College Admissions Doesn't Need to Be So Competitive: Super High Stat Kids are not "a dime a dozen."
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Anonymous
You're kidding right? That blog post just says "I don’t mean to discourage anything from pursuing incredible science and technology research on their own. If you want to do it, DO IT. But don’t do it because you think it’s your ticket to MIT. And that applies to everything you do – classes, SATs, extracurriculars. There is no golden ticket. So breathe." |
Anonymous
| Even going to college is something most this society doesn't get the opportunity to do. |
Anonymous
Could you please provide a source for this? |
Anonymous
| Only 20% of undergrads at Oxford and Cambridge are international. Do you think that number would be so low if they were just taking the kids with the best #s globally? |
Anonymous
| I work in higher ed, have lived in Asia, and visit universities and high schools in China, Japan, and Vietnam annually. My opinion is that holistic admissions are imperfect, but they are a hell of a lot better than purely grade- and test-centric admissions, which corrupt not only the colleges that rely on them but also the high schools that teach to them. |
Anonymous
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Shouldn't schools be looking for more than a current high test score? Especially in a test prep heavy world, I'm glad they look for a lot more.
We don't want the US system to look like Korea's. CSAT prep and pressure is crazy! |
Anonymous
What's your point? These are British universities and they take more international students than say, Harvard, which accepts about 17% international students. But the British, despite their anachronistic system of royalty and nobilities don't have legacy preferences. That should tell you something about merit admissions to their elite universities. |
Anonymous
the EC centered holistic admissions are more likely to confer advantages on the wealthy |
Anonymous
You can, but what would you look for? Then you get into the nebulous world of athletic preferences for obscure rich kid sports, donor admits, legacy preferences, and private schools with their own curriculum that are too "special" to do independently evaluated AP exams but that their kids are far superior to public school kids. |
Anonymous
Why are people bitter about donor preference? How do you think the schools got the money to cover the cost of educating FGLI? |
Anonymous
Then just rip off the bandaid and auction off slots to the highest bidder. |
Anonymous
they have the opportunity, we have student loans. They just choose not to, or choose a deadend major |
Anonymous
That doesn’t work. The whole point of the current messy system is that rich kids get to imagine that they’re smart and smart kids get to imagine they’re part of the elite. It only works because they cross the streams. |
Anonymous
The wealthy have an advantage in nearly everything, including testing and grades. We may never have a complete meritocracy, but most AOs are trained to recognize such disparities. So the kid who does a month of volunteering in Palau on his parent's dime may not have an advantage over the kid who spends 20 hours a week at a parttime job or looking after younger siblings. |
Anonymous
We are told that admissions controls for school quality by comparing the student transcript to their school profile and don't expect students to do more than is offered by the school. Why don't they do the same with ECs? No recognition for ECs not offered by the school or that cost more than a de minimus amount? |