Coca Cola Scholar Profiles — Making Me Reconsider Things

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Provide examples of Coca-Cola Scholar nonprofits that the "founders" continue to develop and scale throughout their college careers and beyond. Because what we see in our community is that Ivy-educated SAHMs start building these things for their kids in the summer after ninth grade, max out the social-media publicity blitz two years later, then everyone gives up the facade at midnight on November 1st without the kid ever really knowing what had been going on. It was so impressive the way that student built an amazing support network for refugees in need of legal guidance until you realized that her mother used to be a highly accomplished immigration lawyer before giving up her career. It's one of many forms of admissions fraud that universities encourage and that today's high-schoolers are forced to consider if they're to compete for elite acceptances. Looking at the scope, the Varsity Blues system was actually a relatively minor tactic by comparison.

+1
Absolute truth.
But posters here insult us for thinking we see through it and AOs don’t. AOs don’t look at what their parents do/did and how it might have played an enormous role. AOs don’t look for proof that the non profit did anything real either.
Outright lying is happening too. A kid who got into Michigan in DCs class admitted that he completely lied on his activities and awards. His dad laughed.

This is the kind of charade that the idiot admissions officers can't seem to able to figure out.

We have a mom at our school that does all the charity work, posting on message boards for money, asking for volunteers to carry those supplies, signup sheets to do several of these tasks, then the local newspaper carries a photo of the child and an article on how the child raised thousands of dollars, donated several bags of groceries, etc to a charity. Going on since 9th grade.

AO's need to do a study of how many of the students who have written up a passion for something actually continue through college. I am pretty sure they would be shocked. This is like active managers who were assumed that would always beat the stock market. Not until indexing became popular and benchmarking got serious interest the charade that the active managers add value got rubbished.

Something like that need to happen to admissions policies.

C’mon, no they wouldn’t. They know exactly what’s going on.

Their entire profession revolves around being fooled by well-packaged 17 year olds.

They’re not being fooled at all. They’re rewarding kids who play the game the best based on what they have to work with. Everything is just shameless self-promotion and truthiness these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mean, they're bound to be pretty exceptional kids since the scholarship is so competitive, and what they do isn't necessary to get into a top school. Just think of Coca-Cola scholars as a feeder to the best colleges in the country, and know that each of these elite schools have thousands of undergrads who didn't do what these Coca-Cola scholars did. But if you want to be confident your kid gets into a top school, it doesn't hurt to look at Coca-Cola scholars as the results speak for themselves:

I'd be curious what schools come in at 6, 7, and 8, any guesses?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lets face it, 99% of high schoolers applying for EMT are pre-med students padding their resume for colleges and med schools, not to become EMT.

Not my experience whatsoever...actually the exact opposite. I think the college and med school padders are "working" in their parent's or parent's friends research labs at NIH et al and then getting their names on research publications and what not.

+1
HS EMT kids have an interest in medical areas--but it's more often to be an EMT or a nurse. The ones who are thinking about medical school are often the ones who are MC and medical school is going to be to a financial hardship so they may be working as an EMT for awhile before they apply.

[Anonymous]

My ds's classmate won it a few years ago. They had gone to school together since K. She has been amazing K. No parent packaging there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My ds's classmate won it a few years ago. They had gone to school together since K. She has been amazing K. No parent packaging there.

*since K

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I still applaud this part of system as it pressures kids and parents who otherwise wouldn't care to get involve in community service.

+1

I've never been big into volunteering or charitable giving. We're becoming involved now because I'm starting to think about college admissions for my oldest who is in 8th grade. We have so much other stuff going on - full time work for both parents, school work, sports, tutoring, music lessons - that we would never, ever pursue community service if it weren't expected in college admissions. It's rather a PITA but mildly rewarding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The thing I see play out in our competitive private HS is the kids who start down this path launch some tutoring or advocacy NFP (even though an almost identical one already exists) and tries to recruit 20 of their classmates to sign on as volunteer tutor (advocate, senior home visitor, whatever) for 10 hours a week. So there are - if it goes off as designed - 20 or more kids putting in a lot of work so 1 kids gets a great line on his activity list.

It's a little too Tom Sawyer's fence painting for my taste.

Oh we had one kid start exactly this at our private school. Kid got into Harvard, site went dead. My younger kid signed up to tutor through this NFP, both times waited over 45 minutes for the kid to join, no one did. But who cares? The kid had this neat website with bios of over 40 tutors. Funny thing, same kid had a twitter account where they posted regularly about their thoughts on AI. The day after Harvard REA came out, not a single more post. Again twitter account did its job.

[Anonymous]

You sound green with envy OP. Accept that your kid is going wherever most other average kids go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing I see play out in our competitive private HS is the kids who start down this path launch some tutoring or advocacy NFP (even though an almost identical one already exists) and tries to recruit 20 of their classmates to sign on as volunteer tutor (advocate, senior home visitor, whatever) for 10 hours a week. So there are - if it goes off as designed - 20 or more kids putting in a lot of work so 1 kids gets a great line on his activity list.

It's a little too Tom Sawyer's fence painting for my taste.

Oh we had one kid start exactly this at our private school. Kid got into Harvard, site went dead. My younger kid signed up to tutor through this NFP, both times waited over 45 minutes for the kid to join, no one did. But who cares? The kid had this neat website with bios of over 40 tutors. Funny thing, same kid had a twitter account where they posted regularly about their thoughts on AI. The day after Harvard REA came out, not a single more post. Again twitter account did its job.

So your kid definitely isn’t trying for Harvard or any other T20 then, because they are easily fooled by this.

There are only two logical options:

1. Participate in the charade and have your kid lie on their application similarly to the successful candidates. (Not ethical)

2. Refuse to participate in the ruse and forgo elite schools, only stick to ones that do not consider such things for application. (Ethical)

Let us know what you decide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing I see play out in our competitive private HS is the kids who start down this path launch some tutoring or advocacy NFP (even though an almost identical one already exists) and tries to recruit 20 of their classmates to sign on as volunteer tutor (advocate, senior home visitor, whatever) for 10 hours a week. So there are - if it goes off as designed - 20 or more kids putting in a lot of work so 1 kids gets a great line on his activity list.

It's a little too Tom Sawyer's fence painting for my taste.

Oh we had one kid start exactly this at our private school. Kid got into Harvard, site went dead. My younger kid signed up to tutor through this NFP, both times waited over 45 minutes for the kid to join, no one did. But who cares? The kid had this neat website with bios of over 40 tutors. Funny thing, same kid had a twitter account where they posted regularly about their thoughts on AI. The day after Harvard REA came out, not a single more post. Again twitter account did its job.

So your kid definitely isn’t trying for Harvard or any other T20 then, because they are easily fooled by this.

There are only two logical options:

1. Participate in the charade and have your kid lie on their application similarly to the successful candidates. (Not ethical)

2. Refuse to participate in the ruse and forgo elite schools, only stick to ones that do not consider such things for application. (Ethical)

Let us know what you decide.

Sounds like Harvard is easily fooled.

🧐

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I googled the "non-profits" from about 20 profiles. Most have inactive sites, dead links, Instagrams with 50 followers or no web presence at all.

Some are definitely legit but many others were clearly for college admits only.

Aren’t you embarrassed to be admitting this?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I googled the "non-profits" from about 20 profiles. Most have inactive sites, dead links, Instagrams with 50 followers or no web presence at all.

Some are definitely legit but many others were clearly for college admits only.

Aren’t you embarrassed to be admitting this?!

But if he doesn’t prove those children are FAKING IT their crimes of doing some service work for a couple of years will go unpunished.

Really an enormous amount of energy spent to “prove” these thoroughly vetted kids who won a very competitive academic award and are rewarded with HYPS admission are actually defective somehow or a representation of the collapse of the West or something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Provide examples of Coca-Cola Scholar nonprofits that the "founders" continue to develop and scale throughout their college careers and beyond. Because what we see in our community is that Ivy-educated SAHMs start building these things for their kids in the summer after ninth grade, max out the social-media publicity blitz two years later, then everyone gives up the facade at midnight on November 1st without the kid ever really knowing what had been going on. It was so impressive the way that student built an amazing support network for refugees in need of legal guidance until you realized that her mother used to be a highly accomplished immigration lawyer before giving up her career. It's one of many forms of admissions fraud that universities encourage and that today's high-schoolers are forced to consider if they're to compete for elite acceptances. Looking at the scope, the Varsity Blues system was actually a relatively minor tactic by comparison.

+1
Absolute truth.
But posters here insult us for thinking we see through it and AOs don’t. AOs don’t look at what their parents do/did and how it might have played an enormous role. AOs don’t look for proof that the non profit did anything real either.
Outright lying is happening too. A kid who got into Michigan in DCs class admitted that he completely lied on his activities and awards. His dad laughed.

This is the kind of charade that the idiot admissions officers can't seem to able to figure out.

We have a mom at our school that does all the charity work, posting on message boards for money, asking for volunteers to carry those supplies, signup sheets to do several of these tasks, then the local newspaper carries a photo of the child and an article on how the child raised thousands of dollars, donated several bags of groceries, etc to a charity. Going on since 9th grade.

AO's need to do a study of how many of the students who have written up a passion for something actually continue through college. I am pretty sure they would be shocked. This is like active managers who were assumed that would always beat the stock market. Not until indexing became popular and benchmarking got serious interest the charade that the active managers add value got rubbished.

Something like that need to happen to admissions policies.

C’mon, no they wouldn’t. They know exactly what’s going on.

Of course they do. I don't know why so many people on this board think *we* can see through it but AOs can't. The fact is: in the vast majority of cases, AOs know what's up and they either don't care or they want students like this (speaking generally: connected, soft skills, rich/wealthy, ruthless, people who will have successful careers and help future cohorts of students with job placement/donate back to the university.)

Yep. Sure seems like they want ruthless liars and have no morals and ethics. The process encourages it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You sound green with envy OP. Accept that your kid is going wherever most other average kids go.

And they will have the opportunity to have the same careers that the Ivy Leaguer have. So, at the end of the day, who cares where they went to undergrad?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You sound green with envy OP. Accept that your kid is going wherever most other average kids go.

And they will have the opportunity to have the same careers that the Ivy Leaguer have. So, at the end of the day, who cares where they went to undergrad?

...and, you are getting greener with envy sourpuss.