I am not sure where you got that. I’ve basically said that coordination is A problem, not the only one.
I am just surprised at how much anti-student/parent animus that there is on this thread. I am not singling out the “Ivy League”, but any school that does anything beyond what is acceptable for a business, which is what all colleges really are.
I hope folks don’t get me wrong. Each of the “Ivy League” schools is tremendous. Nothing can take away from that.
What my limited point is that I would hope that these great institutions would refrain from ch_____ s____ marketing ploys (feel free to fill in any letters you want). But they are not.
To me, there is absolutely NO reason for eight independent universities to coordinate an RD response date. To be brutally honest, these same schools have had enough antitrust issues over the years that it makes no sense to keep up ANY coordinated behavior among the 8 of them. The only reason they do this is to enhance the “Ivy League” brand, which, in turn, enhances each of the eight schools.
There is a huge amount of cash riding on the concept of academic elitism/selectivity/rejectivity. Please don’t blame the students and parents for everything that is the mess of US higher ed.
I definitely think it’s the College Board who sells the names. And I don’t think there’s a problem with a lot of schools the kids probably haven’t heard of that have reasonable admissions odds marketing to kids who didn’t opt out of mailing. Harvard and its like sending them personalized emails encouraging them to apply is totally different, unnecessary and contributes to the problem.
The key problem I see here is the applicants. The vast majority appear to lack the maturity to participate in this process, if they cannot accept the reality. Maybe they should take a few gap years?
I think there’s plenty of blame to go around. I think a coordinated acceptance day is pretty far down the list.
I do put a little blame on the schools for the gamesmanship, but it’s up to families to recognize that they are being played by USNWR and the institutions they rank. Above all else, they are businesses and they are always looking to increase their cachet.
My son started getting mailers in 8th grade. I don’t know if the school did it or we signed off on notifying colleges, but his scores were sufficient to start the junk mail cascade. We get junk mail from everyone. I don’t blame them for anything. I just treat it as what it is…junk, be it from Mercedes, National Geographic, a local dentist, Vanderbilt or Yale.
Respectfully, I disagree. Anyone who would end their life over this has been cultured as to its importance. That’s largely through parenting, driven by societal pressures, and to a degree, by the schools, as a business decision.
So basically “buyer beware?” – the kids should be mature enough to ignore all the useless spam from Harvard and Yale? While it would be nice if every 17 year old had a level fo maturity that eludes most adults and it would be even nicer if those who didn’t have the maturity counterintuitively were mature enough to realize it and not participate in the process as you suggest, none of that has any barring on whether the Ivy’s and other elites are unnecessarily contributing to a problem by personally marketing to people they have no interest in admitting.
I don’t disagree with you. As I’ve said a few times, coordination on “Ivy Day” is symbolic, but it is not wholly meaningless. I do not understand why an “athletic league”, as we refer to it on CC , should coordinate on anything. This is emblematic of so much more.
My greater indictment is not against the Ivies…it’s against “the system”.
Don’t see how?
Yes, there is coordination - but given the rejection rate at those schools, I can’t fathom which hidden additional “advantage” they could possible gain? Consequently, I can’t find it “troublesome” due to some suspected sinister “motive”; it’s just “arbitrary”.
I never heard of Ivy Day except on this site. I’m sure it’s a thing at some high schools, but even with the students who applied to the Ivies near here, Ivy Day was not a thing.
I don’t know what the %age of applicants to the Ivies is compared to the other 3000 minus 8 colleges…but I do imagine the only ones who really care about this are the applicants.
Any applicant to an Ivy League school or similar….should understand that acceptance is a long shot regardless of how great they were in high school. These schools have single digit acceptance rates.
I think there needs to be a stronger emphasis on loving all the schools on the application list…and less on Ivy or bust.
I think the title of this thread is way to harsh. The definition of abusive is
Extremely offensive and insulting, or
Engaging in or characterized by habitual violence or cruelty.
That was not my experience at our school re parents driving the AP load for second tier good students; it seemed driven by the internal competition and bragging rights driven among the kids by the environment. Also, my experience having attended one of these tippy tops is that the kids who need 4+ APs to be challenged usually are not the ones who do best there or in life after it.
, should coordinate on anything. This is emblematic of so much more.