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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This behavior costs admissions people time and energy and for every school that accepted her, some student was rejected--maybe an URM who really wanted to go there.[/quote]

That's not how this works.  For elite schools, you have no idea whether you will get in, barring multi-million dollar donations.  For the very good schools with competitive admissions proccesses, the waitlists are large and at most she bumped a person from the waitlist that was never getting in.  But for the vast majority of the schools that she was likely admitted to, there was little to no admissions process.  She is a URM and a first-gen college student.  She has 5 siblings, including one with serious health concerns.  She plans to be a teacher.  A full-ride (or very close) is probably more important to her than many of the things she would find out on a tour.  And you only know that after you apply.  Look at the schools that she was reported as considering:

Louisiana State University, Valparaiso University, University of North Texas, Fisk University, Randolph University, Brandeis University, and Mississippi State University.

These are fine schools, but only one of them is ranked within the top 100.  And these are presumably the "best" options according to this student's assessment.  So, pressumably a good chunk of the other places that she applied were local universities that admit basically anyone that meets some fairly low minmum.

Though I do love all the outrage about how a poor, black girl from the South is just abusing the system. 
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[b]Most of those schools do not have 100% admittance so yes, she took those 114 spots from someone else who could have gotten admitted.  She also took millions of scholarship dollars away from other poor black girls in the South that applied to those schools.  They won't then go to someone else this year.  They decide each year how much they can offer and if a certain kid doesn't choose the school it goes back for next year.  So someone else missed on those scholarships this year that truly needed them.

I don't have any problem offering free applications to poor kids, but there must be a limit.  Just because you can get a free sample, doesn't mean you go up and take all the samples off the table.  It is a gesture to be use with grace.  Not abused.  This was not only abused, but someone people thought it was newsworthy for the positive.  For people that are currently in this process, it is disheartening.  There are families right above the poverty/pell line that need to pay to apply, pay to send scores, and can only do a handful.  They desperately need scholarship money to even attend.  Most will end up only going to community college and dropping out to work FT because of it.  Our income is less than $75K and we struggled with paying close to $1000 in applications, FAFSA, CSS, and college board score fees.  If schools WANT you to apply to as many as possible, like you said, make them free for everyone. But schools don't want that.  They make a ton of money off of apps and most of the time, they barely look at the first round anyway.  I highly doubt colleges would want anyone who makes the free app cut off, to send out 100 of them.  Do you?  This was only to make the news.  She is that kind of girl. No consideration to her fellow classmates around her.  All about me.  I deserve this.  I will show them.  Congrats for being a selfish idiot.  [/quote][/b]

This is spot on and extremely well-said.  And apparently this high school has made sport out of encouraging this behavior since a boy the year before bragged about getting into 83 colleges.  Someone there is wrongly encouraging this.[/quote]

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