Sorry but this American college admissions "rat race" is stupid ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is it teaching our kids? About "merit", hard work, financial inequality, value? Parents I know are gnashing their teeth over the blatant games played by colleges who seemingly hold all the power. But can't we vote with our feet? Select colleges outside the US system that are more fair (Canada, UK, Ireland, Scotland, etc.) or pick honors colleges in less competitive US colleges that will provide our kids with scholarships and better opportunities. Our public state schools (at least mine) has good intentions but feels broken as well.

What is it all for?

The parents telling me you need to "prune your child since middle school for a cohesive college narrative" and hire consultants to make you marketable, make me feel so sad and hopeless.

your assumption is that US admissions is not fair anymore. which presumes that it was, at one time, fair.

The top schools were for privileged white men for a long time. JFK's essay etc. Then for the well off white children of the UMC in the 80s and 90s. No one from my midwestern high school had ever - ever! - applied to HYP when I was there, including me. Was not on the radar.

Then the world got flat, marketing expanded, the internet happened, SAT prep went national, questbridge and posse happened. And it got a lot harder for the people for whom the top 10% of the class walked right into Dartmouth.

That doesn't mean it got less fair. It just got harder for you - and so it feels less fair.

Opt out. Really. You'll survive without the ivy league and the Ivy League will certainly survive without you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100 years ago, 50 years ago, ivies are expensive, even MC may not be able to afford it. And ivies mostly get their students from boarding schools and private schools. So yeah at that time it’s reserved to rich privileged families.

If we go back to those times, restrict the seats from the commons, there would never be a rat race. I mean, it only becomes a rat race when the commons think they are attainable to them.

Not artfully put, but true. One of the top schools for churning out Nobel winners is City College of NY. It’s where children of poor immigrants in NY went, mostly Jewish. These were smart kids who were driven to improve their family’s lot in life, and many did just that.

Between this thread and the Harvard kids one, it’s made me realize that it’s too bad that the prestige of places like CCNY have fallen. They are perfect for super smart, driven kids who need or should stay close to home and are not interested in the typical college experience but want to just hunker down and get a degree. That’s not to say they are not still good options, just that everyone is falling all over themselves to get into a top 10/20/25 school when those places might not serve the ancillary needs (cost, distance from home, overall culture) that a commuter school does.

Stuy and Bronx Sci kids all going off to Hunter and Stony Brook in droves. Macaulay and Sophie Davis highly HIGHLY respected here in nyc. It maybe doesn't have a national name, but neither did City College at the time. But OP has no interest in sending her kid to Hunter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let the kids decide if they want to play the rate race. In 9th grade, offered the kids to play in the rate race game or get GED and work as HVAC or plumber.

There's A LOT that comes in between a GED and participating in the rat race. My older DC participated in the rat race and went to a T10. We straight up told her that if she wanted X type of school, this was the game. My younger DC did not participate in the rat race. She took the classes she was interested in, joined the clubs she was interested in and got good but not excellent grades. She ended up at a T30. Both are fine choices. No HVAC certificates for either of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways you can go about it

1. Prioritize T20 admission from a young age. Tailor everything towards that goal. Push ahead even if student is not interested in the thing they were doing, because it would look good to colleges. You would have a tough 5-6 years.

2. Prioritize academics and doing well in high school, regardless of how it looks to colleges. Do things you like and drop things you do not like. Take classes you like, but do emphasize rigor in all subjects, not because colleges like to see that, but because they are building blocks and a strong foundation is essential.

T20 admission is a low probability anyway. Even if you choose option #1, you might not end up at T20. That seemed to be a bad tradeoff to me.

If you choose option #2, even if your overall chances of getting into T20 are lower than if you choose #1, you win either way because (a) you did what you loved and if ended up not going to T20, you have that happy HS years (b) if you did end up at T20, you just got a bonus. Heads I win, tails I don't lose.

That is how we made the decision. Turns out when you do things that you do love, it is easier for others to see it as well. It showed up in how my son got voted to the top position in the team and most likely how the teachers wrote the recommendation letters. Ended at HYP.

There is actually a third option, which is to not even allow your kid to apply to Ivy-plus schools (or other similarly-priced schools), even if they have the stats and the money for them. That is what we did, and we’re happy with the results so far.

If Ivy was just about stats, 90% of the anxiety would evaporate.

Oh you got a 1520 SAT, here are the 4 schools that you can apply to and one is guaranteed to take you. Oh you got a 1210 on the SAT, here are the 4 schools with your major that you can apply to and one of them is guaranteed to accept you.

Agreed. McGill does this, not sure why all global t50s don't do this. It makes college admissions so easy and predictable. If you don't make the cut offs you don't bother to apply. And no need for admissions readers who are biased and subjective. A whole industry has cropped up to support the nuances of "holistic admission" and they should just scrap it and allow a certain amount to be admission by exception like UCs do for athletes if they want to attract economic diversity candidates with lower marks.

Elite US colleges are never going to admit "just by stats". That would give them a demographic profile that they consider undesirable and that would doubtless lead to lawsuits. Other global unis don't have this problem. In addition, the elite schools would get a dozen or more kids with the "right" stats that exceed the cutoff for every spot, and how could they distinguish between them unless by using something other than stats? I guess they could do a lottery drawn from all the kids who have the required stats, but that would just enrage everybody lmao.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sucks except if you win. Then it’s great. There is nothing globally that is like the education, connections and level of services of all kinds available at the tippy-top of American higher education.

No, it sucks period. The reason that it sucks is the supply/demand imbalance and the simple fact that there are some whom believe that there are only a small number of schools which "matter" and everything else is a failure. That entire mental model is ridiculous with anything deeper than a surface evaluation because you will quickly realize that this is a demand/ego driven belief rather than any actual difference in quality.

There is a difference in quality. Stanford is better than Arizona State. This is true even though you can succeed in spite of attending Arizona State and even though you may not succeed in spite of attending Stanford.

That is true, Stanford is measurably better than Arizona State. But, Stanford isn't measurably better than Santa Clara especially for undergraduate education.

My suspicion is that Santa Clara is just as good as Stanford for tech majors but wouldn't be as good for other majors.

The quality of the professors and of the other students is certainly going to be higher at any elite school than the majority of state schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways you can go about it

1. Prioritize T20 admission from a young age. Tailor everything towards that goal. Push ahead even if student is not interested in the thing they were doing, because it would look good to colleges. You would have a tough 5-6 years.

2. Prioritize academics and doing well in high school, regardless of how it looks to colleges. Do things you like and drop things you do not like. Take classes you like, but do emphasize rigor in all subjects, not because colleges like to see that, but because they are building blocks and a strong foundation is essential.

T20 admission is a low probability anyway. Even if you choose option #1, you might not end up at T20. That seemed to be a bad tradeoff to me.

If you choose option #2, even if your overall chances of getting into T20 are lower than if you choose #1, you win either way because (a) you did what you loved and if ended up not going to T20, you have that happy HS years (b) if you did end up at T20, you just got a bonus. Heads I win, tails I don't lose.

That is how we made the decision. Turns out when you do things that you do love, it is easier for others to see it as well. It showed up in how my son got voted to the top position in the team and most likely how the teachers wrote the recommendation letters. Ended at HYP.

There is actually a third option, which is to not even allow your kid to apply to Ivy-plus schools (or other similarly-priced schools), even if they have the stats and the money for them. That is what we did, and we’re happy with the results so far.

If Ivy was just about stats, 90% of the anxiety would evaporate.

Oh you got a 1520 SAT, here are the 4 schools that you can apply to and one is guaranteed to take you. Oh you got a 1210 on the SAT, here are the 4 schools with your major that you can apply to and one of them is guaranteed to accept you.

These schools are private institutions. They get to admit students based on their goals and priorities, not yours. The vast majority of schools in the US operate in the manner that you describe. You are free to apply to any of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sucks except if you win. Then it’s great. There is nothing globally that is like the education, connections and level of services of all kinds available at the tippy-top of American higher education.

No, it sucks period. The reason that it sucks is the supply/demand imbalance and the simple fact that there are some whom believe that there are only a small number of schools which "matter" and everything else is a failure. That entire mental model is ridiculous with anything deeper than a surface evaluation because you will quickly realize that this is a demand/ego driven belief rather than any actual difference in quality.

There is a difference in quality. Stanford is better than Arizona State. This is true even though you can succeed in spite of attending Arizona State and even though you may not succeed in spite of attending Stanford.

That is true, Stanford is measurably better than Arizona State. But, Stanford isn't measurably better than Santa Clara especially for undergraduate education.

My suspicion is that Santa Clara is just as good as Stanford for tech majors but wouldn't be as good for other majors.

The quality of the professors and of the other students is certainly going to be higher at any elite school than the majority of state schools.

What you want at the end of college is important in terms of selecting the college. It's comical but true that a high number of kids enroll at Stanford with the intention of dropping out after receiving VC funding...Stanford always ranks #1 by far in terms of undergrads with most venture funded companies and most Y Combinator funded companies.

The average Santa Clara kid just isn't thinking that way. They still do well working at FAANG or other tech companies, but it's a completely different student culture and college mentality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways you can go about it

1. Prioritize T20 admission from a young age. Tailor everything towards that goal. Push ahead even if student is not interested in the thing they were doing, because it would look good to colleges. You would have a tough 5-6 years.

2. Prioritize academics and doing well in high school, regardless of how it looks to colleges. Do things you like and drop things you do not like. Take classes you like, but do emphasize rigor in all subjects, not because colleges like to see that, but because they are building blocks and a strong foundation is essential.

T20 admission is a low probability anyway. Even if you choose option #1, you might not end up at T20. That seemed to be a bad tradeoff to me.

If you choose option #2, even if your overall chances of getting into T20 are lower than if you choose #1, you win either way because (a) you did what you loved and if ended up not going to T20, you have that happy HS years (b) if you did end up at T20, you just got a bonus. Heads I win, tails I don't lose.

That is how we made the decision. Turns out when you do things that you do love, it is easier for others to see it as well. It showed up in how my son got voted to the top position in the team and most likely how the teachers wrote the recommendation letters. Ended at HYP.

There is actually a third option, which is to not even allow your kid to apply to Ivy-plus schools (or other similarly-priced schools), even if they have the stats and the money for them. That is what we did, and we’re happy with the results so far.

If Ivy was just about stats, 90% of the anxiety would evaporate.

Oh you got a 1520 SAT, here are the 4 schools that you can apply to and one is guaranteed to take you. Oh you got a 1210 on the SAT, here are the 4 schools with your major that you can apply to and one of them is guaranteed to accept you.

These schools are private institutions. They get to admit students based on their goals and priorities, not yours. The vast majority of schools in the US operate in the manner that you describe. You are free to apply to any of them.

Did the PP say anything else? The Ivies and their ilk use sophisticated marketing and opaque admissions to drive an escalating spiral of anxiety among the best and the brightest of American teens. Whether we are playing the game or whether we have opted out, we are all free to observe and remark upon this phenomenon and the deleterious effects it has on American society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100 years ago, 50 years ago, ivies are expensive, even MC may not be able to afford it. And ivies mostly get their students from boarding schools and private schools. So yeah at that time it’s reserved to rich privileged families.

If we go back to those times, restrict the seats from the commons, there would never be a rat race. I mean, it only becomes a rat race when the commons think they are attainable to them.

Transparency matters. They should be honest about the students and families they want instead of misleading people into thinking everyone has a fair shot. It’s obvious that isn’t true, so why lie?

It is fair, it just might not meet your definition of 'fairness'. They are very transparent in that they do not care solely about academics but rather ensuring that the vast majority cross a very high bar. They lower that bar a bit for people who fit institutional priorities but keep it high enough to be comfortable that everyone admitted will succeed. They want people from across the US and across the globe and they also want to ensure that socioeconomic conditions are not a barrier to admissions.

Using that criteria the number of applications that they receive from a group of mostly similar candidates far exceeds the spots at their schools which results in a situation where most people never know why they were admitted or denied. This also means that there is randomness and a bit of luck involved. It is frustrating but it isn't unfair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways you can go about it

1. Prioritize T20 admission from a young age. Tailor everything towards that goal. Push ahead even if student is not interested in the thing they were doing, because it would look good to colleges. You would have a tough 5-6 years.

2. Prioritize academics and doing well in high school, regardless of how it looks to colleges. Do things you like and drop things you do not like. Take classes you like, but do emphasize rigor in all subjects, not because colleges like to see that, but because they are building blocks and a strong foundation is essential.

T20 admission is a low probability anyway. Even if you choose option #1, you might not end up at T20. That seemed to be a bad tradeoff to me.

If you choose option #2, even if your overall chances of getting into T20 are lower than if you choose #1, you win either way because (a) you did what you loved and if ended up not going to T20, you have that happy HS years (b) if you did end up at T20, you just got a bonus. Heads I win, tails I don't lose.

That is how we made the decision. Turns out when you do things that you do love, it is easier for others to see it as well. It showed up in how my son got voted to the top position in the team and most likely how the teachers wrote the recommendation letters. Ended at HYP.

There is actually a third option, which is to not even allow your kid to apply to Ivy-plus schools (or other similarly-priced schools), even if they have the stats and the money for them. That is what we did, and we’re happy with the results so far.

If Ivy was just about stats, 90% of the anxiety would evaporate.

Oh you got a 1520 SAT, here are the 4 schools that you can apply to and one is guaranteed to take you. Oh you got a 1210 on the SAT, here are the 4 schools with your major that you can apply to and one of them is guaranteed to accept you.

It would be nice to get a guarantee for sure. My DC with a 35 ACT (not superscored) was deferred from UGA OOS, so not sure schools value the tests that much. Above 75% GPA and 12 APs, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100 years ago, 50 years ago, ivies are expensive, even MC may not be able to afford it. And ivies mostly get their students from boarding schools and private schools. So yeah at that time it’s reserved to rich privileged families.

If we go back to those times, restrict the seats from the commons, there would never be a rat race. I mean, it only becomes a rat race when the commons think they are attainable to them.

Not artfully put, but true. One of the top schools for churning out Nobel winners is City College of NY. It’s where children of poor immigrants in NY went, mostly Jewish. These were smart kids who were driven to improve their family’s lot in life, and many did just that.

Between this thread and the Harvard kids one, it’s made me realize that it’s too bad that the prestige of places like CCNY have fallen. They are perfect for super smart, driven kids who need or should stay close to home and are not interested in the typical college experience but want to just hunker down and get a degree. That’s not to say they are not still good options, just that everyone is falling all over themselves to get into a top 10/20/25 school when those places might not serve the ancillary needs (cost, distance from home, overall culture) that a commuter school does.

Stuy and Bronx Sci kids all going off to Hunter and Stony Brook in droves. Macaulay and Sophie Davis highly HIGHLY respected here in nyc. It maybe doesn't have a national name, but neither did City College at the time. But OP has no interest in sending her kid to Hunter.

Hunter had a great name when I went to SUNY long ago. It was also a school that only locals attended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sucks except if you win. Then it’s great. There is nothing globally that is like the education, connections and level of services of all kinds available at the tippy-top of American higher education.

No, it sucks period. The reason that it sucks is the supply/demand imbalance and the simple fact that there are some whom believe that there are only a small number of schools which "matter" and everything else is a failure. That entire mental model is ridiculous with anything deeper than a surface evaluation because you will quickly realize that this is a demand/ego driven belief rather than any actual difference in quality.

There is a difference in quality. Stanford is better than Arizona State. This is true even though you can succeed in spite of attending Arizona State and even though you may not succeed in spite of attending Stanford.

That is true, Stanford is measurably better than Arizona State. But, Stanford isn't measurably better than Santa Clara especially for undergraduate education.

My suspicion is that Santa Clara is just as good as Stanford for tech majors but wouldn't be as good for other majors.

The quality of the professors and of the other students is certainly going to be higher at any elite school than the majority of state schools.

The real point is that schools are better grouped into buckets, you cannot really stack rank them in any manner that is definitive. And, the top bucket is much larger than many people believe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways you can go about it

1. Prioritize T20 admission from a young age. Tailor everything towards that goal. Push ahead even if student is not interested in the thing they were doing, because it would look good to colleges. You would have a tough 5-6 years.

2. Prioritize academics and doing well in high school, regardless of how it looks to colleges. Do things you like and drop things you do not like. Take classes you like, but do emphasize rigor in all subjects, not because colleges like to see that, but because they are building blocks and a strong foundation is essential.

T20 admission is a low probability anyway. Even if you choose option #1, you might not end up at T20. That seemed to be a bad tradeoff to me.

If you choose option #2, even if your overall chances of getting into T20 are lower than if you choose #1, you win either way because (a) you did what you loved and if ended up not going to T20, you have that happy HS years (b) if you did end up at T20, you just got a bonus. Heads I win, tails I don't lose.

That is how we made the decision. Turns out when you do things that you do love, it is easier for others to see it as well. It showed up in how my son got voted to the top position in the team and most likely how the teachers wrote the recommendation letters. Ended at HYP.

There is actually a third option, which is to not even allow your kid to apply to Ivy-plus schools (or other similarly-priced schools), even if they have the stats and the money for them. That is what we did, and we’re happy with the results so far.

If Ivy was just about stats, 90% of the anxiety would evaporate.

Oh you got a 1520 SAT, here are the 4 schools that you can apply to and one is guaranteed to take you. Oh you got a 1210 on the SAT, here are the 4 schools with your major that you can apply to and one of them is guaranteed to accept you.

These schools are private institutions. They get to admit students based on their goals and priorities, not yours. The vast majority of schools in the US operate in the manner that you describe. You are free to apply to any of them.

Did the PP say anything else? The Ivies and their ilk use sophisticated marketing and opaque admissions to drive an escalating spiral of anxiety among the best and the brightest of American teens. Whether we are playing the game or whether we have opted out, we are all free to observe and remark upon this phenomenon and the deleterious effects it has on American society.

It doesn't have a deleterious effect on society at all. The only deleterious impact is to the egos of some upset families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways you can go about it

1. Prioritize T20 admission from a young age. Tailor everything towards that goal. Push ahead even if student is not interested in the thing they were doing, because it would look good to colleges. You would have a tough 5-6 years.

2. Prioritize academics and doing well in high school, regardless of how it looks to colleges. Do things you like and drop things you do not like. Take classes you like, but do emphasize rigor in all subjects, not because colleges like to see that, but because they are building blocks and a strong foundation is essential.

T20 admission is a low probability anyway. Even if you choose option #1, you might not end up at T20. That seemed to be a bad tradeoff to me.

If you choose option #2, even if your overall chances of getting into T20 are lower than if you choose #1, you win either way because (a) you did what you loved and if ended up not going to T20, you have that happy HS years (b) if you did end up at T20, you just got a bonus. Heads I win, tails I don't lose.

That is how we made the decision. Turns out when you do things that you do love, it is easier for others to see it as well. It showed up in how my son got voted to the top position in the team and most likely how the teachers wrote the recommendation letters. Ended at HYP.

There is actually a third option, which is to not even allow your kid to apply to Ivy-plus schools (or other similarly-priced schools), even if they have the stats and the money for them. That is what we did, and we’re happy with the results so far.

If Ivy was just about stats, 90% of the anxiety would evaporate.

Oh you got a 1520 SAT, here are the 4 schools that you can apply to and one is guaranteed to take you. Oh you got a 1210 on the SAT, here are the 4 schools with your major that you can apply to and one of them is guaranteed to accept you.

These schools are private institutions. They get to admit students based on their goals and priorities, not yours. The vast majority of schools in the US operate in the manner that you describe. You are free to apply to any of them.

Did the PP say anything else? The Ivies and their ilk use sophisticated marketing and opaque admissions to drive an escalating spiral of anxiety among the best and the brightest of American teens. Whether we are playing the game or whether we have opted out, we are all free to observe and remark upon this phenomenon and the deleterious effects it has on American society.

It doesn't have a deleterious effect on society at all. The only deleterious impact is to the egos of some upset families.

Adolescent mental health is a disaster, and the higher-performing the high school, the worse the mental health.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sucks except if you win. Then it’s great. There is nothing globally that is like the education, connections and level of services of all kinds available at the tippy-top of American higher education.

There is no winning. "If you win, you're still a rat." Participating and performing for the rat race teaches our kids that this is the only way to be successful. They will take that mentality to college, their first job, their first relationship, they will seek out careers/jobs that are prestigious and pay money, they'll seek out partners with status who measure their worth that way to and inculcate their children simlarly, they'll learn to value things for their prestige, not fit. They'll measure their own worth, their life and themselves as ranked.