<p>why not look at the kid who kept solid grades in all of high school, even though they weren’t a near all-around brilliant student?</p>
<p>College isn’t closed to those kids. But, college isn’t high school, where the community owes each kid those years of education. There are 3000 schools and kids should aim for the level where they will become empowered and succeed, find their leadership niche, if that’s in them.</p>
<p>For the most competitive schools, think of the level of the academics and the skills of classmates. Is it fair to take a kid who “might” benefit from the stretch-- or might find himself at the back, struggling to keep up? It might help to get specific: should MIT take kids who did ok in math or kids who are at a higher level?</p>
<p>I think there’s a suble tone here that anything out of the top 20 or 40 is subpar. </p>
<p>As for the extras, one’s future potential is not all about high school stats. It’s also shown in how the kid engaged and in what, to what degree. That’s where you get to holistic, which I think may be the real target of this thread.</p>
<p>The kid who gets the short end of the stick is the one who has all the grades for a top education but has to go to a safety school or less. Removing all financial situations as factors, I think that all the top students should have a better chance to go to any of the top schools than they do in the current admissions system. I do think there should be diversity and admittance for students who would not otherwise have been able to attend those colleges due to financial reasons, but not at the expense of kids who are some of the brightest in the country. There has to be a balance somewhere. And I’ve seen too many of those kids get shut out of those colleges because there are so many kids applying now that wouldn’t have applied in the past. </p>
<p>I don’t really know (or care) about the discriminations in the past - not really my complaint and totally off on a tangent of my original point. Maybe I shouldn’t have stated, “the way it used to be”. Maybe I should have stated “the way it ought to be”. I just wish there were more slots for all the students who get straight A’s and high SAT’s than there seem to be currently. I feel bad for them because where do they go when they can’t get in? They have to choose something that won’t be as challenging or up to their level of intelligence. There is always a place for the average student, but down is the only way to go for the top students who don’t get accepted at their target schools, which have now become reaches for everyone.</p>
<p>“All the grades” is a focus on stats, again.<br>
If you apply to a holistic school with single digit (or low double digit) admit rates, you have placed yourself into a fierce competition. Not a lottery. They will look at the whole picture, not just hs stats, and cherry pick the ones they want most. It’s their right. They want a sense of your potential at that college, not just how you did in your high school classes. They want a picture of your non-academic accomplishments and f*uture * potential, not just that you got A’s. And, all they have to go on is your application- unlike teachers, family and friends, they only know what you present.</p>
<p>There are so many great colleges- and I really mean “super.” The kids who don’t get ito HYPS go to those, form a great body of highly competent kids, keep the bar up, there. But, I think there are hs kids with tunnel vision- who only want HYPS and everyone around them has fawned over their hs accomplishments, so they assume they deserve the highest tier of colleges. They forget what holistic expects, don’t realize their own successes just put them into a pool of 10,000+ successful hs kids. They miss the chance to love other options. There is so much ground between “top” and “safety or less.”</p>
<p>blossom, actually, in Virginia it’s possible for a kid to not be able to get into UVa but be able to get into a school like Johns Hopkins. We have friends who were very frustrated that their kid had great SAT’s but grades were not that great . He had no shot at UVa (where all ducks tend to have to be in a row for admission-SAT,GPA,EC’s)but got into JHU and were full pay. They would have loved to get that instate tuition! There are lots of great schools out there. To focus on just the top few seems very shortsighted. UVa stat wise was a safety for my instate kid but I think it was a great fit for him, better than many of the higher ranked schools would have been for him. He loved the big time sports and social scene there.</p>
<p>There has always been notions of elite and non-elite colleges. Only differences was that geographic differences, socio-economic class status, and other factors meant that what was considered “elite” was different. </p>
<p>For instance, even in the NE, I’ve heard dozens of older boomers and older folks who respected Federal Service Academies and CCNY/CUNY much more than the Ivies because the latter were mostly closed to those who weren’t of the right religion, socio-economic class, and/or well-connected until sometime in the mid-'60s. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the Federal Service Academies and CCNY/CUNY were regarded as bastions of academic meritocracy where not being from a family that’s part of the well-off well-connected WASP establishment wasn’t held against you in admissions in the same period. Only your demonstrated academic merit and other demonstrable skills were required.</p>
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<p>That’s not been my experience. While I’ve also met several who weren’t good folks/bright, the vast majority were highly intelligent with some genuine geniuses thrown in, down-to-earth, and went way out of their way to not come across as fitting the negative Harvard/Ivy-league snob stereotype.</p>
<p>I see the situation a little differently. One of the biggest benefits of getting into an elite college is to be surrounded by very smart classmates. When there are far too many qualified applicants, it just pushes the brainy kids beyond the traditional Top-20 to the Top-30 or Top-50. </p>
<p>So the kid who might have gotten into Yale 10 years ago now ends up at Northwestern and the kid who might have attended Northwestern now ends up at Carleton College. Each of these schools benefits by having brighter kids, on average, than previously. And the students who end up at these schools, ego aside, get the kind of education and peers that they always wanted.</p>
<p>Agreed that more colleges get the advantage of having the brightest kids, but are the kids getting the kind of education that they would have gotten if they were in a top tier school if they get shut out? Probably not. So although the colleges and B students get the benefits, the top 10% student doesn’t. He ends up being the smartest one in the school, and may be totally bored by the whole experience. That’s exactly what happened to my friend’s daughter who is transferring out (although she actually chose to attend that school. It wasn’t by default) - her professors agree, btw, that she does not belong there.</p>
<p>Megan, which schools exactly are you referring to? It can’t be Duke, Northwestern, JHU, Wellesley, Reed, Rice… which a generation ago might have been thought of as “Ivy back-ups” but which are now highly competitive with stellar faculty and facilities in their own right. It can’t be U Michigan or UVA or Berkeley… so which schools are these students who are getting shut out of the top tier ending up in and why are they so inferior?</p>
<p>Yes, a student who ends up at Stonehill instead of Swarthmore or High Point instead of Harvard is likely to be among the top students at that college. But shame on that student for not applying more judiciously. There are schools with top faculty and top facilities and fantastic opportunities for highly motivated students (and lots of them) which may not have the name recognition of Harvard but have equally talented students and educational opportunities.</p>
<p>Which schools are you talking about? I think you need to explore a deeper pool of schools before concluding that top students will be bored if they don’t end up where you think they “belong”.</p>
<p>Don’t apply to a vocationally oriented school if you are looking to major in philosophy. Don’t end up at your local teacher’s college if you want deep expertise among the faculty in the latest theories of artificial intelligence or nanoscience. But surely any kid smart enough to be the alleged top students you claim to represent are smart enough to know this already???</p>
<p>Not necessarily as there are many students who may lack such information because their high school GCs don’t know much themselves, students are in neighborhoods/areas where few kids go off to college or tend to only know the local directional public/cc, and parents may not know anything about colleges to the extent here on CC or among students at academically competitive private/public magnet schools. </p>
<p>That’s not to mention students who are constrained by finances or parents who feel “all colleges are the same”.</p>
<p>“So although the colleges and B students get the benefits, the top 10% student doesn’t. He ends up being the smartest one in the school, and may be totally bored by the whole experience”</p>
<p>Megan, can you clarify whether you are talking about the travesty of the kid smart enough for Yale who has to slum it at Northwestern or Carleton, or the travesty of that kid who has to slum it at East Directional State U?</p>
<p>Why “shame on that student”? Is the world going to be denied the next Nobel Prize winner because a smart student who hadn’t figured everything out by age 17 went to a “lesser” college? Is this student really resigned to a life of mediocrity because he/she didn’t have enough APs and ECs in high school? As LoremIpsum has pointed out, the increase in the number of kids applying to “top” schools (among other factors) is forcing a lot of brainy kids into institutions that they might not have considered otherwise. There are smart people everywhere. Some of the most brilliant and accomplished people I know went to colleges you’ve probably never heard of (or if you have, it’s not in a very positive context). They either went from their no-name schools into top graduate programs or directly into industry, where they have been enormously successful EVEN with an obscure degree on their resumes. Not having the perfect undergraduate name on one’s record is not a death sentence for a smart, motivated young adult–even if he/she only “blossoms” in or after college instead of high school.</p>
<p>My point "shame on that student’ was made ironically… apologies if I was clumsy in my wording.</p>
<p>Meghan’s implication seems to be that there are tragic consequences for a kid who is “shut out” of an elite school. I find that position hard to believe.</p>
<p>Agree with Sally, Cromette, Pizza and Cobra. The world is filled with successful and smart people who went to colleges we haven’t heard of (or no college) and for sure is filled with late bloomers who figured things out in their 20’s.</p>
<p>I’m still not sure who is the victim in the OP’s worldview.</p>
<p>I think there are plenty of great colleges for straight A students. And the cool thing is that they AREN’T all Ivy League. They are all over the country - large, small, urban, rural, pre-professional or not, liberal, conservative, etc. Not every 4.0 student is alike and they wouldn’t all flourish at the same kind of school.</p>
<p>I think where it’s really hard today is for the B student. They have a few ECs, mostly Bs, some As and a few Cs. The choices in this case are much more limited, because the schools that used to admit these students have gotten more competitive, along with everyone else. Unless the parents have unlimited funds, it’s a much tougher road because of the increased competition these days.</p>
<p>It just doesn’t seem right that you need a 4.0 and spectacular SATs to get into UCLA or UVA or U of Michigan. Or that my daughter would need at least a 3.7 or 3.8 to have a shot at PSU’s main campus. The choices for a 3.2 student are much narrower than they used to be.</p>
<p>But no one has thought “it’s only the Ivy League (where the smart students should go / be bothered to go)” for the last 30 years or so. I don’t know why this is being treated as some sort of new revelation, when it isn’t. It’s rather like arguing “Well, women can become doctors and lawyers, too!” Well, duh, and they’ve been doing so for the last 30 years. </p>
<p>I think the whole college application process has gotten ridiculously out of hand. Whether its the advent of the common and universal app. that makes it easier to apply to many schools with the click of a button, the ability to cut/paste information from one app to another rather than having to hand type each application individually as we did “back in the day”, or the need to “cast a wide net” to fish for FA, many students are applying to an exceptionally (ridiculously) large number of schools. Add to that the increasing number of international applicants and the number of applications continues to grow and grow each year, especially at the most selective schools. Its a vicious cycle. </p>
<p>And while I agree with you, blossom, statements like
may draw posts referencing that poppycock and tetrazinni article, and down
the tubes the thread will go…</p>
<p>JYM- if we see a citation to Tetrazinni then I owe all of you a round of Margarita’s at the bar/bistro/cabaret closest to UNH. And my sincere apologies.</p>
<p>LOL blossom. How’s about we go ahead and beat’em to the punch, reference the piscatooti and tetrazinni article, call it a day and adjourn for that round of Margaritas :)</p>
<p>For clarification, I never said “ivies”, I said “top tier schools”. That includes all of them.</p>
<p>I never said it was a “travesty” either. I just said I felt bad for them having to go to a school beneath their educational and intelligence level where they might be bored. You have to remember, too, that some of these kids are thinking on a higher level than everyone else, so they might not even relate well to the kids there. That’s why there are Honors/AP classes in high school. It’s the same kind of circumstance - you wouldn’t expect a kid with a genius IQ to be in all regular classes, right?</p>
<p>I never said anything about prestige or thinking it’s going to ruin their lives either. Of course there are smart kids who do well at obscure colleges, but what about those who didn’t want to attend those colleges and are just there because that was the best choice out of what they had left when acceptances came back? I just feel bad for them, that’s all.</p>
<p>sansserif - you bring up a good point that I didn’t even consider about the B student.</p>