Reply to Any high school teachers here who can give some frank talk about which types of students get into the top colleges?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Any high school teachers here who can give some frank talk about which types of students get into the top colleges?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ve been teaching AP for many, many years. Most of my students are the 4.0 unweighted GPA types. They volunteer, are varsity athletes, and they are doing all they can to look good for college. Some truly stand out, but most are very strong candidates.

And then college admissions come and the results appear random. The true stand-outs face surprising rejections and the “just” strong candidate got in instead.

Here’s what I think: students have to meet a threshold to make it into the “considered” pile at a college. But after making it into that pile, the choice itself appears random.

All the kids can really do is get themselves into the pile. Then cross fingers and hope for the best. [/quote]

I think you are accurate all the way until your point about the threshold to be considered pile. After that, it is not random though it may look that way to the outside. The decisions are based on things like.:
- Major (classics gets in over bio; gender studies over engineering; English over CS)
- Talent/ability (National award winning squash player gets in over varsity baseball captain; neither recruited. National ranked figure skater gets on over state champion soccer player; neither recruited)
- essays (what kids reveal in essays matters a lot more than people think.) There is a right way to do essays in the wrong way to do essays. Unfortunately, most HS English teachers advise kids to do the wrong thing. It’s not about overcomplicated sentence and essay structures. The writing should be at easy to read/grasp level; varied sentences, including some very short sentences; poignant, personal, and touching on at least 3-4 of your personal values. It should also not repeat anything covered anywhere else in the application, including your major.
- LOR (an exceptional LOR can make a difference)

Look at the T10 scoring rubrics. You can see why certain kids get in once you understand the scoring. [/quote]

I’m the PP. I still see it as random. I help with the essays. (No, I don’t advise poetic, flowery essays. People do that?) I write those exceptional LOR. I see the variety of majors.

And, after all these years, it still seems random. I know these students more than admissions officers ever will. Sometimes the admissions appear way off. [/quote]

I always wondered...say you've been teaching for 25 years.  If you write a letter of recommendation for a student that has  "wowed' you even compared to the prior 25 years of students whom you have taught, do you say that?  For example, "the finest scholar in my 25 years of teaching?"   Does that carry any weight?[/quote]

I once had a job where I read a lot of letters, and yes, I think it would. I was a contractor helping with a busy college season for a school district and temped at several schools, so I looked at thousands of letters. There are many students who are very bright, hardworking kids, and they get into good colleges. But there's also certain kids who are significantly smarter than those kids, and that's what this kind of comment indicates. Teachers have, every year, some kids with a 4.0 and perfect or near-perfect SATs and various APs or whatever. These kids are 1% or 2% of the class each year. But the one-in-25-years kid is a cut above those. Because a high school teacher sees about 150 kids per year. So to be 1 in 25 years is to be very rare indeed.

And there are kids who just have something special about them. Something that isn't captured by grades or test scores, might be shown in the essay, but the teachers may also call it out. One girl for example, she had good grades, wasn't super strong in math, family wasn't super savvy about college admits, but she was unbelievably insightful as to other people. Just off the charts in her perceptiveness and compassion, a truly unique and rare human being. Her interpretations of literature were stunning. So the teachers wrote her really special recs that highlighted this unique personal quality, of the "Most unique student in my entire teaching career" "rare ability" "stands out above any person I ever met" kind of thing. [/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