Parental resources will always play a role, regardless what system we adopt. IMO, we need to put better resources in public HSs to help guide students and their families. On the other hand, if students don’t have to worry about setting up their 501(c)'s or other esoteric endeavors, they may, just may, have more time to think about what they actually want to study in college.
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In the “it isn’t relevant but I need to share this nugget of trivia anyway” category:
The Queen Mum was the first woman to receive a PhD from Cambridge. An honorary law degree.
Please continue…
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Personally, I think it is a bit nuts and problematic to expect 16 year olds to define their paths. There is something to be said for a general college education that not only allows for some flexibility in career choice but also some time and opportunity to try new paths. These days the lines between disciplines are more blurred than ever. Teaching in silos doesn’t seem like the best model.
That said, I totally agree that US K-12 is broken and woefully underfunded, and the dysfunction at the college admissions level is both a symptom and a cause.
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Yes it is extremely expensive but the fact that it is doable is a huge advantage, which many countries do not provide to their students.
FWIW, US also provides many alternate routes to prosperity. This too is virtually impossible in many countries.
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Elite colleges are looking for game changers and there is no safe to to predict that and hence a holistic system. They are not looking for the best student, or trying to predict who will be make most money and donate a building.
Yale is looking for the next Barack Obama and I suppose U Penn is looking for way to get its diploma back from Trump?
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Absolutely! But more and more elite colleges are doing whatever they can to avoid attracting kids that want to attend their school to make fat stax.
Perspective might be in order- the number of students whose K-12 experience is shaped by dysfunction in college admissions is relatively TINY compared to the huge number of kids whose lives are impacted by the ACTUAL dysfunction in their K-12 education!
Boo hoo for the kids trying to jump through hoops to get into Harvard because having to “settle” for Hopkins or BU would be such a tragedy. But honestly- isn’t the real problem the kids who aren’t reading at grade level when they enter HS, or the kids who graduate from HS who can’t read a bar chart or don’t know that 4 mg. and 40 mg are not the same dose for medication?
I think the British system works for the top of the heap/traditionally wired academic kid. The rest of the college aged population? Not so much. You have a kid who is a late bloomer, or has an LD which wasn’t identified in second grade? If your kid gets tracked to VO-Tech, good luck getting them back on track to university. You have a kid who is both LD AND gifted? good luck.
I see kids in my neighborhood graduating from college- and I know some of the back story- and it is such a tribute to the US college system, warts and all. It’s easy to criticize the insanity of Harvard and Stanford admissions-- but don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s nice to live in a country which believes in second chances, that doesn’t track your career starting in HS (where you may have had medical issues, social/mental health problems which had you under-performing) and where your professional life isn’t defined by your A-levels!
Kid in my neighborhood just finished a BA. She’s 30. She did it the hard way- one class at a time, worked full time, has advanced in her job (same job she’s had since she graduated from HS). Such a tribute to her grit, focus, ambition-- and a tribute to an institution which worked with her, despite lots of challenges- to keep her on track. It’s great that even “slow and steady” can win the race!
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The way I see it is that deciding to jump on the hamster wheel of elite college admissions is a choice, not a necessity. If every hyper qualified student can’t attend Harvard, it isn’t a tragedy. Smart, ambitious kids will be successful wherever they land and it doesn’t take an Ivy League diploma to do it. The irony is that many of the kids yearning for the elusive top 10 college spot come from already privileged backgrounds. Given every advantage, do they really need the cherry on the top that comes with the Ivy League? Frankly, if BU or Northeastern (or the state flagship for that matter) instead of Harvard or Yale is the worst thing that ever happens to a kid they are damn lucky.
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Maybe. The US system works very much better for girls who mature earlier and can keep track of all their assignments and put in the effort in class work throughout high school from freshman year onwards. One slip up in freshman year by a distracted boy, resulting in a bunch of Bs, and those tippy top US schools are most likely off the table.
The UK exam based system works better for boys who grow up enough during high school to do a great job in their exams at 18. Risk taking attitudes are a good thing for high stakes exams. Tracking doesn’t happen before the age of 16, since there aren’t the equivalent of regular and AP classes and there’s no streaming except in math (and even that isn’t universal).
I know that I’d absolutely prefer my gifted ADHD son to be in the UK system where he wouldn’t be forced to do the busy work and subjects like English lit that he hates, and he would have had the chance to mature before his future college choices became constrained by his grades.
I’d also add that what matters in the UK for most top jobs (except law, medicine and engineering) is your degree class, so you do what you are academically best at. It doesn’t surprise anyone in the UK that the last Prime Minister had a degree in geography and the current one has a degree in classics.
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I think the trickle down effect means that students feel they have to overachieve in grades, sports, extracurriculars, even if they are applying pretty far down on the T100 list. Maybe those aiming below 100 do not feel stress,But I knew plenty aiming for Lehigh or LMU or VA Tech who stressed
Twoin-- your gifted ADHD son would only benefit from the UK system if he’d been in primary schools which understood and could accommodate his giftedness. I’ve got a cousin (gifted, ADHD) who was told fashion design, cake decorating, groundskeeper-- his three career options. Three low stress jobs requiring creativity and visual skills since his “lack of focus” was so problematic to the teachers in his early years.
But it was the bullying (many Brits still don’t believe that’s a “thing”- or if it’s a thing, that it’s problematic since it builds character) which got him out of the UK educational system…
I’d rather my kid were “forced” to read novels-- even if he hated them, than put up with an educational system that put so much emphasis on middle school performance as the gatekeeper to higher ed…
My kids were educated in the US and did NOT do busy work in HS. That is not universal in the US. But they did all take English Lit, and even came to appreciate being able to read and enjoy a work of literature…
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The fact that there even is such a list is silly. The emergence of specious, self perpetuating rankings is largely what’s responsible for this abjectly stupidity.
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I agree, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is such a list, and tens of thousands rely upon it, and colleges have been known to alter their behavior to influence their ranking. If I am ever in charge of the universe, I will abolish the list. Until then…
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and this has been proven. Many students in other countries talk at length about the one test that leads to many children ending their life due to the stress and actually prefer America’s admission process
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I’ll help you abolish it.
We get INSANE posts on here from parents who are prepared to take out a second mortgage to pay for their kid to attend a college which is “ranked” higher (marginally higher, at best) than an affordable option. And then those of us who try to encourage the parent to rethink that strategy get cast as elitists for saying that Hofstra or Pace or Stonehill aren’t “worth” that level of debt, and that their kid can get a fine education at the place offering them substantial aid which might be “ranked” five slots lower.
Sheesh.
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We hire people with 7 years of college not 4. But that isn’t the point. Someone said how would people act if employers rendered judgment on our characters based on not much more than our appearances. In my experience, most employers fill most jobs with less info about applicants than what “elite” colleges have.
At the end of the day we are talking about an incredibly small number of people for whom the “elite” college application process is relevant. And if you change the rules/process for admission, you still have the same number of seats available meaning you will have the same number of rejects. Still will have disappointed applicants just different group. Is one set of rules/processes necessarily better or are they just different? No doubt the people who are rejected now but get acceptances under the changes rules/process will be happy (robbing Peter to pay Paul and counting on Paul’s support type of situation).
In 2021, although this has been disproved countless times, people continue to drag this same inane tired argument. Those spots aren’t rubber marked for anyone but who the Uni wants to admit. This coded language about URMs isn’t so subtle anymore and you truly should find a more engaging argument.
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That made me laugh given the suggestions on my S’s latest IEP (in his US high school) that his most appropriate career options were electronic home entertainment installer (the top recommendation!), radio operator, dental/ophthalmic laboratory technician or traffic technician. I think that simply demonstrates the weakness of these career evaluation tests and their inapplicability to gifted kids.
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I could use a good home entertainment installer- call me if this pans out for him!
Agree that this demonstrates the weaknesses of the career tests- but in the US there are second, third and fourth acts for kids who aren’t performing at the top of (whatever) game is required at age 17/18. It is MUCH harder for a kid to get on a university/professional track in the UK if their middle school trajectory reflects their deficits and NOT their strenghts/giftedness!
Are there still radio operators? 
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I wouldn’t say that it is “very clear that the “holistic” criteria were being applied in a manner so as to boost the scores of non-Asians vs Asians.” Asian applicants also generally do not do poorly on holistic criteria. For example, the portion of non-ALDC hooked applicants who received a high 1-2 rating in ECs is below. Asians applicants scored highest in ECs.
Received High EC Ratings
Asian Applicants – 28% received high EC rating
White Applicants – 24% received high EC rating
Hispanic Applicants – 17% received high EC rating
Black Applicants – 16% received high EC rating
A similar pattern occurred on alumni interview, with Asian applicants scoring highest
Received High Interview Ratings
Asian Applicants – 41% received high interview rating
White Applicants – 36% received high interview rating
Hispanic Applicants – 24% received high interview rating
Black Applicants – 21% received high interview rating
Asian applicants also scored highest in LORs among multiple other categories
Received High Teacher LOR #1 Rating
Asian Applicants – 31% received high LOR rating
White Applicants – 30% received high LOR rating
Hispanic Applicants – 22% received high LOR rating
Black Applicants – 17% received high LOR rating
There are essentially only 2 ratings categories where Asian applicants were statistically significantly lower than the average applicant. There was a large difference in athletic, with only 5% of Asian applicants receiving high ratings.
Received High Athletic Rating
White Applicants – 13% received high athletic rating
Hispanic Applicants – 8% received high athletic rating
Black Applicants – 7% received high athletic rating
Asian Applicants – 5% received high athletic rating
And a small difference in personal, as discussed above
Received High Personal Rating
White Applicants – 21% received high interview rating
Hispanic Applicants – 19% received high interview rating
Black Applicants – 19% received high interview rating
Asian Applicants – 18% received high interview rating
Rather than blaming this small difference in personal rating for not having a higher admit rate, the far more influential factor is Asian applicants excelled compared to other races as a whole in scores, particularly in math. The score difference is much larger than the difference any of the categories mentioned above. For example, the portion of different groups who were in the top 10% Academic Index (2/3 score + 1/3 GPA) is as follows:
In Highest AI Decile
Asian Applicants – 18% in highest AI decile
White Applicants – 9% in highest AI decile
Hispanic Applicants – 2% in highest AI decile
Black Applicants – 1% in highest AI decile
So anything that reduces the influence of scores hurts Asian applicants as a whole more than other races. Asian applicants may do the best in ECs on average, yet considering ECs still hurts Asian applicants more than others, if doing so takes away from the relative influence of scores.
Regarding the personal rating in particular, the definition is somewhat nebulous, which makes it difficult to confirm whether the rating is deserved. My personal opinion is that Harvard did not have university policy to give Asian applicants slightly lower personal ratings than average, but there may have been less intentional influences on the individual reader level, such as Asian applicants being less likely to participate in certain types of activities and/or being more likely to appear introverted, and readers interpreting this as negative. This relates to how Harvard modified the reader guidelines I quoted in my earlier post following the lawsuit to include statements like the following:
It is important to keep in mind that characteristics not always synonymous with extroversion are similarly valued. Applicants who seem to be particularly reflective, insightful and/or dedicated should receive higher personal ratings as well.
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