Focus is good. Along with curiosity and openness. Of course. Pre-professional tunnel vision is what limits. Big difference.
It helps to not assume any one bit or anecdote is exactly what your first impression is. After all, we’re talking tippy top. You want to check further, think, see if it’s logical.
Pre-professional tunnel vision? How about liberal-arty tunnel vision?
Curiosity and openness are good and viable qualities in both liberal arts colleges and (pre-)professional schools.
It’s the tunnel vision, not the fact of having some initial “focus.” We were talking Yale. Pre-professional refers to fixed post college ideas, little interest in other exploration or other intellectual growth.
Lib arts kids can be pre-professional. It doesn’t exclusively mean stem or a profession like medicine.
I agree it is the tunnel vision because I do not see any necessary association say between pre-med and tunnel vision or say between pre-law and tunnel vision.
I suppose my wife and I are exceptions to the rule then, as both of us have pursued our dream since high school – mine with the arts, and my wife’s with medicine. For the past forty-years, each of us has been 100% laser-focused – yes, with tunnel vision – on what we wanted since senior year in high school. And each of us has found success in our field BECAUSE of that unwavering commitment to pursing a dream with the same determination and tunnel vision that we had when we were 18-years old. I have to imagine that my wife and I are not too different from many applicants today, but according to @lookingforward and @prof2dad, I guess that means we would be passed over by many top colleges, including Yale.
Of course, I don’t believe that! I think tunnel vision kids do just fine, as do kids who are undecided.
@gibby The main purpose of my earlier statements was to argue that choosing a (pre-)professional majors/program does not imply tunnel vision.
I also do not believe that having a professional goal at a young age should be described as tunnel vision either. For example, my D was quite clear about what she wanted to pursue when she was 14. I have no problem with it. If the colleges she will be applying to have problem with it, it will be those college’s loss.
Preprofessional tunnel vision means seeing classes and college as a mere means to an end - the classes themselves don’t matter, what matters is getting an A which will lead to a lucrative job (for instance) and any class, book, or activity that doesn’t help with landing that job is deemed “useless”. Yes there are kids like that applying to tippy-top and they’re common enough that even among kids applying to Wharton Adcoms have a fondness for the unusual candidates with genuine love for a subject or intellectual idea or aesthetics form.
vs. “I took Calculus BC because it’ll help me get into Wharton which will help me get a job at GS to make 100K a year and retire at 30 with a Patek Philippe. I took AP Lit to pad my schedule and it was pointless but apparently it’ll help with getting into a top school.”
Well, thanks, @MYOS1634 .
The comment was, “he told me that the AO stated that students with focused plans for their future aren’t as competitive.” The context is admissions. Admissions, today. To Yale .
Carry on.
“I took Calculus BC because it’ll help me get into Wharton which will help me get a job at GS to make 100K a year and retire at 30 with a Patek Philippe”
This is what I expected all along about the so-called “pre-professional tunnel vision”!
First, undergraduate Wharton is not pre-professional. It is a professional school. Most of undergraduates at Wharton go out with a job that utilize what they learned at Wharton. Pre-professional majors/programs are those majors that prepare students into a graduate-level professional schools. Examples of pre-professional majors/programs/tracks include pre-med and pre-law. That is the reason why I kept on using “(pre-)professional” in my earlier posts because I know it can be confusing for many people.
Personally, I think the following two are equally noble: (1) a 17 years old kid makes up her mind and wants to become a medical doctor because she wants to serve, enjoys the life style of being a medical doctor, and think the monetary payoff is sensible, etc., and thus does a pre-professional track at Yale; (2) a 17 years old kid makes up her mind and wants to become an investment banker because she wants to serve, enjoys the life style of being an investment banker, and think the monetary payoff is sensible, etc., and thus chooses economics, a liberal arts major, at Yale.
I simply do not think whether someone has a tunnel vision has any thing to do with whether someone choose a pre-med, economics, or say music.
At a thread talking about major choice, I think the so-called “pre-professional vision tunnel” is just too much and not sensitive enough, as the response from @gibby would suggest.
^in admissions parlance, “pre-professional” means students for whom college is a means to an end. Being ready to do everything it takes to be the best you can be within your field of interest isn’t the same as thinking of college as a rite of passage to get rid of till you reach your real goal, the job. “Pre-professional tunnel vision” means that getting to that end excludes everything else that is vital to top colleges. Based on everything Gibby has posted, she doesn’t exhibit that type of attitude. Single-minded dedication doesn’t prevent one from being interested in learning, in activities that don’t build your resumes, in exploring personal growth through unexpected discovery.
It doesn’t necessarily depend on the major, (although some majors attract larger or lesser shares of “pre-professional” students) but on the student’s attitude toward learning.
“Preprofessional” attitudes are actually prevalent in lower-selectivity colleges: the students are expected to be proficient and motivated by their post-college goals but aren’t expected to have exceptional ability and the curiosity to match. The recruitment process for Harvard, Pomona, Carleton, or Princeton isn’t the same as for CSU Chico, Youngstown State, UNC Charlotte, or Delta State. Because colleges such as Yale and, yes, Wharton, expect a different intellectual attitude commensurate with broader aptitudes than the typical major at a directional, the pure “means to an end” attitude shows, at a minimum, that the applicant doesn’t understand what the college wants, indicating either inability or unwillingness to read admissions materials at a high level of analytical skill. Understanding “fit” from both the student’s and the college’s point of view is crucial.
In the context of this thread, underenrolled majors at Yale, the suspicion is that OP is trying to “game the system” by “pretending” to like any random “underenrolled” major. It’s a common “strategy” among some applicants for whom the only criterion is “prestige” and it fails miserably if it’s obvious. A kid who’s passionate about Greek archeology or Margaret Mead’s life doesn’t need a list of all underenrolled majors. A kid who wants to major in ERM or Portuguese has a trail that feeds that interest, for instance s/he has read about this subject or pursued an EC or has a starting point for that interest which they can talk about. Claiming you love X and then being unable to say a thing about it during an interview is a red flag, for instance.
“^in admissions parlance, “pre-professional” means students for whom college is a means to an end.”
From the following admission offices, when they use the word “pre-professional,” they refer to those majors preparing students into a graduate level professional schools. Examples of pre-professional majors/programs/tracks include pre-med and pre-law:
http://undergrad.admissions.columbia.edu/ask/faq/question/2375
http://www.bc.edu/admission/undergrad/whybc/s-preprofessional.html
https://admissions.indiana.edu/education/academic-opportunities/prof-study.html
https://admissions.cals.cornell.edu/academics/pre-professional-programs
https://www.admissions.umd.edu/learn/PreProfessionalPrograms.php?rv=1
The list goes on. One can find the same use of “pre-professional” on even more universities’ advising offices’ websites.
https://studentaffairs.jhu.edu/preprofadvising/
https://www.bu.edu/prehealth/contact-us/
http://www.purdue.edu/preprofessional/
https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/pre_professional_advising/
https://advising.utah.edu/preprofessional/
I don’t have a dog in this fight, and didn’t know pre-professional was a “thing.” Fwiw, the only time I’ve heard the term used was in reference to UPenn. Fwiw, in my very limited experience of kids at UPenn, they were probably more career focused earlier than average.
MYOS gets it.
This is mixing up “professional,” as we commonly use it, and “pre-professional,” as adcoms use that term.
The top schools may offer programs or courses of study that can lead to particular “professions.” But they value a range of intellectual curiosity and various sorts of ongoing academic and other engagement, not just those that lead to the future career X. @IxnayBob, even Wharton.
Again, the comment was that a Yale adcom said, " students with focused plans for their future aren’t as competitive." I believe that was misinterpreted.
The issue isn’t kids with “focused” plans- med school, English teacher, IB, actor, whatever. It’s kids who plainly state all they want out of the 4 years is career prep.
Unfortunately, it happens too often.
The issue isn’t “focused plans.” It’s about an extreme. It happens. Yale will be happy you have focus, can show you are pursuing that…and more. Even if they know that might change But the kids stating (yup, they declare) that they are exclusively focused on X, wont be as competitive.
Part of the problem is so many on CC assert the top colleges are filtering for students who will go on to fame, wealth, influence, or all 3. These posters think you just have to show the tippy top you’re uber dedicated to that path, will get there, and that improves chances. It’s incomplete. And reflects back on one’s thinking.
This happens so often for Yale, with their tag, “future leaders.” But Y has defined that as a broad array of ways we lead. Not just CEO, SCOTUS, Pulitzer or Nobel, etc. It can be simpler influence, more common generosity.
And the TTs are looking first at the 4 years on their campus, how you add to or enhance their campus * community. *
Look for it.
This. Just expressing an interest in some less-popular area won’t help you; actually having that interest and showing it through your activities and achievements may. And it’s not just because the college is trying to fill slots in the Classics department, but because people with unusual interests and achievements are interesting.
This discussion of “tunnel vision” and “pre-professional” simply seems to be another version of whether selective schools want well-rounded students, or more focused students. Personally, I don’t really see much change in that over time, except that maybe people are getting a bit more wise to the tremendous obstacles to a successful life in academia, and that may explain an increased focus on professional careers.
Amen.
DS struggled with this, and while he didn’t pick a “profession” (in the sense of law, medicine, etc.), he decided not to go the PhD track for now. That was a welcome choice for us, and not strictly for financial reasons.