<p>@dustypig, I also loved your post. I’ve been struggling to find these words and you did it beautifully. :)</p>
<p>Coming in late, but more than specifically bemoaning his/ her friend’s four Ivy rejections, the OP seems to be indicting the US on the college/ academia front and implying that we are ultimately damaging ourselves with our less data-based measure for college admissions…</p>
<p>Funny to express such concern, since it seems the US has Asia and much of the rest of the world beat on the Nobel front. </p>
<p><a href=“List of countries by Nobel laureates per capita - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita</a></p>
<p>Maybe thinking “outside the numbers” and “outside the punch list of ecs” has its advantages when it comes to producing broad-minded thinkers–thinkers with ingenuity and imagination, not just great stats. </p>
<p>OH NO. How sad! Another over privileged asian kid getting rejected by a prestigious university.</p>
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<p>where was it said that his student was “over privileged”?</p>
<p>There are a lot of students who do well in school and have great test scores who aren’t over privileged.</p>
<p>@gondalineNJ I would not say that being ranked 15th in the world for Nobel Laureates per capita is a statistic to be proud of. In fact, that ranking is similar to our rankings in the education fields. We are 30th in math, 23rd in science and 20th in reading, and our rankings are getting worse each year. This is not to say that Harvard’s admission process is to blame (or any school’s for that matter), but rather that the education and academic systems in our country need work. I also would not say that the number of Nobel Laureates that a country has is an indicator of the quality of their collegiate system, but rather their research programs (notice that Switzerland, home of the Large Hadron Collider, holds third place in those rankings).</p>
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<p>That isn’t true.</p>
<p><a href=“http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2011/02/myth_of_declining_us_schools.html”>http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2011/02/myth_of_declining_us_schools.html</a></p>
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<p>@fluffy2017 Our scores have been absolutely stagnant for the past 10+ years, while our RANKINGS, as I said, have been decreasing. Compared to other developed countries, we are declining by not improving. Also, your article is out of date, being over three years old. </p>
<p><a href=“U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science : The Two-Way : NPR”>U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science : The Two-Way : NPR;
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<p>In reading, 19 other locales scored higher than U.S. students — a jump from nine in 2009, when the last assessment was performed.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>American Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the PISA findings a “picture of educational stagnation.” He told The Associated Press that America needs to “invest in early education, raise academic standards, make college affordable, and do more to recruit and retain top-notch educators.”</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>“Remember the movie Groundhog Day, where the main character wakes up every morning and realizes nothing has changed? He’s reliving the same day over and over again. Well that pretty much sums up the latest PISA results for 15-year-olds in the U.S. Their scores in reading, math and science have not changed since 2003.”</p>
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<p>@tomwantssnow</p>
<p>I don’t link to blogs since they usually are all over the map - like this one.</p>
<p>He cites the “nations and jurisdictions” that are doing better than the US, but why would he add Shanghai in the mix of the top performers? Why not compare how the US has done compared to a small village in TIbet? Or, since he mentions Shanghai instead of China overall, point out that if you just consider Massachusetts, that it would rank 6th worldwide in reading, above Finland. </p>
<p>It is sloppy reporting with an obvious agenda.</p>
<p>@fluffy2017 </p>
<p>If you read it in it’s entirety, you would see that that is how the PISA study reports the data. Regardless of the fact that it reports China’s large, developed, cities rather than the developing parts of the country (whereas we live in an actual fully developed country), the average score of the United States is below the average of the countries/regions tested.</p>
<p>Also, I find it humorous that you pointed out my choice to cite a blog, calling it “sloppy reporting with an obvious agenda”, when you cited Jay Matthews, “an education columnist and blogger for the Washington Post” [1], and the page was in the “voices” section of the Washington Post (their blog/column section). The piece that you cited was indeed a column, (generally defined as an article that incorporates both the author’s personality and opinion) and is therefore biased as well. Although it might not be “sloppy”, as you called blogs earlier, it does have an agenda as well.</p>
<p>[1] <a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/jay-mathews”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/jay-mathews</a></p>
<p>Here is the full report from the company that conducted the research, which is most of what I quoted earlier, and the basis of the piece that I cited:
<a href=“http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf”>http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf</a></p>
<p>@Tomwantssnow: looking at a rank without looking at how many out of it’d be leads to false conclusions!
= actually, 15 out of 220 is MUCH better than 20-25 out of 30. 
What that says is that the secondary education system has enormous disparities in the US, with some schools ranking among the best in the world, and a whole bunch ranking among the lowest ones. (The primary system seems to work pretty well in comparisons and Higher education wins in all world rankings).</p>
<p>There is a difference between a blog, which is not supposed to be linked to at CC (see the TOS), and a column which has editorial oversight.
You shouldn’t find that amusing.</p>
<p>@fluffy2017 Moving past the article I quoted, the study still supports what I was saying. What I actually find amusing is that, when debating, you choose not to comment on the points I am making. The truth of it is we are falling further behind, and studies support that statement. We are not losing quality of our education; instead other country’s are increasing the quality of theirs, which lowers our rankings. This is exactly what I said in the first place, and, unless you want to dispute the validity of the study that I cited, I’d like to leave it at that.</p>
<p>Sheesh, have ya’ll got OT? Start a new thread for your silly debate.</p>
<p>The reason for such rejections is the unfortunate fact that a private school with many applicants to choose from admits a class as a whole, rather than admitting individuals. They are not interested in making sure the best applicant gets in, then making sure the second best gets in, etc. They are interested in optimizing the entire student body according to several factors, including perceived student experience (they think students want to have racially diverse peers), competitive powerhouse (they want their school to win many competitions), community outreach (they think each part of the surrounding community has diminishing marginal return in term of how much effort they invest in it, so they want students with diverse volunteering interests), etc.</p>
<p>It is inevitably a messy process. Do more of it manually, and you introduce more entry points for human error. Do more of it with an algorithm, and you reduce nuanced information down to questionable heuristics. Either way, you end up with casualties of the system. But even if you could quantify the cost of these casualties, would anyone in the admission process notice or care? There is a point where trying harder to admit the best possible class comes at a cost of human resources that outweighs the benefit of improving the student body.</p>
<p>@fluffy, maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but NPR most certainly has editorial oversight!</p>
<p>Hard work and dedication is not always enough to get you in. I’ve worked my you-know-what off for four years, getting high SAT scores and above a 4.0 GPA, all while being in 5+ clubs every years and I was not accepted to Columbia ED. That being said, the name of a school should not be the reward for four years of hard and excruciating work. Would it be nice to go to Harvard or Yale or Penn? Heck yes! That’s why I’m eagerly awaiting the next week. But name brand alone does not guarantee success. I have a full ride scholarship to St. John’s University (not nearly as prestigious as your Ivies or Duke or Stanford) but being able to get a free college education in a great school in a great city is good enough for me. Of course the Ivies offer a great world-class education, but that does not guarantee success later in life. The Ivies are a name brand, not a badge that says “I went to ________, I can do whatever I want”. These schools have been around for 400 years or less. Think of all the people in human history who COULDN’T have gone to an Ivy, let alone apply to one. The vast majority of people in the world (and even highly successful people for that matter) did not attend an Ivy League school and life has turned out fine for them. If the name of a school alone is why someone would apply somewhere, that’s shallow, unthoughtful, and a pretty good indicator of why they didn’t get in.</p>
<p>Current junior applying to the Ivies next year (and a few more). If you really look at who’s getting in to these top schools (Ivies + U Chicago + Vanderbilt + Duke), you will see that grades and test scores matter, but they aren’t everything. And I agree with this methodology of choosing a class.</p>
<p>Grades only mean so much - they only show how much effort you put in.
Test scores (most people attending Ivies prepare for them) are similar.</p>
<p>That being said, what will get you into an Ivy? Essays, ECs, Hooks. I go to one of the toughest prep schools in the nation (so we have many students who get into Ivies and similar schools) and time and time again I will see someone with great grades get denied for someone else who made a difference outside of school. The Ivies want people who will shape the world - whether it be through athletics or research or in the corporate world, and they will choose the students they deem best for these roles.</p>
<p>Also - legacy appears to have a huge factor on who gets in (why wouldn’t it?).</p>
<p>Edit: The Ivies are overrated - there are a number of schools out there just as good, if not better than the Ivies (Stanford? MIT? U Chicago? NU? Vanderbilt? Duke?)</p>
<p>jsmike123qwe asked: “How can I tell them to work hard in high school, when there is nothing to work towards besides four years in a city or state institution (not that these are in anyway bad).”</p>
<p>You can teach them that learning is best done for its own sake, for the joy in realising how things work and what happens if. Teach them that struggling to excel is best done for its own intrinsic merits, and that you don’t get the brass ring just because you put in the standard amount of effort.<br>
You can teach them that in life, there are no guarantees. In fact, anyone who doesn’t teach their children that they are not guaranteed the results they want just because they want them is probably doing those children a grave disservice. As parents, we need to teach our children to strive, but also to have Plans B, C, and D, and to expect that (as often than not) they will need to use them.</p>
<p>^^^^Well said.</p>
<p>^^^^ Indeed! </p>