rd chances for athlete/debater

<p>escape: i don't know why you have your panties in such a knot. i haven't cursed on this board, not even with asteriks, i haven't called anyone names like some have, i was a little harsh on achat, i admit. had i known that she was an old lady, i would have pulled my punch at the last minute. in the spirit of being helpful and remaining cognizant of the original post, i gave my opinion of how chill could ace his penn app. frankly, you could replace almost every reference to native american in my last posting and substitute something else there and the formula would still work. what i said isn't even original, that is the same basic blueprint one would use if one were an athlete looking to get in, i just used native american because i feel that the op's best "hook" was as a native american, it's certainly not his grades, sats or puffed up ec's. </p>

<p>also, i don't believe interesteddad is defending me. in fact, why should he? i've done nothing wrong. i just don't walk lockstep with the pc police who believe that they alone should be the judge, jury and executioner of appropriate conduct and civility. i don't believe that one should subjugate one's beliefs because others take it upon themselves to censor what others should hear or not hear. another thing, what are you blabbeing about with "free speech ends where harrassment begins" stuff? that sounds good on a bumper sticker, but let's get real. free speech does not end because of harrassment. free speech ends in a totalitarian takeover. in our country (is maine still with us?, it's so far north i thought canada may have annexed it) when free speech is denied, it's the censor that usually gets reprimanded. i'm also sure that swarthmore would be proud of how i stand my ground (they may not agree with me totally) and how i can express myself without having to conform to or comply with the edicts of the phonies who like to swim in the "politeness pool" yet have no remorse over calling someone a moron. lastly, i'm sure i'll get into a top five, ten or fifteen professional school if that's what i decide i want. i do attend swarthmore afterall, or have you forgotten? i also won't play that "oh bowdoin is such a great school..." game, it may be, but it still feeds on swarthmore's leftovers.</p>

<p>Returning to the original intention of this thread (if yall don't mind), I think Chillax has a chance for sure. </p>

<p>SATs are in line, grades are on the low side, but ECs are good. Sure, the was Chillax presents them is certainly puffed up, but if you peel off the outside crap, its clear that he/she is a gifted debater and athlete. As someone who worked in admissions, his stats are perfectly in line with what swat accepts. On the other hand, Chillax, you need to set yourself apart. Swat places a big emphasis on Why Swarthmore? As you already have set yourself towards UPenn, I am not sure how much you want Swat and how that will come across in your essay. But you definetly have a shot. </p>

<p>Duh, what makes you the authority on what Swarthmore wants in a student? As I understand it, you are a freshman there. Sure, maybe you have perfect grades/scores, but let me assure you that not everyone does....</p>

<p>I award banana "best post on this ridiculously long thread". Thank you banana.</p>

<p>My sentiments exactly, ecape!</p>

<p>see that only goes to show how totally pointless these 'chances' threads really are. we have banana who takes the safe road by saying the op has a "shot" of getting in (everyone has a "shot" don't they? that's what the admissions dept always says), interesteddad says the op is a long "shot" (i think i interpreted his postings that way), achat's kid is still arguing with the wash u kid, and i say that without emphasizing the native american aspect of op's heritage, that there is no shot. the opines are all over the place (except there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm for op having a good shot at swarthmore). so where does that leave the op? in shock, because he can't believe that there are those out there that wouldn't be in awe of all his wonderful accomplishments. in shock that noone posted how upset they are that chill would have a swarthmore acceptance locked up thereby taking away what was an open slot. in shock that many find his puffed up ec's to be rather ordinary in comparison to the ec's of the types of students accepted at swarthmore. so what now? well, there's always penn......state, but hurry, rolling admissions may shut you out there too.</p>

<p>Look, Duh, you know why I /care/ what you post? Because I think it's a shame someone who is obviously so advantaged and has some capabilities has shown increasing ignorance as to how the world works in all of his posts. I don't know everything, but allow me to clarify a few things:</p>

<p>"i'm sure i'll get into a top five, ten or fifteen professional school if that's what i decide i want. i do attend swarthmore afterall"</p>

<p>I hope this statement was a joke. Or else, you need to learn a whole lot more about applying to professional schools if that is truly where you aim yourself.</p>

<p>Your response to my statement that many top students go to state schools where you said how top students from everywhere go to ivies? The first 10 years of my education I attended school in one of the poorest and lowest performing districts of IL. My hometown sends a kid to an ivy league school maybe every few years or so. My home hs doesn't offer APs, so the schools really don't do a good job of preparing kids for college, no matter how smart they are. Lots of students deal with the same disadvantage. Lots of excellent students go to state schools simply b/c they've never heard of other schools, don't realize scholarships are available, want to stay close to home, etc.</p>

<p>Sure, being a minority like Native American may offer a certain advantage in the admissions game. But if it was nearly easy enough to get ahead that way as you indicated in some of your posts, do you really think Native Americans would remain as socioeconomically screwed as they are today? The only reason it offers some advantage in admissions, is because a majority of Native American people have poor resources to begin with, and would have more to overcome before they'd begin applying to a school like Swat. I could write a post paralleling yours above beginning with: "How to get into Swarthmore: be a rich, white boy born in a good school district with supportive parents and a silver spoon in your mouth..." I think you could learn a great deal from listening to others at Swat and beyond, and not being so focused on bashing so-called "PC". One-quarter of women your age have been sexually abused. A majority of minorities your age have experienced overt and covert racism in their lives. You think that doesn't **** with how someone competes in school, no matter how smart they may actually be, and no matter what supplemental opportunities they may be afforded? I do not like the way you reduce these realities to a game in your posts. Unless you've walked a mile in someone's shoes, please do not pass judgment on what someone's class rank or SATs mean about their capabilities or work ethic (that goes for you and your daughter too, ID). I could go on about some very personal experience too, but I do have a life, and a couple more points to get in...</p>

<p>"i also won't play that "oh bowdoin is such a great school..." game, it may be, but it still feeds on swarthmore's leftovers."</p>

<p>I have no interest in debating overall superiority of one school to another such as Swarthmore to Bowdoin. Simply put, I think there's no such thing, it's subjective. As a fairly good critical thinker, it's counter-intuitive. Schools are composed of individuals with a variety of talents who will go their separate ways after graduation. I agree that Swarthmore's academics may be somewhat more challenging, and that Swarthmore has a slightly higher % of students who are capable of competing at top professional schools -I never said otherwise. However, some students who are independent thinkers as opposed to major tools, realize that doing well enough at a variety of good schools affords them the same opportunities afterwards. Therefore, if a less competitive school might better meet the needs of a given student, it makes sense to go there. This explains girls I knew who chose Smith over Williams and Brown, and students who chose Bowdoin over Princeton and Swarthmore. I chose Bowdoin for myself because of a superior Environmental Studies faculty -I am not bothered that you don't have the same priorities for your education as I myself do.</p>

<p>Finally, I'm pretty damn sure you misinterpreted banana's post. I do not think banana was just "taking the safe road", but rather being frank.</p>

<p>I just hate what this whole "College Rankings" obsessive-mentality has done to the lives and stress levels of a lot of gifted youth. It gives the false impression that college is way more important as an overall measure of accomplishment, personal growth, and a future success indicator than it actually is. Plus it occasionally creates annoying adults who don't feel a need to justify aspects of themselves to anyone b/c they went to "such-and-such college" and must be brilliant.</p>

<p>"I could go on about some very personal experience too, but I do have a life"</p>

<p>Are you sure about it, ecape? Because if you do have a life, you should go and live that life - and let this thread die...</p>

<p>i've been so busy and escapes posting is so long i had to read it in sections (and there were certain sections that read better to the strains of violins in the background) and probably respond in sections. i really appreciate some of the kind words about swarthmore and myself from escape. but i do have some questions. does bowdoin require students to leave their tongues at home before they arrive at college? i find that at swarthmore, many of the students keep their tongues in their cheeks. doing that results in statements like "i do attend swarthmore, afterall." i really don't want to get into issues concerning racism and sexual abuse because they are not germane to the topic at hand which is "can a student with subpar grades and mediocre sats and inflated ec's get accepted at swarthmore or penn without a significant hook?" the answer is no in chill's case unless you're telling me that chill was sexually abused or the product of racial discrimination, which if that is the case, may make me reconsider my opinion.</p>

<p>if anyone still cares, i just spent an incredible weekend with a bunch of high school kids visiting for discovery weekend. i didn't know about it beforehand, but happened upon it and crashed a couple of their events. if anyone had any doubts before, take it from me now after meeting with these kids, chill, the original op has absolutely no chance of getting into swarthmore if he has to compete with this bunch. chill wouldn't even make it in applying as a urm if these kids are the competition. i will say that i did see a bit of stress in these kids. i heard a lot of "what did you get on the sat's and what is your gpa?" stuff amongst the specs. i did hear one kid say that this years version of princeton review said that swat accepted 22% of its applications for my class. if this is true then the percentages for chill just got better. i thought it was 18%. oh well.</p>

<p>The acceptance rate was 19%, after waitlistees were included, for this year -- class of 2010.</p>

<p>i walked to borders today because i wanted to check on the discrepancy. it seems that the princeton review 361 best colleges 2007 ed. is using the wrong data. my recollection was that there were about 4800 apps while both pr and usn&wr noted that apps were around 4100. i seem to recall that when i was searching for colleges, i was told that the stats in last years pr for swarthmore was also misreported. i assume that any interested students would go to each colleges site to confirm these numbers before actually applying, but that begs the question of what use are guidebooks if they are inaccurate. it seems that everyone said chills best shot at swat was ed and the accept rate listed in these books would bear that out at 50% or thereabouts, but i thought that the actual admit rate for ed's for my class was substantially lower as a result of an increase in ed apps. this would screw a lot of the kids i met this weekend who thought they would have a 1 in 2 chance of getting in ed, but in actuality would only have a 1 in 3 (or just slightly better) chance. borderline or percieved borderline applicants should know what the actual ed and rd numbers are and guage whether they want to risk a swat ed app or go for a surer thing in the ed rounds. it's late and i'm a little fried, but the college planning process was a big thing in my household and these types of discrepancies could change the landscape of ones overall application strategy. swat was my first choice and i had little doubt about getting into any school other than harvard or yale (they're such a crapshoot), so these number variations probably would not have affected me that much, but to the larger populace and especially the kids i met this weekend, this could be a life altering mistake relying on these guidebooks. for all i know, the reason chill thought he had a chance here was because of the numbers from last years pr (i don't think the 2007 pr 361 best colleges was out yet when this thread started).</p>

<p>The guidebooks rely on the most recent Common Data Set, which was available last October/November. 22% is the correct admissions rate for the Class of 2009 at Swarthmore.</p>

<p>Class of 2010 dropped to 19%. That will be reflected in next year's guidebooks and in the new Common Data Set info that Swat will start posting shortly.</p>

<p>PR did have some massive typo for Swarthmore's admissions rate in last year's book. They copied the data incorrectly from the Common Data Set. If I recall, they double counted the number of female acceptances or some such nonsense.</p>

<p>Heh, maybe that explains the huge increase in apps for your class!</p>

<p>it's possible that's why there was a huge jump in apps or possibly that swarthmore was profiled in the newsweek college issue, but most likely my suspicion is that the applicants knew i was going to be applying and wanted to follow the trend.</p>

<p>Nngmm, it is true that I should not make such massive generalizations. I am interested, though, in the cultural patterns of particular schools. Swarthmore is quite small, and I haven't visited it yet, so I do not have any ways of discerning the 'personality writ large' (anyone familiar with Ruth Benedict?) of this college. It seems that Duhvinci exhibits several tendencies which could possibly be characteristic of what the admissions office is looking for- bean counting intelligence combined with a completely perverse system of values revolving around elitism and success. Again, though, you are absolutely right, that I do not have enough information to make this judgement, and I ought to research the school some more. It certainly has some thrilling intellectual resources, but I wouldn't put up with this attitude of entitlement for anything.</p>

<p>orangetree,
There are a number of parents who post on this board from time to time, and all of us have very nice kids who go to Swat. Very smart, but very nice. :)</p>

<p>I haven't posted in a while, but I would like to say that my son who goes to Swarthmore is definitely not pretentious or obsessed with grades. The other students there that I have met are also very down-to-earth. They work hard academically but have other interests. They also do not seem like spoiled rich kids. The diversity is amazing, and this adds to the college a lot.</p>

<p>As I remember, the original poster had a lot of experience in debate. I hope he was not discouraged from applying, because he seemed to have a lot to offer to any college.</p>

<p>dear moms, hello!
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so abrasive in my last post. I was sort of incensed by the comments of one kid, you know? - I guess it wasn't terribly mature of me to direct my feelings on a college with thousands of students. Of course there must be lovely kids there, as I'm sure yours are. Congratulations on having your children at such a wonderful school!
-m.</p>

<p>
[quote]
..which could possibly be characteristic of what the admissions office is looking for- bean counting intelligence combined with a completely perverse system of values revolving around elitism and success.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>For a school with a $40,000+ sticker price and 1440+ median SATs, I can't think of a college admissions office that is less interested in "bean counting intelligence" or "elitism". Those two qualities are, in fact, notably absent in the Swarthmore student body from everything I have been able to discern. The lack of elitism is actually one of Swarthmore's defining characteristics.</p>

<p>or, he could just be analytical enough to know what ticks people off, and there yal go falling for it.</p>

<p>Oh, we had a troll before that had a HUGE grudge against Swarthmore, so whoever this person is seems mild by comparison. If he is really is a student, then maybe once he is past his pass/fail semester he will take a bit of a break from the negativity because of time constraints!</p>