<p>Audiophile:
The OP surely did not send his D to an inner-city school?
Yours is the wrong question to ask unless you think that inner-city schools provide as good an education as prep schools (or, for that matter, non-inner city schools) and that therefore inner-city kids should be admitted at the same rate as prep school graduates based on merit alone “if the system were not rigged.” The morale of the story I recounted is that the poor kid was not helped by the fact that his lack of preparation was overlooked when he was admitted (at the expense of more middle class and better-prepared students). He might have done much better closer to home at a less rigorous college (disclaimer: S was a member of the class that was profiled in The Gatekeepers).
I can’t find the pie chart on the new Harvard website that showed the proportion of private vs. public school graduates but I remember that about 65% were from public schools. Since the launching of the Financial Aid Initiative, there’s been an effort to reach out to inner city schools but I don’t know how successful it has been.</p>
<p>Starbright, I did not know the term “fac brat” until I came to CC, either, but I knew of the phenomenon ever since H was a graduate student in a department that tried to recruit a prof whose 10 children were guaranteed free tuition at the University of Rochester. Harvard only gave (and still gives) interest-free loans, but they can be used anywhere. MIT gives a lump sum, but again, it can be used anywhere.</p>
<p>“Its kind of like going to the LVI forum and questioning why instrumentation is needed to perfect occlusion, when youve been using bilateral manipulation to equilibrate to CR and gotten great results for years (inside dental reference).”</p>
<p>I smell a fellow Pankey guy ;p (inside reference)
I agree with everything you said :)</p>
<p>unimpressed–sorry your D didn’t get accepted, but you’ll be “crying” all the way to the bank! All your kids will get a great education and make in-state connections at UW. Congrats! :)</p>
<p>I’d like to see veteran posters be a little kinder/gentler with new posters. </p>
<p>There are some regional differences at play in this thread. Don’t blame someone in the northwest (or midwest or south) for not knowing all about the east coast admissions scene. In many states, top students are happy to go to the state u. The admissions process isn’t so full of strategies and angst for most students around the country.</p>
<p>poetgrl… popcorn without butter and salt is just empty puffy calories.
The college thing works out – most of the time – it just does. I’m glad that there are so many possibilities, and such a wide range of them.</p>
<p>“So, the OP is Canadian, and at McGill all qualifications are objective. Very strong contrast to the US system…scores, grades…make it or don’t. I believe they have moved to this system at Oxford as well, though I could be mistaken”</p>
<p>Very, very astute Poetgrl. I think this really is the crux of the issue for me-I didn’t really understand the cultural differences regarding “merit” definitions. My path was very similiar to the Canadian system-in fact McGill doesn’t care much about EC’s or essays, so I didn’t get this other way of looking at it. I do more now-I don’t like it, but it’s a private system and they can do what they like. I can choose to participate or not based on my values. My conversations in the future with students will reflect this, not in a “sour grapes” way, but in a more focused talk about the relative merits and values the different systems embrace. They DO embrace different values and the purpose of my initial post was to see what y’all thought about that-I was curious. I have enjoyed the conversation. It has been very enlightening. Thank you.</p>
<p>“So, I’m not willing to attend the pity party for the OP. This guy and his family got handed a better hand than one heck of a lot of the kids who DO get into top colleges.”</p>
<hr>
<p>jonri-wow-Understand We are all really happy in our house. We need no pity as all is good. I’m cool with everything, and yes my kids have a great hand dealt to them and they know it :). I’m better understanding the private “system” and those who defend it (sometimes aggressively;p)
My point has been it doesn’t matter so much where you go-so why should there be a pity party? I prefer a celebration party for all the kids :)</p>
<p>My S2 has the stats for the tippy top schools and says next fall he will apply to MIT, Dartmouth and Princeton. We will just sit back and see if they call the numbers on our Bingo board. Regardless of the results, I am proud that he has the qualifications to apply.</p>
<p>A couple of thoughts - the elites don’t always go wild over the ‘preppy’ sports and ECs. My child’s school doesn’t have most of them either. (We have soccer, b-ball, fencing and Ultimate frisbee mostly, and mostly as a fairly casual level.) We do send kids to the elite schools in goodly numbers.
Some universities/colleges include merit for their employees - but it comes from a different ‘pot’ than normal scholarships. From what little I know , it doesn’t give anybody a boost at admissions.</p>
<p>I agree with marite (post #150). I tend to defend things “aggressively” when people attack them aggressively. IMO, that’s what unimpresseddad did. And, he made a lot of faulty assumptions in doing so. The MAJORITY of kids at MIT and Harvard attended public high schools and are neither legacies nor athletes. </p>
<p>I’m glad he and his kids are happy. I hope his daughter mails back the post card saying that she doesn’t want to stay on the MIT waiting list. I really think if anyone gets in off the waiting list, it ought to be someone who would be impressed by the opportunity attending MIT will be.</p>
<p>“I’d like to see veteran posters be a little kinder/gentler with new posters.”</p>
<p>So would I.</p>
<p>Also, I would like to know, I mean I was going to apply to Yale and Harvard as a transfer for the sake of it but I decided not to waste the money (since Harvard started accepting transfers again). Do you think that they would accept a person from a tier 4 school with perfect SAT scores, perfect GPA and a lot of good ECs?</p>
<p>Schools I applied to as a transfer:</p>
<p>UConn (accepted)
UGA (accepted, it was a safety, pray to god I don’t have to go)
University of Maryland at College Park (accepted)
Georgia Tech (accepted, not going, it was a safety because my school has a transfer agreement with them)</p>
<p>here are the ones I am waiting to hear from:</p>
<p>Georgetown
Washington U in St Louis
University of Washington
Columbia
Penn
Cornell
Boston University
University of Rochester
and George Washington University</p>
<p>Money, it was basically free and I was rejected from my state flagship University because my GPA was a 3.2 when I was applying to colleges. </p>
<p>Also I made some poor choices two years ago during the applications process, I missed out on some high quality schools which would have given me decent financial aid but heck, money isn’t as big of an issue now for my parents and I have some scholarship money left over.</p>
<p>I can only guess, since I’m not an adcom. The chances of being able to transfer, from any school (not just Tier 4) are probably lower than the 6.9% admit rate at Harvard. It does not mean it can’t happen, but usually priority is given to freshmen. And this year, many schools have had record numbers of applicants.
Still, you have some very nice acceptances already. My nephew is at UMCP and loves it there. And the rest of your list is very nice!</p>
<p>Shrinkrap what is with the fish reference? =P</p>
<p>Also, marite, the transfer acceptance rate at Yale was 2 percent last year, 1 percent acceptance rate at Stanford. I visited UMCP, liked it but UConn is my pick because of the location (lived there, unfortunately parents moved down here for my HS years, I miss the Northeast). </p>
<p>Anyways that is if I get rejected from all of those other schools. Washington U and Georgetown have decent transfer acceptance rates of around 20 percent. I regret not applying to Vandy which had a transfer acceptance rate of around 55 percent or so. </p>
<p>According to my professor who used to teach at Georgetown and has friends up there, I shouldn’t worry, he says “you are going to make it into Georgetown as a transfer, I feel that you really belong there”. Maybe that’s a good sign.</p>
<p>I learned something, once you really get to know the people on this section well, you see that they are not bad people at all. Just that your first impression of them maybe a bit skewed.</p>
