Making up things in common app activities and awards

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

💯

Some of these admissions people are awful at sussing out character. They want leaders leaders leaders, we’ll guess what? Many “leaders” have sharp elbows and competitively race everyone to the top, pushing people to the side as they go. They’re not exactly the “kind” sort of students Dartmouth claims they want.

My kid’s longtime classmate is a leader, she lies and cheats at every turn. Dartmouth would not know.

Begin teaching your child the lesson that life is not fair now. I see this reality hitting UMC children hardest at this juncture because their parents have not laid the appropriate groundwork early on in their lives. I remember my parents messaging to me from very early in ES that sometimes cheaters win, that sometimes the people who are better/faster/smoother talkers win, and that sometimes you will lose even when you “won” on merit. I was not taught that I deserved anything, because while I was most special to my parents, every other child was as special to theirs and I had no idea what struggles or advantages were going on with others behind closed doors.

I have made this abundantly clear to my kids. Life is not fair. There is no easy way to win everything.
Do what you have to if you want something.
Within reason.

+1
I really didn’t know cheating was so rampant tho. My DD was struggling in an AP and took a lot of quiz retakes. I asked her if a lot of people retook them and she said hardly anyone - they all have A’s. I thought “geez how could she be struggling in such an easy class?” Then she told me she was in a class group chat at the beginning of the year. Right before the first test someone posted the answers to the prior years test - she got out of that group chat immediately. She said they had all the answers to all the tests and she wanted no part of that. She struggled through with help from her teacher, who actually ended up writing me to tell me how impressed he was with how hard she worked for her grade (she ended up with a B which I was very proud of). He wrote her a college rec letter as well. I suspect he knew everyone else was cheating on some level.
It was quite a learning experience for her and me, too.

The easy thing to do would be to change test questions, but your kid took a hit to their GPA and learned a lesson. The cheaters got As. The teacher didn't have to take the trouble of rewriting stale tests. Everybody wins

She should have anon reported them. She lost here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, the universities are lying to you. Why not lie to them?

Because lying shrivels the soul. Not worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

💯

Some of these admissions people are awful at sussing out character. They want leaders leaders leaders, we’ll guess what? Many “leaders” have sharp elbows and competitively race everyone to the top, pushing people to the side as they go. They’re not exactly the “kind” sort of students Dartmouth claims they want.

My kid’s longtime classmate is a leader, she lies and cheats at every turn. Dartmouth would not know.

Begin teaching your child the lesson that life is not fair now. I see this reality hitting UMC children hardest at this juncture because their parents have not laid the appropriate groundwork early on in their lives. I remember my parents messaging to me from very early in ES that sometimes cheaters win, that sometimes the people who are better/faster/smoother talkers win, and that sometimes you will lose even when you “won” on merit. I was not taught that I deserved anything, because while I was most special to my parents, every other child was as special to theirs and I had no idea what struggles or advantages were going on with others behind closed doors.

I have made this abundantly clear to my kids. Life is not fair. There is no easy way to win everything.
Do what you have to if you want something.
Within reason.

+1
I really didn’t know cheating was so rampant tho. My DD was struggling in an AP and took a lot of quiz retakes. I asked her if a lot of people retook them and she said hardly anyone - they all have A’s. I thought “geez how could she be struggling in such an easy class?” Then she told me she was in a class group chat at the beginning of the year. Right before the first test someone posted the answers to the prior years test - she got out of that group chat immediately. She said they had all the answers to all the tests and she wanted no part of that. She struggled through with help from her teacher, who actually ended up writing me to tell me how impressed he was with how hard she worked for her grade (she ended up with a B which I was very proud of). He wrote her a college rec letter as well. I suspect he knew everyone else was cheating on some level.
It was quite a learning experience for her and me, too.

The easy thing to do would be to change test questions, but your kid took a hit to their GPA and learned a lesson. The cheaters got As. The teacher didn't have to take the trouble of rewriting stale tests. Everybody wins

She should have anon reported them. She lost here.

My daughter made me promise that I wouldn’t say anything to the teacher. Why? Not sure. Probably didn’t want to stir the pot. I honored that.
I don’t think she lost at all.

[Anonymous]

This is depressing. Not just the cheating but that the activities aren’t even good enough. Nothing is good enough.

[Anonymous]

When the whole system is based on (systematic) cheating, people don’t care about integrity anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

💯

Some of these admissions people are awful at sussing out character. They want leaders leaders leaders, we’ll guess what? Many “leaders” have sharp elbows and competitively race everyone to the top, pushing people to the side as they go. They’re not exactly the “kind” sort of students Dartmouth claims they want.

My kid’s longtime classmate is a leader, she lies and cheats at every turn. Dartmouth would not know.

Begin teaching your child the lesson that life is not fair now. I see this reality hitting UMC children hardest at this juncture because their parents have not laid the appropriate groundwork early on in their lives. I remember my parents messaging to me from very early in ES that sometimes cheaters win, that sometimes the people who are better/faster/smoother talkers win, and that sometimes you will lose even when you “won” on merit. I was not taught that I deserved anything, because while I was most special to my parents, every other child was as special to theirs and I had no idea what struggles or advantages were going on with others behind closed doors.

I have made this abundantly clear to my kids. Life is not fair. There is no easy way to win everything.
Do what you have to if you want something.
Within reason.

+1
I really didn’t know cheating was so rampant tho. My DD was struggling in an AP and took a lot of quiz retakes. I asked her if a lot of people retook them and she said hardly anyone - they all have A’s. I thought “geez how could she be struggling in such an easy class?” Then she told me she was in a class group chat at the beginning of the year. Right before the first test someone posted the answers to the prior years test - she got out of that group chat immediately. She said they had all the answers to all the tests and she wanted no part of that. She struggled through with help from her teacher, who actually ended up writing me to tell me how impressed he was with how hard she worked for her grade (she ended up with a B which I was very proud of). He wrote her a college rec letter as well. I suspect he knew everyone else was cheating on some level.
It was quite a learning experience for her and me, too.

Retests are a reason admissions is so plagued right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

💯

Some of these admissions people are awful at sussing out character. They want leaders leaders leaders, we’ll guess what? Many “leaders” have sharp elbows and competitively race everyone to the top, pushing people to the side as they go. They’re not exactly the “kind” sort of students Dartmouth claims they want.

My kid’s longtime classmate is a leader, she lies and cheats at every turn. Dartmouth would not know.

Begin teaching your child the lesson that life is not fair now. I see this reality hitting UMC children hardest at this juncture because their parents have not laid the appropriate groundwork early on in their lives. I remember my parents messaging to me from very early in ES that sometimes cheaters win, that sometimes the people who are better/faster/smoother talkers win, and that sometimes you will lose even when you “won” on merit. I was not taught that I deserved anything, because while I was most special to my parents, every other child was as special to theirs and I had no idea what struggles or advantages were going on with others behind closed doors.

I have made this abundantly clear to my kids. Life is not fair. There is no easy way to win everything.
Do what you have to if you want something.
Within reason.

+1
I really didn’t know cheating was so rampant tho. My DD was struggling in an AP and took a lot of quiz retakes. I asked her if a lot of people retook them and she said hardly anyone - they all have A’s. I thought “geez how could she be struggling in such an easy class?” Then she told me she was in a class group chat at the beginning of the year. Right before the first test someone posted the answers to the prior years test - she got out of that group chat immediately. She said they had all the answers to all the tests and she wanted no part of that. She struggled through with help from her teacher, who actually ended up writing me to tell me how impressed he was with how hard she worked for her grade (she ended up with a B which I was very proud of). He wrote her a college rec letter as well. I suspect he knew everyone else was cheating on some level.
It was quite a learning experience for her and me, too.

My son told me the same thing--rampant cheating. What surprised me was how easy it is for students to use their cell phones during tests. I'm a college professor, and I am not naive about cheating and accept that I can't catch every instance, however, I don't provide opportunities to easily cheat. All of my exams are administered like SAT tests, i.e., no bags, phones, etc. at the desk. My son reports that most of his teachers don't seem to care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

💯

Some of these admissions people are awful at sussing out character. They want leaders leaders leaders, we’ll guess what? Many “leaders” have sharp elbows and competitively race everyone to the top, pushing people to the side as they go. They’re not exactly the “kind” sort of students Dartmouth claims they want.

My kid’s longtime classmate is a leader, she lies and cheats at every turn. Dartmouth would not know.

Begin teaching your child the lesson that life is not fair now. I see this reality hitting UMC children hardest at this juncture because their parents have not laid the appropriate groundwork early on in their lives. I remember my parents messaging to me from very early in ES that sometimes cheaters win, that sometimes the people who are better/faster/smoother talkers win, and that sometimes you will lose even when you “won” on merit. I was not taught that I deserved anything, because while I was most special to my parents, every other child was as special to theirs and I had no idea what struggles or advantages were going on with others behind closed doors.

I have made this abundantly clear to my kids. Life is not fair. There is no easy way to win everything.
Do what you have to if you want something.
Within reason.

+1
I really didn’t know cheating was so rampant tho. My DD was struggling in an AP and took a lot of quiz retakes. I asked her if a lot of people retook them and she said hardly anyone - they all have A’s. I thought “geez how could she be struggling in such an easy class?” Then she told me she was in a class group chat at the beginning of the year. Right before the first test someone posted the answers to the prior years test - she got out of that group chat immediately. She said they had all the answers to all the tests and she wanted no part of that. She struggled through with help from her teacher, who actually ended up writing me to tell me how impressed he was with how hard she worked for her grade (she ended up with a B which I was very proud of). He wrote her a college rec letter as well. I suspect he knew everyone else was cheating on some level.
It was quite a learning experience for her and me, too.

Retests are a reason admissions is so plagued right now.

That's kind of the opposite of what PP is saying, her "good" student is doing the retakes (which involve a lot of extra work/planning as you do them outside of class and often have to complete a study guide beforehand etc.) while a bunch of other students are just cheating their way through and not doing retakes. I think the re-testing policy is a way not to make cheating on tests so tempting since mobile digital devices/social media have made it so prevalent. Kids who wouldn't actively cheat before now are just more easily drawn into it by group chats etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

Colleges have NO idea who is doing what. They take it all on face value. Did you read Who Gets In and Why? The one kid they didn't believe was the kid how had a part time job for 20 hours a week and they thought that sounded high. Based on literally nothing but their own privilege of not working in high school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the passion project movement is rooted in this "trust and never verified" system.

you can laugh but the kids who found a "passion" in spring of junior year to cook with grandma (look for our podcast!) while connecting your love for baking with your interest in chemistry were super super successful with top colleges

the fact that you cooked with grandma 4x, did 4 podcasts that were 7 minutes each, than you dropped it all and actually plan on transferring into CS asap all go unmentioned. our high school counselors let people tell their own stories, even when they side eye it all

This is actually what private college counselors help kids do.

There’s a whole cottage industry that charges $50,000 to create these narratives. Very very easy to do and you don’t need to pay to do this well.

Where's the evidence that it actually works though? It's really hard to tell since you'll never know how any particular kid would have done without it.

It works at our private school. For schools like Vanderbilt or Barnard or Middlebury.
Don’t think it’s working for a top 10 school.

It absolutely does work for some. Many of the Coke scholarship winners have grossly exaggerated the impact of their “nonprofits”, most of which are no longer in operation before the end of their senior year.

I know a Coke scholarship winner. Also know a good number of kids that got into Ivies. Most had non-profits or 'passions' that emerged when their family member (grandma, grandpa, etc.) or tribe (parents' village in china) goes through real (grandma's glaucoma) or imaginary suffering (lack of education opportunities at said chinese village) and decided to do something about it (ML programs written by dad or paid programmers in another country to parse through eye photos to detect glaucoma early or educational app developed by foreign developers with 'thousands of visits' from a bot farm in another country). Just checked the app. Downloads stopped the month after the ivy admission. Almost all of them are gunning for wall street or law school . They are not about the money

Best part is, it's not just one kid in the family. If the first one gets into Harvard, guess what, the next 2 or 3 will get in as well. They have perfected the formula, why not keep using it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the passion project movement is rooted in this "trust and never verified" system.

you can laugh but the kids who found a "passion" in spring of junior year to cook with grandma (look for our podcast!) while connecting your love for baking with your interest in chemistry were super super successful with top colleges

the fact that you cooked with grandma 4x, did 4 podcasts that were 7 minutes each, than you dropped it all and actually plan on transferring into CS asap all go unmentioned. our high school counselors let people tell their own stories, even when they side eye it all

This is actually what private college counselors help kids do.

There’s a whole cottage industry that charges $50,000 to create these narratives. Very very easy to do and you don’t need to pay to do this well.

Where's the evidence that it actually works though? It's really hard to tell since you'll never know how any particular kid would have done without it.

It works at our private school. For schools like Vanderbilt or Barnard or Middlebury.
Don’t think it’s working for a top 10 school.

It absolutely does work for some. Many of the Coke scholarship winners have grossly exaggerated the impact of their “nonprofits”, most of which are no longer in operation before the end of their senior year.

I know a Coke scholarship winner. Also know a good number of kids that got into Ivies. Most had non-profits or 'passions' that emerged when their family member (grandma, grandpa, etc.) or tribe (parents' village in china) goes through real (grandma's glaucoma) or imaginary suffering (lack of education opportunities at said chinese village) and decided to do something about it (ML programs written by dad or paid programmers in another country to parse through eye photos to detect glaucoma early or educational app developed by foreign developers with 'thousands of visits' from a bot farm in another country). Just checked the app. Downloads stopped the month after the ivy admission. Almost all of them are gunning for wall street or law school . They are not about the money

Best part is, it's not just one kid in the family. If the first one gets into Harvard, guess what, the next 2 or 3 will get in as well. They have perfected the formula, why not keep using it?

Do you have any evidence for your racist remarks?
On the other hand, it has been confirmed that an incredible amount of white students lie on their college applications.
"The main finding: 34 percent of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application. The most common lie (by 48 percent of those who lied) was to be a Native American."
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/10/25/survey-asks-if-applicants-are-truthful-about-race#:~:text=The%20main%20finding%3A%2034%20percent,to%20be%20a%20Native%20American.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the passion project movement is rooted in this "trust and never verified" system.

you can laugh but the kids who found a "passion" in spring of junior year to cook with grandma (look for our podcast!) while connecting your love for baking with your interest in chemistry were super super successful with top colleges

the fact that you cooked with grandma 4x, did 4 podcasts that were 7 minutes each, than you dropped it all and actually plan on transferring into CS asap all go unmentioned. our high school counselors let people tell their own stories, even when they side eye it all

This is actually what private college counselors help kids do.

There’s a whole cottage industry that charges $50,000 to create these narratives. Very very easy to do and you don’t need to pay to do this well.

Where's the evidence that it actually works though? It's really hard to tell since you'll never know how any particular kid would have done without it.

It works at our private school. For schools like Vanderbilt or Barnard or Middlebury.
Don’t think it’s working for a top 10 school.

It absolutely does work for some. Many of the Coke scholarship winners have grossly exaggerated the impact of their “nonprofits”, most of which are no longer in operation before the end of their senior year.

I know a Coke scholarship winner. Also know a good number of kids that got into Ivies. Most had non-profits or 'passions' that emerged when their family member (grandma, grandpa, etc.) or tribe (parents' village in china) goes through real (grandma's glaucoma) or imaginary suffering (lack of education opportunities at said chinese village) and decided to do something about it (ML programs written by dad or paid programmers in another country to parse through eye photos to detect glaucoma early or educational app developed by foreign developers with 'thousands of visits' from a bot farm in another country). Just checked the app. Downloads stopped the month after the ivy admission. Almost all of them are gunning for wall street or law school . They are not about the money

Best part is, it's not just one kid in the family. If the first one gets into Harvard, guess what, the next 2 or 3 will get in as well. They have perfected the formula, why not keep using it?

Do you have any evidence for your racist remarks?
On the other hand, it has been confirmed that an incredible amount of white students lie on their college applications.
"The main finding: 34 percent of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application. The most common lie (by 48 percent of those who lied) was to be a Native American."
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/10/25/survey-asks-if-applicants-are-truthful-about-race#:~:text=The%20main%20finding%3A%2034%20percent,to%20be%20a%20Native%20American.

Np. People of every race do this.
White people make up nonprofits all the time and are private. So do Asian kids. So do the black kids.

This isn’t about one race. Everybody does it and then the nonprofits are shuttered by spring semester.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the passion project movement is rooted in this "trust and never verified" system.

you can laugh but the kids who found a "passion" in spring of junior year to cook with grandma (look for our podcast!) while connecting your love for baking with your interest in chemistry were super super successful with top colleges

the fact that you cooked with grandma 4x, did 4 podcasts that were 7 minutes each, than you dropped it all and actually plan on transferring into CS asap all go unmentioned. our high school counselors let people tell their own stories, even when they side eye it all

This is actually what private college counselors help kids do.

There’s a whole cottage industry that charges $50,000 to create these narratives. Very very easy to do and you don’t need to pay to do this well.

Where's the evidence that it actually works though? It's really hard to tell since you'll never know how any particular kid would have done without it.

It works at our private school. For schools like Vanderbilt or Barnard or Middlebury.
Don’t think it’s working for a top 10 school.

It absolutely does work for some. Many of the Coke scholarship winners have grossly exaggerated the impact of their “nonprofits”, most of which are no longer in operation before the end of their senior year.

I know a Coke scholarship winner. Also know a good number of kids that got into Ivies. Most had non-profits or 'passions' that emerged when their family member (grandma, grandpa, etc.) or tribe (parents' village in china) goes through real (grandma's glaucoma) or imaginary suffering (lack of education opportunities at said chinese village) and decided to do something about it (ML programs written by dad or paid programmers in another country to parse through eye photos to detect glaucoma early or educational app developed by foreign developers with 'thousands of visits' from a bot farm in another country). Just checked the app. Downloads stopped the month after the ivy admission. Almost all of them are gunning for wall street or law school . They are not about the money

Best part is, it's not just one kid in the family. If the first one gets into Harvard, guess what, the next 2 or 3 will get in as well. They have perfected the formula, why not keep using it?

Do you have any evidence for your racist remarks?
On the other hand, it has been confirmed that an incredible amount of white students lie on their college applications.
"The main finding: 34 percent of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application. The most common lie (by 48 percent of those who lied) was to be a Native American."

Well the kids see that's how you become an HLS professor and US Senator despite your mediocre background...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

Exactly. The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take. And they paid the price for it.