WSJ article on your child's chances of getting into an IVY are slim

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: I thought smart kids went to IVY. Now I know it has nothing to do with how smart they are.

It absolutely does, and also how hard they had to work to overcome really hard circumstances. As it should be.

Speaking of fantasies. Overcoming hard circumstances? For maybe 2% of them. The rest are privileged beyond comprehension for most Americans.

I hate to break it to you, but being first gen and/or a URM IS a hard circumstance.

Sometimes. The URMs I know at Harvard have the same HHI income as us, the fathers had literally the same jobs, and they went to similar or the very same schools as our kids.

You think the incoming classes are full of poor black kids and first gen immigrants and it makes your big, hippie heart so happy. It’s a white savior fantasy. Most kids at ivies are privileged, despite the PR push about the first gen kid from Jersey or Florida.

Eh most of the ones my kid has met are the exact opposite. First gen. Immigrant families. I wouldn’t think to generalize off my kids anecdotal experience though. You do you.

Oy vey. I went to an elite college for both my bachelor's and professional degree. Rich immigrants were the most shameless liars. All of the family wealth can be hidden overseas and they just lie about their parents' backgrounds even though the family tree is full of doctors, baristers, businessmen, politicians and diplomats.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:First-generation Americans aren’t necessarily poor. Their immigrant parents were often in the upper class where they came from.

It’s supposed to be first generation college student. In other words, if you are one, none of your parents or grandparents earned a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Schools play fast and loose with that definition, however.

Many clearly state that it’s being the first educated in the US. So you can have European educated phd parents and get first gen preference.

I’ve seen the opposite but okay

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My kid had a 4.0UW at TJHSST, a 1580 SAT, double digit number of APs with 5s on all the exams, state-level academic awards, club leadership, varsity athlete, and didn't get into HYPSM.

Should I call the WSJ?

Agree 100%. There are so many of these "average excellent" students like the subject of the article with all the grade inflation in HSs nationwide, and the vast majority won't get into the Ivy League. Straight A's, solid extracurriculars and top test scores just don't cut it for most students. My daughter graduated TJHSST in 2018, had a superscored 1600 SAT and was also a 2 sport varsity athlete with first or second team all conference honors (but not good enough to play either sport in the Ivy League D1) and was likely in the top 10% of the class at TJ. She had an excellent guidance counselor at TJ who gave her good advice about her chances and how she should present herself to the colleges she applied to. She too was shut out of Stanford and the 3 Ivys she applied to but she wasn't surprised and took it in stride. Still she had a fantastic outcome and was accepted to Duke, UChicago and UVA Echols and is now a few weeks from graduating from Duke w/a great job waiting for her. She wouldn't have traded her 4 years at Duke for ANY of the Ivys at this point. Outside of the covid year, she loved her 4 years at Duke and the group of friends she made there.

Congratulations to your daughter but with all of the changes in admissions such as TO, emphasis on recruitment of first-gen and/or URM students, increasing #s of applications, etc. the high school class of 2018 admissions aren’t relevant.

NP. It's more relevant than the 40 year olds on here that talk about their admissions experience. It was already tough in 2018.

40 year olds? For the class of 2003 at Harvard, the admit rate was around only 12%.

Which is three times what it is now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I thought smart kids went to IVY. Now I know it has nothing to do with how smart they are.

It absolutely does, and also how hard they had to work to overcome really hard circumstances. As it should be.

Speaking of fantasies. Overcoming hard circumstances? For maybe 2% of them. The rest are privileged beyond comprehension for most Americans.

I hate to break it to you, but being first gen and/or a URM IS a hard circumstance.

Sometimes. The URMs I know at Harvard have the same HHI income as us, the fathers had literally the same jobs, and they went to similar or the very same schools as our kids.

You think the incoming classes are full of poor black kids and first gen immigrants and it makes your big, hippie heart so happy. It’s a white savior fantasy. Most kids at ivies are privileged, despite the PR push about the first gen kid from Jersey or Florida.

Actually I don't, I think the incoming classes are full of rich white unbelievably privileged kids. But they do indeed let in students who have faced hardship.

The bolded doesn't disprove anything I said. By ''us'' you are implying that you are white and that I am as well. Hopefully one day you'll understand intersectionality.

No one could possibly read this and think that by “us”, I meant you. It’s obviously referring to me and my spouse. Hopefully one day you’ll understand not everything is about you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid had a 4.0UW at TJHSST, a 1580 SAT, double digit number of APs with 5s on all the exams, state-level academic awards, club leadership, varsity athlete, and didn't get into HYPSM.

Should I call the WSJ?

Agree 100%. There are so many of these "average excellent" students like the subject of the article with all the grade inflation in HSs nationwide, and the vast majority won't get into the Ivy League. Straight A's, solid extracurriculars and top test scores just don't cut it for most students. My daughter graduated TJHSST in 2018, had a superscored 1600 SAT and was also a 2 sport varsity athlete with first or second team all conference honors (but not good enough to play either sport in the Ivy League D1) and was likely in the top 10% of the class at TJ. She had an excellent guidance counselor at TJ who gave her good advice about her chances and how she should present herself to the colleges she applied to. She too was shut out of Stanford and the 3 Ivys she applied to but she wasn't surprised and took it in stride. Still she had a fantastic outcome and was accepted to Duke, UChicago and UVA Echols and is now a few weeks from graduating from Duke w/a great job waiting for her. She wouldn't have traded her 4 years at Duke for ANY of the Ivys at this point. Outside of the covid year, she loved her 4 years at Duke and the group of friends she made there.

Congratulations to your daughter but with all of the changes in admissions such as TO, emphasis on recruitment of first-gen and/or URM students, increasing #s of applications, etc. the high school class of 2018 admissions aren’t relevant.

NP. It's more relevant than the 40 year olds on here that talk about their admissions experience. It was already tough in 2018.

40 year olds? For the class of 2003 at Harvard, the admit rate was around only 12%.

Which is three times what it is now.

But still very selective.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The young people I know who went to Ivy school have had mediocre career success post graduation. Some have gone back to school for JDs or masters, but there are people from much lesser schools in the same programs so WTF. Maybe Ivys are like most designer labels, they don't = quality.

I don’t think they do much for most of the kids. Parents just want bragging rights.

Yep, it's an ego thing for the parents mostly.

It’s a massive boost (graduating with an Ivy degree) for FGLI kids.

Any college is a massive boost for first gen. It doesn’t need to be Ivy.

But the connections that a first gen would get from the Ivy is massive vs the state school. Whereas for most at the ivies, they already have the ability to make those connections with their families position in life.

Delusional fantasy not based on reality. You think the billionaires like Jared Kushner at Harvard was hobnobbing around with first gen or poor or minority peers? Heck no.

Data says otherwise.

This sort of data and research is easily faked and juked. For example, this current freshman at Brown says many of her "first gen" "minority" and/or "low income" Ivy peers are scammer con artists who lie.

I don't care what one little girl said in a post in the Daily Beast.

I don’t care what a misogynist thinks.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:“The record 11.8 percent admission rate for Harvard's class of 1999 is significantly lower than rates at other Ivy League schools, ...“

Has it ever been easy?

It’s never been easy for your typical kid. It’s always been significantly easier for connected kids.

I went to a NE boarding school. They told us that before about the 1990s, kids essentially signed up for HYP like you would an intramural softball team. It isn’t like that anymore, but my high school sends roughly 25% of its graduates each year to an Ivy League school. The process remains deeply unfair.

100% bullsh*t. Obama was rejected from all the Ivies in 1980 and had to transfer into Columbia.

Yes, Obama went to that super well known New England Boarding School in Hawaii. Exactly the same. How could we all be so stupid.

I personally know a dozens of smart rich white men who went to NE boarding schools in the 80s and were rejected from Ivies. They ended up at liberal arts colleges. They're now all in their 50s and multi-millionaires, so it's not as if they were unmotivated layouts, either. It is impossible for the Ivies to have taken every clever white prep / boarding alum in any decade.

This raises the question about whether they are multimillionaires because of the college they attended or the value of pre-existing family connections/networks/seed money.

[Anonymous]

The Harvard student body is overwhelmingly wealthy. There was a very slight drop in the wealth if the student body at Harvard in the 80’s, but it has remained level since.

67% are in the top 20% in income. 53% are top 10%. 4.5% are in the bottom 20%.

The most surprising thing is that only 1.8% of students move from the bottom to the top income quintile and only 11% moved two or more income quintiles after graduation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/harvard-university

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First-generation Americans aren’t necessarily poor. Their immigrant parents were often in the upper class where they came from.

It’s supposed to be first generation college student. In other words, if you are one, none of your parents or grandparents earned a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Schools play fast and loose with that definition, however.

Many clearly state that it’s being the first educated in the US. So you can have European educated phd parents and get first gen preference.

Can you provide some examples? Genuinely curious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The young people I know who went to Ivy school have had mediocre career success post graduation. Some have gone back to school for JDs or masters, but there are people from much lesser schools in the same programs so WTF. Maybe Ivys are like most designer labels, they don't = quality.

I don’t think they do much for most of the kids. Parents just want bragging rights.

Yep, it's an ego thing for the parents mostly.

It’s a massive boost (graduating with an Ivy degree) for FGLI kids.

Any college is a massive boost for first gen. It doesn’t need to be Ivy.

But the connections that a first gen would get from the Ivy is massive vs the state school. Whereas for most at the ivies, they already have the ability to make those connections with their families position in life.

Delusional fantasy not based on reality. You think the billionaires like Jared Kushner at Harvard was hobnobbing around with first gen or poor or minority peers? Heck no.

Data says otherwise.

This sort of data and research is easily faked and juked. For example, this current freshman at Brown says many of her "first gen" "minority" and/or "low income" Ivy peers are scammer con artists who lie.

I don't care what one little girl said in a post in the Daily Beast.

I don’t care what a misogynist thinks.

+1

That’s some pretty breathtaking misogyny in display from that poster, which also unintentionally makes the original Daily Beast post seems all that much more accurate. If the Daily Beast writer was wildly off the mark, we wouldn’t have been subjected to the desperate misogyny trying to shut that conversation down.

Maybe the misogynist is someone who is an Ivy first gen scammer and is worried about being called out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The young people I know who went to Ivy school have had mediocre career success post graduation. Some have gone back to school for JDs or masters, but there are people from much lesser schools in the same programs so WTF. Maybe Ivys are like most designer labels, they don't = quality.

I don’t think they do much for most of the kids. Parents just want bragging rights.

Yep, it's an ego thing for the parents mostly.

It’s a massive boost (graduating with an Ivy degree) for FGLI kids.

Any college is a massive boost for first gen. It doesn’t need to be Ivy.

But the connections that a first gen would get from the Ivy is massive vs the state school. Whereas for most at the ivies, they already have the ability to make those connections with their families position in life.

Delusional fantasy not based on reality. You think the billionaires like Jared Kushner at Harvard was hobnobbing around with first gen or poor or minority peers? Heck no.

Data says otherwise.

Hahaha! Unverified and false data is now gospel? As if multi-billion universities and non-profits never pull tricks & cut corners to make themselves seem [more] effective. As if they haven't been busted providing false and misleading data to US News and the public over and over and over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I thought smart kids went to IVY. Now I know it has nothing to do with how smart they are.

It absolutely does, and also how hard they had to work to overcome really hard circumstances. As it should be.

Speaking of fantasies. Overcoming hard circumstances? For maybe 2% of them. The rest are privileged beyond comprehension for most Americans.

I hate to break it to you, but being first gen and/or a URM IS a hard circumstance.

I hate to break it to you, but my 1/4 black kids who look 100% white and have been raised in an upper middle class home are considered URMs for the purpose of college admissions. They definitely have not had unduly “hard circumstances” and yet it is kids like them who benefit most from affirmative action. I’m certainly not going to force them to not claim 1/4th of their ancestry and hence lower their admissions potential but objectively it is blatantly unfair that they are getting this huge advantage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I thought smart kids went to IVY. Now I know it has nothing to do with how smart they are.

It absolutely does, and also how hard they had to work to overcome really hard circumstances. As it should be.

Speaking of fantasies. Overcoming hard circumstances? For maybe 2% of them. The rest are privileged beyond comprehension for most Americans.

I hate to break it to you, but being first gen and/or a URM IS a hard circumstance.

I hate to break it to you, but my 1/4 black kids who look 100% white and have been raised in an upper middle class home are considered URMs for the purpose of college admissions. They definitely have not had unduly “hard circumstances” and yet it is kids like them who benefit most from affirmative action. I’m certainly not going to force them to not claim 1/4th of their ancestry and hence lower their admissions potential but objectively it is blatantly unfair that they are getting this huge advantage.

Troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I thought smart kids went to IVY. Now I know it has nothing to do with how smart they are.

It absolutely does, and also how hard they had to work to overcome really hard circumstances. As it should be.

Speaking of fantasies. Overcoming hard circumstances? For maybe 2% of them. The rest are privileged beyond comprehension for most Americans.

I hate to break it to you, but being first gen and/or a URM IS a hard circumstance.

I hate to break it to you, but my 1/4 black kids who look 100% white and have been raised in an upper middle class home are considered URMs for the purpose of college admissions. They definitely have not had unduly “hard circumstances” and yet it is kids like them who benefit most from affirmative action. I’m certainly not going to force them to not claim 1/4th of their ancestry and hence lower their admissions potential but objectively it is blatantly unfair that they are getting this huge advantage.

Troll.

I am 100% not a troll. What is it about my statement that you find hard to believe?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I thought smart kids went to IVY. Now I know it has nothing to do with how smart they are.

It absolutely does, and also how hard they had to work to overcome really hard circumstances. As it should be.

Speaking of fantasies. Overcoming hard circumstances? For maybe 2% of them. The rest are privileged beyond comprehension for most Americans.

I hate to break it to you, but being first gen and/or a URM IS a hard circumstance.

I hate to break it to you, but my 1/4 black kids who look 100% white and have been raised in an upper middle class home are considered URMs for the purpose of college admissions. They definitely have not had unduly “hard circumstances” and yet it is kids like them who benefit most from affirmative action. I’m certainly not going to force them to not claim 1/4th of their ancestry and hence lower their admissions potential but objectively it is blatantly unfair that they are getting this huge advantage.

What goes around comes around. Why do you think Americans support Nixon and Reagan's war on drugs that affect blacks disproportionately with mass incarceration?