Oh, one more bit of advice: Founding pie club, a total loser. 
The anti 800 rhetoric- such as it is- is targeted to the kid whose parents are making him or her take the SAT for the 6th time to move that 790 to an 800. And they are making a point that a kid who has even a rudimentary understanding of statistics should understand- that the 790 won’t keep you out, and the 800 won’t get you in.
Why does this bother you so much Quant? This is both true and transparent, both of which you advocate for.
You are probably correct about the anti-800 rhetoric now, blossom. However, I remain convinced that the anti-800 rheotoric in the past revealed not only a distaste for applicants who thought that their 800’s would get them in, or for applicants who took 6 tries to get to 800, but a more general distaste for any applicant who scored 800’s regardless of the circumstances. This situation did not last for many years, but it prevailed for more than one. I printed out some of the MIT admissions posts, blog posts, and CC posts by the bloggers a little over a decade ago, and this distaste was palpable when it was present.
LOL. Maybe my son got too many 800s for MIT! It’s all water under the bridge - he had a great four years at CMU and that particular admissions director was fired for lying about her resume.
I think it’s misleading to confuse kids or parents with anything that hints a first try 800 is a liability. Even on a thread that’s 80+ posts in. People lurk.
No, just top scores isn’t enough. But it was phrased, “who just walks into an SAT testing locale and comes out with double 800s (or quintuple 800s) without multiple takes, tutors, or extensive prepping.”
If that were so, it would exclude a lot of bright kids who do have the rest.
We should be careful with some sorts of speculative sidebars or one’s impressions from the way past.
@mathmom good way to look at it! Duke was just intimidated by how smart my S was! Lol!
He is happy where he is now. But he is now acutely aware of the difference between smart, wicked smart, off the charts, and the kids who are “the total package”. He always says he thinks he is not even top 50% smart at UMich.
Show not tell, like many catch phrases, is not terribly useful to kids who cannot “show” the total package. I think these elite schools also look for a rec that describes the kids as “once in a lifetime student”, not jus smart, funny, etc. these are things you can’t change at this point. All you can do is package what you have to “show”.
Really it means your essay should just tell them who YOU are (your essence), not what you’ve done. The package will show what you’ve done.
A for instance, my older S had a great deal of issue with the essay, many reviews and edits. He felt he had nothing to say and ended up with a good essay, but not terribly authentic feeling. My younger S wrote his in one sitting and one edit. Was not deep. It showed he was whimsical, creative and funny with a passion for cinema. I sent it to a counselor to review. They hated it. But my S refused to change it. He got into his dream school.
Be authentic and your school will choose you:)
Good luck.
True, you have to be able to show what they want to see. True, you need to have an idea what that is. AFter all, a kid chooses his targets, the college chooses whom to admit.
There is no admit criterion that says, “She’s herself. She only did what matters to her.” As parents, sure, we want our kids to know themselves and know how to pursue their goals. But highly competitive colleges don’t admit based on self satisfaction. And you do need to be cautious that what’s “authentic” is what they like- or be able to say, “Oh, well.”
I had two very different kids. One was a computer whiz and didn’t pretend to be anything else. He applied to very selective universities and got rejected from half of them. Of course he didn’t get admitted because he was authentic and even honest to a fault, but he did figure he was enough like what ever “it” these colleges were looking for that he had a shot.
It was much less clear who younger son was going into the process. His activities, grades and scores were good, but less obviously going to be a match for any college. So he spent a fair amount of time figuring out how to present himself in light of what different colleges wanted to see. That included applying to colleges like Chicago where he could write a whacky essay, and to Tufts which at the time I had an optional essay that could show off both his interest in history and creative writing.
@lookingforward yes, need to be able to walk away. If the school isn’t into who you are, then one should take their rejection more as a “no match” than a rejection. I think the right school ultimately picks the student if they show who they are. Maybe not the school they wanted originally, but the right one.
It’s like a job interview. If you have to hide who you are or pretend to get the job, do you want that job? (I have the luxury of experience where i can choose, but i wish i had been given this advice when i started out.
I’m a double Harvard reject.
Radcliffe rejected me undergrad; they did me a huge favor, I found my peeps at Brown both socially and intellectually in a way that I doubt would have happened in Cambridge.
And then rejected me from the B-school which was the biggest boon to my professional life. I ended up at a different top 5 business school (at least as it was ranked then, don’t know about now) where I was able to pursue some things that were not available at Harvard, where my somewhat funky background was a benefit and not a liability, AND where I was able to launch into a career which while not impossible from Harvard, would have been very unlikely AND somewhat more complicated/logistically complex to pull off.
That’s the nice thing about hindsight. I should make a donation to the non-alumni fund in honor of their shrewd decision-making way back when.
If you aren’t qualified for a job, being authentic won’t get you far. It’s not about, “I wanted to take choir instead of
senior English” or “I want to be an engineer but thought AP physics would be tough, so I took stats.” Or, “robotics was all boys, so I joined the pie club, I really, really like to bake.”
Alot of what you need to show is your level of thinking.
^No one is talking about not being qualified. Only show not tell. I have issues with there being a “right” way to express yourself as long as it reflects who you are and addresses the prompt.
Sorry, I can’t get far from the fact were discussing apps, not ordinary day-to-day decisions. Not something where you just register and you’re in. If a prompt asks about a challenge and you talk about 3rd grade stage fright, it may be you, it may be authentic, and it may not give them much info about who you are today. And many of us feel you don’t have to specifically address the prompt. In this respect, it’s not like a hs teacher taking off points because you didn’t answer exactly.
You’re trying to get an admit. There are many choices how/what to write. Make it help.
Nevermind. This place can be very frustrating to folks trying to present a different POV.
I’m having trouble understanding the plain meaning of a recent comment by lookingforward,
"No, just top scores isn’t enough. But it was phrased, ‘who just walks into an SAT testing locale and comes out with double 800s (or quintuple 800s) without multiple takes, tutors, or extensive prepping.’
If that were so, it would exclude a lot of bright kids who do have the rest."
My meaning was that there was definitely an era when MIT expressed distaste on the admissions web site for students with multiple 800’s. That does not seem to be 100% over now, though it is greatly reduced. Perhaps they exclusively mean this to apply to students who take the SAT’s multiple times in order to achieve those scores, or perhaps they mean students who think that would suffice, but they did not say so (except in one kind of irritating post by “Momchil,” that did address students who thought it was enough). But the rhetoric as it stood until recently was really off-putting to a student who happened to have multiple 800’s (through no fault of his/her own).
When I said that a student “just” walks into an SAT testing locale . . . I did not mean that the student had no other qualifications, just that getting multiple 800’s was trivial for the student–no tutors, no multiple tests, no extensive prepping. There are people who can do that easily enough.
When lookingforward wrote “if that were so,” did that mean “if multiple 800’s were enough”? It doesn’t make any sense in the context of the quotation from me. I was commenting that some students achieve high scores simply by signing up to take the tests and showing up at the testing center on the appointed day (sort of like how an idiot gets to be a policeman, in the Pink Panther films).
What a relief to know that it is okay to get 800’s the first time out, without prep!
@QuantMech – I have no clue if or when there was disdain expressed for 800 scorers for MIT… but could it be not with the score, but with the attitude that the score was in itself evidence of mathematical brilliance? Because the SAT math tests don’t really cover higher math – so I can see someone who has been studying multivariable calculus in high school as being put off by students boasting of top scores in a mostly multiple-choice test that barely touches on pre-calc. (Even the SAT Math 2 subject test only adds coverage of “trigonometry and elementary functions (precalculus)”.
Because math itself is predictable and consistent - a system where answers are either right or not – then in theory any student who has a good grasp of math concepts through the trig & precalc level should theoretically be able to score 800. That doesn’t happen because of the time constraints on the test and simple errors made along the way-- but the point is that any student who has taken calculus in high school is already receiving instruction beyond the level of the test.
But it’s not simply about being “qualified.” Selective colleges (and employers) turn away far more qualified applicants than they accept.
When I read the post from @HRSMom (" If you have to hide who you are or pretend to get the job, do you want that job?") – I took it to refer to personal qualities that go beyond and outside mere qualifications. Is the company culture a good fit? Doe the job offer the opportunities for growth that the employee is looking for? Will the job be stimulating and rewarding for the employee, or will the employee hate every minute there, counting down the time each day until they can go home? In the employment context it could be the difference between working in a very competitive culture or with a different company that emphasizes teamwork and collaboration. I think that college fit is probably broader and more flexible in most cases-- but there still is probably a pretty big difference in the “feel” of being a student at MIT vs. a student at Olin. Brown vs. U of Chicago? etc.
Ahh. But not how I took it.
OP did ask about less competitive colleges. Much of this isn’t as significant there. But if you’re applying to a highly competitive college, presumably you have some interest. If you want to get admitted, you should have an idea of both what the culture is and how you fit that. It’s not enough to say, “Here I am, love me or leave me, I did it my way.” That filtering for fit can take place before applying.
If you’re going to present yourself as interested in studying xxx, wouldn’t you want to show you’re prepared, have taken the appropriate classes and done relevant activities? Would you think you’re a viable candidate because you pursued other courses that interested you, skipped relevant ECs?
The parallel to a job app is: would you apply without the prep and qualifications, because you think it should be ‘come as you are?’ I don’t see it working that way. Not for a highly competitive college, nor a highly competitive employer.
But “qualifications” for college are variable, because the colleges value diversity of talents and interests and often do take students with lopsided profiles.
So yes, many students are more than viable candidates even though they may have an atypical profile or followed an unconventional approach through high school. And I think the more confident students are more inclined to think that if a college would reject them for whatever choices they’ve made and want to present on their college app… then they wouldn’t want to attend that college anyway.
“Show, not tell” doesn’t mean that there is some sort of magic, hidden number of boxes that the student needs to tick off to get in. It just a basic rule of presentation – it just is a more effective way of communicating whatever it is that the applicant wants to communicate.
And it is somewhat different than a job app because of the role (student) being applied for - or if it’s like a job, it’s more like an internship or trainee position, because the student wants to come to the college to learn and be taught. So they need to show that they have readiness and potential, but not expertise.
I that, somewhere in there, is where we agree.
For now, I’l leave it at that.