Lessons Learned - The College Application Process

[Anonymous]

I've heard that you need at least one AA (or Hispanic) grandparent (great-grandparent isn't enough) to mark AA (Hispanic) on the app. I don't know whose rule this is, but it's the word on the street among DD's senior friends. I would think that if you mark that you're a minority on the app but the interviewer sees you're not visibly diverse, this would count against you, not for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've heard that you need at least one AA (or Hispanic) grandparent (great-grandparent isn't enough) to mark AA (Hispanic) on the app. I don't know whose rule this is, but it's the word on the street among DD's senior friends. I would think that if you mark that you're a minority on the app but the interviewer sees you're not visibly diverse, this would count against you, not for you.

Ok, that's nuts. My daughters are half Hispanic. One looks it. The other is pale, red- head and blue eyes. You telling me one "counts" as a minority and the oer doesn't? They have the same exact background and set of parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do people think about the ACT vs the SAT. My DC did better on a sample ACT than on the PSAT so I figured he should take the ACT. Is it equally accepted?

If you go to College Confidential, the ivies seem to take the ACT as readily as the SAT (with the caveat that you need to look really closely to try to distinguish the ACT kid who built a reactor in his garage from the SAT kid who had no ECs, and even then you can never really tell why different kids got accepted or rejected). Almost all the ACt kids at least took the PSAT, though, to try to qualify for NMSSF. Some kids took both.

My DD and I are looking at the college admission requirements and all the schools we have looked so far state "SAT or ACT". My DD took both. She liked SAT better because ACT tests her "endurance". The results are incredibly similar though. We looked at the charts and her ACT score corresponds to her SAT score very well. She went to a 4-week SAT prep course before the test, but no ACT prep course.
DD says ACT feels easier, but the results did not show for her.
I would suggest that you sign up for both tests for your kids. If you don't like the result of one, you can always choose not to report it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people might consider this unethical, but the easiest way to get at least a 100 point SAT advantage is to specify that you are black when you fill out the SAT demographic questions. In other words, a 500 for a black student is equivalent to at least a 600 for a white student.

We're white, but my daughter marked black for race. (There's no genetic test for race, by the way.) Her total SAT was 1710 and her high school GPA is 2.93. She got into every highly competitive school to which she applied (she didn't apply to any Ivys, though) and she is getting merit scholarship offers out the kazoo.

This is just a big lie.

How does the common app ask about race/ ethnic origin? Are there boxes to check? Or a blank space? If there are categories what are they? I'm especially interested if one can identify as "African" even if they couldn't honestly say "black" - Egyptian, for example.

If you have ancestors from the continent of Africa, you are African American

2nd generation white afrikaaner benefits from affirmative action?

[Anonymous]

So here's my lesson learned from my vantage point of halfway through the process: it is our children's process, not ours. Every time we've tried to step in and assert our opinion over his, its not only caused tensions, but we've ultimately realized he was right. He knows how to handle his current course load and more importantly what schools would be right for him. These aren't necessarily the schools we would choose to attend ourselves, but they are a much better fit for him.

The whole process is an effort for us parents to leave our displaced narcissism at the door. The more we allow them to do, the better the chance that they will have a successful college experience (which is the point, right? Not bragging rights.) and not end up back at home after one year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I don't know how you best develop a balance between preparing appropriately for college and losing perspective but I think some of y'all have slid over on the losing perspective side.

To each his/her own. We will be paying a quarter of a million dollars for college. That's a huge investment. And the last really big parental obligation to the future of my child. It's worth the effort.

It used to be that at then end of high school, graduates were seen as young adults who set out to be more independent and to start to live their own life. Now we have parents as early as MS scripting their child's lives all the way through college. Soon it will be that parents script and financially support kids till the end of their twenties - there will be no end to adolescence! At some point you have to back off and start letting your children grow-up and make decisions and live their own lives.

so true and probably why the kid who started a landscaping business and became an EMT did so well on his college apps. I think the savvy admissions counselors these days can spot a "packaged" applicant a mile away.

Really, Ivy parents start in preschool. Where have you been?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't forget to factor in your zip code and how it may shine some light on a family's net worth (or the many ways an admissions committees could figure out exactly how much money you have). Ivies do not give merit aid and their calculators for need based aid will exclude almost all middle class residents of large metropolitan areas. Need blind is not a binding contract. If you want to know why Suzy, a NMSF with a 4.8 weighted and perfect SAT scores with amazing ECs, was rejected by every Ivy while Sally with a 4.0 and an SAT composite around 2100 who worked on the stage crew and was a member of the French club was accepted by several, the answer is usually her family finances. Ivies want to offer acceptance to students who will actually enroll. A kid from a family with two or three college bound children whose parents make less than $800k a year and own a home with a mortgage and are putting money away for retirement would be financially irresponsible (unless they have a ton of cash lying around--like a few million at least) to pay $240k for one or their offspring's education. Heck it is pretty darn impossible to make a case for the cost of 4 years at the state school to the tune of $120k. The differential for 2 kids tuition, room and board between private and public institutions would be $240k. The average middle or upper middle class family would be crazy to spend an extra $120k for an ivy undergraduate education.. If you happen to know any students actually attending an ivy league or top ranked private small liberal arts school at the moment ask them what type of lifestyle their classmates enjoy. I can tell you for a fact that most have been brought up in very privileged households where second homes, expensive vacations, tutoring, sports trainers, etc. were part of their everyday life and that of their friends. Why on these types of boards no one brings this up is astonishing. You could all save yourselves a ton of pain and some money by just not applying to these schools. If you want to reach for something reach for the merit scholarships at your state university or at the privates that roll back tuition for super qualified students. Ivy league is still the old boy network and even if your student ends up there the odds that he or she will like being in the minority with the other not super rich kids is slim. Just cause you got in does not guarantee entrée into the circles of power and money. Buyer beware.

Thanks for not applying and leaving space for the rest of us

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some people might consider this unethical, but the easiest way to get at least a 100 point SAT advantage is to specify that you are black when you fill out the SAT demographic questions. In other words, a 500 for a black student is equivalent to at least a 600 for a white student.

We're white, but my daughter marked black for race. (There's no genetic test for race, by the way.) Her total SAT was 1710 and her high school GPA is 2.93. She got into every highly competitive school to which she applied (she didn't apply to any Ivys, though) and she is getting merit scholarship offers out the kazoo.

The reason this is fraudulent is that you consider yourself white, but self reported as black. Schools wouldn't admit as much, but they really don't care what your skin tone is - if you self report as black you count for purposes of all the statistics that matter to them. BUT, if you want to reap the advantages of being black, you have to call yourself black - you can't say that I'm white, but I self reported as black. The best thing to do is to avoid calling yourself Caucasian when your child is enrolled in elementary school - mixed race will work. No one is going to call you on it and most people are in fact mixed race at some level. It is much easier to "African American" if that is an option, since most Americans with any southern European heritage have ancestors from North Africa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard that you need at least one AA (or Hispanic) grandparent (great-grandparent isn't enough) to mark AA (Hispanic) on the app. I don't know whose rule this is, but it's the word on the street among DD's senior friends. I would think that if you mark that you're a minority on the app but the interviewer sees you're not visibly diverse, this would count against you, not for you.

Ok, that's nuts. My daughters are half Hispanic. One looks it. The other is pale, red- head and blue eyes. You telling me one "counts" as a minority and the oer doesn't? They have the same exact background and set of parents.

I know a blond, blue-eyed girl who had to submit her grandmother's birth certificate to prove the grandmother was born in a Hispanic country.

[Anonymous]

Excuse me, but what possible historical basis is there for giving racial preference to Hispanics?

Chinese were treated far worse and they bear the brunt of affirmative action?

[Anonymous]

Excuse me, but what possible historical basis is there for giving racial preference to Hispanics?

http://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Empire-History-Latinos-America/dp/0143119281

It's really hard to say who was treated "worse" historically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Excuse me, but what possible historical basis is there for giving racial preference to Hispanics?

http://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Empire-History-Latinos-America/dp/0143119281

It's really hard to say who was treated "worse" historically.

]

so if you cannot make a definitive judgement on this, then why are Hispanics getting major concessions compared to Chinese?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard that you need at least one AA (or Hispanic) grandparent (great-grandparent isn't enough) to mark AA (Hispanic) on the app. I don't know whose rule this is, but it's the word on the street among DD's senior friends. I would think that if you mark that you're a minority on the app but the interviewer sees you're not visibly diverse, this would count against you, not for you.

Ok, that's nuts. My daughters are half Hispanic. One looks it. The other is pale, red- head and blue eyes. You telling me one "counts" as a minority and the oer doesn't? They have the same exact background and set of parents.

I know a blond, blue-eyed girl who had to submit her grandmother's birth certificate to prove the grandmother was born in a Hispanic country.

Hah! Our DD's grandparents have no birh certificates. Born in the coubtry in colombia. Where, you know, girls weren't allowed to go to school beyond 6 th grade because they were expected to cook / clean for their brothers.

This really gets at the question of what is the reason behind affirmative action. I can only cnclude it is o try to redress the fact tat some mnority groups are underrepresented in higher ed. Ths the difference between Chinese and Hispanics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Excuse me, but what possible historical basis is there for giving racial preference to Hispanics?

http://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Empire-History-Latinos-America/dp/0143119281

It's really hard to say who was treated "worse" historically.

]

so if you cannot make a definitive judgement on this, then why are Hispanics getting major concessions compared to Chinese?

Underrepresented versus not underrepresented.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Excuse me, but what possible historical basis is there for giving racial preference to Hispanics?

Chinese were treated far worse and they bear the brunt of affirmative action?[/quote

Treated worse by whom? The u.s.? I think not.