What has surprised you - as your kid comes to the end of this process

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how accurate our school’s Scoir scatter grams turned out.

+2 Especially for state schools.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Pleasantly surprised that there are plenty of T50 schools that accept strong, well rounded applicants. DD got in everywhere she applied with a good GPA, solid (but not exceptional) SAT scores, varsity sports, leadership and service.

Because she is a female. C'mon, your should know that.

Nope. Being a female hurts these days, since they are over-represented at nearly every college. Male applicants have a small advantage now.

Depends on the school. DS's college explicitly favors women.

Some schools say they don’t consider gender at all in admissions, and their male to female ratio can become really skewed. Tulane is one of the schools that doesn’t consider gender in admissions. The gender ratio is really uneven.

[Anonymous]

As an athlete the admission process was insane.

Coaches approaching children to go to their school only to ghost them 3 weeks later. They had to do an immense amount of interviews, visits, showcases.

You only hear about the top athlete and how easy it is for them but the others it’s crazy.

The admission process was 3 full years.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I was surprised how mean and judgmental people can be about other people’s kids. Adult snark is one thing, mocking teenagers quite another. Regardless of the anonymous nature of this forum, I don’t understand why anyone feels the need to belittle a high schooler’s character, intellect, or choice of ECs, college, major, etc.

I admit anonymously to being overly harsh about a few kids who appear to have waltzed into tippy top schools to play sports but have not done anything close to the academic work my kid and friends have done (many of whom are still waiting for decisions).

There are a lot of students who are top academics. They aren’t rare. Talented athletes are rare so they are sought after. Sports are big money in this country. The universities make quite a bit of money from their athletes. There’s no point in getting upset.

Division 3 says hello. We are not talking about Alabama Div. 1 football or Stanford Olympic athletes. Given that Williams is 40% athletes, no, it is not at all rare. BTW, if your kid wants to go to Alabama, the athletes do not get in the way of your admission. In fact, there are fewer athletes there than Amherst College.

And the athletes at Williams do not get in your way either. Changing the acceptance rate from 6% to 10% means that the answer is still no for the vast majority of applicants and that a huge number of kids with equivalent stats were denied. And most athletes at Williams will have academics similar to typical admitted students meaning nobody lost out to anyone "less deserving".

Cutting athletes in 1/2 means 20% more “equally deserving kids” who are not athletes get in. This is a zero sum game — and not too difficult to understand.

Really isn't hard to understand if you look at the entire picture. Athletics is important to Williams, very important. I understand that you don't like it but they are an institutional priority at Williams.

Athletics is a huge priority at all of the Elite D3 schools because they value broad excellence and the skills that athletes bring (leadership, determination, grit) are highly valued. The combination of high academic capability and high athletic capability isn't common but and the applicants that have both tend to do very well. These schools want those kids, they really want them.

You really won't like what follows:

Who has the largest athletics program in D3? MIT
Who has won the most Directors Cups at the D3 level? Williams
Who has the second most? JHU
Who is in the top 10 this year?
JHU
Middlebury
W&L
Tufts
Emory
Williams
Amherst
CMU
WashU
MIT

NYU, Wesleyan, and CMS are the next 3.

Williams will never slack off on athletic recruiting because their peers aren't going to slack off. They will take 3.9UW, 1500 and very good athlete all day because that is an exceptional candidate and they are lucky to get them. Cutting athletic recruiting wouldn't mean fewer athletes, it would just mean weaker teams and which is in conflict with Williams institutional priority which is dominating the Directors Cup standings.

Athletics is a key priority for virtually every elite D3 school.

I’m a PP. I have no issue with a 3.9(high rigor), 1500, good athlete (i hope with some leadership) getting into Williams, etc.

I do have a problem with 3.5 (low rigor), TO athlete with no other activities getting into T20 schools.

Athletes are great, but no one else with one activity and those stats is getting into T20.

Just to be clear, you are jealous of a kid that spent thousands of hours more than your kid improving his/her athletic craft and is admitted to those schools?

Let me tell you. I have been a recruiter for the 2 of the top 5 IBs and the top MC group over the last 20 years. In all cases we would ALWAYS take the Athlete from the top schools, even if their GPA was a 3.0 than the non athlete with a 4.0. Very simple. You can teach that drive….once you remove the athletics out of the way, they have shown to be on avg, much better workers than the non-athletes….complain all you want. That is a fact.

What? Because maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA in the face of intense competition doesn't reflect drive?

Sure. Imagine then how hard it is to be an elite athlete and maintain a 3.5…..I’m sorry….It is what it is….I will and have taken the 3.5 athlete vs your kid hundreds of times……

while that's a good testament to their time management and stamina, it doesn't show me deep passion for a subject or discipline outside their sport. That elite athlete is putting their physical sport (hours practicing or games and travel) ahead of science labs, essays, debating, etc.. I think a tired, overworked elite athlete who is up at dawn practicing and focused on their sport will struggle to go toe to toe in a discussion seminar or write an essay with required depth of someone who wasn't just a B+ student in high school. Being a student-athlete in an elite sport in college is being an athlete first and a student is very secondary.

My issue if I was a recruiter is that so few elite athletes have ever had a job. My son's AAU friends play basketball all summer, same with most of his elite athlete friends. None have worked before. His college football playing friends have to report for practice on June 1--no summer jobs for them either. Not sure who prepares the athletes for the workforce.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how accurate our school’s Scoir scatter grams turned out.

+2 Especially for state schools.

Scoir was not accurate for my kid and friends from their school. Things are much harder this year and more kids applied to the exact same colleges from our school.

[Anonymous]

The athletes get jobs from other athletes. They are top traders and hedge fund managers on Wall Street. The game clock and training give them an edge in high pressure situations

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That my kid, who applied as a normal student in Dec for a STEM PhD would have plans completely trashed by this sh!th0le of an administration in January.

The scientific brain drain and decades-long lingering health and economic effects mean she'll now try and emigrate to another country to study - hopefully before they shut the borders to keep white flight in check.

The offers are being rescinded left and right at the moment. I'm not sure how aware the public truly is. Hoping the veteran's show up in force tomorrow and teachers start walking out in masse soon.

Maybe Poindexter & his giant brain could serve in the military for a few years before he spends the rest of his life in a lab somewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That Trump and Elon are destroying my children's dreams and futures.

How so??

[Anonymous]

Call me naive, but I didn't realize how important the raw numbers were amidst so much talk about "holistic" admissions process and that higher numbers (especially with loaded up AP classes, versus being in a strong, private school that doesn't offer many) beat out what an actual educational experience and degree of college prep might be. This isn't a private school bitterness post. It's more about being aware of what others have noted--that the numbers get you into the pool and *then* the other parts of your application float you up.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The humanities kids get in to T25 with lower stats, especially if they have ANY sort of well-I regarded honor or award.

Makes you sound like they are undeserving when the truth of the matter is that they should be favored even more than they are, to stem (pardon the pun) the STEM+business+econ trade school tide. I’d go so far as to say they merit a tuition reduction, as they cost almost nothing to teach and get no benefit from a school’s latest science center in the hundreds of millions.

+1

T25 schools are much more than STEM diploma factories …..

The nation needs more STEM graduates not snowflakes who get luxury degrees in humanities bs.

Yes, our car dashboards aren’t complicated enough. Please have your STEM genius add a few hundred more useless features to the control screen. Like maybe a way to control the barometric pressure inside the car, or a vibrating gas pedal to massage my right foot.

[Anonymous]

No one is arguing that athletes aren't super motivated and focused. But so are kids who maintain high GPAs in really hard classes, or the kid who volunteers 800 hours a year, or the musician, or someone who has to work to support their family.

I think it's helpful to remind EVERYONE that there are MANY different admissions processes happening simultaneously and different groups of students are held to different standards. It's the school's right to admit whomever they want for whatever reason they want.

Just be aware that there are different roads to the same place.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Try not to be a stem major

Is math (pure or applied) considered a stem major? In most of the universities, math seems to be in the College rather than the Engr schools.

This is why being a humanities major is valuable.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Hooks matter more than anything else at the top 20 schools, and especially the Ivies. A kid at the top of the class, with perfect grades and scores and impressive, unique ECs, will almost always lose out to a kid without those things who has a hook. I heard this so many times but did not fully absorb it without personal experience.

Is being URM (like Hispanic or black) still considered a hook?

Yes. The student simply needs to communicate this in an "identity" essay or via extracurriculars. Colleges want and should be able to build diverse classes (diverse in every way). Holistic admissions is not going anywhere, but reinstating test scores ensures there's a merit threshold.

So Brown & Wesleyan are actively recruiting evangelicals & political conservatives? Tell us more!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The humanities kids get in to T25 with lower stats, especially if they have ANY sort of well-I regarded honor or award.

Makes you sound like they are undeserving when the truth of the matter is that they should be favored even more than they are, to stem (pardon the pun) the STEM+business+econ trade school tide. I’d go so far as to say they merit a tuition reduction, as they cost almost nothing to teach and get no benefit from a school’s latest science center in the hundreds of millions.

+1

T25 schools are much more than STEM diploma factories …..

The nation needs more STEM graduates not snowflakes who get luxury degrees in humanities bs.

Yes, our car dashboards aren’t complicated enough. Please have your STEM genius add a few hundred more useless features to the control screen. Like maybe a way to control the barometric pressure inside the car, or a vibrating gas pedal to massage my right foot.

Well you are welcome to go back to a world without technological advances, let me know how that works out for you.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The humanities kids get in to T25 with lower stats, especially if they have ANY sort of well-I regarded honor or award.

Makes you sound like they are undeserving when the truth of the matter is that they should be favored even more than they are, to stem (pardon the pun) the STEM+business+econ trade school tide. I’d go so far as to say they merit a tuition reduction, as they cost almost nothing to teach and get no benefit from a school’s latest science center in the hundreds of millions.

+1

T25 schools are much more than STEM diploma factories …..

The nation needs more STEM graduates not snowflakes who get luxury degrees in humanities bs.

Yes, our car dashboards aren’t complicated enough. Please have your STEM genius add a few hundred more useless features to the control screen. Like maybe a way to control the barometric pressure inside the car, or a vibrating gas pedal to massage my right foot.

Good lord. Next you or a family member receive some advanced medical treatment (developed by one of the geniuses you deride), I hope you think of this post.