S/O, Where did your "top private school" DC get into through ED (that's not Ivy, or a Top 10 school)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And sadly, schools that cutoff at the 3.9 level are going to miss a lot of great kids. Who says that a 3.9 kid at a top private has learned more than a 3.2 kid. At our school a lot of the 3.2 kids are just as smart, and pretty hardworking, but kinder, more passionate, less self-absorbed and more interesting than some of the 3.9s. This is not to criticize those at the tippy top, but rather to sway that a lot of that energy gets lost in a highly stats driven admissions process. My husband went to an Ivy, and he wonders if it would be as interesting an experience now.

We were discussing this at work the other day. We work with/hire lots of young, ambitious college graduates, and have been completely underwhelmed by the HYP graduates that we've been seeing lately. They have been far outperformed by the graduates of the "lesser" schools. This is a small sample, but it belies the narrative that only "outstanding, hardworking, total package" kids get into HYP. We finally concluded that these schools admit kids that are good at school, and that doesn't necessarily translate to the real world. YMMV

Totally agree. We consistently have HYP interens and young hires and I'm consistently underwhelmed by their performance. They are "smart'" but clearly not the go-getters and often lack common sense and good judgment and have a total sense of entitlement. We have started to look for others at top tier or two tier schools and have had much more success. I think a lot of these soon to be graduates are about to have a rude awakening.

Depends what job you're hiring for. I totally agree that HYP grads won't excel at making cold calls selling widgets and they're less likely to be super-aggressive in the widget marketing department. I can also see that, in some cases, some might have a sense of entitlement that gets in the way of success. I tend to think of HYP grads as tending to have fewer of the rough-and-tumble skills that lead to success in certain types of American businesses. But for academic/intellectual work, I imagine the HYP student's track record of work ethic and smarts would lead to excellence in the areas of research, science, public policy.

Maybe part of what you're referring to is leadership ability in the workplace? Or sheer extroversion? Here I agree the HYP students are probably a mixed bag. The emphasis on high GPAs is going to get a lot of introverts who are uncomfortable pushing stocks/widgets on customers. The focus on ECs and high school leadership positions is supposed to select for go-getters, but I doubt it's completely effective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And sadly, schools that cutoff at the 3.9 level are going to miss a lot of great kids. Who says that a 3.9 kid at a top private has learned more than a 3.2 kid. At our school a lot of the 3.2 kids are just as smart, and pretty hardworking, but kinder, more passionate, less self-absorbed and more interesting than some of the 3.9s. This is not to criticize those at the tippy top, but rather to sway that a lot of that energy gets lost in a highly stats driven admissions process. My husband went to an Ivy, and he wonders if it would be as interesting an experience now.

We were discussing this at work the other day. We work with/hire lots of young, ambitious college graduates, and have been completely underwhelmed by the HYP graduates that we've been seeing lately. They have been far outperformed by the graduates of the "lesser" schools. This is a small sample, but it belies the narrative that only "outstanding, hardworking, total package" kids get into HYP. We finally concluded that these schools admit kids that are good at school, and that doesn't necessarily translate to the real world. YMMV

Totally agree. We consistently have HYP interens and young hires and I'm consistently underwhelmed by their performance. They are "smart'" but clearly not the go-getters and often lack common sense and good judgment and have a total sense of entitlement. We have started to look for others at top tier or two tier schools and have had much more success. I think a lot of these soon to be graduates are about to have a rude awakening.

Depends what job you're hiring for. I totally agree that HYP grads won't excel at making cold calls selling widgets and they're less likely to be super-aggressive in the widget marketing department. I can also see that, in some cases, some might have a sense of entitlement that gets in the way of success. I tend to think of HYP grads as tending to have fewer of the rough-and-tumble skills that lead to success in certain types of American businesses. But for academic/intellectual work, I imagine the HYP student's track record of work ethic and smarts would lead to excellence in the areas of research, science, public policy.

Maybe part of what you're referring to is leadership ability in the workplace? Or sheer extroversion? Here I agree the HYP students are probably a mixed bag. The emphasis on high GPAs is going to get a lot of introverts who are uncomfortable pushing stocks/widgets on customers. The focus on ECs and high school leadership positions is supposed to select for go-getters, but I doubt it's completely effective.

Oh, dear. I'm guessing you didn't attend HYP. If you had, you'd know that there's plenty or rough-and-tumble when you get so many Alpha kids together. Indeed, self-promotion skills are critical to surviving at HYP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Surprisingly (to me), the unhooked, non-recruited kids who did the best were from public school while the unhooked kids at Big 3s did less well."

I think GPAs have a lot to do with that. Some of the local privates, Sidwell Friends just to name one of them, are notoriously tight in their grading while grade inflation nationally in high schools is pretty common. A more typical profile for many kids applying from a deflationary grade environment is to have high test scores that do not have the expected correlation with their GPAs. For a long time, the privates have relied on their reputation with colleges, figuring that their recognized rigor would compensate for lower GPAs. That approach no longer works as much, and either the privates have to do a much better job of selling their curriculum and how it prepares their graduates for college or join the crowd and start inflating their grading policies.

Agree with your assessment of the problem; hope that schools in this situation start ramping up the PR effort, rather than dumbing down the curriculum or pushing grade inflation.

I disagree with the assessment. Colleges have regional admissions folks who are very familiar with the grading and rigor at each school in their assigned regions. Many colleges even reweight applicants' GPAs using their own proprietary weights, based on their knowledge of the grading and rigor at different schools. It would be wrong to think that colleges put a B from Sidwell on the same level as a B from Easy A HS.

There's no need for PR efforts to provide regional admissions reps with this info they already have. To the extent they're taking a smaller share of area privates' graduating classes, I'm guessing this is because of increased interest in having different types of students, or something else. But I don't know for sure.

As a former admissions staffer, I'd say that turnover in those jobs is pretty high, so there's a constant need for schools to keep their regional officers informed about the strength and rigor of their curricula. Some schools do a better job of this than others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:10:48 again. Harvard used to send out a press release right after the regular decision announcements, saying they rejected XXX number of perfect SATs. The figure was always over 1,000. I haven't seen this in a few years. Either I haven't noticed or they stopped doing it.

On the other hand, I know several unhooked kids who got into top five USNWR schools with SATs around 2100 and fabulous ECs. The ECs were accomplishments at a national level, plus great recs and great essays--these kids did well on the whole package. Surprisingly (to me), the unhooked, non-recruited kids who did the best were from public school while the unhooked kids at Big 3s did less well. (Caveat emptor! small sample size of DC's acquaintances at publics and privates!) The common denominator among the kids we know who got into the very top colleges were GPAs of 3.9 or 4.0 so it seems true (to me at least) that colleges are looking for extremely hard workers--at the top USNWR schools, you just wouldn't survive the first semester if you weren't academically inclined and a very hard worker.

Also, it's a crap shoot. You just have to accept the random nature of part of this process. We feel our DC was very lucky, as much as anything else. This is very tough on the kids who worked like crazy throughout high school, and reasonably expect that the 3.9 GPA should be rewarded with acceptance at their first choice schools. They do usually get into great schools, but not necessarily HYP.

If Hravard did that then they lied as there are only about 300-400 perfect SATS each year. For the class graduating in 2013 the number of perfect scorers was 494.

[Anonymous]

*Harvard

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And sadly, schools that cutoff at the 3.9 level are going to miss a lot of great kids. Who says that a 3.9 kid at a top private has learned more than a 3.2 kid. At our school a lot of the 3.2 kids are just as smart, and pretty hardworking, but kinder, more passionate, less self-absorbed and more interesting than some of the 3.9s. This is not to criticize those at the tippy top, but rather to sway that a lot of that energy gets lost in a highly stats driven admissions process. My husband went to an Ivy, and he wonders if it would be as interesting an experience now.

We were discussing this at work the other day. We work with/hire lots of young, ambitious college graduates, and have been completely underwhelmed by the HYP graduates that we've been seeing lately. They have been far outperformed by the graduates of the "lesser" schools. This is a small sample, but it belies the narrative that only "outstanding, hardworking, total package" kids get into HYP. We finally concluded that these schools admit kids that are good at school, and that doesn't necessarily translate to the real world. YMMV

Totally agree. We consistently have HYP interens and young hires and I'm consistently underwhelmed by their performance. They are "smart'" but clearly not the go-getters and often lack common sense and good judgment and have a total sense of entitlement. We have started to look for others at top tier or two tier schools and have had much more success. I think a lot of these soon to be graduates are about to have a rude awakening.

Depends what job you're hiring for. I totally agree that HYP grads won't excel at making cold calls selling widgets and they're less likely to be super-aggressive in the widget marketing department. I can also see that, in some cases, some might have a sense of entitlement that gets in the way of success. I tend to think of HYP grads as tending to have fewer of the rough-and-tumble skills that lead to success in certain types of American businesses. But for academic/intellectual work, I imagine the HYP student's track record of work ethic and smarts would lead to excellence in the areas of research, science, public policy.

Maybe part of what you're referring to is leadership ability in the workplace? Or sheer extroversion? Here I agree the HYP students are probably a mixed bag. The emphasis on high GPAs is going to get a lot of introverts who are uncomfortable pushing stocks/widgets on customers. The focus on ECs and high school leadership positions is supposed to select for go-getters, but I doubt it's completely effective.

Oh, dear. I'm guessing you didn't attend HYP. If you had, you'd know that there's plenty or rough-and-tumble when you get so many Alpha kids together. Indeed, self-promotion skills are critical to surviving at HYP.

Oh, dear, you'd be wrong! Probably because you didn't attend HYP yourself. There are lots of introverted/more academically-oriented kids at these schools. Also, I went to Wharton, so there's that. Wharton's where you get the rough-and-tumble kids who challenge the professors, in front of the rest of the class, in obnoxious ways, in class. So yes: I'm pretty good at telling rough-and-tumble from intellectual/academic. You could learn from me.

Here's my biggest problem with your posts: your whinging and sour grapes. First you start with "admissions officers just don't understand how tough the private schools are." That got shot down, for good reason. So then you try out "well, those HYP kids are crap employees at my widget factor anyway". News flash: maybe those HYP kids are a bad fit for your widget factory, and maybe your widget factory really would be better off with the scrappy kids from Podunk U's business "school." Fine with me, I'll hire the intellectual/academic introverts for my public policy shop. Talent comes in all shapes and sizes. Your whiny "HYP grads are useless because they don't want to sell widgets" just sounds a little pathetic to the ears of this Wharton grad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Surprisingly (to me), the unhooked, non-recruited kids who did the best were from public school while the unhooked kids at Big 3s did less well."

I think GPAs have a lot to do with that. Some of the local privates, Sidwell Friends just to name one of them, are notoriously tight in their grading while grade inflation nationally in high schools is pretty common. A more typical profile for many kids applying from a deflationary grade environment is to have high test scores that do not have the expected correlation with their GPAs. For a long time, the privates have relied on their reputation with colleges, figuring that their recognized rigor would compensate for lower GPAs. That approach no longer works as much, and either the privates have to do a much better job of selling their curriculum and how it prepares their graduates for college or join the crowd and start inflating their grading policies.

Agree with your assessment of the problem; hope that schools in this situation start ramping up the PR effort, rather than dumbing down the curriculum or pushing grade inflation.

I disagree with the assessment. Colleges have regional admissions folks who are very familiar with the grading and rigor at each school in their assigned regions. Many colleges even reweight applicants' GPAs using their own proprietary weights, based on their knowledge of the grading and rigor at different schools. It would be wrong to think that colleges put a B from Sidwell on the same level as a B from Easy A HS.

There's no need for PR efforts to provide regional admissions reps with this info they already have. To the extent they're taking a smaller share of area privates' graduating classes, I'm guessing this is because of increased interest in having different types of students, or something else. But I don't know for sure.

Sounds like a parent who hasn't had a child apply to college yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And sadly, schools that cutoff at the 3.9 level are going to miss a lot of great kids. Who says that a 3.9 kid at a top private has learned more than a 3.2 kid. At our school a lot of the 3.2 kids are just as smart, and pretty hardworking, but kinder, more passionate, less self-absorbed and more interesting than some of the 3.9s. This is not to criticize those at the tippy top, but rather to sway that a lot of that energy gets lost in a highly stats driven admissions process. My husband went to an Ivy, and he wonders if it would be as interesting an experience now.

We were discussing this at work the other day. We work with/hire lots of young, ambitious college graduates, and have been completely underwhelmed by the HYP graduates that we've been seeing lately. They have been far outperformed by the graduates of the "lesser" schools. This is a small sample, but it belies the narrative that only "outstanding, hardworking, total package" kids get into HYP. We finally concluded that these schools admit kids that are good at school, and that doesn't necessarily translate to the real world. YMMV

Totally agree. We consistently have HYP interens and young hires and I'm consistently underwhelmed by their performance. They are "smart'" but clearly not the go-getters and often lack common sense and good judgment and have a total sense of entitlement. We have started to look for others at top tier or two tier schools and have had much more success. I think a lot of these soon to be graduates are about to have a rude awakening.

Depends what job you're hiring for. I totally agree that HYP grads won't excel at making cold calls selling widgets and they're less likely to be super-aggressive in the widget marketing department. I can also see that, in some cases, some might have a sense of entitlement that gets in the way of success. I tend to think of HYP grads as tending to have fewer of the rough-and-tumble skills that lead to success in certain types of American businesses. But for academic/intellectual work, I imagine the HYP student's track record of work ethic and smarts would lead to excellence in the areas of research, science, public policy.

Maybe part of what you're referring to is leadership ability in the workplace? Or sheer extroversion? Here I agree the HYP students are probably a mixed bag. The emphasis on high GPAs is going to get a lot of introverts who are uncomfortable pushing stocks/widgets on customers. The focus on ECs and high school leadership positions is supposed to select for go-getters, but I doubt it's completely effective.

Oh, dear. I'm guessing you didn't attend HYP. If you had, you'd know that there's plenty or rough-and-tumble when you get so many Alpha kids together. Indeed, self-promotion skills are critical to surviving at HYP.

Oh, dear, you'd be wrong! Probably because you didn't attend HYP yourself. There are lots of introverted/more academically-oriented kids at these schools. Also, I went to Wharton, so there's that. Wharton's where you get the rough-and-tumble kids who challenge the professors, in front of the rest of the class, in obnoxious ways, in class. So yes: I'm pretty good at telling rough-and-tumble from intellectual/academic. You could learn from me.

Here's my biggest problem with your posts: your whinging and sour grapes. First you start with "admissions officers just don't understand how tough the private schools are." That got shot down, for good reason. So then you try out "well, those HYP kids are crap employees at my widget factor anyway". News flash: maybe those HYP kids are a bad fit for your widget factory, and maybe your widget factory really would be better off with the scrappy kids from Podunk U's business "school." Fine with me, I'll hire the intellectual/academic introverts for my public policy shop. Talent comes in all shapes and sizes. Your whiny "HYP grads are useless because they don't want to sell widgets" just sounds a little pathetic to the ears of this Wharton grad.

Actually, I'm a Princeton and Stanford grad, and you've got me confused with another poster. But I do agree that you're obnoxious -- query, though whether you learned this at Wharton or if it just comes naturally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:10:48 again. Harvard used to send out a press release right after the regular decision announcements, saying they rejected XXX number of perfect SATs. The figure was always over 1,000. I haven't seen this in a few years. Either I haven't noticed or they stopped doing it.

On the other hand, I know several unhooked kids who got into top five USNWR schools with SATs around 2100 and fabulous ECs. The ECs were accomplishments at a national level, plus great recs and great essays--these kids did well on the whole package. Surprisingly (to me), the unhooked, non-recruited kids who did the best were from public school while the unhooked kids at Big 3s did less well. (Caveat emptor! small sample size of DC's acquaintances at publics and privates!) The common denominator among the kids we know who got into the very top colleges were GPAs of 3.9 or 4.0 so it seems true (to me at least) that colleges are looking for extremely hard workers--at the top USNWR schools, you just wouldn't survive the first semester if you weren't academically inclined and a very hard worker.

Also, it's a crap shoot. You just have to accept the random nature of part of this process. We feel our DC was very lucky, as much as anything else. This is very tough on the kids who worked like crazy throughout high school, and reasonably expect that the 3.9 GPA should be rewarded with acceptance at their first choice schools. They do usually get into great schools, but not necessarily HYP.

If Hravard did that then they lied as there are only about 300-400 perfect SATS each year. For the class graduating in 2013 the number of perfect scorers was 494.

Harvard superscores. Perfect superscored SAT scores probably aren't that rare, given that more than 10,000 students get perfect scores on each section of the SAT each year.

[Anonymous]

This thread has wandered so far off the question. Are most Ed's at schools like Landon and prep sports related?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Oh, dear. I'm guessing you didn't attend HYP. If you had, you'd know that there's plenty or rough-and-tumble when you get so many Alpha kids together. Indeed, self-promotion skills are critical to surviving at HYP.

Oh, dear, you'd be wrong! Probably because you didn't attend HYP yourself. There are lots of introverted/more academically-oriented kids at these schools. Also, I went to Wharton, so there's that. Wharton's where you get the rough-and-tumble kids who challenge the professors, in front of the rest of the class, in obnoxious ways, in class. So yes: I'm pretty good at telling rough-and-tumble from intellectual/academic. You could learn from me.

Here's my biggest problem with your posts: your whinging and sour grapes. First you start with "admissions officers just don't understand how tough the private schools are." That got shot down, for good reason. So then you try out "well, those HYP kids are crap employees at my widget factor anyway". News flash: maybe those HYP kids are a bad fit for your widget factory, and maybe your widget factory really would be better off with the scrappy kids from Podunk U's business "school." Fine with me, I'll hire the intellectual/academic introverts for my public policy shop. Talent comes in all shapes and sizes. Your whiny "HYP grads are useless because they don't want to sell widgets" just sounds a little pathetic to the ears of this Wharton grad.

Actually, I'm a Princeton and Stanford grad, and you've got me confused with another poster. But I do agree that you're obnoxious -- query, though whether you learned this at Wharton or if it just comes naturally.

I was just following your example, honey, and that's where I "learned" this "obnoxious" behavior. Go refresh your memory by looking at your own first three sentences. Ciao, sweetie!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Surprisingly (to me), the unhooked, non-recruited kids who did the best were from public school while the unhooked kids at Big 3s did less well."

I think GPAs have a lot to do with that. Some of the local privates, Sidwell Friends just to name one of them, are notoriously tight in their grading while grade inflation nationally in high schools is pretty common. A more typical profile for many kids applying from a deflationary grade environment is to have high test scores that do not have the expected correlation with their GPAs. For a long time, the privates have relied on their reputation with colleges, figuring that their recognized rigor would compensate for lower GPAs. That approach no longer works as much, and either the privates have to do a much better job of selling their curriculum and how it prepares their graduates for college or join the crowd and start inflating their grading policies.

Agree with your assessment of the problem; hope that schools in this situation start ramping up the PR effort, rather than dumbing down the curriculum or pushing grade inflation.

I disagree with the assessment. Colleges have regional admissions folks who are very familiar with the grading and rigor at each school in their assigned regions. Many colleges even reweight applicants' GPAs using their own proprietary weights, based on their knowledge of the grading and rigor at different schools. It would be wrong to think that colleges put a B from Sidwell on the same level as a B from Easy A HS.

There's no need for PR efforts to provide regional admissions reps with this info they already have. To the extent they're taking a smaller share of area privates' graduating classes, I'm guessing this is because of increased interest in having different types of students, or something else. But I don't know for sure.

Sounds like a parent who hasn't had a child apply to college yet.

That was my post, and my kid is at Columbia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I disagree with the assessment. Colleges have regional admissions folks who are very familiar with the grading and rigor at each school in their assigned regions. Many colleges even reweight applicants' GPAs using their own proprietary weights, based on their knowledge of the grading and rigor at different schools. It would be wrong to think that colleges put a B from Sidwell on the same level as a B from Easy A HS.

There's no need for PR efforts to provide regional admissions reps with this info they already have. To the extent they're taking a smaller share of area privates' graduating classes, I'm guessing this is because of increased interest in having different types of students, or something else. But I don't know for sure.

Sounds like a parent who hasn't had a child apply to college yet.

That was my post, and my kid is at Columbia.

Bam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Oh, dear. I'm guessing you didn't attend HYP. If you had, you'd know that there's plenty or rough-and-tumble when you get so many Alpha kids together. Indeed, self-promotion skills are critical to surviving at HYP.

Oh, dear, you'd be wrong! Probably because you didn't attend HYP yourself. There are lots of introverted/more academically-oriented kids at these schools. Also, I went to Wharton, so there's that. Wharton's where you get the rough-and-tumble kids who challenge the professors, in front of the rest of the class, in obnoxious ways, in class. So yes: I'm pretty good at telling rough-and-tumble from intellectual/academic. You could learn from me.

Here's my biggest problem with your posts: your whinging and sour grapes. First you start with "admissions officers just don't understand how tough the private schools are." That got shot down, for good reason. So then you try out "well, those HYP kids are crap employees at my widget factor anyway". News flash: maybe those HYP kids are a bad fit for your widget factory, and maybe your widget factory really would be better off with the scrappy kids from Podunk U's business "school." Fine with me, I'll hire the intellectual/academic introverts for my public policy shop. Talent comes in all shapes and sizes. Your whiny "HYP grads are useless because they don't want to sell widgets" just sounds a little pathetic to the ears of this Wharton grad.

Actually, I'm a Princeton and Stanford grad, and you've got me confused with another poster. But I do agree that you're obnoxious -- query, though whether you learned this at Wharton or if it just comes naturally.

I was just following your example, honey, and that's where I "learned" this "obnoxious" behavior. Go refresh your memory by looking at your own first three sentences. Ciao, sweetie!

New poster here. I went to Harvard, and think you both sound like idiots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And sadly, schools that cutoff at the 3.9 level are going to miss a lot of great kids. Who says that a 3.9 kid at a top private has learned more than a 3.2 kid. At our school a lot of the 3.2 kids are just as smart, and pretty hardworking, but kinder, more passionate, less self-absorbed and more interesting than some of the 3.9s. This is not to criticize those at the tippy top, but rather to sway that a lot of that energy gets lost in a highly stats driven admissions process. My husband went to an Ivy, and he wonders if it would be as interesting an experience now.

We were discussing this at work the other day. We work with/hire lots of young, ambitious college graduates, and have been completely underwhelmed by the HYP graduates that we've been seeing lately. They have been far outperformed by the graduates of the "lesser" schools. This is a small sample, but it belies the narrative that only "outstanding, hardworking, total package" kids get into HYP. We finally concluded that these schools admit kids that are good at school, and that doesn't necessarily translate to the real world. YMMV

Totally agree. We consistently have HYP interens and young hires and I'm consistently underwhelmed by their performance. They are "smart'" but clearly not the go-getters and often lack common sense and good judgment and have a total sense of entitlement. We have started to look for others at top tier or two tier schools and have had much more success. I think a lot of these soon to be graduates are about to have a rude awakening.

Depends what job you're hiring for. I totally agree that HYP grads won't excel at making cold calls selling widgets and they're less likely to be super-aggressive in the widget marketing department. I can also see that, in some cases, some might have a sense of entitlement that gets in the way of success. I tend to think of HYP grads as tending to have fewer of the rough-and-tumble skills that lead to success in certain types of American businesses. But for academic/intellectual work, I imagine the HYP student's track record of work ethic and smarts would lead to excellence in the areas of research, science, public policy.

Maybe part of what you're referring to is leadership ability in the workplace? Or sheer extroversion? Here I agree the HYP students are probably a mixed bag. The emphasis on high GPAs is going to get a lot of introverts who are uncomfortable pushing stocks/widgets on customers. The focus on ECs and high school leadership positions is supposed to select for go-getters, but I doubt it's completely effective.

Oh, dear. I'm guessing you didn't attend HYP. If you had, you'd know that there's plenty or rough-and-tumble when you get so many Alpha kids together. Indeed, self-promotion skills are critical to surviving at HYP.

Different poster. Were you actually trying to make HYP grads appear to be jackasses? If so, bravo -- well done.