“Anyone who does not believe that a huge portion of last semester’s high school grades were base on cheating is naive beyond belief. I’m sure that doesn’t include any admissions people who must be keenly aware of this.”
There’s a lot of cheating even before covid, it happened in my upstate NY high school and it happens here locally in the bay area, kind of a something no one wants to talk about.
“If a kid that was great in math all the sudden gets Cs…that might not just be blamed on the online experience .”
Adcoms are not going to ding that kid.unless they know the context of every individual. We’re assuming that everyone has reliable internet, a supportive family, access to tutors if kids start struggling, which is not the case.
“I do know AO at various schools so don’t wish to play that game.”
I doubt they lack empathy as you’re making them out to be, but if they are, at least we know that NU will show compassion.
"But the Harvard Crimson staff is not among them. "
You said this generation, implying everyone, that’s what the word means - all. And this generation is definitely facing more issues on the mental health front as others have pointed out.
@Luckyjade2024 , if you’re a student who is anxiously waiting to start college (been there; felt that way—many years ago!), I can certainly understand your wanting to be optimistic. I’m actually usually a "glass half- or even 3/4-full kind of person too. I was just pointing out that it’s VERY early in a study that’s so far been done on only 45 subjects, and from what I understand there are a lot of hurdles to overcome between a small, early study and the actual approval and availability of a vaccine. So I’m just trying to be rather uncharacteristically rational about the whole thing.
(I was a caseworker for people with AIDS in NYC in the late '80’s/early '90’s, so that experience has also made me inclined to not get too excited about these things–there were so many supposedly “miraculous” treatments for so long that were eventually found to be either useless or just downright dangerous.)
But you’ll get there, one way or another, and I hope it’s very soon, and safe, and a wonderful experience for you!
Which company are you talking about? Moderna? After testing 30,000 will be a year away if everything goes well. Phase 3 is the part that really counts. Fingers crossed
My son and his girlfriend broke up recently. They’ve been good friends since 8th grade and had been dating for about 2 years. They attend different schools and were only seeing each other about once a month prior to their schools being shutdown and them coming home but since then they hadn’t seen each other in person at all. They’re still friends but didn’t see any point in continuing to be officially dating. TBH they were probably headed in that direction anyway. It’s just that the shut down due to the virus sped up the process.
Perhaps such a period of relatively minor (in the grand scheme of things) adversity will produce an emotionally stronger and more resilient generation.
It’s so sad, looking back to the 80’s and AIDS…the world didn’t have a sense of urgency/care toward a cure nor a vaccine as they do now. Maybe because of the stigma back then. I wasn’t alive…but had to have been beyond sad to live through for anyone with HIV or AIDS
It’s so sad, looking back to the 80’s and AIDS…the world didn’t have a sense of urgency/care toward a cure nor a vaccine as they do now. Maybe because of the stigma back then. I wasn’t alive…but had to have been beyond sad to live through for anyone with HIV or AIDS
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@Luckyjade2024 ,If I were a college admissions person, I would admit you on the spot for that comment! So many young people (even LGBTQ ones) have no idea what it was like then, and how the stigma made everything so much harder for those with the virus. It sounds terrible in a way, but I lost so many people that I cared about back then (many of whom had been rejected by their own families) that I have thought, “At least Covid-19 is an equal-opportunity virus, so that it’s more likely that people will work harder to eradicate it soon!” It’s a sad comment on human nature, but I think it’s true.
Anyway, your thoughtfulness and insight has brightened my day. All my best to you through this temporary setback and the dreams you want to pursue.
I agree, this (a crappy residential college experience) is a minor problem in the grand scheme of the god-awful world they will be living in for the rest of their lives. They’re certainly going to need resiliency to deal with all of the problems that have been handed to them by my generation and those that have come before.
As discussed upthread, the 2020/21 application season is going to be a hot mess. Between widespread academic competitions cancellations, rampant grade inflation, and universal test-optional (if not test-blind) policies, most of the objective data that was previously available to adcoms can no longer be relied on.
The last shoe dropped the other day when MIT announced they, too, will be suspending standardized tests requirement for next year.
At least they are not going test-blind like Caltech: they will still consider tests scores for those who submit them, and they make it very clear that for them the tests do indeed have a predictive value.
"This was not a decision we made lightly. Our reliance on these tests is outcome-driven and applicant-oriented: we don’t value scores for their own sake, but only to the extent that they help us make better decisions for our students, which they do. We regularly research the outcomes of MIT students and our own admissions criteria to ensure we make good decisions for the right reasons, and we consistently find that considering performance on the SAT/ACT, particularly the math section, substantially improves the predictive validity of our decisions with respect to subsequent student success at the Institute. As such, we had hoped that the public health situation would improve such that taking the tests would be safe and accessible to everyone well in advance of the application deadline.
Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to be the case."
My gut feeling is that most institutions that went test-optional due to COVID will not have the political will to go back to requiring these tests in the future (as they were already under attack nationwide), which will make it an untenable requirement for those few institutions that otherwise would like to still use them.
Hard to imagine schools will completely abandon testing because they’ll receive immense pressure from the testing juggernaut which includes not just the testing agencies but the test prep industry as well.
Absolutely, @AlmostThere2018. As we’ve been lamenting many competitive opportunities our kids missed out on this year, we inevitably end with telling DS24 “but at least you had the last year”.
Rising seniors who were building up towards their chance to shine in the Spring of the Junior year really have the most rotten deal.
Lots of prep school have already dropped AP designation for their advance classes. I mean some of the rigors courses go beyond AP classes. My kids were enrolled in higher level classes when they started college.
Also people who qualified for RSI or other similar summer research or humanities programs will get a huge boost.
Dickinson College just walked back their earlier decision to bring students back to campus and will now be fully remote for the fall. Only students with a true need to be on campus will be permitted to live there. They cited Pennsylvania’s quarantine rules for residents of other states ,general uncertainty about the behavior of the virus, and testing that will take longer to produce results than they had been originally promised.
University of California system is already test-optional until 2022 and test-blind 2023-24, and possibly beyond, and definitely not using ACT/SAT again:
“The University of California Board of Regents today (May 21) unanimously approved the suspension of the standardized test requirement (ACT/SAT) for all California freshman applicants until fall 2024. The suspension will allow the University to create a new test that better aligns with the content the University expects students to have mastered for college readiness. However, if a new test does not meet specified criteria in time for fall 2025 admission, UC will eliminate the standardized testing requirement for California students.”
@TheGFG yeah there’s some time left here for schools to change their tune. I wonder if the schools that know they will be using mostly remote classes are now looking at their finances and trying to decide if they can give up the room and board income. It’s going to be a big pain to have kids on campus this fall. Have to weigh the ups and downs of that decision.