With college season coming up, wanted to hear some rants about the admissions process.
Personally, I hate the fact that you have to pay such expensive fees to just apply to college!
I think we need to make it a firm ground rule that this thread is for venting, and therefore no responses and prolonged debates about another member’s post will be allowed. - Fallenchemist, Moderator
I really dislike how it forces kids to start shaping their lives to fit applications so early in life. After your early teens, everything you do is evaluated by how valuable it is on an app.
The fact that elite schools do not use the same supplemental writing prompts, essentially requiring students to write a unique essay for every application. This was extremely nerve-wracking for our entire family.
I understand that elite schools may use these supplements to filter out random applications from students who are underqualified or not genuinely interested – but OP simply wanted to know if it made me angry – and it did.
What make me mad is that FA is a black box, and that it is based essentially on one year of pay, hurting many sorts of people with businesses or contract work. One year that is unusually productive becomes the basis for four years of financial aid.
FA being based on 1 year of pay essentially, that grinds my gears. Also, as a white male, race based affirmative action grinds my gears, I wish they would make it situational or needs based. Nothing disadvantaged about an affluent suburban black kid just because he’s black, anyone who thinks that skin color is in itself a disadvantage may want to evaluate whether or not they’re racist. I’m done with affirmative action whining/complaining I’ll live with it and move on.
Spending up to $250000 on something AND having to convince the seller to let me buy it!!
The fact that schools consider any outside scholarships as part of your family contribution. I.e, if your family can afford $20k a year and the school awards $40k to meet the $60k COA, and then you win a $2500 scholarship, your financial aid is decreased accordingly because your need technically declines. I know that private universities owe me nothing and I’m entitled to nothing, but this drives me absolutely crazy. Just seems to punish kids who go out of their way to apply for any scholarships, trying to reduce their own burden.
Applies similarly to the fact that financial aid automatically considers all of the students earnings as part of the contributions. So I could work all summer, make $2000, and have my financial aid reduced that amount, or I could sit on my butt all summer and net the same amount?
Grrr.
Ooh! The tasty can of worms! 
It annoys me that more advanced subject knowledge (as demonstrated by AP and SATIIs) is valued less in admissions than the basic generic stuff and specific test taking skills (as demonstrated by ACT and SAT). The colleges (especially public) are just plain stating “We don’t care how much you love or know your future field of study! Just get the best grades and generic test scores and have a long enough list of ECs.”
Overemphasis on GPA is playing a role, too. I find it ridiculous that 13-14-15 yr-olds are expected to worry about college “resume” by having straight As as to have that “perfect” GPA. Just imagine how many brilliant “late bloomers” the Ivys and such are missing!
Having said all that, good or bad, the system is there and all the kids are left to do is play along. The only hope is that Einstein will be Einstein even if he goes through a community college at first.
Nova…I can’t sympathize, at full pay every dollar goes to them!
The gall of Kaplan. They keep sending out (what I presume are) mass e-mails trying to make people feel insecure about their test scores and buy tutoring services for the LOW LOW PRICE of a couple hundred dollars. After all, “a difference of a few points could make the difference at your dream school” and, anyway, you can “beat the price increase!” (their price increase) if you order now.
I guess they aren’t squeezing enough cash out of the students at their for-profit college.
I don’t have much of a problem personally with standardized testing (though I think it does disadvantage some groups) and got decent scores myself, but this just seems predatory - capitalizing on peoples’ hopes and fears. I spam/ignore them, but it pisses me off nonetheless - I know that some people really agonize over this stuff.
Oh, and snail-mail too, from StudyPoint.
As if high school seniors and their parents aren’t already insecure. You’re right.
I find it unhealthy to get “ridiculously angry” about things, especially ones that are beyond my control. But I am pretty indignant at how many people (parents included) seem to think that lying or exaggerating on an application is acceptable behavior.
Just talking about this today…never thought it was fair to the kids who are really strong in language-based majors such as foreign language, english, social sciences, history, etc., but may be mediocre in math / science most times are shut out of the more selective schools because of their lack of high scores on math SAT / upper level math / science courses.
One of the thing that bothers me most about admissions (specifically for those elite schools) is that we are basically expected to be these top 20 college-minded kids by the time we’re 13/14. We’re expected to start developing those ECs that we’re expected to stay active in all through high school, take a ridiculously tough course load that swallows up all of our time while struggling to adjust to high school and the whole teenager thing, and basically have a good portion of our life figured out as early as possible. Where’s the time for exploration?
If you’re anything like me, you stumbled a bit at first, wanted to explore while also enjoying high school. Now I’m being told that for admission to these schools I needed to be Ivy-minded since freshman year. Yikes! My school is not one that pushes students toward these type of schools, so for the very few at my school who strive for these elite institutions, we find that we jumped on the bandwagon way too late. In all honesty, I’m glad I didn’t load up 4 ECs freshman year and take every single pre-AP class offered. I needed time to mature and adjust, while also focusing on developing my passion outside of the classroom. Hopefully I won’t be taken out of the running because of this, but it sure feels good to vent. 
@csdad: I see your point but the same can equally be said about the kids who are strong in math/sciences but mediocre in writing. Essays are a big part of admissions for everyone as well as language parts of SAT and ACT, so this seems to be fair.
However, if colleges paid more attention to the respective majors, it would be nice and make more sense. I mean future English majors would be selected for their achievements in language/lit/writing skills (including advanced courses) and not so much for the perfect math scores and future physicists would not be expected to have the best essay or language scores but would need to show some advancement in physics and math.
It feels nice to dream 
Having to spend so much money sending standardized test scores :’( D:
Another thing that annoys me (not about the admissions process, but the atmosphere surrounding it) is people thinking that black kids have a free ticket into an Ivy. Some people seem to think that we just have to check the race box and have average qualifications and we’re in. I’m in the top 1% of my class, 34 ACT, 4.0 UW GPA, a published writer, and I STILL know that the odds of me being accepted are slim to none. Even as a black male - who are supposedly more heavily recruited than black females, since black females surpass us in college enrollment and often have KILLER qualifications - I know that I am not a shoe-in for Brown. We still have to work just as hard as everyone else!
I didn’t mind tailored supplemental essays, but disliked the “why This School” essay.
The randomness of the process bothered me, but I guess we are stuck with that: we all know or will know great kids who don’t get in to places where more mediocre kids with more polished salesmanship skills will be accepted. While we are ranting, that’s what bugs me the most. The super hard working, nice, quiet kid who gets passed over for the better packaged but shallower one.
1 thing I hate (somewhat related to the college admissions process) are the chances forum on CC, especially for the Ivies, Stanford, UChicago, MIT and other extremely selective institutions.
I don’t get why people continually post chances on these forums for those aforementioned schools. They are a reach for everyone, nobody can chance you based on stats alone, yet people still ask, I don’t know why.
If it’s for a more predictable school (via admissions) in that they are formulaic instead of holistic, or if they’re asking for college suggestions for their GPA/SAT, then that’s fine as the people on CC can open the eyes of the poster (break the bubble that they were in), but so many chances for Ivies just bugs me sometimes, especially when it’s general consensus here that it’s impossible to chance someone for the Ivies as something other than a reach.