UC San Diego -- or Prostitute College

Parent Cafe
221

<p>Maia and I have pretty much decided that even if she gets into Pomona (we haven't heard from them yet, but that was our "safety" -- kidding!) she's going to UCSD because it's half the price.</p>

<p>Considering how closely parents on this board read SAT tests and college evaluation systems, I wonder how some of them managed to misunderstand some pretty basic information in my article.</p>

<p>I'm not going to bother with the poor souls who actually imagined that Maia considered less prestigious colleges "prostitute college," or who were offended by her making a joke about....sexual-slavery-around-the-world- which-my-God-is-a-very-serious-problem! </p>

<p>But, for the record, I didn't write (as someone complained I did) about ignoring advice of "education professionals" who wanted Maia to consider a third-tier private school or a Cal State. I ignored their advice that she should go to 12th grade.</p>

<p>We didn't consider Cal States or third-tier privates because we were quite prepared for Maia to go to the L.A. City College honors program for a year or two and then transfer to a UC, if she didn't get into a UC she wanted to go to. (And, sorry, that might have meant Santa Barbara.) Was that really so wrong?</p>

<p>I'm glad I didn't know about such things as those elaborate point systems before, or we might have been discouraged. But now that I think of it, I guess Maia probably got points for getting herself an internship at a local alt-weekly the summer before 9th grade, going to Washington & Lee's Summer Scholars program last summer, and her couple of paid live-blogging gigs for the American Cinema Foundation over the past two years.</p>

222

<p>Frankly, there are many on this board who should be ashamed of themselves.</p>

<p>Maia, you will take UCSD by storm -- you aren't one to go unnoticed. :)</p>

223

<p>
[quote]
Frankly, there are many on this board who should be ashamed of themselves.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Oh yes, I'd have to agree with that without hesitation. But, let's stop the delusion for a second. </p>

<p>Let's start with people who are too lazy to read posts correctly, twist the words of other members, confuse their own faulty interpretations with facts, and are too obnoxious and narrow-minded to recognize their mistakes, let alone, apologize when it is warranted. </p>

<p>Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and I believe that we will disagree about the identity of the respectful posters in this thread.</p>

224

<p>Since a few of us seem to have developed the nasty habit of misunderstanding the finer points of your articles, allow me to ask direct questions that should go a long way in demystifying your positions.</p>

<p>I won't bother asking you if you believe that the rejections by UCLA, UCSB, and CMC were inappropriate. I would, however, like to ask WHY you consider their decisions to be incorrect or questionable. Do you also believe the admission officials at the named schools -and Pomona for that matter- to be pompous jackasses? </p>

<p>Further, allow me to ask if you see the acceptance of your daughter at UCSD as a vindication for your and your daughter's choices in preparing for college. </p>

<p>Changing subject, unless I am mistaken, you criticized the decision of parents to invest in preparation classes, namely $2,000 test preparation programs. However, since you asked us to consider that the W&L Scholars program might have contributed to boost your daughter's EC scores at UCSD, could I ask you why you consider a program costing upwards of $2,000 to be different, and why a paid summer program should grant extra admission credit at UCSD? </p>

<p>Lastly, could I ask you if you would have written your series of articles if UCSD had also rejected your daughter and forced her to follow the alternative route of attending LACC for a number of semesters?</p>

225

<p>Calmom - I'm sorry to harp on this, but your continued repetition of your misunderstanding of the reality of UC admissions for the average kid who has academic credentials towards the lower end of the UC eligibility scale - or even the middle - is problematic. (Your post 210) I'm not talking about Maia here - I think it's pretty clear that she had a lot going on that was not evident from the newspaper articles - but about a more typical high school student. In fact, the typical California high school student applying to UC has to have grades and test scores far above the UC minimums to have a realistic shot at acceptance not just to Berkeley, UCLA and UCSD, but also Santa Barbara, Irvine and Davis. Even Santa Cruz has become much more selective in the past ten years. It's just not like it was back in our day.</p>

<p>An example: UC's minimum eligibility in the statewide context formula has a minimum combined SAT score (5 total tests - used to be SAT 1 + 3 SATII's, now SATI + 2 SATIIs) for each range of grade point averages. Two years ago my older son had test scores which exceeded the UC minimum for his GPA by over 1200 points - that's almost 250 points per SAT test. He's not a genius - the minimum standards are just ludicrously low. He also had some stuff going for him - Sports team captain, overcame some adversity (an officially diagnosed and acknowledged learning disability.) He applied to a number of UC's, including Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Irvine. He was rejected by every UC except Riverside. (He chose to go to San Diego State, which is actually slightly more selective than Riverside.) </p>

<p>I'm not harping on this because I have an axe to grind. I'm harping on this because unrealistic expectations are bad for parents, students, and also the University, which gets blasted by political opportunists who feed off of the sense of unfairness which arises when little Johnnie doesn't get into the UC Mom and Dad thought was a sure thing. My son and I knew that most UC campuses were a long shot despite his better than average academic qualifications, and avoided a lot of disappointment by forming realistic expectations. </p>

<p>The common data set numbers really don't lie. Yes, students get admitted at all points along the bell curve of grades and test scores. Yes, there will be unusual students like Maia who will be the ones who create those data points at the 10th and 90th percentiles. But parents of normal high school students should look at the profile of students who are actually admitted into these schools, just like other schools, realistically assess how special their kids are in the ways that make them more "admittable" than other kids, and set their expectations accordingly. The UC "minimum" standards have no real world relevance to a normal high school student's chances of being admitted to any UC campus besides Riverside, and, I assume, Merced.</p>

<p>And please don't read me wrong - Riverside is an excellent school, and any student can get a fine education there. I'm not sure why it is scorned by so many; I guess being the bottom dog of the UC system causes it to be snubbed by a lot of people who would jump at the opportunity presented by its bona fide educational qualities if it were independent of UC. But the fact is - Riverside is the only UC campus which will admit most students who place towards the lower end of the Uc eligibility scale. (Sorry - I keep forgetting Merced. I don't really know much about the new school.)</p>

226

<p>I am in the unusual position of being compelled to agree with Xiggi, who wrote along the lines of some of my thoughts in a more incisive manner than I would have.</p>

<p>The facts displayed in the article would have worked with a headline something like "Cluess but Lucky to Get Into UCSD."</p>

<p>The attitude displayed in the article deserved the headline: "College Admissions is Screwed Up: They Don't Realize How Special My Kid Is, the Pompous Jackases."</p>

227

<p>"I am in the unusual position of being compelled to agree with Xiggi"</p>

<p>TheDad, this is not the Cafe. Different forum, different rules of engagement! :)</p>

228

<p>However, sometimes, it's not fair to these students that show great strenghts in areas that aren't testable. She's an avid study of Russian, yet it's not testable for AP or SAT. Is that fair for her?</p>

<p>I'm glad to have known this young woman for her incredible strenght and fortitude when she dealt with ridicule from others. </p>

<p>It's important that she feels she has succeeded in what she has accomplished, not to fit into some pre-conceived method of success. </p>

<p>I got into the Ivy League's that I got into with what I knew best. I tried my best, I gave it my best and I always stayed true to what I believed. </p>

<p>There was no prepping or anything like that that many of my fellow admitted students say they have received.</p>

<p>As for WNL, it's not so much that it's paid but it really is a great program to explore the summer with kids that, well, are doing some academicsbut soemtimes like to be kids...</p>

<p>Isn't that what youth is about? Fun?</p>

229

<p>I really think that the writer of the column needs to understand that when you write an article meant for national exposure, then she is exposing her child to what occurs next, which can be very judgmental. The article was written in a way to be provocative and get attention. Besides some disagreements I personally have with the tone and content, I really do think that it is controversial as to whether one exposes one's own child so much for the sake of getting attention. Politicians often have no choice, but journalists do. I hope that Maia doesn't mind this controversy, it appears that she is OK with it. But it was her mother's choice to write a "trying to be oh so clever" article. So if you can't stand the heat, don't start the fire.</p>

<p>By the way, I have absolutely no interest in admissions at UC colleges, so please don't give another lecture about the odds at UCs for Russian majors. I think the point of the article was how lucky the child was to get in against all of her odds, although I'd rather read about someone who really had odds against them, as in from South Central LA.</p>

230

<p>Maia's Mom:
"I'm not going to bother with the poor souls who actually imagined that Maia considered less prestigious colleges "prostitute college," or who were offended by her making a joke about....sexual-slavery-around-the-world- which-my-God-is-a-very-serious-problem! "</p>

<p>Goodness. Snubbed again.</p>

231

<p>Maia:
'I came up with prostitute college a few years ago on my blog and still use it today...to describe anyplace of education worse than the worst community college. I don't mean to denigrate women who "work it" but unless anyone here is a prostitute, I really don't mean to offend anybody."</p>

<p>Maia's Mom:
"I'm not going to bother with the poor souls who actually imagined that Maia considered less prestigious colleges "prostitute college," or who were offended by her making a joke about....sexual-slavery-around-the-world- which-my-God-is-a-very-serious-problem! "</p>

<p>Goodness. Snubbed again. </p>

<p>Me too. What's that group in San Francisco called that defends the rights of prostitutes, like for their safety and maybe one day they'll get into community college or maybe even a UC? Where's Julia Roberts when we need her?</p>

232

<p>My quote:
Frankly, there are many on this board who should be ashamed of themselves.</p>

<p>xiggi: Want the other cheek?</p>

<p>Me: Well if it will make you (and any others) feel better</p>

<p>;) /</p>

<p>Just kidding!</p>

233

<p>You are right, let's just declare prostitutes the scum of the earth, no compassion. How about "john school" or are they up on the scale, just a little lower than community college, not quite as far down? And don't forget: "It's Hard Out Here To Be A Pimp", great sympathy at the Oscars this year. Maybe the poor downtrodden prostitutes will be next on our list for some respect or remorse for their station in life. They need to write a song for a movie in 2006: "It's H*** out here in prostitute college, but at least there are no SATs"</p>

234

<p>I heard UC Berkeley has a lot of gay people and bad school atmosphere (at least in the frosh year), but this about San Diego is still shocking</p>

235

<p>I'm not going to say that every prostitute is in her position by choice (because I know that some are forced into it by their own parents). But some/many truly are.</p>

<p>As someone who has had some "dirt poor" parents, grandparents and great-grands, etc, I (and they) take exception to the suggestion that poor people are forced to choose prostitution. Poor people have morals just like anyone else and most would not choose prostitution -- no matter what! Being poor doesn't mean the inability to live a moral life. My 80+ year old parents are insulted by such suggestions.</p>

236

<p>I'm kind of late getting to this party, but Maia seems to me like a very resilient kid. Resilience is a trait that seems to be of interest to adcoms, because it promotes success in a variety of endeavors, including adjustment to the challenges of college. </p>

<p>Yeah, she did vent a little online about her rejections, but who doesn't vent? The difference is that with this new generation, things that used to be private are now done in public for all the world to see, and kids don't always realise the consequences of that. </p>

<p>Maia seems to have handled some very difficult situations well, especially when you consider the weird harassment from her teacher at the private school. Lots of parents would be suing or demanding special concessions, instead of giving the school mild props for their handling of the situation. Lots of kids would have tuned out of school altogether. </p>

<p>As for Maia graduating early instead of following conventional wisdom and revving up the GPA: as parents, we all end up having to balance "one size fits all" policies against our child's best interests. </p>

<p>Yeah, I'll confess, I exploited the IEP process to get around D's neighborhood high school's policy of not allowing the kids to take foreign language till 11th grade, even if they studied it in middle school. This (IMO, misguided) policy was based on the idea that the kids wouldn't pass the state exit exam if they frittered away a 9th or 10th grade class period on foreign language instead of courses tailored to the test. Call me whiny and entitled, but that didn't describe my kid, so I saw no reason for her progress (and interest) in foreign language to be stymied during an important period in brain development.</p>

<p>If the decision to leave high school early had been disastrous, Maia would have been the one to face the consequences, and based on what I've seen, I think she would have been able to bounce back from it, even if it took her a year or two at community college.</p>

237

<p>Back from an intense weekend of momming - the SAT, one kid home from college, another playing in a state championship soccer tournament (third place - yay!), another busy with play rehearsals - and I find most of what I wanted to say in response to calmom has been said by others. But to recap:</p>

<p>"Eligibility" for the UCs is not the same thing as "guaranteed admission", unless one is ELC. To look at the admissions statistics in another way, at UCSB (which appeared from the article to be Maia's "safety" school) almost half of the students who applied - the vast majority of whom were "eligible" - were NOT admitted. It's not the way it was in my day, when you selected three campuses on your UC application and were all but guaranteed admission to at least one of them.</p>

<p>And while the UCs place less weight on SAT scores than some schools, they still remain an important determinant of admission. According to its online admissions profile, in 2004 UCSD admitted fewer than a quarter of applicants with math SAT scores of 500-590. Santa Barbara's admissions rate for scores in that range was higher - 42% - but again, that means that nearly 60% of those students were denied admission. Now, one could certainly argue that the SATs should be scrapped (or at least deemphasized) because they unfairly favor students from middle-class homes with well-educated parents - but that's the kind of kid we're talking about here. I think any competent college counselor, knowing Maia's GPA and SAT scores and knowing these statistics, would have advised her to apply to a REAL "safety" school as well as to the UCs. That Maia and her mom apparently did not do so tells me that either they were poorly advised, or that they chose to ignore the advice they were given.</p>

<p>And as for bias - when I read the original story in the Times, I thought "who on earth wrote THAT?", THEN checked the byline. Ms. Seipp could have been a bleeding-heart liberal (like me), and her kid a URM, and I still would have had the same reaction. I know first-hand the heartbreak of watching your child open thin envelopes in April, and I'll bet that 99% of the parents on this forum can relate to the feelings I had - first, "How dare they reject my kid?", then, "What did I, as a parent, do wrong? How could I have helped her avoid this?" There was an awful lot of the first attitude in this essay, and not a scintilla of the second. That, and Ms. Seipp's "I know better than (the private school counselor) (the USC professors) (Jeremy's parents)" attitude were what bothered me. </p>

<p>However, calmom, you are right about one thing - I should not have assumed that I know Ms. Seipp's position on affirmative action from her political affiliation. That was wrong of me. But I am convinced that if Maia was a URM and Ward Connerly saw that she'd been admitted to UCSD with those stats, he'd be screaming!</p>

<p>And, again, don't get me wrong - I'm happy for Maia, and know she'll do well at UCSD. I was annoyed by the tone of her mother's article, not by the outcome of Maia's college search.</p>

238

<p><<< Catherine Seipp, in her From the Left Coast column at the National Review Online, wrote an article titled College Confidential. >>></p>

<p>The article talks about CC's recent thread which featured Maia's col ap process and her acceptance into UCSD after worrying that she couldn't get accepted into "prostitutes college" after UCSB rejected her.</p>

<p>I don't know how to put in a hyperlink so if someone can do it, please do!</p>

239

<p>As anyone even vaguely acquainted with me knows, I don't suffer officious types gladly. Not the administrators at my 16-year-old daughter Maia’s old private school, which we quit last year after they wouldn’t let her graduate at the end of 11th grade, and not readers who think they know her better than I do.
A couple of days ago, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed by me about Maia’s rejection-letter dejection before she was accepted at UC San Diego as a Russian/Soviet Studies major....</p>

<p>— Catherine Seipp is a writer in California who publishes the weblog Cathy's World. She is an NRO contributor.</p>

<hr>

240

<p>Wow, she sure had a lot of bizarre experiences (and teachers and administrators) in high school. I can't keep track of which were private/public.</p>