<p>My daughter struggles mightily in math, but is a science whiz. As to this comment "In fact, with that kind of math score, Maia will very likely struggle in physics and chemistry and possibly in biology as well." I disagree. Daughter barely broke 500 on math (albeit for a very specific reason relating back to the mega-mistake I made as a parent), but is in AP bio and physics this year with a 4.2, received near-perfect scores on the bio and chem regents here in New York. One can't assume.</p>
<p>the voice of free speech and respect for diversity!</p>
<p>"The NRO, however, is in a bubble, located two steps over from the sixth circle of Dante's Inferno, north by northwest of the Land of the Lotus Eaters, to the right of Potzdorf (20 points for citation of the allusion without resorting to Google), downwind from Wonderland, mauve from Mooseturd, Montana, and E-flat from downtown Bakersfield, California."</p>
<p>"Calmom, sometimes you amaze me. I don't see that any of the posters have been pompous or self-righteous."</p>
<p>You really don't?</p>
<p>Congratulations on your acceptance!! and tell your mom I think she's great.</p>
<p>This is a pretty good example of how you can't assume anything based on a few test scores, GPA--the limited info given in the article. Many on here puzzle why a seemingly <em>lesser qualified</em> applicant got into a certain school over a seemingly <em>more qualified</em> one they know. Here, once a few more details are filled in, it suddenly starts to make sense. And it is a very hopeful story for lots of kids without perfect stats.</p>
<p>Geez Xiggi... Talk about rewriting history! There wasn't a word of "trashing" of any school in Maia's mom's article. She wrote that Maia was tearful and was upset at the rejections ---they knew UCLA was a longshot, but they thought she had a better shot at a UC campus with a 53% admit rate. The only thing Maia "trashed" was herself, with her self-deprecatory comment about "prostitute college". </p>
<p>As to your comment about "accepting rejection graciously"... you still don't see your own arrogance shining through? Are kids with perfect SATs and the requisite number of AP classes also expected to be "gracious" when the Yale rejection arrives? Or is it only the 2nd class students, the ones who didn't have a long diatribe of "stats" they or their parents could boa****lly post in a "chances" thread, who have the right to feel and express disappointment at a letter telling them they aren't good enough? </p>
<p>News flash, kid: it feels bad to be rejected. It feels bad to be rejected when you are so brilliant and have such impressive stats and such a long array of accolades that you can come on to this board and rant about the athletes or URMs or legacies with "lesser" stats who got in over you ..... and it feels every bit as bad when you don't have the numbers but poured your heart out over your personal statement and somehow hoped that it would strike a chord with whoever has the job of deciding who gets in. It is those who think that the "stats" should determine who gets in who are doing the trashing, with the predictions of failure. And no, the state master plan does not designate UC Riverside a ghetto campus for kids whose point score places them below the very top of the heap.</p>
<p>If Maia had written the article, it might have seemed a little over-the-top in terms of self-pity. But her Mom wrote it. And to me, the article seemed very familiar. My d. learned she was accepted at NYU this week, but waitlisted at Boston U. And she was very despondent over the BU waitlist -- everyone had told her BU was a match, NYU a reach. In fact, she was so despondent that when I walked after researching all the plane connections & costs for NY and asked her to choose her flight, she sadly announced that she had changed her mind and wasn't going to University Day after all. (Fortunately for Jet Blue revenues, she changed her mind quickly)</p>
<p>So we parents feel helpless and distraught, because we are seeing our kids get kicked around this time of year. Our kids react to the bad news exactly as any normal human being would, mostly behind the firmly closed bedroom doors --or in Maia's case, the bathroom floor. But Maia's mom decided to write about it openly -- not by extolling her daughter's virtues and then condemning the random unfairness of it all, but by revealing the weak spots and underplaying the strengths, to give her readers a window on what it really feels like. "Gracious" is the stiff-upper-lip act we all put on when we are out and about; Maia's mom let us all into her home to share the real experience.</p>
<p>Geez Xiggi
do I have to go back over the thread and point out the different posters who predict doom and gloom for this girl's future at UC San Diego?</p>
<p>
[quote]
The Subject Tests should be testing the knowledge and mastery of subjects learned in high school. Because of their inherent difficulty and lack of high schools teaching Chinese or Korean, the tests are both very difficult for non-native speakers and entirely trivial for native speakers. For instance, native speakers have said that the tests represent a second or third grade level of difficulty. As a result, the curves for Korean and Chinese are totally skewed because of the large number of native speaking students taking the test. Because the UC system uses a numerical scale that rewards SAT Subject Tests, this situation is especially troublesome in California and is obviously detrimental to non native speakers who desire to test their accomplishments.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Thanks, xiggi. I guess I'm glad my senior S didn't get it together in time to take the Mandarin SAT II - sounds like he would have been chewed up and spit out, as a non-native speaker.</p>
<p>As a Californian I think people need to keep in mind that the UC schools (and the Cal State schools) are PUBLIC schools (not privates, not ivies, not elite little LAC's). </p>
<p>The taxpayers (who are paying for the tuition!) would have a Sh** F*t, if the only kids who could get into one of their 10 UC campuses (208,000 students) or 23 Cal State Campuses (405,000 students) were students who had the stats that some of the naysayers think is necessary.</p>
<p>There are many majors that don't require a person to be a math whiz (or a writing whiz or history whiz or science whiz).</p>
<p>"Geez Xiggi... Talk about rewriting history! There wasn't a word of "trashing" of any school in Maia's mom's article. </p>
<p>As to your comment about "accepting rejection graciously"... you still don't see your own arrogance shining through?"</p>
<p>No Geez, Xiggi. Why addressing a post to my attention, if you don't bother paying the slightest attention that what I wrote! Did you read my TWO references about the "pompous jackasses?" Did you bother checking the posts and blog entries written by Maia? I don't think so!</p>
<p>And for the record, please point out exactly where my so-called arrogance is shining through? Aren't you reinventing what my position is on this issue, in the same way you are absolutely attempting to create an image of greatness for this candidate, based on mere similarity with your own daughter and an affinity for the russian language? </p>
<p>Feel free to find the story of Maia and the OpEd piece instructive; that is your unalienable right. However, I have the right to see it as an account of a family approaching the process armed with serious misconceptions and a lacking knowledge. This has nothing to do with first class or second class students who lack a "diatribe" of stats -whatever diatribe may mean here. </p>
<p>Further, your attempt to portray me as an elitist who denigrates lower stats students is simply laughable. Go back as far as you wish in my posting history to find this type of posts, or any comments akin to the "What Are My Chances" posts.</p>
<p>Inasmuch as I agree that a rejection does sting, I'll keep rejecting the notion that this opens the door for uninvited stidents to attack school officials in the gratuitous way Maia DID. How does the story start again? One hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. "Just the thing to quench my thirst," quoth he ...</p>
<p>
[quote]
Did you bother checking the posts and blog entries written by Maia? I don't think so!
[/quote]
What does that have to do with anything? This is a thread about the column the mother wrote. Do you think I should go dredging up your past posts for choice quotes every time I disagree with you on a thread? (If I did, there would be a gold mine).</p>
<p>If you disagree with something Maia posts in another thread, go respond over there. If you don't like her blog -- post a comment there. But you are waaay off topic -- and IMHO out of line -- to dredge that stuff up to set yourself up with a straw man argument over here.</p>
<p>"What does that have to do with anything? "</p>
<p>Duh, again, had you READ my posts in this thread instead of fabulating about them, you'd have noticed the nature of my objections. </p>
<p>Here's the text I quoted earlier:</p>
<p>So far I have heard back from 4 colleges: Claremont McKenna, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and UC San Diego. I have been rejected by the first three and accepted into the last. Given the fact that Claremont McKenna said this year was the most competitive for them and that Pomona is even more competitive than they are by 5%, I will face another rejection or two by April 10. I have sent my appeal to UCLA today.
UCSB and UCLA were very polite in "denying" me admission. Claremont McKenna on the other hand said after "sorry," that they had voted no against me. **Wow--the idea of an academic roundtable occupied by pompous professorial jackasses grumbling on how I am not good enough does not disappoint me.* I am not going to cry about it, as my mother described my earlier responses to UCLA and UCSB in her upcoming column Sunday. Instead, I got their postcard which had been hanging on the wall, and ripped it to a million pieces.
The last words I bellowed to them but they couldn't hear?
Screw them! *</p>
<p>"But you are waaay off topic -- and IMHO out of line -- to dredge that stuff up to set yourself up with a straw man argument over here."</p>
<p>Who are you to decide about what is on-topic or not? I did not create this angle to rebut your attacks. I brought this issue up in almost every post in this thread, including my very first one. You're the one who has decided to attack me on my position, but refuse to acknowledge not even reading my posts. </p>
<p>This is what I wrote from the get go: </p>
<p>"Inasmuch, as this is not an issue [grades and scores] for me to consider, nor is a system that allowed this student to earn an acceptance at UCSD, I find the comments of "Maia" to be less than commendable." followed by the comments quoted above.</p>
<p>Have a modicum of integrity!</p>
<p>Count me among those who did not see a sense of entitlement in the article - not on first reading and not upon going back to try to see what others here saw.</p>
<p>Count me among those who are astonished at folks - my cc friends among them - who feel they can predict a student's success in college based upon a focus on the lowest stat provided in the article, or even upon the all of the "stats" provided in the article. I would have expected at least a modest attempt at "holistic" review ;) of the candidate. Or a postponement of predictions for future success if not enough info about the candidate were available.</p>
<p>I think calmom has it largely right (I didn't pore through every sentence of every one of her posts here, but agree with her general take).</p>
<p>I saw the article as a fairly lighthearted "who'd a thunk it?", with - okay - a little lording it over the test prep/test-retake syndrome. I might disagree with the author on the value of 4 years of high school, but that doesn't make her naive. And I don't know her kid.</p>
<p>Count me as one who is not a fan of the tone or language in some of the daughter's cc posts/blogs quoted here.</p>
<p>Still, I think several posters have been very harsh here in predicting the daughter's future. I say, Buen chance, Maia. My bet is you will do well. Illegitimi non carborundum.</p>
<p>xiggi, let's not take a kid's talk too serious. Have you ever been young? Were you ever cussing out to someone. It is a damn internet forum. Should people make every word they said accountable?</p>
<p>Maia is still one year younger than normal hs seniors. Even though I feel she has a bigger heart than a lot of senior members here, she is still a kid. I bet she will do well. </p>
<p>Congrats to her.</p>
<p>I just noticed that there appears to be a technical glitch in this thread. Text that was quoted using the [ quote] feature seemed to have vanished. This may cause some posts to be rather hard to follow.</p>
<p>"Should people make every word they said accountable?"</p>
<p>I am happy to dismiss the words of a "kid." However, in this thread, I have been accused of a number of sins by someone who is a bit removed from being a kid. I have been accused of criticizing students with lesser scores or even have little appreciation for the nuances of learning a language, and this based on the wildest speculations. The issue of languages was particularly amusing since I grew up in a family where four languages are spoken, which added to the classical and asian language that were mandatory subjects at school brings my total to six. Well, seven if I could count Texan as my mother tongue.</p>
<p>But she does have all the answers!</p>
<p>Great posts, Calmom, and congratulations Maia! I loved your mom's article, and thought it refreshing. :)</p>
<p>"Over my son's spring break, we had a couple of his friends over for movies and discussion. Son is a first year at U of Chicago. One of his friends is attending community college for financial reasons, the other is attending because of the LD support offered. Oddly enough, these young people, attending what might be described as a 'prostitute college' in this thread, were not unhappy or poorly served by their institution, or bewailing their lot in life. They are both very bright and creative, and will be well-prepared for four-year institutions in the future."</p>
<p>I believe that "prostitute college" is supposed to be one step below community college in the article. Community colleges are amazing places where students take rigorous courses to become useful members of societies. I have had employees and friends over the years get tremendous educations and opportunities at these colleges. They were very smart people whose backgrounds were not full of opportunities, often immigrants, and they worked during the day and at night took challenging courses, many while juggling family life as well. Community colleges are not places to be denigrated.</p>
<p>I don't even get the joke about "prostitute college". It's a horrible twist of fate when a woman becomes a prostitute, and why is it a joke, as if a prostitute really has a chance. Was she in "college" to learn about drug addiction and poverty?</p>
<p>Yes I think this article shows a sense of entitlement. The best thing mother and daughter could do is work in the fields for a year somewhere in California, and see what it is like to not have the choice between a private HS and a UC. Community college may look good at that point. Maybe there would be some empathy for those with less opportunity, or the millions of women forced into slavery and prostitution in the history of the world. No, they didn't get college.</p>
<p>Actually, I thought, especially after Maia posted more details, that her mom really did not help her readers, especially those with kids applying to college, by mentioning only Maia's stats and not those aspects that made her a desirable applicant. </p>
<p>Both applying to college and deciding whom to admit are all about making predictions. Would I have a chance of being admitted to xyz given my GPA, board scores, ECs, etc...? If not, then where do I have a chance? Will this applicant succeed in our college if we decide to admit him/her given the profile? So posters, including myself, commented on the results of Maia's application and offered predictions based on what her mom wrote. If her mom had written more details, then students with similar GPA and board scores but without Maia's other accomplishments would not think that the UC admission system is so arbitrary.</p>
<p>I did not predict failure; I predicted difficulty and I stand by what I said. I base it on the experience of my S. Despite having SAT Math in the 700s and having taken all Honors sciences in high school, he did not find college-level science classes easy at all. Unless the science classes for non-science majors are so watered down as not to be any more challenging than Regents exams, I do not see the relevance of the latter to the discussion.</p>