Yes, there aren’t too many colleges sites that can generate 300+ posts about admission rates to University of Chicago from a single private school (there’s niche for you).
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Highly achieving students (and their parents) aren’t necessarily arrogant. And I would say that most here aren’t. But many are. And I think it very much distracts from this place.
Over time, I have gotten such that I tend to skip the names of posters. Look just at the posts. Having been here for a number of years, its interesting to me that I can often times guess who made the post just by what they said. Not all of that is based on arrogance though some is. And if I was a drinker (which I am not), you could play a drinking game trying to guess who will be the first to post in a given thread and give bonus points for guessing what they said.
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Exactly. Kids aren’t a one note person. My kid could school you on Classics one day and amputate your leg the next.
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I think academic brilliance is highly valued by some of the people who post here and, as a result, there can be a whiff of intellectual snobbery in the air at times. Certainly (in my view) there is a hyper-focus on the doings at elite schools. I saw this article today and it made me think of CC. It’s an interesting take by a guy who attended Oxbridge. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/academic-intelligence-is-absurdly-overvalued-x2832r7jz
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Well, my kid could out procrastinate yours by a country mile without breaking a sweat.
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This depends completely on the school. Vanderbilt was the example that started this tangent. Their CDS says they awarded $20,000,000 in non-need based institutional scholarships and grants. This excludes athletic scholarships and tuition waivers. You don’t spend $20M over a “relatively small # of applicants.”
That is quite a bit . . . it would probably be easier to tell what it all means if they showed how many kids were receiving merit aid and what the average award was.
In their CDS, 700 students were granted non-need based institutional awards. That’s roughly 10% of the student body. They received an average of $25,000. That totals $17M for this past year. Not sure where the other $3M went.
Unless your goal is a job in academia, then it does matter.
There are many drinking games that could be generated from this site 
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Perhaps we could return to the topic of the OP rather than this sidebar on the merits of CC?
Just catching up on this one. I think I should probably reread the OP.
In any case, having a “holistic” approach allows a college to accept anyone they want without defining their criteria leaving applicants to guess the criteria based on what the schools say they are interested in on their web site or during information sessions. Or, based on what guidance counselors or college consultants think is important based on their past experience on who gets in and who doesn’t.
Colleges talk about diversity, so we all know that is factor. We all know they need to fill sports team rosters and seats in the orchestra and that type of thing. We know that they only have so many slots in the engineering school, etc. And, we all know that the rankings are important so we can look at the factors that determine rankings. We all know what the categories are on the applications and figure it looks better to be able to fill in all the boxes rather than leave anything blank. So, students are trying to document volunteer work, get a paid job, participate in extracurriculars, have a leadership role, and win some awards. Too bad there is not category to check documenting that you can do your own laundry, make dinner, and navigate public transportation.
My list in the paragraph above is pretty extensive if you want to check all the boxes. I’m not sure if most categories on the list rise to shaping character except volunteering or maybe the idea that sports builds character in a particular way that may or may not jive with your personal philosophy. All the boxes available to check does imply that high school students should be very busy outside of school and that being a good student is not enough. This also implies that those who are very busy because they have many responsibilities at home need to explain why they aren’t on a sports team or building homes for Habitat for Humanity. There really isn’t a place to say that you’ve kept a journal or had a pen pal since 4th grade. Or, how many books you’ve read for pleasure. Or, that you’re really awesome at League of Legions.
In any case, character aside, I do think that what is included on the college applications does have a strong impact on how many students spend their time in a way that is not necessarily positive. The degree to which athletes get preferred admission seems way out of proportion to the degree that athletes contribute to the greater good compared to everyone else.
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The difference between their $20mm of stated merit aid vs the $17mm in the CDS is the balance of merit based aid that went toward fulfilling a demonstrated financial need.
I don’t think so. It’s in this column: “exclude non-need-based aid use to meet need.”
I agree, @ultimom . The admission process also favors extroverts rather than introverts, and group activities rather than more solitary pursuits. A quest for “leadership”, however phony, seems to drive a lot of it.
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I think this is school dependent.
I am a joiner. My kids are not. I worried (privately) that this would hurt them and it didn’t. I think if you are competing for one of the named scholarships at a college with a weekend, fly-in’s, panel interview, etc- then the extroverts have a leg up. But for plain vanilla admissions- you just have to walk through the student union to read the walls- there are clubs, there are activities, there are parties. But there are also the job postings for students who want to work in the rare book library learning to catalogue, there are fellowship opportunities for students who already know Sumerian but want to learn Ugaritic, there are awards for the best paper on Women’s contributions to Renaissance Studies. Not that these kids can’t be extroverts- but a university also rewards and has opportunities for the solitary scholars and the kids whose best work is done alone in a library, lab, music or sculpture studio.
There are tens of thousands of “non-leaders” going to college!!!
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What’s there to brag about their GPA or test scores? Both GPA and test scores have been so inflated that “perfect” GPA and “perfect” or near-“perfect” test scores are far from rarities. Besides, a student may fool his schoolmates but can’t fake his GPA or test scores in a college application. IMO, holistic admissions encourage (but do not cause) “bragging” or exageration, or worse, making them more widespread.
In SC, the state Department of Education actually did the opposite until 2016. The state public schools were actually biased against admitting in-state students. While the vast majority of students were indeed from SC, the admittance criteria favored OOS students. This was due to the grading scale used SC state-wide was based on a 7 point scale (93-100 A, etc.), rather than a decile scale. In theory, a student reporting a 4.0 UW GPA from neighboring NC to Clemson could have had a 3.0 in an SC achieving the same percentages. This disconnect was the driving factor in changing its grading scale to a standard 10 point scale that year.
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Although in Union, you could just wait 2 years and get redistricted.
Just for one year. NC had a 7 point scale until 2015. It switched right as my oldest (class of 2019) entered high school. Also I’m not sure about your math on that. It wasn’t that much difference. A 3.0 on the 7 pt scale was more like an 88, which would be a 3.7, not 4.0.