I am troubled by requiring significant volunteerism and placing it above other ECs. Should kids have to drop off their sports team, out of music, or whatever in order to get more hours? If you read even a few chance me threads on here or comments made by many parents, you will see that there is already a very firmly held belief among many families that large numbers of volunteer hours are an absolute requirement. Our school has no public transportation and with a late dismissal, it’s impossible for kids to volunteer anywhere during normal working hours. I think there are significant obstacles of scheduling and transportation. There have been several groups my kids wanted to be involved with or were involved with in middle school but the high school daily schedule precluded that.
This will further greatly advantage kids who are extroverts, highly popular, social while giving HS bullies another tool to screw over the less popular kids. In most mainstream high schools…I can easily see this further screwing those who are labeled “Nerds” for being highly passionate and high achieving about academics while not being as interested in athletics or ECs like student government which can devolve into little more than petty popularity contests having little to do with assessment of one’s good character.
Talk about cultivating a “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere…especially at competitive academic HS environments like WWP which you’ve complained about in another thread…
I’m amused by the idea that Harvard, Yale and their ilk are selecting for good character. When I look at the people I know who have graduated from those schools, they are very smart, and mostly very hard working. But they are not kinder or more honest than anyone else. So if top schools are selecting for integrity, they aren’t doing a good job of it.
LOL. In D’ s case those were the people who actually knew who she was (and they were the ones who loved her). The people at the school didn’t even know she was there.
TheGFG, I hear you but, thinking a kid isn’t as likely to pump up a friends LOR seems quite naive to me, and I mean no disrespect. What student in their right mind would ask a friend to provide an LOR unless they were absolutely certain it would be positive? Additionally it is far more likely that the student would have more opportunity to read the letter, and guide the LOR writer as to what to convey.
Our daughters guidance counselor was helpful (small public High School) and he wrote a LOR that he shared with my wife and I after it had been sent. It was the most beautiful and one of the most kind letters I have ever read.
We were contacted by a Harvard admissions officer prior to the RD decisions had been announced, they wanted two more LOR’s from the heads of two summer programs that our daughter had participated in. They wanted these letters and they wanted them quickly. We jumped through hoops to contact these people and to impose upon them to request and prepare LOR’s very quickly. Our daughter had already submitted all of the requested LOR’s previously. So we didn’t completely understand. We thought it was positive in that they perhaps were looking for information that would provide support for their decision to offer her admission. At least that is what we were hoping.
These people very graciously prepared these LOR’s and sent them directly to the admissions office. When regular decision day came our daughter was wait listed. In mid May she was offered a spot off of the wait list.
We have no idea what element or combination of elements were the most meaningful. In our daughters case they ended up with five LOR’s versus I believe the normal three.
Well, our school is competitive and yet kids found peers to do this for them. S wrote 2 LOR for other students’ Dartmouth applications. One letter was written for a friend for the same year he was also applying to Dartmouth, and therefore he was “helping” the competition. The friend got in.
My kids had a different approach to applying to college. If I had to label them I’d guess I have three Chloes and a Doe. One of my Cloes could have been a competitive Zoe if he applied himself. My Doe was just born a Doe. He is self-driven and works hard. My other kids, teachers and everyone else who spent time with Doe dating back to before he started school recognized what we are calling a “Doe”.
My Chloes each selected a school, based on their anticipated major, location and GPA/test scores applied ED or EA, got in and accepted. One OOS, two in-state, one application each. Why? They were really great fits for these somewhat selective schools (~50%). One Chloe, if he worked very hard could have been a competitive Zoe, but didn’t. He received the top merit-based, prestigious in-state scholarship, so he could have gotten into a higher ranked school, but being top dog is a much better fit for him than getting into a more selective school.
My Doe was recently accepted to an HYP SCEA. He works very hard because he loves to learn new things. He is also highly competitive, being the youngest of four. He did not know where he would apply until after his junior year spring break, when, at the suggestion of his academic advisor, we toured the “elite” schools. Then, and only then, did we see a specific HYP as being a great fit, so he applied SCEA. The AdComs must have seen who he was through a combination of his high ACT score (no SATs), strong academic record, recommendations (no extra ones), interesting application (he’s opinionated and just not shy about it in his essays) and interview. He’s not an athlete, legacy, URM, NMF or a national champion at something. He is Caucasian and we are middle income. No extra tutoring for standardized tests but used practice books from Amazon. The HYP AdComs must be doing something right.
How can most parents or students know what specific schools are good fits until at least sophomore or junior year? When kids say “I have dreamed of XYZ since I was young” they are not basing that college on fit. We let what they did in HS guide to select their college, not the other way around. I think each of my kids are at the right college for them and couldn’t be happier. One HYP, one OOS and two different in-state schools. Could it be that parents are over-thinking this?
Not at all. Even the nerdy kids have a nerd friend, and it only takes a one page rec. My introverted, nerdy son had his all-STEM geek friend write him a rec letter, and that friend’s English was as a second language. Still accepted.
Havard also decided that students should no longer be pressured into declaring a major at the end of their freshman year. I think it’s obvious from the applications which kids are STEM and which are not, and which could go either way. (I liked art, history and math best, but had good grades in everything - I could have majored in anything - in the end architecture seemed to combine the most of my interests and strengths, but it wasn’t obvious when I applied.) I don’t know if things have changed now that they have added engineering.
I think that the big unknown is what actually fed into the decision for the individual applicant. I have guesses about what looked best and worst on my kids’ applications, but I could be wrong. The only thing I know for sure is that Chicago found my kid’s “Why Chicago” essay funny because they mentioned it in a holiday card.
Just wondering: are these changes effective immediately? Will they matter for this admissions cycle?
This is a sure way to keep away the kids who walk to the beat of their own drum. My S is smart, took difficult classes and did well in them, writes extremely well, and scored high on standardized tests. He did not participate in school EC’s, and he did not do community service. He filled his time with writing, playing, and recording music. His friends were into the same music he was into … they weren’t scholars, and a letter of recommendation from one of them would likely not have impressed any adcoms. S excelled quietly in school, despite the fact that his friends weren’t in his classes, weren’t doing hours of homework, weren’t interested in academics at all. S was absolutely prepared to do well at just about any school … guess that shouldn’t matter, though, because as a teenager he chose to explore his own interests. (And I suppose I am a bad mom because while I encouraged him to do EC’s and community service, I didn’t “make” him.)
"This will further greatly advantage kids who are extroverts, highly popular, social while giving HS bullies another tool to screw over the less popular kids. "
That makes zero sense, because the less popular kids aren’t going to ask the high school bully who steals their lunch money and laughs at them in the hall to write their LOR.
And introverts can have friends just like extroverts do.
“I am troubled by requiring significant volunteerism and placing it above other ECs. Should kids have to drop off their sports team, out of music, or whatever in order to get more hours?”
That would be relevant if these colleges now said they “required” significant volunteerism or that they unilaterally placed it above EC’s. Let’s get real - the aspiring theater student who spends her time in local community plays, the scientist-kid who does an internship at the lab, the aspiring politician who does work for a local government body - they won’t be all of a sudden required to drop those things and become candy stripers at the hospital.
You’re assuming the high school concerned may have more than one nerdy friend or that the high school environment is such they could always find each other. That’s not always the case judging by the large numbers of college classmates and some former high school dropouts with high GPA/SAT/academic ability who recounted feeling very isolated as the only academically passionate nerd in a high school whose campus culture…including parents, teachers, and school admins prioritized those who are athletes and socially popular at their expense.
Some of them felt the need to permanently move out of their hometowns after HS/college due to the prevalence of this anti-intellectual/anti-nerd attitudes among most adults and educators there.
Yes…many of those HSs were ones where the motto was millions for a new state-of-the-art athletic facilities/stadium for the athletes…a pittance at best to support the buildings, books, labs, and facilities needed to provide an education.
I’m also wondering how meaningful is a recommendation from a peer who is likely to have a strong interest in the admission outcome…whether it is a friend who benefits intrinsically from a friend’s positive admissions outcome or a ostensible friend/“frenemy” who benefits from the individual’s negative admissions outcome out of mere glee and/or as a means to “eliminate a fellow competitor”.
IMO…the above issues is a good reason why recommendations should only come from those who aren’t peers and who don’t have personal/familial ties beyond meaningfully observing the recommendee in his/her professional supervisory as a teacher or supervisor(non-family/family friend) at work.
OT, but engineering wasn’t recently added. Harvard’s undergrad app had engineering(under DEAS) as one of the major/concentration options when my graduating class were applying to colleges in the mid-'90s.
Also, Harvard has had an engineering school for several decades at least. My uncle’s unfortunate encounter with a Harvard Engineering graduate working as his clerk/secretary took place in the '70s and judging by the estimated age of said graduate…he probably graduated sometime in the late '50s/early-'60s.
But cobrat, the school benefits from student admissions’ results far more than a peer will. The adults have career incentives to promote students, especially at many private schools whose brand appeal depends on successfully facilitating elite school admissions. And I suppose if your nerdy kid can’t even find one friend–just one–than he isn’t going to be the type of student the Ivies want. After all, the friend could come from an EC outside school as well.
I suppose the argument is that this hurts kids who are on the spectrum, as they may have a harder time finding / making / keeping friends. But that would be apparent from an interview, I would imagine as well.
“frenemy” who benefits from the individual’s negative admissions outcome out of mere glee and/or as a means to “eliminate a fellow competitor”."
You inhabit some really odd world where people routinely rub their hands with glee at the idea of embarrassing / hurting someone else. Maybe that’s why you rub your hands with glee at ticking “the establishment” off.
@cobrat, yes there was a DIVISION of engineering before. Now (since 2007) it’s a SCHOOL- however unlike other SCHOOLS you don’t apply to it separately. You still apply to Havard undeclared. Which is in keeping with Harvard’s notion that you shouldn’t be typecast too early.
Not every kid has a friend that could reliably write a recommendation. Introverted or socially awkward kids would be disadvantaged by a peer reference.
I think ad come at top colleges recognize that for at least some portion of each class could be replaced by similar students who were rejected without damage to the overall quality of that class.
As GFG pointed out above, elite colleges are not immune from having students behaving badly. I don’t think kids at Harvard are of better character overall than kids at a directional state u or even at a trade school.
I’m all over being an academically passionate nerd, having been one myself, but it’s quite rare that there is only ONE such person at a given high school.