State school admissions should not be wholistic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just want to +1 the folks mentioning UMBC, Towson, St. Mary's, etc. In practice, every Maryland kid who does reasonably well can get in SOMEWHERE but the idea that every kid should be guaranteed UMDCP is bonkers.

If you look at Maryland's statistics, they get about 65,000 applications. They admit about 30,000 and about about 5,500 attend.

Towson gets about 22,000 applications, admits about 7,000 and enrolls about 3,500.

Both are taxpayer funded, and both offer a pretty decent admissions shot for a qualified kid actually.

This feels closer to how it works in NY for the SUNY schools.

There are many different options and it seems like there's a SUNY that's a good fit for every decent NY student who wants to go to one.

It's overall a flatter system than many state school systems. Though I think SUNY Binghamton is considered the hardest to get into, it's not like there's a huge drop off between Bing and many of the other SUNY schools. Each offers its own value and every decent NY student can find their fit at in-state rates if they want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.

It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.

It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.

I’m sorry if your child did not get into the University of Maryland College Park. That said, “going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades” sometimes is not enough because the University of Maryland does not have enough spots to admit every applicant who meets that criteria. It is enough to get into at least some Maryland state schools, but your post is focused only on UMD College Park. Why is that?

Also, it is difficult for any parent to know whether their child is among “the most academically accomplished” applicants. Do you know what your child’s teachers wrote in their recommendations? Do you know how your child’s essays compared to those of other applicants?

Lastly, every Maryland resident is guaranteed admission into some state school, even if it is a community college. Or do you think that community college is beneath students from “good public high schools”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In Texas, the top 5% high school kids are guaranteed admission to its top public college (UT Austin), but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get into their first choice majors. Other TX colleges (including Texas A&M) will take the top 10% for sure, again to some major not necessarily your first choice. In practice, the top 5-10% of high school kids in Maryland ARE pretty much guaranteed a spot at UMD. I don’t see how imposing such a rule would make any practical difference.

To be clear, this system is NOT wholly merit based. It was actually designed intentionally to be inclusive of students from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds and high schools.

Students admitted from the top 5% of underperforming high schools often have much lower scores and metrics than students from more competitive high schools that don't make the top 5%. It's not uncommon for a straight-A students with high SAT scores from very competitive high schools to fall under the top 5% cutoff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UMD CP admissions uses a secret internal tool to re-weight GPA based on rigor of classes taken and their views of the high school. That kind of thing should be public knowledge.

Agreed. I wonder if it is FOIA-able.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.

You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.

UVA is that way in VA. The difference is we have William&Mary, VA Tech and JMU—so really 4 state flagships and then GMU and VCU are well-respected too.

I am truly baffled by how some state school systems like Virginia and California can have so many great options while other states don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.

You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.

UVA is that way in VA. The difference is we have William&Mary, VA Tech and JMU—so really 4 state flagships and then GMU and VCU are well-respected too.

Yeah I think that is why Maryland is such an outlier. Very big population of high-achieving graduates and only one well-known state school.

New Jersey
Connecticut
Washington
Nevada
Pennsylvania

There are a lot of states like this. In fact I'd say most states are like this

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, basically OP’s kid had good grades, no material extra-curricular and no story that they could articulate that made them standout from other academic bots. Reasonable summary?

This. We hear variations of this all the time here:

“TO should be banned,” so says the parent of a kid who tested well.

“1580 first try,” so says the parent looking sideways at a super scoring kid.

“1560, top 5% of class, denied/deferred?!??” So says parent of a kid who isn’t well rounded.

“Those ECs are a dime a dozen…they want a kid who can stand out. My kid stood out by x, y, z…” says the parent of a kid with good ECs.

“They should make essays done in person to stop AI use and/or adults helping,” so says parent of a strong writer.

Etc etc etc. everyone wants what helps their kid emphasized and what hurts their kid eliminated.

There are global norms, particularly for state schools. and those global norms almost never include lacrosse, legacy, donations, family connections, what you did during summer vacation, or what expensive extracurricular activity you engaged in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a reason that public flagships in the South, and every private school, are full of high-stats kids from Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut.

These are high-tax states who are not focused on developing post-secondary options for high-stats kids.

If you have a problem with admission, question the State's educational mission.

Lifting the bottom and let the top go to Ivy.

That's the blue state formula.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.

You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.

Are you telling me if you look at the Naviance for Whitman or whatever school you are at that the top 5% of applicants are an equal mix of accepts and declines? I can tell you for B-CC that is not true. Same at 10%. Top kids are almost uniformly admitted.

I think you are going to need to name the school and your evidence at this point, beyond the fact that your child apparently was not admitted.

So just to be clear you are on board with the idea the top 10% at Whitman should be guaranteed admission? That’s the point here and if you agree, fine. The argument is not about whether top students get denied now, it’s whether the state should legally be allowed to deny them based on twenty six random made up factors.

Random made up factors. lol. You justt want to substitute that with the random factors that best suit YOUR kid. Guess what? The university wants and needs kids who are different from yours too.

DP there are global norms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.

You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.

Are you telling me if you look at the Naviance for Whitman or whatever school you are at that the top 5% of applicants are an equal mix of accepts and declines? I can tell you for B-CC that is not true. Same at 10%. Top kids are almost uniformly admitted.

I think you are going to need to name the school and your evidence at this point, beyond the fact that your child apparently was not admitted.

So just to be clear you are on board with the idea the top 10% at Whitman should be guaranteed admission? That’s the point here and if you agree, fine. The argument is not about whether top students get denied now, it’s whether the state should legally be allowed to deny them based on twenty six random made up factors.

But this is a strawman, because top 10% at Whitman generally isn’t getting denied.

One word is doing a lot of work right there.

Not really. Just because 100% of top 10% kids don’t get in doesn’t mean it isn’t 90 or 95%. But you’ve provided no substance to any of your arguments and can’t spell holistic correctly, so have a feeling any sort of nuance is lost on you.

As someone else said, name the school and the naviance data that highlights your problem, whatever it is.

It should be 100%. That’s the point. What’s the argument for excluding some kids but not others? The kids who get excluded have no idea why they were denied. In state college tuition is a benefit for your tax dollars. What if it was the other way around? Ninety percent of people pay a normal tax rate but ten percent are picked for a randomly super high tax rate and they aren’t given any reason. No one would look at that and say “well you know that’s close enough to 100%”.

So your argument is simply that the only thing that matters is GPA (and, subsequently, class rank) and this should be the only deciding factor, based on an arbitrary threshold (decided by you). Not test scores, class rigor, intended major, anything else. Got it.

Global norms include test scores and intended major only.

You get your test score and that tells you the best college you can get into depending on the major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, basically OP’s kid had good grades, no material extra-curricular and no story that they could articulate that made them standout from other academic bots. Reasonable summary?

Grades and test scores are how most of the world selects its undergrads, and I think it takes away an enormous amount of stress from families. You know where your kid is likely to get in, based on their high school grades. It makes life easier.

My oldest kid's safeties were UMD (our state school), McGill and St Andrews, which he got into based on grades alone. He has autism and did not have any extra-curriculars to speak of, and eventually chose a different US college, but we were so thankful to have decent safeties he could rely on. McGill relies SOLELY on grades and test scores and apparently UMD accepted him largely on the same.

By far the most inequitable part of US college admissions are the extra-curriculars - some of them are incredibly expensive to keep up and stand out in. It's a racket by an industry of youth sports and youth arts, and the American higher education system is complicit. My second child has gone quite far in her main extra-curricular, so we are playing that game, but I don't like it.

I agree. My kid's top extracurricular line is great but it has been like a part time job PLUS it costs more than what I earned after taxes at my first job after college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, basically OP’s kid had good grades, no material extra-curricular and no story that they could articulate that made them standout from other academic bots. Reasonable summary?

This. We hear variations of this all the time here:

“TO should be banned,” so says the parent of a kid who tested well.

“1580 first try,” so says the parent looking sideways at a super scoring kid.

“1560, top 5% of class, denied/deferred?!??” So says parent of a kid who isn’t well rounded.

“Those ECs are a dime a dozen…they want a kid who can stand out. My kid stood out by x, y, z…” says the parent of a kid with good ECs.

“They should make essays done in person to stop AI use and/or adults helping,” so says parent of a strong writer.

Etc etc etc. everyone wants what helps their kid emphasized and what hurts their kid eliminated.

There are global norms, particularly for state schools. and those global norms almost never include lacrosse, legacy, donations, family connections, what you did during summer vacation, or what expensive extracurricular activity you engaged in.

Stick to state schools. Private schools are just that and should be able to admit as they please within the law. State schools also have the right to consider the overall interest of the state when crafting their admissions policies. Global norms if they actually exist carry zero weight in this discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do we realized how hard it is to be top 10% in w schools? This county has almost the best public school system, if we don’t consider privates. Many top 10% students there could be top 1% in average schools.

Considering UMDCP ranks #46. There should be guaranteed acceptance, not only to top10%, probably 15%.

Being top 10% at Whitman is way easier than living in poverty and being a target of systemic racism and still managing to make it to the top 10% at an under resourced school. Furthermore, the latter student brings a much needed perspective to the University that the UMC kid from Whitman does not bring.

If everyone at your school is living in poverty, then why is it harder to get into the top 10% there? Isn't everyone dealing with the same issues?

The latter student is simply not prepared for academic rigor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.

You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.

Are you telling me if you look at the Naviance for Whitman or whatever school you are at that the top 5% of applicants are an equal mix of accepts and declines? I can tell you for B-CC that is not true. Same at 10%. Top kids are almost uniformly admitted.

I think you are going to need to name the school and your evidence at this point, beyond the fact that your child apparently was not admitted.

So just to be clear you are on board with the idea the top 10% at Whitman should be guaranteed admission? That’s the point here and if you agree, fine. The argument is not about whether top students get denied now, it’s whether the state should legally be allowed to deny them based on twenty six random made up factors.

Random made up factors. lol. You justt want to substitute that with the random factors that best suit YOUR kid. Guess what? The university wants and needs kids who are different from yours too.

DP there are global norms.

There really aren’t. And given that the US secondary education system is not uniform “global norms” likely aren’t a good fit anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[b]An auto-admit for top 5% or top 10% from MD high schools to UMD would make it much harder to get in, even in-state. All the kids right at the cusp of that class rank would struggle when they normally would consider UMD a safety. Look at UT Austin, all the non auto-admit in state kids are struggling to get in like never before.

In Texas., that has resulted in some parents moving their kid from a high-performance high school to a low-performance one so their kid could make the percentage cut. Also, some kids in low performance schools make the cut but find themselves in over their head at college. There is no perfect system.

This is happening at TJ now with a lot of kids doing far worse at TJ than they would at their base school.