, but if you sell yourself right, colleges will see and understand that. </p>

<p>Cheers.</p>

3

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<p>Not nearly as much as you seem to think it does. The single most important thing is what YOU make of the environment that you end up in, no matter what campus it happens to be.</p>

<p>Your whole post is centered around the mistaken idea that if you don’t attend one of the “top schools,” then you are somehow a loser or a failure. In your case, without a drastic attitude change, that may well be a self-fulfilling prophecy.</p>

4

<p>The world isn’t Ivy or bust.</p>

<p>We all live in a great, free country, and have access to quality education. Hundreds of millions of people do not even have these things that we take for granted. We have the ability to work hard at any school and become whatever we want to be. We can learn about any subject we see fit and express and define ourselves however we want to. </p>

<p>Don’t want to get too philosophical here. I just think it’s hypocritical for any American to complain about a lack of opportunity with knowledge of how life is in other areas of the world.</p>

5

<p>I think that there are only a couple of professions that having an elite degree matters…I think those are Wall Street jobs. </p>

<p>For everything else…doctors, lawyers, engineers, and so forth…it really doesn’t matter where you go. There are highly successful people who went to their local state school, mid-level private, started at a CC or whatever. </p>

<p>What is your career goal?</p>

6

<p>As a self-admitted “rich Caucasian”, I’m sure you appreciate how much better off you are than many who had little to no guidance, not enough to get them even the 4.0 or 34, much less any contests, research, or competitions. You went to a nice, private school and then a good public high school and have a 4.0–I’m sure there are many on here who can attest to much more so “less than perfect” pasts.</p>

<p>Your 34 and 4.0 are enough to get you through the basic threshold at any college or university. You worked hard for it and should be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Students whose parents have been doing the work for them will have to face the realities of the real world soon enough. </p>

<p>Keep in mind that the the other CC students are usually overachievers and do <em>not</em> represent an accurate sample of your competition. The top colleges accept MANY without research, competitions, etc. </p>

<p>Are you a senior? If so, write the best essays you can and you will have a decent shot. A 25% acceptance at UChicago is above their average and pretty good. If you aren’t a senior, you still have time.</p>

7

<p>With that great ACT and GPA, you WILL be able to get into top schools - probably about 97% of the 3000+ colleges in the US. So don’t let your misinformation eat away at you because there is nothing you can do about it now. But just so you know, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!! </p>

<p>I am a parent who went to every guidance night put on at our school. I remember the freshman one many years ago - the guidance counselors spent almost the whole time talking about how ‘it is not true that you need to take at least 3 ap’s a year, that you need to do this, blah, blah, blah’. Well, na</p>

8

<p>Wait…middle schoolers take APs?</p>

9

<p>" My family had the same ideas I did and were shocked when I said that my calculated chance(using parchment) at Uchicago was 25% with ideal test scores(34 act+2 800 subject tests) and gpa(4.0). "</p>

<p>What on earth could have possessed your family to think that every student with your test scores and GPA had some sort of natural right to attend U Chicago? There are many, many, many students with that profile in this country and U Chicago only has so many spaces for freshman each year. As a private institution, U Chicago can admit whomsoever they please. Heck, they could reject every student with your profile and still fill up the place umpteen times over.</p>

<p>Yes, your grades and scores and number of APs and ECs are indeed good enough to “go anywhere”. However just because those factors put you into the competition, does not mean you are guaranteed a space. Make your list of dream institutions. Apply to them. Maybe you will get into one/some/all of them. But please, please, please have the good sense to identify some other options for yourself and include those matches and safeties on your application list as well.</p>

<p>Your GPA and exam scores will get you a true full ride at a number of institutions. How about that? Good places for FREE. Go read the threads at the top of the Financial Aid Forum and learn all about it.</p>

10

<p>Very inspirational story. I know that I can be successful and make the most of my life blah blah blah. It is just the fact that others like myself are getting better opportunities. It has nothing to do with reason. I guess this feeling originates from maby entitlement, pride, or jealosy?</p>

11

<p>

Where is YOUR responsibility in all of this. If ANYTHING in life is a priority to you, then it is incumbent upon you to spend some of your own initiative pursuing it, rather than passively expecting people to advise you. </p>

<p>Are you also expecting a beautiful girl to just fall in your lap when it’s time to get married?</p>

12

<p>same thing with me, but I’m not rich haha.</p>

<p>Very few opportunities to do things that really distinguish myself, like reserach at a university or get really cool internships, etc.</p>

<p>I did the most that I possible could from where I come from though (nearly Eagle Scout, soloist in concert band on mellophone, in jazz band on trumpet, and woodwind choire on Oboe). Plus lots of other ECs and leadership. I worked the heck to score high on the SAT (2330 and 800, 780, 770 on subjects). I wrote the best essays I could. Hopefully the colleges will realize that I’m not given some of the best opportunities, but I did the most that I can.</p>

13

<p>guess this feeling originates from maby entitlement, pride, or jealosy?</p>

<p>Whatever it is, don’t let it control your life. Your college years are only 4 years of your life. It’s not the dream. Your future adult life is your dream.</p>

<p>When you’re a success no one is going to care where you went. Seriously. My son’s orthopedic surgeon went to some no-name 3rd tier public…and ended up at Duke Med and the Mayo Clinic for his residency.</p>

14

<p>I agree with you on so many levels.</p>

<p>I- in middle school, did not really care for my grades. I didn’t know how what I did would affect me later in high school. As a result, I was unable to take a challenge science course in 8th grade, and Algebra 1 in 8th grade. Now as a high school junior, I am taking Alg/2Trig, and I will not be able to take calculus as a senior. I did not start in honors science in 9th grade, thus I was a year behind in the “general” science education path. I will not be able to take AP Physics C, because I will not have the time to do it and I will not have the math requirements because I couldn’t take Algebra 1 in 8th grade.</p>

<p>And on the subject you addressed with other students doing summer research and internships and these crazy things that you can do, but I was not told of ANY of it. It seems tons of kids around me of varying degrees of cultures and economic statuses are able to get into these things, but why does it feel like all of these things have been “hid” from me, despite me being as equally qualified as these kids who are getting these opportunities? </p>

<p>This isn’t a new problem - the idea that your environment will dictate what your possibilities will be, but it is one that really needs to be fixed. My divorced parents do not have the time to help find these opportunities for me, and take me to them and whatnot. My mom is at work all of the time and my dad lives an hour away. Even if I were able to get into one of these things, it would be dubious whether or not I’d actually be able to participate in it to the fullest.</p>

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<p>Please do revive this thread when you get your results and let us know how it went.</p>

16

<p>I fully understand what the OP is saying. The scores these kids have today are unbelievable, and the numbers of them with these scores has taken me by surprise. I thought that my daughter’s numbers would put her in the top ten out of 450 at her high school–she was lucky to make the top 40. When I heard her SAT scores, we were so excited and I remember telling her she was not going to take the SAT again. Now I wish I had let her pull her math score up another 20(!) points. Silly, eh? She applied to a couple ivies last year, some near ivies, a couple “safeties,” and a large state u. She was accepted at large state u. Her “safeties” were sure things as far as we were concerned. Her scores were in their 75th percentile. Got wait listed at both. Blew us away how little I knew about applying to college in 2012-13. And I’m a professor.
As for financial aid, some of you can testify about how ignorant I was/still am about that. I look at what some of you, for example ucbalumnus, can pull off the top of your heads, and I marvel. This business is a whole lot different than it was 40 years ago, and my D’s good public high school and its very good counselors did almost nothing to make clear the difficulties and intricacies of the acceptance and financial aid process (I’m not blaming them). I’ve learned more from reading CC night and day for the last five months than from all of the many books I’ve read since I started three years ago. And I am grateful to many of you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom.
I don’t think it’s a matter of responsibility the struggles I’ve had advising my D. I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. And it wasn’t as if my peers were telling me I was clueless. they didn’t know either, frankly. I’d talk to them around the pool or in restaurants and they wouldn’t say diddly about how difficult they were finding the processes. When I was trying to get a very good student into school that’s right for her that I can afford on my salary it became quickly clear that I was playing from behind and had better start cramming. But all those opportunities D had for awards and math competitions and Latin prizes I (and people at my school, it seems) didn’t know anything about until I started reading the ECs of students who were posting here. It was too late at that point to get D involved with those opportunities. I thought her being fluent in Spanish (immersion since kindergarten) and having 4 years of Italian in h.s. would matter to admissions officials. The ones I talked to about her never batted an eye. So there may be adults out there who know all the opportunities that are available, all the steps in the FA process, all the ins and outs of applications at 10 or 12 of over 3000 colleges in the U.S., but I haven’t met them and it’s unreasonable to think that the OP would have met them.</p>

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<p>Hey, OP and others, you talk as if the opportunities were placed in kids’ laps. Sure, some kids have parents and guidance counselors that tell them about opportunities. But the reason kids from varying income levels/socioeconomic situations get them is because the kids actively search out opportunities. </p>

<p>I didn’t know such things existed before College Confidential either. But when I discovered it in December of junior year, I immediately started to search out summer programs and research internships. Most of them can be found through a simple internet search. I applied to three programs I found through CC: Bank of America Student Leaders, RSI, and MITES, and one that I found through internet searches(there are many more but by the time I was looking many of the deadlines have passed), UMich’s SCEEP. The only one to which I was accepted was a peripheral of MITES, E2@MIT, which was one of my top choices. I also began interning at a lab at a nearby university where I lived.</p>

<p>This is a good life lesson to learn-if you want to get ahead, you can’t just wait for someone to tell you what opportunities exist. There are so many out there for whoever is curious and bold enough to take it. Don’t act like life has passed you by–for the rest of your life, be sure to always be seeking ways to expand beyond yourself and the usual flow. No one gets ahead by going along with a natural, prescribed path and expecting it to take them anywhere special. If you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll end up with everyone else.</p>

<p>I am sympathetic toward your feelings, but it’s too late to sound entitled and bitter that maybe you weren’t as competitive or “special” as you thought. You are obviously smart enough to succeed at most of the top colleges, and now you have to find a way to make yourself stand out in your essays.</p>

18

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<p>Those “safeties” were probably schools that consider “level of applicant’s interest” so that they can reject or waitlist applicants who appear to be using them as “safeties”. Look up those schools on [CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) and check their admissions criteria.</p>

19

<p>ucbalumnus, correct again. didn’t have CollegeData last year (actually I was much less involved last year because I didn’t know there was this mountain of data to master), but CD does show that one of the schools says “Level of Applicant’s Interest” is rated as “Important,” second to “Very Important.” These are both LACs, but the other school says interest is “Not Considered.” Yet when I called the admissions officer to ask a question about the deferral, she asked why this was the first time she was hearing from me! So, a lesson for all of us, but one that didn’t even occur to me til you mentioned it, ucbalumnus. Schools often want to hear from their applicants. There’re two examples of this dictum over on the Tulane site right now where 2 applicants with very strong stats were deferred, and the speculation is that the deferral was because the candidates didn’t do enough to convince the school that they wanted to go there, even though Tulane was a number one for each of them. </p>

<p>I first learned of the size of the material to be mastered when a friend of mine who’s a bonds analyst tried to explain to me what I was getting into. She had apparently approached her daughter’s application the way she would analyze bonds, including a lot of number crunching. She was paying princely sums to a professional counselor to get her D into one of the schools at the top of the list and a son into an ivy. I took that approach and her advice this year. It’s been intense and instructive, but even the counselor I hired wasn’t as helpful as digesting all this information from CC, the books, and the data sets. This is not a job that should be left to even very well organized high school students, in my opinion, unless you want to risk the results my D got last year. Let’s not blame the kids for not knowing everything they could about this process, and certainly most parents can be forgiven for not making their children aware that there are these opportunities that they never heard of. I don’t know what the solution is, but this is a much more complex process than I thought it was, and I needed to realize that probably before she went to h.s. </p>

<p>What you say, amaranthine, in the second half of your post about students taking the initiative is correct, but 9th graders who can take the initiative to search out Latin awards and to know, for instance, to stick to one EC all four years are rare–even the ones whose parents went to college. It may even be that most 9th graders are unprepared cognitively to think in these terms. As a professor, I spend a lot of time encouraging college students to research the opportunities for summer internships or lab research or work with the feds or what have you, and I’ve learned that it’s not that they’re all lazy or unmotivated. For a lot of them it’s that they’re unprepared to think four years down the road. The present occupies a lot of brain activity and getting it to commit to a course of action years away is not easy. That’s why the military wants them, and that’s why we don’t give them mortgages. They’re pliable, thank goodness, or I wouldn’t be able to teach them. So I’m suggesting that we lighten up on the students in this forum and encourage them instead to learn these lessons the first time.</p>

20

<p>The most important factor is doing well in the environment where you are planted. If your high school has an excellent newspaper, learn to write. If there is a great coach, try out for the sports team. If there is a heartwarming community service activity, offer to help. A great drama program, try out or work in tech. Then become a leader for the activity that you enjoy the most. I am an alumni interviewer for a very popular University on CC. Three of the individuals that gained admission recently were quite unique. One girl had no Internet at home and was a writer using free wifi in the community. The other was a national jump rope champion. Another was an athlete who practiced her sport daily in any kind of weather and offered a one week free summer camp for kids in the community every summer since middle school. These are not the sort of activities that over attentive parents would suggest. They were influential in admissions because they show commitment on the part of the student. Choose a challenging course load in high school and look for unique opportunities that excite you. Learn to write well and be kind. Your application will reflect something remarkable and it will be noticed. Step up. Don’t blame your family members.</p>