Try Harder!

Applying to College
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Ok - just putting my thoughts out there - all opinions are my own, some of it is said with humor to lighten the mood - if you don’t agree, don’t get angry, just say so and laugh. :slight_smile:

I have so many thoughts about the college admission process - about what I didn’t know, what I learned, what I learned too late and what I still don’t know, and that is after the full cycle is over. Maybe if I had a second child to go through it and a year or two to recuperate, we would see different results, but who knows. I won’t say better, because my daughter had fantastic results. The only nut she couldn’t crack was the ivy nut. But that is one place where I feel CC fails, because most of the advice I have seen over the past year on CC has been don’t bother, you have zero chance of acceptance. Or why bother, ivies suck anyway. I guess when there is so much incredible help on all other topics and so little help on applying to Ivies you just have to shrug, maybe they were right, or maybe it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or maybe people secretly don’t want to help because they are trying to increase their own child’s chance? Or maybe they are past that point of worry because their kid already is a student or graduate, but they want to have this aura of mystique and superiority. (Saw a lot of that on the Harvard threads). But I digress…

I personally think the problem is the focus on the too much aspect of - the Try harder! - and I 100% blame the schools for that - the colleges, the high schools, the middle schools and even the elementary schools. Why do I blame the colleges most though? Because they are eating that garbage up. Student A has 50 ridiculous extra curriculars? Let’s look for student B with 100 ridiculous extra curriculars! Yes, 99 of them are meaningless, but they did 100! Student A plays the Oboe 20 hours a week and is on the aquatic fencing team too but absolutely hates both of those things! Fantastic! Does he/she also happen to know Mandarin or Farsi and teach proper ways to recycle caviar tins to homeless youths after school and is the President and Founder of the Left Handed Inter High School Picolo Club? We’ll take them and send them a likely letter to tell them how fantastic they are!

They need to let kids and teens go back to being kids and teens. I am ok with challenging academics. We are after all talking about schools and colleges and in this case elite colleges. You can study extremely hard and still be a teen. I don’t really have a problem with standardized tests because I think that at a basic level they set a bar, either you know the concepts or you don’t, and if you don’t know the concepts you are going to struggle at any college. But I also understand the push for test optional because not all school districts are created equal. Also, there is the factor of people who take years worth of prep courses to get their 1500-1600 score. A lot of people do not have the financial capability for that or the time - a lot of people don’t want to bother doing that. (My daughter could barely be bothered to take a practice test. For her taking the test was practice. I don’t intend that to mean she took it a bunch of times, she took it twice and hit that mid 1500 range superscore) I don’t think it matters if a student who shows excellent potential from a terrible school or school district received a 1300 on the SAT, to me that shows they will do fine, more so then the kid who took 4 years of SAT prep courses and got a 1500, in the best school district in the state. Colleges have enough information to understand this.

I have no problem with students playing sports they love, or instruments they love, or performing in plays, musical theater, ballet, singing - and putting these things on their college applications and writing about them in their essays if they want to. If their passion is animals or plants or whatever and they spend a lot of time on those things they love, then they should be allowed to do that. I wish that is what kids were allowed to do. But that isn’t what most kids are doing - they are being forced to play 3 or 4 sports they don’t enjoy, because one isn’t good enough. Orchestra? you must do marching band too. Debate, newspaper, Quiz bowls, mathletes, model UN, etc etc etc. It’s an epic race to have unreal resumes of tasks the schools, counselors, advisors or parents thought would look good for college admissions. What bugs me even more than the fact that people still force this on kids is that they are right, they do need it because colleges are still eating this up. But sorry Yale, Johnny didn’t really solve the hunger crisis in city Q or country X. No, Susie didn’t really do groundbreaking research that was instrumental in curing any disease. For that matter, Molly didn’t wake up one day and say, I want to learn how to fence, because she thinks that is the coolest sport ever. And most other kids don’t want to play 4 sports, they want to play one or maybe two. If I was on an admissions panel, I would look at some of these applications and just continually be like “are we really believing this? Next!” Anytime I felt something was insincere, a gimmick, I am clearly doing this to look like a saint on my college resume or to look amazing on my college resume, I would put them in the reject pile… or maybe the limbo that is waitlist land…

I wish it was more like this: I think academics and testing should make up the largest part of the admissions decision (which I think is the way all the rolling admission schools roll…) because at the end of the day you are talking about admission into an academic institution. Not a personality club, not a glee club, not a community service organization and again, in regard to this thread they were mainly talking about elite institutions. Followed by the essays, letters of recommendation, and interviews if there are interviews. The essays, interviews and LoRs are where the AOs can factor in intangibles and those things that they want to build their class for their stated mission and goals. I think the real issue in the try harder is the ECs and the Community Service aspect of the application. I think the extra curriculars should be an important part, but it should be more contained. Maybe limit how many ECs students can put on their applications because not everybody has the same opportunities to even participate in ECs. I truly believe some schools (and some scholarships) have algorithms to discard applicants who don’t meet a threshold number of extra-curriculars and particularly extracurriculars that take place at school. Rather than say pummel me with a list of 400 ECs, list your two most important ECs or even just 1 most important EC. Tell how much time you spent on it and what you did. I feel like an essay should be mandatory about one extra-curricular and why it was important to you. Community Service I think should just be removed from the whole application process for so many reasons - which is a whole different thread. But if people think CS is important for kids to learn, then make it a requirement every year as part of your graduation requirements - 1 to 2 hours per semester or something - not the ridiculous things that are going on, that once again shows the disparity between those with means and those without. Is it really fair for example that Student A has “400 hours of community service folding blankets at ye olde billionaires’ retirement home” when Student B goes home to a house that often has no electricity, heat or food? Should she be doing 400 or 40 or even 4 hours of community service? Because I kind of think the fact that she is still getting to school in the morning and finishing high school is amazing. Should a student who is practically homeless and has no food be volunteering at a homeless shelter or food bank for the sake of padding their application with community service hours? But for some reason colleges eat all this community service stuff up. I also think schools that insist on holistic admissions, should require a 3–4 minute video introduction by the applicant to do with however they please. The only requirement should be no super tools, heavy editing, super special effects, graphics, etc. It should be plain and simple, the student should be able to do it with a simple laptop, phone or tablet, introducing me in whatever way I feel like. Whether that be talking to the camera, doing a soliloquy from Shakespeare, singing, hitting 25 3-point shots in a row, skateboarding, break dancing, ballet, showing off your artwork, talking about your favorite tv show, author or book, whatever. Something for them to get to know you before they toss you in the midden heap in favor of some sub-par niece of a $50M donor. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Just to append on at the end to address Mwolf’s post above: no, they don’t have to change their process - and I touched on this some. But the bottom line is, the process is broken, because it is breaking children. It is also broken because I consider it to be largely fabrication - you aren’t getting real applicants you are getting products of what kids think schools want to see or what they think they need to be, to be accepted, rather than who they are. This is why a lot of students struggle and fail in colleges across the board, not just ivies and top 10s. They have created a product and get to college and realize they don’t even know who they are or what they really want to do or be. :confused:

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Common app limits the ECs to 10.

And the point of holistic admission is so student B has a fair shot.

But yes, PARENTS need to to let their kids be kids. There are plenty of great schools in the US that don’t require sacrifices of childhood.

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I believe Harvard uses a “personal rating,” not a "personality rating.” This rating is heavily dependent on the information in the teacher and guidance counselor evaluations, which are localized to the school and outside Harvard’s direct control. And, again, at extremely high achieving schools in high achieving areas it is more difficult to stand out, whether it be in evaluations, academics or EC’s. But this isn’t exclusive to Asian students, even if they are overrepresented in such schools.

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Dont even get me started on common app! :grin:

And I dont mean that you can submit 20, I mean the fact that it is absolutely terrible - especially since it is so geared towards ECs performed at school - and then the character limitations. How about instead of 10, give them 1 to 3 and give them space to put meaningful information about the EC so they know if the EC is meaningful or fluff. :thinking:

As for holistic admission being to give student B a fair shot - i would say that is the ostensible reason. I would say in reality it creates vagueness, chaos and this system of well… try harder. :slightly_frowning_face:

edit: and just so we are clear, I am not say limit what kids do - I am saying limit what they can submit, so they can be more thoughtful about what they do, and think about what they submit rather than trying to create the biggest list possible - which you can get around the 10 by submitting a resume

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I thought the documentary was really well done. One of the best I’ve seen. By the end, I found myself rooting for all of the kids. Several touching and humanizing moments throughout.

I don’t think the film alleviates any stereotypes about Asian students. One of the teachers told the students they won’t get in to Elite U because they’re Asian. I think that’s irresponsible because the students end up believing it and making excuses, including telling the Brown girl that she got in because she is black.

The belief that Asians are victimized morphs into some sort of colloquialism that Asians are robotic, and without personality. That’s not what non-Asians think. The elite-education-seeking mentality in and of itself is the reason for low “personality” scores. You even see one of the Asian girls saying she is looking forward to a change of scenery because she is tired of Chinese people.

It’s interesting to me how little of the focus was on college affordability, which is the # 1 consideration for everyone I know.

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Exactly. Many people on this thread seem to expect colleges to change their admissions standards in order to reduce that stress. Putting aside the assumption that the changes that people want won’t reduce stress (a wrong assumption), my point is that colleges have no incentive to make the changes that people here want. The fact that these colleges are doing well financially and remain super popular means that colleges have no incentive to make the changes that people want.

The main way that people can put pressure on colleges is through refusing to apply, and so to put pressure on enrollment and on tuition revenue. Since these colleges have lots of money and more applicants than they can deal with, the only way the sway these colleges to change is to provide a compelling reason for them to change.

I am challenging people who claim that colleges should change their admission criteria to provide such a reason.

I will expand that. I challenge the people who claim that the stress is the result of the present admissions criteria to explain how their admission criteria will reduce stress.

As far as I see, the stress described in this video is mostly the result of the fact that a lot of high school kids want to attend a set of colleges which cannot accept more than 10%-15% of them at most. No matter what criteria are used, most of these kids will not be accepted, and no matter what criteria are used the pressure to “try harder” will still be there.

In fact, replacing “Holistic” with more “academic achievement based” criteria will make it worse. When all are working on exactly the same set of criteria, the competition becomes that much more intense, and the penalty of relaxing becomes even higher. Kids will spend almost no time on doing anything they love, and focus entirely on a small set of academic pursuit.

Movie club? Forget about it. Music, art, theatre? Out the Window. Any leisure time activities? Nope, they need to study a bit more for that exam or that math competition.

A kid is sick for a couple of weeks during their sophomore year? Welp, there goes any weekend until the middle of junior year.

And yet, with all this, as all of the HYPSM obsessed kids or kids with HYPSM obsessed parents lose any joy in life, lose any ability to relax or just have fun, most of these poor kids will still not be accepted to a colleges which will satisfy their parent’s or their own need for prestige.

Holistic admissions at least allows kids to pursue their passions and interests.

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I agree that many students and their families will pursue their “dream” colleges regardless. We see them on CC every day, whatever sound advices they may receive on CC. However, many of them would likely be compelled to face the reality much sooner if the “elite” colleges adopted more transparent admission standards. Much lower percentage of students in UK apply to Oxbridge because many of them realized much earlier that they weren’t “Oxbridge materials”. Why stress yourself when you know you aren’t getting in?

No doubt some do. But many appear to pursue such extracurricular activities purely because of their “dreams” of attending “elite” colleges.

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So, a major point that no one has yet raised is that it is SO important to think outside the box!!! If “everyone” has 50 ECs, don’t go for 75! If “everyone” plays the violin, don’t play the violin, unless you love playing the violin!

Pick your head up, and realize that there are tens of thousands of students doing mostly the same thing. (Band, student government, model UN Etc)

If you love something, do it! But realize that doing something to get into college won’t necessarily work.

Realize that there is more than one path to success in college admissions, and more than one path to success in life. I know this is a bit of a cliche, but has held true for my kids. One got his 1st job at a very selective investment bank (1% of interviewees get offers) from his safety school barely in the T50. Another was admitted to a T20 with his main EC being a manual labor job on a farm. The 3rd had a test score in the 90th percentile, WAY below his school’s average, but now his college GPA is in the top 15% at his school.

Be strategic! Apply to less popular schools, or less popular locations. Apply where your sex is underrepresented.

If the process is emphasized, rather than the outcome there will be much less stress for the students. One of my kids struggled in French – went for extra help, had to have tutoring, spent the most time studying for that class. With all that effort, his grade was a C+. And as I told him, that was a great grade! He did his best, and thatsall anyone can ask. (Side note – that work paid off in college, where he was a French minor with straight As!)

Much of this is within families’ control – it is possible to not buy into the rat race.

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Of course, less popular schools are easier to get into. But it does not seem like (here on the forums or at Lowell HS) schools like SFSU or UCM generate much interest. There are other examples in other states (e.g. most engineering hopefuls in North Carolina focus on NCSU and ignore NC A&T).

That only matters for colleges that consider that in admissions (not all do). If it is, that generally puts female applicants at a disadvantage (since US college undergraduates are around 59% female these days), unless they are interested in majors where they are underrepresented or colleges which mostly have those majors. Of course, male applicants interested in those male-heavy majors may not gain any gender advantage that may exist otherwise.

A similar argument can be made along the lines of race/ethnicity, but many students do not want to go to a school where they are that underrepresented.

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I think all of this goes back to what parents (and kids’) expectations for college are. Are you hoping Harvard will mean you’ll be paid 6 figures out the gate or soon after? The assumption may be flawed (one, that you’ll make that much and/or two, that it’s the only path to making that much).
Are you hoping that at Harvard you’ll be surrounded by “your” people? Again, assuming that’s true, that may not be the only path or even healthy. I read an article recently about the high suicide rate at ivies - because all of a sudden, someone who is really competitive all their life is thrown together with a large group of highly competitive kids who have decided their grades are their worth and path to the end of some rainbow. This is all a fallacy.

Maybe Harvard or another ivy isn’t the right school (if there even is just one “right” school).

I agree when I see so many ECs that look like the kid is just short of having cured cancer, I question whether that’s accurate or if the kid ever had a chance to just be a kid. They have their whole lives to slog through work. My son has a ton of band related ECs but all stuff he chose because he loves it. He’s been playing golf a long time but I told him I thought it might be too much to do both next year - he agreed and chose band. My daughter has golf team in the fall and chorus as part of school. Community service hours are built into school graduation requirements so they do those as part of school. She does a summer job and gym over summer because that’s the magnet programs requirement. That’s it and more than enough because they’re kids.

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Fantastic ideas for ECs! Recycling caviar tins to homeless youth could also be a startup funded by crypto for maximum impact, especially if taken global.

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And MWolf’s statement is probably more true without holistic admission.

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Given that American high school students are among the unhappiest in the developed world, it is reasonable to believe the current system is broken. As the students in the movie note, they are deeply cynical about both the admission process and the colleges themselves.

Or perhaps just more realistic about both the nature of process and the schools.

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I agree largely with your characterization but have also seen that when people offer advice based on there experiences they are often dismissed out of hand, told decisions are random or accused of bragging.

In the case of Try Harder it is obvious that the secret of success isn’t as elusive as we like to suggest. Everyone seemed to recognize “the one” student with a clear path to his school of choice and no surprise that student was accepted at both Harvard and Stanford.

When you contradict the CC mantra that Ivy admits are tantamount to a lottery by highlighting that often successful candidates are accepted at several elite schools you are told that is an anecdote vs the 1550/4.4 score kid rejected at multiple schools who is held up as proof the entire system is flawed.

People point out 90% of ECs are contrived yet fail to juxtapose that against sub 5% acceptance rates which suggest the likelihood that professional AOs are on to it and weeding it out.

So to advice. Students have to be blessed with a combination of raw academic talent and a home and school environment that support and cultivates those abilities. Unfortunately given inconsistency of resources schools correctly try and calibrate and correct where possible but put simply they identify students they believe will thrive as members of a competitive academic community.

As far as ECs be authentic, passionate, sincere and focused where possible. Participation awards, mid level box checking or mediocrity across activities hurts vs helps. Choose to do what you both like to do and are good at. This may not get you into the school of your choice but you will have fun and be meaningful along the way. At least when this experience is communicated to AOs it will be tangible in the “who is this candidate and how would they contribute to our community” column.

Make sure your essays and applications are good, specific and consistent. Quality and depth versus quantity. Truly think through why a specific school and your ambitions and personality are good fits and communicate those reasons by example when possible.

Set your expectations. We make it sound like a black box of info. I point back to Try Harder and the fact that the kids know for whom the road to elites is clearly paved. It is in fact that way at most schools amongst the very very top who have both hard and soft attributes that stand out. The next group down seems to elicit the most confusion. By that I mean the super academic with lesser ECs or vice versa. Unfortunately, that is the group getting the most squeezed out these days and the students and parents from whom you hear the most justified disappointment.

Schools are no longer checking boxes yet kids are seeking admissions by checking more and more boxes at the expense of their happiness. With applications booming schools are now attempting to find kids that not only have the academic qualifications but stand out amongst so many kids that are well qualified. Simply trying harder is a flawed approach and to head off the inevitable response from the CC community yes a degree of luck helps in an imperfect system.

Lastly a comment on holistic review and diversity. Please stop soothing your disappointment by thinking someone that doesn’t look like you stole your spot. That logic only holds if no one that looks like you was accepted. Otherwise no one stole anything. In fact you lost out (justified or not) to the kid who matches your demographics not a schools desire to provide an environment that mirrors society.

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You said what I was trying to say, but far more articulately!

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In all the years I have been on this site, I haven’t read the countless threads about the Ivies as saying either of these things. Certainly not anything that has been established by an agreement by most people here. One of the reasons the “Is X school worth it” threads are so common. There is no agreement.

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I watched the documentary last night. Just fantastic. As someone else said, I was rooting for all the kids especially Shea.

My son went to a school ranked nationally in the top 12. 25%Asian but only 38%white. They take from every social economic situation in the city. You have to test into this public. Getting 895 /900 gives you a look.

Saying this the one thing they stressed was have a few reaches. They made kids apply to school with great merit. Many kids went to schools for free winning national scholarships. Some went to Ivys and MIT but not many. Local to Chicago many went to Northwestern, UChicago and UIUC.

They showed the pressure the kids are in daily nicely in the documentry . But these types of kids usually want it no other way also. They are academically driven and would excel at just about any school. Mostly these kids tend to support each other.

The ivy day scene was very realistic. At my son’s school the question of the day is "Which schools did you get rejected by " It almost became a running joke.

As many already know here, you gotta cast a wide net of schools you would be “happy” to attend. No way someone is happy with all 25 schools they applied to.

With my sons school only being 38% white race was talked about with a running theme of… “Don’t give them an excuse to reject you”

Again the focus was applying to reaches but also to great schools much lower down the food chain. Some schools suggested for my son at that time we were kinda insulted by until we saw the amount of merit being given. That opened our eyes.

I do think schools need to be better in having the students apply more broadly in general and tampering expectations.

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I agree with everything you said. For example, everyone focuses on UMD CP in MD (we’re in MD) but UMBC is a great school also with academically focused kids which I think either of my kids would fit in amongst. Even if it’s not considered as “prestigious” as UMDCP.

I would also add that the choices kids make in HS should be made more for self discovery at this point (and so they have a strong sense of confidence in who they are, which is so much more than just some stats on paper). I’m also a believer in sense of belonging you get from being parts of different groups; and that keeping busy in productive activities keeps you out of your head and out of trouble (to a degree). But I don’t believe they should be choosing activities for sake of getting into college.

I’ve seen it elsewhere so I can’t take credit, but essentially the colleges you choose to apply to should fit you (interests, majors, personality, goals etc) rather than trying to building your HS years so as to fit any particular college.

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Some of us may believe that the students can get equally good education at many different colleges in different tiers, but that’s far from a universal agreement. If we can’t convince ourselves, what makes us think that we can convince others?

We keep telling students that these schools with single-digit admit rates (or whatever other standard we use) is a “reach” for everyone (except, perhaps, for a few super “hooked”), but the list of such schools keeps growing, and growing rapidly. This obviously means that the list of schools that are “matches” or “safeties” is rapidly shrinking. Is there any wonder that these “talented” students (as we often call them) wouldn’t want to “settle” for this shrinking list of “matches” and “safeties”?

I don’t think there’s any other country in the world, where college admissions create so much uncertainty. And uncertainties create stresses. Do they not?

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If I had a magic wand I would love to create an elite non-holistic university for our country-- even just one! I don’t see our current elite universities changing their ways because they have no incentive to do so. Actually they have an incentive not to change. The biggest factor in their mystique has never been the rigor of their education (although it is rigorous), but rather the social access they provide to the upper class, so they have a major incentive to stay WASPy. To stay WASPy, they can no longer get away with hard quotas, but they can still have soft quotas by using LADC as well as subjective “personal” scores.

Affirmative action for URMs/low income/1st gen may not be “fair” but at least it has a good goal (so debatable in my opinion.) The same cannot be said for LADC preferences. Where I come from (rich, overwhelmingly white, midwest suburb) there are a ton of LADC admits. I know so many mediocre students who got in this way. The stories I could tell, ugh. It is really gross.

So I would like to create even a single elite university that admits based on grades, rigor, and testing. At a minimum a test like the SATs, but preferably one that is more difficult in order to discriminate at the top levels. Also possibly an Oxbridge system where faculty have major input and their own tests.

This dream university should be strong across the board (i.e. not just STEM or humanities) so that it doesn’t attract a skewed gender ratio off the bat. But otherwise gender should not be taken into account. Nor should race be taken into account (if it becomes 75%+ Asian, or any other race, so be it.) And obviously no LADC (it can have club sports, or at most D3, but no coaching slots or tips or tricks.)

And then let’s make it affordable. I suggest it be public, and students from any state will be charged the same. It will not have merit awards, but can provide need-based financial aid.

Other countries have these schools (or something close), so obviously it can be done. But we have nothing like this is the US. But maybe there is a university here that can work to become closer to this model–maybe even just one.

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