The Students Who Got Into Eight Ivies Are All Children of Immigrants

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP has a point. Many people familiar with the Ivies and similar schools look at someone's applying and gaining admission to all of them as a "Stupid Pet Trick," even if they are too polite to say it. There are such differences among the schools that applying to all of them is not especially rational, unless the goal is just to get into an Ivy and/or show that you can kick ass with admissions departments.

If I was a teen living in NoVa going to TJ, I would definitely apply to numerous schools. Your peers are virtually all as smart as you and her race puts her at a disadvantage as far as admissions go. It's not like she was the the standout student in a mediocre school, they're all so talented and smart.

If this child was a white, black or hispanic student the posts would be completely different and that is the sad reality of DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP has a point. Many people familiar with the Ivies and similar schools look at someone's applying and gaining admission to all of them as a "Stupid Pet Trick," even if they are too polite to say it. There are such differences among the schools that applying to all of them is not especially rational, unless the goal is just to get into an Ivy and/or show that you can kick ass with admissions departments.

If I was a teen living in NoVa going to TJ, I would definitely apply to numerous schools. Your peers are virtually all as smart as you and her race puts her at a disadvantage as far as admissions go. It's not like she was the the standout student in a mediocre school, they're all so talented and smart.

If this child was a white, black or hispanic student the posts would be completely different and that is the sad reality of DCUM.

Apparently, she was a standout, as most TJ students don't get into a single Ivy. But, of those who do, I doubt many saw fit to apply to all eight.

[Anonymous]

Amazing. It really surprises me how most people in this country look down on foreigners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amazing. It really surprises me how most people in this country look down on foreigners.

Huh? Can you point us to another country that welcomes so many foreigners and provides them so quickly with access to their most elite institutions? Apart from perhaps Canada and Australia, I can't think of any.

[Anonymous]

Interesting Rorschach test in the responses. The original post cited an article mentioning students from Nigeria, Ghana, Somali, and Bulgaria. One of the responders posted a story about an Indian-American. So we're talking about African-American, European-Americans, and Asian-American immigrants. There is no a racial dimension, but it seems to have an immigrant dimension just like spelling bees.

+1 to the "Stupid Pet Trick" post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amazing. It really surprises me how most people in this country look down on foreigners.

Huh? Can you point us to another country that welcomes so many foreigners and provides them so quickly with access to their most elite institutions? Apart from perhaps Canada and Australia, I can't think of any.

The pp said people in this country not the higher education institutions. The colleges are very welcoming, because they want the best and the brightest regardless of country of origin. They bring innovation, which keeps the school in high ranks and the money flowing.

The general population of this country are the ones that look down on foreigners. That's the obvious. Nice try though.

[Anonymous]

Time to take the affirmative action training wheels off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amazing. It really surprises me how most people in this country look down on foreigners.

Are you talking about Slovakia? Or Japan? Because doesn't certainly doesn't describe America.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Time to take the affirmative action training wheels off.

So you believe these students got in because of Affirmative Action, not due to their incredible merit and talent?

Would that be your reaction if a brilliant white American did this? What about a brilliant white female American?

[Anonymous]

There are white and Asian kids who get into all the schools they apply to, including all the ivies. I don't know why it's only the Nigerian immigrants who go public with it.

[Anonymous]

It makes sense for a kid to apply to MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, and Georgia Tech. Or Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and Swarthmore. Or maybe Brown, Oberlin, and Reed. These groups of schools all have qualities that would attract similar students.

But the eight Ivies plus MIT and Stanford are not interchangeable. A kid for whom UPenn would be a good match would probably be very unhappy at Dartmouth and vice versa. I would tell my own child to figure out what he wanted in a school before sending out applications to any and all. What would happen if the child only got into the one Ivy that would not at all suit that child? Would the student just go to any Ivy just because it's an Ivy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It makes sense for a kid to apply to MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, and Georgia Tech. Or Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and Swarthmore. Or maybe Brown, Oberlin, and Reed. These groups of schools all have qualities that would attract similar students.

But the eight Ivies plus MIT and Stanford are not interchangeable. A kid for whom UPenn would be a good match would probably be very unhappy at Dartmouth and vice versa. I would tell my own child to figure out what he wanted in a school before sending out applications to any and all. What would happen if the child only got into the one Ivy that would not at all suit that child? Would the student just go to any Ivy just because it's an Ivy?

Really, who cares? In the end, the kid will only enroll at one school. Most kids will flourish at a wide range of schools.

[Anonymous]

The TJ student who got in is Indian-American and a standout student even in TJ. She was smart to apply to all 8 Ivy schools because we know that the admissions criteria for Asians is more stringent than any other racial group. There is no Affirmative Action for Asians.

Considering that both parents are engineers from Bangalore - she probably had the finances to apply to multiple colleges, which she did.

While I applaud her getting into all the colleges she applied to (14 in all) - I did feel disheartened as an Asian parent, to see how much our brightest Asian students have to hedge their bets.

Now that she has the options, she can decide where to go. The colleges think that she is a good student to add to their student body, now she has to decide which college is the best match for her. Academically, she can nail it where ever she goes.

[Anonymous]

You only need to apply to all the Ivies if your only goal is to go to an Ivy. These students are acting as if they didn't care about the differences between the colleges. As an alumni interviewer, I hate it that many applicants who really want to go never get an interview. My alma mater is overwhelmed by applicants who take very little effort to understanding whether why they want to go besides the brand name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The TJ student who got in is Indian-American and a standout student even in TJ. She was smart to apply to all 8 Ivy schools because we know that the admissions criteria for Asians is more stringent than any other racial group. There is no Affirmative Action for Asians.

Considering that both parents are engineers from Bangalore - she probably had the finances to apply to multiple colleges, which she did.

While I applaud her getting into all the colleges she applied to (14 in all) - I did feel disheartened as an Asian parent, to see how much our brightest Asian students have to hedge their bets.

Now that she has the options, she can decide where to go. The colleges think that she is a good student to add to their student body, now she has to decide which college is the best match for her. Academically, she can nail it where ever she goes.

Many Asian-American students have benefited from Affirmative Action policies. Please stop trotting out that tired canard.

You might want to read 16:34's post to understand why, for many, respect for this young woman's achievements is tempered by the sense that she and her family were perhaps more interested in getting her into "name" schools than on focusing on the best match for her as an individual. We are happy to congratulate her, but not quite yet ready to build a shrine to her, if that's OK.