Reply to Making up things in common app activities and awards

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Making up things in common app activities and awards"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not.  But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no,  Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis,  and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.[/quote]

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not.  Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents. [/quote]

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.
 [/quote]

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.
[/quote]

Exactly.  The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take.  And they paid the price for it.[/quote]

I mean, a couple paid the price.  The thing we learned for Varsity Blues is colleges are hackable.  Nobody verifies shit.[/quote]

In this case, the people who were supposed to do the verifying (in this case, the coaches) were corrupt. That is certainly going to happen again and there is practically no way to prevent it.[/quote]

🚨 exactly right.

AO: Coach this looks fishy, is this kid really a superstar?

Coach (counting pile of hundreds): For sure, man! This kid is the number one Water Poloist in the state, we need them now.

AO: Okay then, admit. I don’t want to be the guy to screw the team over.

Coaches were the weak link because they aren’t paid that much (unless football), and they have a lot of personal leeway in deciding who is talented at these sports with few fans and few players.

Everyone can tell who is good at Basketball. There are HIGH SCHOOL teams that are famous.

Water Polo? Sailing? Crew? Dressage? Who knows. Someone with domain knowledge needs to weigh in, and that’s Couch Corrupto and nobody else.

This is why national science prize winners and Eagle Scout/Gold Award are so appealing to schools: someone exterior to the school that is a trusted source did some vetting. You can easily check if they actually won the award with one email or phone call.

If you’re concerned about fakery, encourage your kid to do verifiable stuff and invite the school to check up on it or provide hard evidence.

[/quote]

How are ECs shielded from "privilege" criticisms, though? If we toss test scores because we buy the argument that they reflect only "privilege", why should anything in that line of thinking make it into the stew?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics