Sorry but this American college admissions "rat race" is stupid ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is such a misguided thread.

Sour grapes anyone?

Is it possible you are feeling defensive, and can't be receptive to the wisdom that's on this thread?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such a misguided thread.

Sour grapes anyone?

+1 pure comedy.

It's clarity actually.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100 years ago, 50 years ago, ivies are expensive, even MC may not be able to afford it. And ivies mostly get their students from boarding schools and private schools. So yeah at that time it’s reserved to rich privileged families.

If we go back to those times, restrict the seats from the commons, there would never be a rat race. I mean, it only becomes a rat race when the commons think they are attainable to them.

Transparency matters. They should be honest about the students and families they want instead of misleading people into thinking everyone has a fair shot. It’s obvious that isn’t true, so why lie?

It is fair, it just might not meet your definition of 'fairness'. They are very transparent in that they do not care solely about academics but rather ensuring that the vast majority cross a very high bar. They lower that bar a bit for people who fit institutional priorities but keep it high enough to be comfortable that everyone admitted will succeed. They want people from across the US and across the globe and they also want to ensure that socioeconomic conditions are not a barrier to admissions.

Using that criteria the number of applications that they receive from a group of mostly similar candidates far exceeds the spots at their schools which results in a situation where most people never know why they were admitted or denied. This also means that there is randomness and a bit of luck involved. It is frustrating but it isn't unfair.

I would not call the holistic review "very transparent". Does companies hire employees by holistic review? Does any company hire a quant trader by checking his violin skills?
1. Despite the prestige, these elite institutions do not guarantee better financial or career success after graduation.
2. If international students are included in the target student pool, these institutions should not receive tax sponsorship or tax-exempt status, since American students are not given higher priority.

A company hires employees based on their skills, and that includes how they work with others and how they communicate, etc. But if you can discuss during an interview things that show you are more than a robot (ie play the violin or teach music to kids at the local Y) you might land the job over someone who cannot make eye contact and cannot communicate but is wickedly smart. Because yes the holistic person matters in the real world as well.

There is a good chance your boss (and their boss) did not attend an elite school, yet they are managing you and getting paid more than others who did attend an elite school.

What you’re saying ultimately leads to the conclusion that there’s no real need to compete for elite or Ivy League schools. Plenty of influencers with strong looks and social skills are eager to sell products online without any elite credentials.

Your example about your boss actually proves that chasing elite schools is unnecessary.
Soft skills are not exclusive to elite private institutions—they’re available and trainable everywhere. Even someone working at KFC needs to maintain eye contact and communicate well. The assumption that intelligent people are all shy or socially awkward is simply absurd.

[Anonymous]

This thread reminds me of the time I had to coach my son and a bunch of other first graders on a soccer team. We had to give each kid a customized trophy at the end of the season. It was so painful having to come up with something. I think went as deep as “best shin pads”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread reminds me of the time I had to coach my son and a bunch of other first graders on a soccer team. We had to give each kid a customized trophy at the end of the season. It was so painful having to come up with something. I think went as deep as “best shin pads”.

That sounds so weird. How about playing for the sake of exercise and socializing alone and not for trophies at all??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways you can go about it

1. Prioritize T20 admission from a young age. Tailor everything towards that goal. Push ahead even if student is not interested in the thing they were doing, because it would look good to colleges. You would have a tough 5-6 years.

2. Prioritize academics and doing well in high school, regardless of how it looks to colleges. Do things you like and drop things you do not like. Take classes you like, but do emphasize rigor in all subjects, not because colleges like to see that, but because they are building blocks and a strong foundation is essential.

T20 admission is a low probability anyway. Even if you choose option #1, you might not end up at T20. That seemed to be a bad tradeoff to me.

If you choose option #2, even if your overall chances of getting into T20 are lower than if you choose #1, you win either way because (a) you did what you loved and if ended up not going to T20, you have that happy HS years (b) if you did end up at T20, you just got a bonus. Heads I win, tails I don't lose.

That is how we made the decision. Turns out when you do things that you do love, it is easier for others to see it as well. It showed up in how my son got voted to the top position in the team and most likely how the teachers wrote the recommendation letters. Ended at HYP.

There is actually a third option, which is to not even allow your kid to apply to Ivy-plus schools (or other similarly-priced schools), even if they have the stats and the money for them. That is what we did, and we’re happy with the results so far.

If Ivy was just about stats, 90% of the anxiety would evaporate.

Oh you got a 1520 SAT, here are the 4 schools that you can apply to and one is guaranteed to take you. Oh you got a 1210 on the SAT, here are the 4 schools with your major that you can apply to and one of them is guaranteed to accept you.

Agreed. McGill does this, not sure why all global t50s don't do this. It makes college admissions so easy and predictable. If you don't make the cut offs you don't bother to apply. And no need for admissions readers who are biased and subjective. A whole industry has cropped up to support the nuances of "holistic admission" and they should just scrap it and allow a certain amount to be admission by exception like UCs do for athletes if they want to attract economic diversity candidates with lower marks.

Mcgill is larger than any Ivy and Canada is less than one eight the size of the United States. The top 8 Canadian schools enroll 305,000 undergraduate students. For the top eight US schools to serve the same proportion of the US population they would each need to enroll 305,000 students.

+100

People constantly say "I wish they could be like Canada" or "I wish that they could be like Oxbridge" without taking the time to actually understand the numbers. It's the application numbers which drive the angst, not holistic admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is it teaching our kids? About "merit", hard work, financial inequality, value? Parents I know are gnashing their teeth over the blatant games played by colleges who seemingly hold all the power. But can't we vote with our feet? Select colleges outside the US system that are more fair (Canada, UK, Ireland, Scotland, etc.) or pick honors colleges in less competitive US colleges that will provide our kids with scholarships and better opportunities. Our public state schools (at least mine) has good intentions but feels broken as well.

What is it all for?

The parents telling me you need to "prune your child since middle school for a cohesive college narrative" and hire consultants to make you marketable, make me feel so sad and hopeless.

Most colleges in the US accept most applicants. Why do we have to look outside the US? Why are we so fixated on elite colleges?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is it teaching our kids? About "merit", hard work, financial inequality, value? Parents I know are gnashing their teeth over the blatant games played by colleges who seemingly hold all the power. But can't we vote with our feet? Select colleges outside the US system that are more fair (Canada, UK, Ireland, Scotland, etc.) or pick honors colleges in less competitive US colleges that will provide our kids with scholarships and better opportunities. Our public state schools (at least mine) has good intentions but feels broken as well.

What is it all for?

The parents telling me you need to "prune your child since middle school for a cohesive college narrative" and hire consultants to make you marketable, make me feel so sad and hopeless.

Most colleges in the US accept most applicants. Why do we have to look outside the US? Why are we so fixated on elite colleges?

Because stupid media like USNews keep gaslighting parents that you need to put your kids in top schools or you are a failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sucks except if you win. Then it’s great. There is nothing globally that is like the education, connections and level of services of all kinds available at the tippy-top of American higher education.

No, it sucks period. The reason that it sucks is the supply/demand imbalance and the simple fact that there are some whom believe that there are only a small number of schools which "matter" and everything else is a failure. That entire mental model is ridiculous with anything deeper than a surface evaluation because you will quickly realize that this is a demand/ego driven belief rather than any actual difference in quality.

There is a difference in quality. Stanford is better than Arizona State. This is true even though you can succeed in spite of attending Arizona State and even though you may not succeed in spite of attending Stanford.

That is true, Stanford is measurably better than Arizona State. But, Stanford isn't measurably better than Santa Clara especially for undergraduate education.

My suspicion is that Santa Clara is just as good as Stanford for tech majors but wouldn't be as good for other majors.

The quality of the professors and of the other students is certainly going to be higher at any elite school than the majority of state schools.

The real point is that schools are better grouped into buckets, you cannot really stack rank them in any manner that is definitive. And, the top bucket is much larger than many people believe.

In terms of educational quality it may be true that the top bucket is really 100 colleges rather than 20. But in terms of bang for the buck, I certainly made distinctions between top 10 and 50-100. I was prepared to pay full price for top 10, but full price for private or out of state public ranked 11-100, forget it.

And that is your choice. But I personally think it's a ridiculous choice. If you have the $$$, most in the T100 are still worth it if it's the right fit for your kid.
But you are stating you wouldn't pay $90K for a school ranked 15 or 25? That's BS and I feel for your kid.

No I absolutely would not pay full price for Rice, WUSL, Emory, or Notre Dame, let alone Boston College, NYU, or Villanova.

Don't feel bad for my kid, he did better than any of the above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sucks except if you win. Then it’s great. There is nothing globally that is like the education, connections and level of services of all kinds available at the tippy-top of American higher education.

No, it sucks period. The reason that it sucks is the supply/demand imbalance and the simple fact that there are some whom believe that there are only a small number of schools which "matter" and everything else is a failure. That entire mental model is ridiculous with anything deeper than a surface evaluation because you will quickly realize that this is a demand/ego driven belief rather than any actual difference in quality.

There is a difference in quality. Stanford is better than Arizona State. This is true even though you can succeed in spite of attending Arizona State and even though you may not succeed in spite of attending Stanford.

That is true, Stanford is measurably better than Arizona State. But, Stanford isn't measurably better than Santa Clara especially for undergraduate education.

My suspicion is that Santa Clara is just as good as Stanford for tech majors but wouldn't be as good for other majors.

The quality of the professors and of the other students is certainly going to be higher at any elite school than the majority of state schools.

The real point is that schools are better grouped into buckets, you cannot really stack rank them in any manner that is definitive. And, the top bucket is much larger than many people believe.

In terms of educational quality it may be true that the top bucket is really 100 colleges rather than 20. But in terms of bang for the buck, I certainly made distinctions between top 10 and 50-100. I was prepared to pay full price for top 10, but full price for private or out of state public ranked 11-100, forget it.

And that is your choice. But I personally think it's a ridiculous choice. If you have the $$$, most in the T100 are still worth it if it's the right fit for your kid.
But you are stating you wouldn't pay $90K for a school ranked 15 or 25? That's BS and I feel for your kid.

No I absolutely would not pay full price for Rice, WUSL, Emory, or Notre Dame, let alone Boston College, NYU, or Villanova.

Don't feel bad for my kid, he did better than any of the above.

Fiction, Your kid goes to Towson

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100 years ago, 50 years ago, ivies are expensive, even MC may not be able to afford it. And ivies mostly get their students from boarding schools and private schools. So yeah at that time it’s reserved to rich privileged families.

If we go back to those times, restrict the seats from the commons, there would never be a rat race. I mean, it only becomes a rat race when the commons think they are attainable to them.

Transparency matters. They should be honest about the students and families they want instead of misleading people into thinking everyone has a fair shot. It’s obvious that isn’t true, so why lie?

It is fair, it just might not meet your definition of 'fairness'. They are very transparent in that they do not care solely about academics but rather ensuring that the vast majority cross a very high bar. They lower that bar a bit for people who fit institutional priorities but keep it high enough to be comfortable that everyone admitted will succeed. They want people from across the US and across the globe and they also want to ensure that socioeconomic conditions are not a barrier to admissions.

Using that criteria the number of applications that they receive from a group of mostly similar candidates far exceeds the spots at their schools which results in a situation where most people never know why they were admitted or denied. This also means that there is randomness and a bit of luck involved. It is frustrating but it isn't unfair.

I would not call the holistic review "very transparent". Does companies hire employees by holistic review? Does any company hire a quant trader by checking his violin skills?
1. Despite the prestige, these elite institutions do not guarantee better financial or career success after graduation.
2. If international students are included in the target student pool, these institutions should not receive tax sponsorship or tax-exempt status, since American students are not given higher priority.

There is a good chance your boss (and their boss) did not attend an elite school, yet they are managing you and getting paid more than others who did attend an elite school.

True, but also true that graduates of elite schools are unquestionably over-represented in corporate management, law, academia, politics, finance, you name it. Go to an Ivy, and top employers will chase you. Go to most state flagships, and you will have to chase the top employers (and you probably won't catch them).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100 years ago, 50 years ago, ivies are expensive, even MC may not be able to afford it. And ivies mostly get their students from boarding schools and private schools. So yeah at that time it’s reserved to rich privileged families.

If we go back to those times, restrict the seats from the commons, there would never be a rat race. I mean, it only becomes a rat race when the commons think they are attainable to them.

Transparency matters. They should be honest about the students and families they want instead of misleading people into thinking everyone has a fair shot. It’s obvious that isn’t true, so why lie?

It is fair, it just might not meet your definition of 'fairness'. They are very transparent in that they do not care solely about academics but rather ensuring that the vast majority cross a very high bar. They lower that bar a bit for people who fit institutional priorities but keep it high enough to be comfortable that everyone admitted will succeed. They want people from across the US and across the globe and they also want to ensure that socioeconomic conditions are not a barrier to admissions.

Using that criteria the number of applications that they receive from a group of mostly similar candidates far exceeds the spots at their schools which results in a situation where most people never know why they were admitted or denied. This also means that there is randomness and a bit of luck involved. It is frustrating but it isn't unfair.

I would not call the holistic review "very transparent". Does companies hire employees by holistic review? Does any company hire a quant trader by checking his violin skills?
1. Despite the prestige, these elite institutions do not guarantee better financial or career success after graduation.
2. If international students are included in the target student pool, these institutions should not receive tax sponsorship or tax-exempt status, since American students are not given higher priority.

There is a good chance your boss (and their boss) did not attend an elite school, yet they are managing you and getting paid more than others who did attend an elite school.

True, but also true that graduates of elite schools are unquestionably over-represented in corporate management, law, academia, politics, finance, you name it. Go to an Ivy, and top employers will chase you. Go to most state flagships, and you will have to chase the top employers (and you probably won't catch them).

Catch them and be part of the greed and oppression?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sucks except if you win. Then it’s great. There is nothing globally that is like the education, connections and level of services of all kinds available at the tippy-top of American higher education.

No, it sucks period. The reason that it sucks is the supply/demand imbalance and the simple fact that there are some whom believe that there are only a small number of schools which "matter" and everything else is a failure. That entire mental model is ridiculous with anything deeper than a surface evaluation because you will quickly realize that this is a demand/ego driven belief rather than any actual difference in quality.

There is a difference in quality. Stanford is better than Arizona State. This is true even though you can succeed in spite of attending Arizona State and even though you may not succeed in spite of attending Stanford.

That is true, Stanford is measurably better than Arizona State. But, Stanford isn't measurably better than Santa Clara especially for undergraduate education.

My suspicion is that Santa Clara is just as good as Stanford for tech majors but wouldn't be as good for other majors.

The quality of the professors and of the other students is certainly going to be higher at any elite school than the majority of state schools.

The real point is that schools are better grouped into buckets, you cannot really stack rank them in any manner that is definitive. And, the top bucket is much larger than many people believe.

In terms of educational quality it may be true that the top bucket is really 100 colleges rather than 20. But in terms of bang for the buck, I certainly made distinctions between top 10 and 50-100. I was prepared to pay full price for top 10, but full price for private or out of state public ranked 11-100, forget it.

And that is your choice. But I personally think it's a ridiculous choice. If you have the $$$, most in the T100 are still worth it if it's the right fit for your kid.
But you are stating you wouldn't pay $90K for a school ranked 15 or 25? That's BS and I feel for your kid.

No I absolutely would not pay full price for Rice, WUSL, Emory, or Notre Dame, let alone Boston College, NYU, or Villanova.

Don't feel bad for my kid, he did better than any of the above.

He goes to the Catholic University of America, sweetie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100 years ago, 50 years ago, ivies are expensive, even MC may not be able to afford it. And ivies mostly get their students from boarding schools and private schools. So yeah at that time it’s reserved to rich privileged families.

If we go back to those times, restrict the seats from the commons, there would never be a rat race. I mean, it only becomes a rat race when the commons think they are attainable to them.

Not artfully put, but true. One of the top schools for churning out Nobel winners is City College of NY. It’s where children of poor immigrants in NY went, mostly Jewish. These were smart kids who were driven to improve their family’s lot in life, and many did just that.

Between this thread and the Harvard kids one, it’s made me realize that it’s too bad that the prestige of places like CCNY have fallen. They are perfect for super smart, driven kids who need or should stay close to home and are not interested in the typical college experience but want to just hunker down and get a degree. That’s not to say they are not still good options, just that everyone is falling all over themselves to get into a top 10/20/25 school when those places might not serve the ancillary needs (cost, distance from home, overall culture) that a commuter school does.

Stuy and Bronx Sci kids all going off to Hunter and Stony Brook in droves. Macaulay and Sophie Davis highly HIGHLY respected here in nyc. It maybe doesn't have a national name, but neither did City College at the time. But OP has no interest in sending her kid to Hunter.

Hunter had a great name when I went to SUNY long ago. It was also a school that only locals attended.

But that’s sort of my point. Many kids probably should stay close to home for all sorts of reasons. There shouldn’t be such a stigma against going to a commuter school. Not all students should live away and try to fit into a campus life that is not their cup of tea.

So stop allowing your family and kids to be guided in life by what others think! That is a YOU problem.

Yes, why do individual parents even allow their teenaged children to experience peer pressure? Raise your children in total social isolation, that will solve the problem!

There is a difference between minor social pressure and letting your kid be guided for major life choices by other teens.

Yes you have failed if you allow that much societal pressure to affect major choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways you can go about it

1. Prioritize T20 admission from a young age. Tailor everything towards that goal. Push ahead even if student is not interested in the thing they were doing, because it would look good to colleges. You would have a tough 5-6 years.

2. Prioritize academics and doing well in high school, regardless of how it looks to colleges. Do things you like and drop things you do not like. Take classes you like, but do emphasize rigor in all subjects, not because colleges like to see that, but because they are building blocks and a strong foundation is essential.

T20 admission is a low probability anyway. Even if you choose option #1, you might not end up at T20. That seemed to be a bad tradeoff to me.

If you choose option #2, even if your overall chances of getting into T20 are lower than if you choose #1, you win either way because (a) you did what you loved and if ended up not going to T20, you have that happy HS years (b) if you did end up at T20, you just got a bonus. Heads I win, tails I don't lose.

That is how we made the decision. Turns out when you do things that you do love, it is easier for others to see it as well. It showed up in how my son got voted to the top position in the team and most likely how the teachers wrote the recommendation letters. Ended at HYP.

There is actually a third option, which is to not even allow your kid to apply to Ivy-plus schools (or other similarly-priced schools), even if they have the stats and the money for them. That is what we did, and we’re happy with the results so far.

What if that's where your kid wants to attend? If you can afford it, why not allow them to apply?

Because if you don’t take it off the table altogether, then as soon as their friends start hiring private counselors (8th grade, for us, though the friends in question were a grade or two ahead), everything becomes “Larla says her counselor says Harvard wants …”

So you parent your kid and have serious discussions about finding the right fit for them. And create a good list of reasonable targets and safety schools to apply to along with the dream schools.
Then you set expectations.

However if you truly are not willing to pay then you let your kid know that early on.