Please. Stop. Blaming. Others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks, OP.

I have a child who got into her dream school EA that other "higher ranked" kids at her school got deferred from...and they are openly talking about getting "yield protected" in front of her.

She is a well-qualified, high stats kid with some interesting ECs that these kids don't know about. She also reached out to professors in her area of interest and spoke to a couple of majors in the department. Did that make the difference? Did they do those things too? I have no idea. But I do know that those kids have no idea that she did those things. They just know that she is "ranked" a few slots down from them and that they feel entitled to her spot.

It makes her feel terrible but, in reality, it reflects badly on them.

Congratulations to your child!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents and students here aren’t blaming “others”. They are blaming a broken system

They do get you into good schools. Just not the good schools that you think give you bragging rights.

If you believe this is universally true, you are still living your own college days in the '80s.

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/.

Check out Carnegie Mellon average salary 3 years out of college. Then check VT or UMD or whatever else you want to pick. This is actual data. So maybe I'm not living in the 80s. Right?

And why do you imply going to a top school will let you skate by and not study abroad? Weird.

[Anonymous]

These posts calling it unfair just sound entitled and out of touch to me. It was a different world in the early ‘90s when these kids’ parents applied to college, and a different universe when their grandparents applied in the ‘60s, but some people haven’t kept up with the changes. And a lot of people are under the impression that their children are more accomplished and deserving of they go to a wealthier or a private high school, and it just isn’t true. They’ve been scammed by real estate agents and private school administrators.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents and students here aren’t blaming “others”. They are blaming a broken system

Amen. It's more than just a flood of applicants and even the flood of applicants has its origin, which is part of the broken system.

Aren't we get vocal and drive change when things are broken? And if you don't think things are broken when 1600 SAT scores and 4.5 GPAs don't get you into good schools, we have different expectations for Higher EDUCATION in America.

They do get you into good schools. Just not the good schools that you think give you bragging rights.

+1

The application process is not about admitting 'the top X number' of students; it's about admitting 'X number of students'. If your child was not offered the opportunity to enroll it does not mean that your child was 'better' or 'worse' than the students who were offered the opportunity to enroll.

What happens when your child does not get the job they most want and think they deserve to have, or when your child does not get to date the person they most want and think they deserve to have ??

What's the purpose of college? To be educated or to be bubble-wrapped?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think grade and SAT inflation is also really hurting parent and student expectations. Back in the 90s only 1-2 kids at my high school had a 4.0 GPA. There were no weighted classes so no GPAs above a 4.0 at all. I got into Carnegie Mellon with a 3.75 GPA, which was very near the top of the class for my high school; the top student ended up at Harvard.

Now students who would have been B students in the 90s have 4.3 GPA, leading both them and their parents not to realize that a top GPA is now a 4.9 or some other nonsense. It's the same with SAT scores. A 1400 used to be really good. Now it seems anything under a 1550 is mediocre. All of the good students are bunched at the top, leading to a lack of separation amongst top students and more of a lotto feeling as to who gets in. The grading scale is fundamentally broken.

It's not broken, it's intentional. And it should be considered fraud. The school brass and teachers keep gullible parents dumb and happy (and quiet) with fake As and the College Board gets suckers hooked to their fake inflated tests.

I see so many parents bragging about their kid's "all A's" and you can just tell by the course list and the kid's orbit they are an average layabout. The parents who brag about the A's never brag about official AP scores or SAT score.

Good sat scores means you are good at prepping for tests. A GPA is something accumulated over a period of four years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents and students here aren’t blaming “others”. They are blaming a broken system

They do get you into good schools. Just not the good schools that you think give you bragging rights.

If you believe this is universally true, you are still living your own college days in the '80s.

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/.

Check out Carnegie Mellon average salary 3 years out of college. Then check VT or UMD or whatever else you want to pick. This is actual data. So maybe I'm not living in the 80s. Right?

And why do you imply going to a top school will let you skate by and not study abroad? Weird.

Oh come on. When you average the earnings across all graduates, of course a highly technical university like Carnegie Mellon is going to have higher salaries than UMD. Apples to oranges. Try comparing engineering grads from both.

[Anonymous]

Lol, explain UK A-levels then 15:27

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lol, explain UK A-levels then 15:27

I’m that poster and I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These posts calling it unfair just sound entitled and out of touch to me. It was a different world in the early ‘90s when these kids’ parents applied to college, and a different universe when their grandparents applied in the ‘60s, but some people haven’t kept up with the changes. And a lot of people are under the impression that their children are more accomplished and deserving of they go to a wealthier or a private high school, and it just isn’t true. They’ve been scammed by real estate agents and private school administrators.

There is significant advantage in getting a high quality high school education when trying to access top universities. Denying that would be the scam. It is not the entitlement some express on here but it is a very large advantage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really sorry that so many kids are hurting right now because of the college rejections. It hurts, I know. Especially when your child has worked hard and seems to be well qualified for these schools by objective measures, like GPA and test scores. My DC is one of these kids, having just been rejected or WL from seven schools over the last two weeks (and rejected ED in December).

The fact is, many schools are simply flooded with applications from well qualified students and cannot accept them all. So they make tough decisions and make decisions based on very quick reviews of applications, many of which are basically indistinguishable from one another. In some cases, they may look "unfair" because we see other kids in our orbit getting into the same school that our kid gets rejected from and we can't imagine what that kid had that ours didn't.

So, to make ourselves and our kids feel better, there is so much blaming--blaming other "lesser" URM kids, "lesser" public schools with grade inflation, "yield protection", etc.....and it is not fair to the kids who did get in. And, to be honest, it's not good for our own kids--it only feeds grievances. Let's teach them graciousness and grit. It will serve everyone better.

So, to all the kids out there who were accepted to Rice, Hopkins, Wash U, Rice, Northeastern, CMU, Northwestern: Congratulations to you! You deserve it! You are worthy of that acceptance. You earned it.

No need for condescension OP. No one is blaming kids who got into these schools. The system for applying to schools is corrupted. Bottom line. Anyone who disputes that is not playing with a full deck.

Um...if you spend 5 minutes reading some on DCUM you will see TONS of people blaming URMs, yield protection, and urban public schools--all of the things that OP mentions.

You didn’t read the post. The system is broken. No one is blaming URM kids. The. SYSTEM. IS. CORRUPTED. DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND? URM kids are not to blame. The system is to blame. The posts are an indictment of the system.

Huh? There is thread after thread saying “less qualified” URMs are getting in and it’s discrimination. You must be new to DCUM.

I think most people are more concerned with the UMC white parents who spend $$$ and pull every string possible to beef their kids resume as opposed to let them standing on their own. If the only way your kid can be impressive is through tutors, test prep, essay consultants, and EC that cost $$$, I thrilled to here colleges can see through that. Because you 100 hours from an $8k “white savior” trip or volunteering for an exclusive sports club in McLean, I am cool if admissions see through that.

Pretty sure this sums it up for me!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really sorry that so many kids are hurting right now because of the college rejections. It hurts, I know. Especially when your child has worked hard and seems to be well qualified for these schools by objective measures, like GPA and test scores. My DC is one of these kids, having just been rejected or WL from seven schools over the last two weeks (and rejected ED in December).

The fact is, many schools are simply flooded with applications from well qualified students and cannot accept them all. So they make tough decisions and make decisions based on very quick reviews of applications, many of which are basically indistinguishable from one another. In some cases, they may look "unfair" because we see other kids in our orbit getting into the same school that our kid gets rejected from and we can't imagine what that kid had that ours didn't.

So, to make ourselves and our kids feel better, there is so much blaming--blaming other "lesser" URM kids, "lesser" public schools with grade inflation, "yield protection", etc.....and it is not fair to the kids who did get in. And, to be honest, it's not good for our own kids--it only feeds grievances. Let's teach them graciousness and grit. It will serve everyone better.

So, to all the kids out there who were accepted to Rice, Hopkins, Wash U, Rice, Northeastern, CMU, Northwestern: Congratulations to you! You deserve it! You are worthy of that acceptance. You earned it.

No need for condescension OP. No one is blaming kids who got into these schools. The system for applying to schools is corrupted. Bottom line. Anyone who disputes that is not playing with a full deck.

Um...if you spend 5 minutes reading some on DCUM you will see TONS of people blaming URMs, yield protection, and urban public schools--all of the things that OP mentions.

You didn’t read the post. The system is broken. No one is blaming URM kids. The. SYSTEM. IS. CORRUPTED. DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND? URM kids are not to blame. The system is to blame. The posts are an indictment of the system.

Huh? There is thread after thread saying “less qualified” URMs are getting in and it’s discrimination. You must be new to DCUM.

I think most people are more concerned with the UMC white parents who spend $$$ and pull every string possible to beef their kids resume as opposed to let them standing on their own. If the only way your kid can be impressive is through tutors, test prep, essay consultants, and EC that cost $$$, I thrilled to here colleges can see through that. Because you 100 hours from an $8k “white savior” trip or volunteering for an exclusive sports club in McLean, I am cool if admissions see through that.

Pretty sure this sums it up for me!!

Me too except that these assumptions are made about my kids due to our zip code and they didn’t have any of those benefits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think grade and SAT inflation is also really hurting parent and student expectations. Back in the 90s only 1-2 kids at my high school had a 4.0 GPA. There were no weighted classes so no GPAs above a 4.0 at all. I got into Carnegie Mellon with a 3.75 GPA, which was very near the top of the class for my high school; the top student ended up at Harvard.

Now students who would have been B students in the 90s have 4.3 GPA, leading both them and their parents not to realize that a top GPA is now a 4.9 or some other nonsense. It's the same with SAT scores. A 1400 used to be really good. Now it seems anything under a 1550 is mediocre. All of the good students are bunched at the top, leading to a lack of separation amongst top students and more of a lotto feeling as to who gets in. The grading scale is fundamentally broken.

It's not broken, it's intentional. And it should be considered fraud. The school brass and teachers keep gullible parents dumb and happy (and quiet) with fake As and the College Board gets suckers hooked to their fake inflated tests.

I see so many parents bragging about their kid's "all A's" and you can just tell by the course list and the kid's orbit they are an average layabout. The parents who brag about the A's never brag about official AP scores or SAT score.

Good sat scores means you are good at prepping for tests. A GPA is something accumulated over a period of four years.

MIT disagrees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents and students here aren’t blaming “others”. They are blaming a broken system

They do get you into good schools. Just not the good schools that you think give you bragging rights.

If you believe this is universally true, you are still living your own college days in the '80s.

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/.

Check out Carnegie Mellon average salary 3 years out of college. Then check VT or UMD or whatever else you want to pick. This is actual data. So maybe I'm not living in the 80s. Right?

And why do you imply going to a top school will let you skate by and not study abroad? Weird.

Oh come on. When you average the earnings across all graduates, of course a highly technical university like Carnegie Mellon is going to have higher salaries than UMD. Apples to oranges. Try comparing engineering grads from both.

Yes, please look up computer science (my kids major) for both. I'll wait.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think grade and SAT inflation is also really hurting parent and student expectations. Back in the 90s only 1-2 kids at my high school had a 4.0 GPA. There were no weighted classes so no GPAs above a 4.0 at all. I got into Carnegie Mellon with a 3.75 GPA, which was very near the top of the class for my high school; the top student ended up at Harvard.

Now students who would have been B students in the 90s have 4.3 GPA, leading both them and their parents not to realize that a top GPA is now a 4.9 or some other nonsense. It's the same with SAT scores. A 1400 used to be really good. Now it seems anything under a 1550 is mediocre. All of the good students are bunched at the top, leading to a lack of separation amongst top students and more of a lotto feeling as to who gets in. The grading scale is fundamentally broken.

It's not broken, it's intentional. And it should be considered fraud. The school brass and teachers keep gullible parents dumb and happy (and quiet) with fake As and the College Board gets suckers hooked to their fake inflated tests.

I see so many parents bragging about their kid's "all A's" and you can just tell by the course list and the kid's orbit they are an average layabout. The parents who brag about the A's never brag about official AP scores or SAT score.

Good sat scores means you are good at prepping for tests. A GPA is something accumulated over a period of four years.

Good SAT scores means 12 years of accumulated essential academic foundation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think grade and SAT inflation is also really hurting parent and student expectations. Back in the 90s only 1-2 kids at my high school had a 4.0 GPA. There were no weighted classes so no GPAs above a 4.0 at all. I got into Carnegie Mellon with a 3.75 GPA, which was very near the top of the class for my high school; the top student ended up at Harvard.

Now students who would have been B students in the 90s have 4.3 GPA, leading both them and their parents not to realize that a top GPA is now a 4.9 or some other nonsense. It's the same with SAT scores. A 1400 used to be really good. Now it seems anything under a 1550 is mediocre. All of the good students are bunched at the top, leading to a lack of separation amongst top students and more of a lotto feeling as to who gets in. The grading scale is fundamentally broken.

It's not broken, it's intentional. And it should be considered fraud. The school brass and teachers keep gullible parents dumb and happy (and quiet) with fake As and the College Board gets suckers hooked to their fake inflated tests.

I see so many parents bragging about their kid's "all A's" and you can just tell by the course list and the kid's orbit they are an average layabout. The parents who brag about the A's never brag about official AP scores or SAT score.

Good sat scores means you are good at prepping for tests. A GPA is something accumulated over a period of four years.

WTF is this logic?
Don't your kid prep for exams, midterms, and finals??