Anonymous
Post 07/17/2025 09:20     Subject: Social Portfolios?!?

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:One problem we encounter in admissions is the heavily curated application that shows extraordinary leadership and originality but the student has neither leadership nor originality. Even interviews don't really weed then out anymore as the stakes have gotten so high for some students that they have prepared for am interview like it was a PowerPoint presentation complete with jokes and anecdotes.


Sounds like you are in admissions! At our school, one teacher writes LORs giving credit for projects to her favorite kids even though it was someone else’s idea and work. So she can say that SHE got this kid into <prestigious school>, which is true but she leaves out HOW she got them in. Then those kids tell younger kids to join her club and do whatever the teacher says so that they can do well in admissions.

Perhaps the videos will help a bit after all!

How do you know about the recommendations a teacher has written? They're submitted in a secure, online portal.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2025 09:15     Subject: Social Portfolios?!?

[twitter]
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:One problem we encounter in admissions is the heavily curated application that shows extraordinary leadership and originality but the student has neither leadership nor originality. Even interviews don't really weed then out anymore as the stakes have gotten so high for some students that they have prepared for am interview like it was a PowerPoint presentation complete with jokes and anecdotes.


Sounds like you are in admissions! At our school, one teacher writes LORs giving credit for projects to her favorite kids even though it was someone else’s idea and work. So she can say that SHE got this kid into <prestigious school>, which is true but she leaves out HOW she got them in. Then those kids tell younger kids to join her club and do whatever the teacher says so that they can do well in admissions.

Perhaps the videos will help a bit after all!


But how? The videos are just kids defending viewpoints with other kids right? So the debate kids will do extraordinarily well?
And verbose social kids?
Who else?
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2025 09:02     Subject: Social Portfolios?!?

Anonymous wrote:One problem we encounter in admissions is the heavily curated application that shows extraordinary leadership and originality but the student has neither leadership nor originality. Even interviews don't really weed then out anymore as the stakes have gotten so high for some students that they have prepared for am interview like it was a PowerPoint presentation complete with jokes and anecdotes.


Sounds like you are in admissions! At our school, one teacher writes LORs giving credit for projects to her favorite kids even though it was someone else’s idea and work. So she can say that SHE got this kid into <prestigious school>, which is true but she leaves out HOW she got them in. Then those kids tell younger kids to join her club and do whatever the teacher says so that they can do well in admissions.

Perhaps the videos will help a bit after all!
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2025 08:58     Subject: Social Portfolios?!?

Anonymous wrote:One problem we encounter in admissions is the heavily curated application that shows extraordinary leadership and originality but the student has neither leadership nor originality. Even interviews don't really weed then out anymore as the stakes have gotten so high for some students that they have prepared for am interview like it was a PowerPoint presentation complete with jokes and anecdotes.


Just by logic, you cannot fill up an entire college class with 2,000 original leaders. That makes no sense. You can't have leaders without some followers or some observers or some analytic types. you can try I guess but it could cause some issues.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2025 08:49     Subject: Social Portfolios?!?

Anonymous wrote:One problem we encounter in admissions is the heavily curated application that shows extraordinary leadership and originality but the student has neither leadership nor originality. Even interviews don't really weed then out anymore as the stakes have gotten so high for some students that they have prepared for am interview like it was a PowerPoint presentation complete with jokes and anecdotes.


So do you think these Zoom discussions are helpful?