<p>Sure, Ivy League admissions are rigged. I like Poetgrl’s take on this one - everything in life is rigged. Honestly, you can’t expect a private school to function on a complete meritocracy - they need to get their money somehow. The wealthy get benefits from very nearly everyone in the world (the more you pay anyone, the more they do/give you), schools included. Arguably, I would say that the elite schools are taking a step in the right direction now, with need-blind admissions and “affirmative action” (though I don’t wholeheartedly agree with AA - personally, I would like it to be based entirely on socioeconomic status, but I understand the difficulties in doing so and the severely diminished marketing value).</p>
<p>I would like to take the time here to note that it is definitely possible to get into an Ivy League school without being overly privileged. I indeed go to a mediocre public school (we’ve had one kid go Ivy League in our history as a URM and on a football scholarship), and I’ve never been on any athletic team save for one year of cross and half a year of track. I’m full on Chinese-American. No legacy. Very, very poor (I have to pay $4,100 total each year, which is in essence only “personal expenses and travel”). I’m not particularly incredible in any major way. I didn’t even write a stellar essay. I got into Harvard this year. It’s definitely possible. You have to be lucky and determined, and on another day with another reader I very, very well may have gotten rejected, but it’s most certainly possible to get in.</p>
<p>One of my S’s k-8 classmates was killed in a drug deal gone bad by the time he was 19; another former schoolmate was killed last year, also in a drug deal gone bad. He was 21. On the whole, however, the school is fairly drug-free and quite safe (according to a student survey conducted several years ago).
As far as disruptive students, it depends on the class, the students and the teacher. When I visited the school for the first time, I went to a class where the teacher did not seem to have much control and the students did seem unruly and unengaged. In another class, half the students seemed to be dozing off. But my Ss had some terrific teachers and both got a very good education. You sound, however, to have attended a very unsafe school; and I agree, it is hard to reach for top colleges from such schools. I can only hope that your school is not typical of schools throughout the country!</p>
<p>marite: please do read my new thread, I am currently a second year student in college and lets say the hard work paid off.</p>
<p>If you believe the school I went to was bad, wait till you see some of the local PUBLIC schools in the area. Chances are, you would need a cop to escort you.</p>
<p>One time my other visited a local public school with me, a young man (rather muscular) pushed her out of the way and called her a female dog. Well, I looked at him like he was crazy, he ended up shouting at me. I avoided him and tried to move on with my mother, the kid came back and pushed me, I pushed him back, he went on a wild swinging rampage.</p>
<p>Luckily I had some martial arts training, I managed to knock the kid down and restrain him. He shouted all sorts of anti-Asian racial slurs at me and started crying.</p>
<p>That is the type of trash I would have had to deal with had I gone to a local public school.</p>
<p>Promise me you’ll never apply for a job in the diplomatic corps. You hae no idea to whom you are speaking. </p>
<p>(1) I am a life-long educator with no less than 10 different roles I have played, and am still active in. Every penny in our household went to education, in the grand tradition of my parents, who did the same. We would allow, let alone encourage, our children, to enroll in institutions where education “gets lost in the noise”? Who are you that you think you know your audience?</p>
<p>(2) You sure do talk out of both sides of your mouth. Suddenly, Ivy league students might be OK people, but above, the quote I boxed revealed that you believe that such students do not get in on merit, but on something else. Again, you have no idea what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>I’m here to inform you that my D got accepted to all 3 Ivies she applied to, and a Regents at Berkeley, because she’s the embodiment of merit, and the embodiment of lack of privilege. </p>
<p>One thing’s clear: You need to get out more.</p>
<p>:D Not really. Most of the profs who teach first year chem at UW are horrible and the class sizes are ginormous. All quiz sections and labs are taught by TAs with thick foreighn accents. I strongly suggest to look into taking the chem. sequence at the North Seattle Community College or Bellevue College. I do mean it. I have a guinea pig in my family who retook a chem class at one of the community colleges and really like it compared to her experience at U-Dub.</p>
<p>Are there some cranky people on here, or what? One wrong word and ya’ll are jumping all over one another. Go get a glass of wine and lighten up!</p>
<p>I like that, “quit yer carping.” I’m going to have to use that one on my unfortunate husband.</p>
<p>epiphany-I think I have been clear that when talking about “merit” I’m talking about the schools selection criteria-not the kids. I have been clear , i believe in stating that all the kids applying are “smart enough”, including the current student body. Never implied that IVY students were not “ok people” whatever that means to you. I have also not said that the education at said institutions was anything but excellent. Somehow you added all of these things. You sir do not also know me either, really.
One question-how can you be a lifelong educator with 10 different positions with parents who saved every penny for your education-a grand tradtion as you say- yet your daughter is the embodiment of lack of privledge. Do you not think that she has benefited from this tradition? It’s a good tradition one I have also started when the kids were babies.
I get out plenty. ;p</p>
<p>First year roommates. My son at Dartmouth. One eighth (I think it was actually one- sixteenth, Native-American), 1120 on the two part SAT, had lived in Paris, flunked out on the academics, but more so on the partying, later returned and graduated.
My daughter at Princeton. Another first year roommate. A rower. Hated all her classes, just wished she could be rowing all the time.<br>
Neither made for great late night Ivy League conversations.
A bit of a surprise for kids who got in from a family which will never have a six figure income, who expected their first Ivy League encounter would be with smart kids. Nope.</p>
<p>Post 70:
I’m not going to reveal anything about her identity, or mine (to protect her). We had extremely compromised financial circumstances, without going further than that. The point is, what little money I did have, I chose to spend on education rather than many other things that frankly the middle class often chooses, not to mention additional things that richer people also have (besides education). She was poor enough to be generously awarded aid by all the Elites to which she applied. Financial aid all the way, need-based.</p>
<p>But the broader points are two:
(1) I don’t care that you’re trying to cover over your first post by back-tracking now about merit – a subject you have brought up on following posts as well. If it’s the institutions that supposedly are so baaaaad that they award for fit and “not for merit,” then the students supposedly admitted in such a fantasy scheme are nevertheless “non-meritorious,” by definition. It was you who juxtaposed fit against merit, not I.</p>
<p>(2) Every parent, and every student, who happens to know a bunch of well-qualified students, declares himself quite the expert on who is and is not meritorious. Actually you have no clue who is and who is not meritorious, because you have no access to the private files of the 10K or so applicants to each Elite institution. You have snippets of information. You don’t even know fully a single file submitted except those you have fully laid eyes on. Even I did not have “fully” the view of my own D’s file because thankfully I was not privy to the contents of her LOR’s. (I don’t think it’s proper for those to be viewed by anyone but the committee members, and the authors of those letters.) Later, her teachers shared with me some of those contents — orally, long after admission & matriculation. The best intimate information you have is the information about your D – not her competition, except in superficial and partial ways.</p>
<p>No one is “meritorious” in a vacuum, when it comes to Elite admissions. It is all a comparative exercise. All of it. One applicant’s merit becomes surprisingly dwarfed by another applicant’s even more impressive merit.</p>
<p>A question-true or false: Do the children of a University employee especially prof. (Ivy or otherwise) get any special treatment (more merit) than other applicants to that university or others? I have seen no official accounting of this(doesn’t mean there isn’t any) but a friend who has taught at some of the mentioned schools assures me it is the case. Discuss ;p</p>
<p>I don’t know of any decent data on this.
The experience that I have at here at The University of Chicago, and the fellow students my kids have run into in the East, says that this is a stronger hook than legacy. I don’t know how to compare it to athletic recruits or URMs. Impressionistic only. Tough to do the research. It would be nice if it were done.</p>
<p>Why do these kinds of threads always lead to a senior member jumping on people, and in the process use the opportunity to tell everyone yet again what elite school their offspring attends? I suspect Danas’ kids experience is more the norm than not. It will be very interesting to see this all play out in the next 10-15 years when this rigged system (and it is, why even argue the point?) dumps their few students into the work place and most of their peers and the older generation who do the hiring are still angry at the system, and do a little social engineering themselves- by refusing to hire these graduates.</p>
<p>Think about the amount of anger the vast majority of students and parents feel about admissions the past 4 years or so. Do you think all the anger is going to morph into admiration when the real work world is the only game in town? No, of course not. The elite graduate of these times will likely face a very different work/hiring environment because of the events of the past years. The elites schools are damaging their brand and worth for short term gain.</p>
<p>“According to Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73, approximately 12 to 20 children of faculty apply to the College each year and are accepted at a significantly higher-than-average rate. Faculty members’ children are given “particular care by the admissions committee,” Lewis says.”</p>
<p>Found this in the Harvard Crimson. Interesting. Must be more meritorious than others consistently.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the issue of faculty privilege is off-topic, though, since you were the one who brought up the meritoriousness of the general applicant pool – unless we’re going to go into discussing hooks now. I don’t think that would be productive, since you’re supposedly trying to establish that your D has some inside knowledge (perhaps you, too?) about who is and is not meritorious, without consideration of Special Admissions (a completely different topic).</p>
<p>Of course it’s rigged! I just think its odd you only discover this now. </p>
<p>If you drew the right straws, you have well off parents, who could send you to a great school (public or private), afford to invest in the right ECs for you and keep you out of youth labor market so you had more time for studies. Summers could be spent enriched, or maybe taking extra courses. They could hire tutors as you needed, and private admissions consultants if the school GCs weren’t good enough. Surely they could pay for psychoeductional assessments to detect, rule out or account for performance attributed to learning disabilities. Maybe they were scientists and could provide the right heavy handed science fair guidance leading to Intel and Westinghouse. Maybe they were accomplished musicians or athletic coaches, and viola, no surprise you are accomplished in that arena too, or PhDs who discussed great philosophers at dinner each night. Even better if you happen to have parents who were legacies at your school, or wealthy enough to name a building. Regardless, your higher SES would likely mean a high SAT score as well, not to mention the ability to hire tutors or classes for SAT improvement as well. Such parents could also read, edit, maybe even heavily handedly ‘revise’ your essays as needed (not that any such parents exist on CC mind you). Not to mention, you might even luck out and get adults in your life that spend a lot of time on CC gleaning tons of useful information that can only aid in your success. </p>
<p>Then a bunch of people with just an undergrad degree in a high turnover occupation could sit in a room and after taking the basic hard stats into account, pretend to compose a ‘class’ of the ‘right fit’ based on reading these endless files of polished overachievers…as if they could both detect the right kind of personality and know how to ‘create’ a particular class that could sing harmony together. At least here its rather random (at least if you take out the professional coaches and essay writers from the equation). </p>
<p>No doubt that many have advantages others do not, and in varying degrees those advantages have nothing to do with the students innate attributes. That isn’t slamming anyone (including my own offspring!) but come on, let’s be realistic. Just because we can point to some success stories from the ruins of poverty doesn’t at all prove it’s a big happy meritocracy and there aren’t huge advantages to some over others. </p>
<p>The issues brought up here are very, very complex.
One student at my daughter’s school says that A students go into academia, and B students work for C students. This may have been true for fifty or a hundred years. How do you evaluate a C student who won an Olympic Gold Medal when it comes to the workplace? Or the C student who was an FDR or Teddy Roosevelt, or Bush or Kerry? A or C didn’t seem to matter to them. And of course there are the C students who are the offspring of politicians or scions of great wealth. Should academic merit control your destiny? Hmmm… No easy answers to some of these questions.</p>