<p>It must be damn near painful to be in the Admission Room where adcoms decide over applicants. </p>
<p>I must ask the question, How are the Adcoms to differentiate between candidates and the excrutiating decisions that must be made?</p>
<p>One of the first problems I see stems from a conversation in the "How low SAT" thread by Apfreak, inwhich we discussed the case of a Kid from one of the worst situations in America period. SAT:910 GPA:4.0 RANK: 1 SCHOOL: Southeast DC. </p>
<p>How did the adcoms come to the consensus that his application was not enough for admission and those of other kids particularly those who were given every opportunity</p>
<p>Another question is how the hell can they keep track of all the little things:</p>
<p>-Making sure every state is represented
-Being aware of all the awards and abreviations
-Trying to find lies and misrepresentations
-Keeping track of URMs and Women
-Keeping track of the SAT average
-Keeping track of the atheletes
-Appeasing the coachs
-Appeasing the rich donors
-Keeping track of the poor
-Denying applicants of a certain type "Upper Middle Class New Jersey Asian American Academic superstar" over " South Florida Hispanic lower middle class mediocre"
-Identifing some of the extenuating circumstance and giving them a value, "I was homeless: SAT 1770" while trying to compare it to " I had a great mom and dad, and lived in a nice house: SAT 2400"
- Assigning values to the wildly unstandard High schools, For example a good school in South Carolina is no where near the competiveness of Stuy, Bronx Science, Tomas Jefferson, most Fairfax schools, most Montgomery(MD) schools....
-Assiging values to recommendations, a teacher who is relatively young in her or his career might say a kid "IS THE BEST IN CAREER" but a old geiser who taught einstein as a kid might say " ABOVE AVERAGE" to THE SAME APPLICANT.
- Assigning a value to the essay.....enough said
-Trying to counterbalance the aid of outside support. Obviously a kid who went to KAPLAN, bought into the IVYWISE private consultant, bought a EXTRACURRICULAR ADVISOR, paid for the essay.... DESERVE to have a diminished chance, but CAN HARVARD REALLY REJECT HIM FOR TRYING TO PRESENT THE BEST APPLICATION POSSIBLE</p>
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Assembling a class of Harvard must be a task that not even Herculeas can accomplish</p>
<p>What do you guys think, how do you feel the adcoms will look at your application since the decision has already been made (DEC 9 for 99% of the applicants) and the only thing left is notification on the 14th? What situations do you think Harvard should accept a candidate under besides the 2400/4.0/1/good EC? I mean wow. </p>
<p>That PBS documentary on Amherst must have been staged, because the admission process MUST include some secretive finger play. It isnt the utopian Meritocracy it is like in India or Korea where the top 500 scorers on ONE test are given admission.</p>