<p>It will be interesting to see if the next generation parents the same way. Go past the tennis courts in our town during nice weather, and you will see them filled with Asian parents drilling their children. (And sometimes an Eastern European gentleman I know having his D kick soccer balls across the net to him.) Will these youngster be the parents be out there drilling in 20 years?</p>
<p>Yeah, texaspg, I was going to mention the fact that so many are slender vegetarians, which might preclude them bulking up enough for football. However, some vegetarian Indian friends of mine allow their children to eat meat, albeit out of the house or cooked out of the house.</p>
<p>Actually, from what I’ve observed at many elite schools…including some Ivies is that the “excels at everything” type student is not as common as implied above. While there may be a slightly greater proportion of them at elite schools…there are many more students who excels only in certain areas at a high-level…and yet are average or sometimes even mediocre in others. A reason why such kids are still considered quite impressive and even intimidating by many of their classmates…even at the elite schools like Harvard. It is a reason why some friends who attended such schools and realized they’ve had this intimidating effect do their utmost to downplay this aspect* whenever they meet someone new so that they do not come across as intimidating from the outset.</p>
<p>As for the “some people who just aren’t that good at anything”…I’m wondering if that was caused by a home/surrounding community’s encouragement of mediocrity and/or whether the natural curiosity common among pre-school aged children ended up being snuffed out by a tyrannical martinet of a teacher, bullying classmates, browbeating parents taking the Tiger parenting to extremes, etc. </p>
<p>Saw those effects on classmates throughout my childhood and I could have easily become one of them if I wasn’t blessed(some would argue cursed) with a stubborn rebellious streak which such behavior only makes me more tenacious in standing my ground to stick it to them. </p>
<ul>
<li>Some would take it to the point of only making vague references about the location of their alma mater rather than “drop the H-bomb” or the equivalent at peer institutions.</li>
</ul>
I guess I just don’t agree with this, especially now and especially at the most selective schools. I think they don’t even accept many people who don’t excel at almost everything, at least in the context of the high schools they come from. It’s certainly true that there are some kids who intimidate even those high achievers.</p>
<p>At the risk of restarting a multipage argument, I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “excel” and by “almost everything.” Is it your belief that all, or almost all, superior students are also superior athletes? I’m pretty sure that isn’t the case at our local high school, and I suspect if it were universally true people wouldn’t be making such a big deal about how smart Andrew Luck is.</p>
<p>Sure, some superior students are superior athletes, and probably more could be if they devoted the time to it. And I suspect a lot of top athletes, possessing that kind of discipline, are very good students. However, although I’m sure all the top students at our local high school have various talents, I almost certain they don’t excel at everything. And I don’t believe there is a huge overlap between the very top students (many of whom are accepted at the very top academic schools) and the top athletes (many of whom are recruited by the top schools in their sports).</p>
<p>Getting back to the legacy topic, I think that one of the reasons that colleges encourage legacies to apply – besides money – is that having multiple members of a family attend the same school creates a good impression of that school.</p>
<p>A few years ago, I worked with a woman from a Syracuse family. Although she had gone to another university, her husband had graduated from Syracuse, and his experience there was so positive that both of their sons chose Syracuse, even though they were not pressured to do so, and both were very pleased with their choice and with the opportunities there.</p>
<p>I had never thought very highly of Syracuse – even though it’s my sister’s alma mater – but this family’s positive experience impressed me. </p>
<p>My own family has, somewhat accidentally, turned into a Cornell family. I graduated from Cornell and also got a master’s degree there, my husband got his master’s and doctoral degrees at Cornell, and our daughter is a recent graduate. I know that we create a good impression of Cornell just as my colleague’s family creates a good impression of Syracuse. Even though we are careful to give people the warts-and-all truth about Cornell and to make the point that it’s not the best choice for everyone, several students have applied there after discussions with one of us, and at least one is attending Cornell.</p>
<p>Multiply this by thousands of legacy families, and you have something that colleges could value.</p>
No, I’m not claiming that superior students are also superior athletes. But many of them are at least good athletes and/or good artists and/or good musicians and/or good something else. Almost all of them excel at all of their academic subjects, because most of them have perfect or near-perfect grades in the most challenging curricula offered at their schools–many of which are themselves selective high schools. But in my experience, there aren’t that many who are just excellent students–most of them are very good at other things too, and they are the type of kids who tend to succeed at what they try to do.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong–I’m on the side of this discussion that thinks inherent ability is important. I’m just suggesting that if know some people with a lot of different inherent abilities, you might be led to think that a lot more people are like that, when they may not be at all.</p>
<p>Some of them succeed at least in part because they choose to devote their time and effort to things that they are naturally good at. The shy ones don’t tend to choose debate or drama – or if they do choose it, they don’t stay with it for long. The clumsy ones don’t focus on sports. The tone-deaf rarely spend more than a year or two in the band. But when they find something that works for them, they stick with it and give it their time and energy. And they end up playing lead roles in school plays, or qualifying for all-state orchestra, or being the most valuable player on the softball team. Hard work is part of it, but so is choosing an activity where they are comfortable and successful.</p>
<p>Sure. In the final analysis, what these schools want is alumni who are going to be successful in whatever field they wind up choosing. And the combination of a habit of hard work with understanding where one’s talents lie and how best to exploit them has to be one of the core elements of success no matter which field one is in.</p>
<p>Right. Which is why naturally non-athletic kids don’t bother to “stick with 10,000 hours of practice in a sport til they become recruitable” (despite the upthread assertions that they could or should). There’s just little point to it. They go do whatever else it is that they are good at, whether it’s music, art, languages. </p>
<p>Something’s fun if you’re good at it - but something’s also fun if you’re naturally inclined / talented at it.</p>
<p>That’s happened to us as well with NU – my MIL had gone there (though had not graduated) and now there’s me, H and S. It wasn’t any kind of well thought out plan, though, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>My family was very much a Harvard/Radcliffe one through most of three generations (although I betrayed it by turning it down to go elsewhere, twice). Of my grandmother and her five siblings, four got ABs there (plus one MD and one PhD), and a fifth married an AB/PhD. From the mid-60s to the late 80s, I never failed to have a cousin there – often multiples of them. But since then the well has sort of dried. Only two cousins have attended in the past 20 years, and no one in the generation below mine has been accepted yet, including several who would have been unbroken fourth-generation legacies. So it goes.</p>
<p>Based on my limited personal experience, I think the boost from legacy preference at Stanford is pretty weak. My daughters have legacy standing at Stanford, and D2 who was valedictorian, ranked #1 of 600, 4.88W/4.0 UW, 34 & 2210 ACT & SAT w/APs, scientific research program, and tons musical ECs and awards was rejected at Stanford.</p>
<p>Her stats and achievements put her well in the running for slot even without the legacy. Based on the commonly-believed lore of CC, her stats plus her legacy status should served to make her a shoo-in. Didn’t happen. She was just another one of the thousands of high-end kids who didn’t get in.</p>
<p>^^Yeah, since Stanford didn’t want my daughter, she went to the Ivy league instead. She is currently a junior at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>So don’t cry too hard for her. She got into many fine schools. But the point is that, at some schools at least, legacy may not be so all-powerful as some people, especially the legacy haters, imagine it is.</p>
<p>I’ve noted before that even the legacy kids who don’t get in tend to get accepted to really great schools, and a lot of the legacy kids who are accepted are also accepted at similar non-legacy schools.</p>
<p>That’s why the commonly-believed lore of CC is hogwash, and why legacies aren’t even remotedly a shoo-in, and why it comes aross as whiny when people say things such as “the elite schools take care of their own, once you’re in the club, you’re in” when legacy acceptance rates are still very, very low. I counseled my S that his double legacy was nothing other than a very, very slight feather on the scale, would not make up for any deficiency / shortcoming, he still needed to kick butt on his essays, and I’m glad that is how we took it. Contrary to annasdad’s assertion, “the club” had no obligation to take him, and I was pleasantly surprised when they did.</p>
<p>Actually, the club sends you a nice letter explaining that they love legacies, but that your kid still might not get in, and if that happens, please don’t be too mad.</p>
<p>"Based on my limited personal experience, I think the boost from legacy preference at Stanford is pretty weak. "
that was our experience as well. DS applied during the first year for the new Admissions director, and word was out that he wanted to increase S’s “geographic diversity” and make Stanford “less” of a college for Calif. students. Also, DS was NOT an athlete, and S has a well know reputation for loving scholar-athletes. DS was accepted at 2 Ivys, and 12 other colleges/U’s . He did not apply to HYP. It would have been interesting if he had been accepted at one of those 3.</p>