Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteered for this organization to sponsor an Afghan refugee family The person who founded it is a now at Stanford. https://www.irocenter.org/about-immigrant-refugee-outreach-center-dmv

And that person who allegedly started it (shhh.. it was her mom), hasn’t done anything with it since she left for California. I know this because l also volunteer with them. It’s run by other people who care while the founder is having fun at Stanford. At least they continue to do good, and l had an amazing experience with their help, but definitely not thanks to the founder!

The website is clear she is a founder but she doesn't run it.

It is her lawyer mom that runs it, right??

DP, and when the previous PP says "the website is clear she is a founder but she doesn't run it..." (as if to defend the founder), this seems to illustrate the point: Since it was founded in 2019 (as per the web site) and within 2 years the founder has stepped down from any operational role, that is a pretty clear indication of the founder's short-term motivation. Moreover, to have the founder prominently featured on the web site (e.g. with the video of her the about page, citing her [rather than the mission] in the first sentence of the 'about' blurb.), these are all reinforcing the conclusion that this non-profit was a self-promotional tactic.

And how exactly does a non-profit keep running after a couple of years when its supposedly main founder steps away? There would need to be a backup management team/ individual in place by that time, one that has some sort of established role, to keep operations going. Either the founder has built such a team, or groomed a successor, (both unlikely in the <2 years she 'ran' it before college)--or there is already a shadow leader in place, which isn't really a secret here, as her mother is also the co-founder (but chooses to give her daughter top billing for some mysterious reason!).

The web site also says that the founder hatched her non-profit 2 months after completing an overseas refugee-related project. It's not rocket science to see that this sort of timeline is jumping in somewhat impulsively before really learning the lay of the land and taking time to research what has been most effective in this type of work.

Anonymous wrote:Applicants who start non-profits should immediately go to the reject pile. It’s an obvious application stunt. If a top-tier school wants to find genuinely interesting people, they won’t find them among these gamers.

My SIL was the director of an honors college for years. 10 page tiger mom resumes went straight to the trash. Some offices see through it and aren’t impressed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteered for this organization to sponsor an Afghan refugee family The person who founded it is a now at Stanford. https://www.irocenter.org/about-immigrant-refugee-outreach-center-dmv

And that person who allegedly started it (shhh.. it was her mom), hasn’t done anything with it since she left for California. I know this because l also volunteer with them. It’s run by other people who care while the founder is having fun at Stanford. At least they continue to do good, and l had an amazing experience with their help, but definitely not thanks to the founder!

The website is clear she is a founder but she doesn't run it.

It is her lawyer mom that runs it, right??

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“I hate this lying transparent scam why don’t colleges see through this?”

Translation: I am mad that I didn’t get off my ass and set this up for my kid.

This made me laugh-- thanks!

Me too! But also crying while laughing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteered for this organization to sponsor an Afghan refugee family The person who founded it is a now at Stanford. https://www.irocenter.org/about-immigrant-refugee-outreach-center-dmv

This is an NCS STA family that has charted the paths of all their children in the school since the first day of school! All kids dabble in saving the refugees. Parents are lawyers who basically run the organization for them in their name. It's truly the most egregious Tiger Mom, Lion Dad case anyone has ever known on the Close.

And there are parents like this all over the country essentially cheating to make their kids appear amazing.

And parents like this around the world too. My friend in an Asian country (she and her spouse are US-college educated) did something similar. Their daughter "Larla" was leading an initiative to teach her hobby to poor kids in another developing country, starting around 10th grade. The mom shared the gofundme-type page and I gave a small amount (she is a good friend, just misguided on this front). But from the gofundme content, it seemed like the fundraising was basically Larla's parents getting their friends to donate. Naturally, the parents both "helped" organize the trip to carry out the hobby-related event, and the event had a fancy name. Afterwards, the girl also managed to parlay this 'charitable effort' into getting onto some speaker panels for 'youth leaders'...this was covid time so there were lots of these virtual/international conferences with a low bar for attending. The girl got into an ivy...I think she's smart, she had a serious hobby, and could have been an attractive candidate without the whole charitable-event thing... but the whole thing really annoyed me.

It was a little more creative than the 'start a nonprofit in your backyard' angle, and the 'youth leader' speaker thing probably got her more mileage...I think the college admissions may have been fooled.

This one the PP shared is pretty transparently ridiculous, though. As someone who has worked with refugees a little, and has seen a lot of other volunteers doing this kind of stuff informally, it's really disappointing to see someone start something that is most likely duplicating efforts, all for the sake of looking good. There are numerous other established refugee-supporting organizations in the area. Why the need to create a separate organization instead of helping advance the work of one of the other ones...Disappointing that Stanford did not see through this ploy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A unifying theme among ED admits from our Big 3 school (those that have posted their ED to social media) seems to be that they "started a nonprofit." One or two I have seen seem fulsome and ongoing. Others, not so much.

Is this the latest "angle" parents in the DMV are encouraging?

Good works, even if done for a short period of time, are still worthwhile. And not all efforts will be successful. But anecdotally, it is curious.

It isn't just nonprofits. Kids are packaged as "entrepreneurs" as well.

Yeah -- seeing this a lot. And I agree with the prior poster who described it as "gross." It's worse than much of the 'voluntourism' out there. In this case, the kids generally are using the experience for an admissions edge.

I don't see it as gross. I see it as smart. Not all started a business for the sole purpose of getting into college. Some did it because they were tired of getting rejections when applying to jobs so they created their own opportunity.

My kid started her own business when she was 14 almost 15. No one wanted to hire her since she was under 16. She heard it over and over: apply again in a year; we only hire 16 and up. She's a talented artist and gifted her bff a pair of hand-painted shoes. That friend's cousin loved them and asked if she could pay DD to paint her a pair for her quince. More kids asked to pay for custom shoes and then when she was 16, she created an LLC when a video of her product went somewhat viral and she was inundated with orders.

This sounds like a business that a 15 year old could actually run with very limited parental involvement. That’s legit and smart. Good for her! But a lot of these stories are win-at-all-costs, parent run frauds. Schools should take a few minutes to distinguish between the two kinds and look into the business/non profit claims. How many of us know a kid whose non profit helped literally no one but it helped get them into a great school? Or broke fundraising records but it was mostly one donation from mom or dad? Too many. Schools need to check these claims. Otherwise they’re rewarding lying and cheating - and encouraging more liars and cheaters in the workforce.

My kid had zero interest in volunteer work.
Got through the middle school requirement and did zero in HS.

Of course, it concerned me with regard to college applications.
But the kid had taken course rigor to the extreme, got good grades, good test scores, and leadership EC.
Accepted ED in a top-choice school.
Glad we don't have to worry about this volunteer/nonprofit stuff in college because the kid has a paid internship already lined up!

Applicants who start non-profits should immediately go to the reject pile. It’s an obvious application stunt. If a top-tier school wants to find genuinely interesting people, they won’t find them among these gamers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A unifying theme among ED admits from our Big 3 school (those that have posted their ED to social media) seems to be that they "started a nonprofit." One or two I have seen seem fulsome and ongoing. Others, not so much.

Is this the latest "angle" parents in the DMV are encouraging?

Good works, even if done for a short period of time, are still worthwhile. And not all efforts will be successful. But anecdotally, it is curious.

It isn't just nonprofits. Kids are packaged as "entrepreneurs" as well.

Yeah -- seeing this a lot. And I agree with the prior poster who described it as "gross." It's worse than much of the 'voluntourism' out there. In this case, the kids generally are using the experience for an admissions edge.

I don't see it as gross. I see it as smart. Not all started a business for the sole purpose of getting into college. Some did it because they were tired of getting rejections when applying to jobs so they created their own opportunity.

My kid started her own business when she was 14 almost 15. No one wanted to hire her since she was under 16. She heard it over and over: apply again in a year; we only hire 16 and up. She's a talented artist and gifted her bff a pair of hand-painted shoes. That friend's cousin loved them and asked if she could pay DD to paint her a pair for her quince. More kids asked to pay for custom shoes and then when she was 16, she created an LLC when a video of her product went somewhat viral and she was inundated with orders.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteered for this organization to sponsor an Afghan refugee family The person who founded it is a now at Stanford. https://www.irocenter.org/about-immigrant-refugee-outreach-center-dmv

This is an NCS STA family that has charted the paths of all their children in the school since the first day of school! All kids dabble in saving the refugees. Parents are lawyers who basically run the organization for them in their name. It's truly the most egregious Tiger Mom, Lion Dad case anyone has ever known on the Close.

And there are parents like this all over the country essentially cheating to make their kids appear amazing.

Anonymous wrote:I volunteered for this organization to sponsor an Afghan refugee family The person who founded it is a now at Stanford. https://www.irocenter.org/about-immigrant-refugee-outreach-center-dmv

This is an NCS STA family that has charted the paths of all their children in the school since the first day of school! All kids dabble in saving the refugees. Parents are lawyers who basically run the organization for them in their name. It's truly the most egregious Tiger Mom, Lion Dad case anyone has ever known on the Close.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This makes me tired. Just be a real person and do ECs that resonate with you. Help others. Or don't. But don't be duplicitous.

Most kids do this but selective colleges don’t reward them for their honesty. Colleges want to think they’re getting the most special snowflakes who really do have the maturity to pull of these impressive resumes. Truth: parents are driving most of it AND making most of it happen. So selective schools are filled with students of bad character and no integrity. Then they graduate with say….a Penn business degree and run major scams while appearing to be the vision of success. ‘Merica.

LOL. Do you really think Stanford is "filled with students of bad character and no integrity?"

Um....ever hear of Sam Bankfried? That guy was practically raised at Stanford by his two Stanford law professor parents (who appear to be deeply involved in the scandal as well)

Elizabeth Holmes sounds familiar too.

And Peter Thiel. If someone is a businessman and evil, you can just assume Stanford

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm glad my DC stayed true to themselves and didn't do community service for the sake of college apps. (and I'll fess up that I did push my kid for the sake of college apps.)

Didn't even want to track their hours and didn't list any community service on their common app.

Got into their ED school.

.

Yes but nobody cares about your third tier SLAC where you were full pay and them letting your kid in with a 28 ACT.

Lol.. kid is high stats and was accepted to a top ranking school... without having to start a nonprofit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm glad my DC stayed true to themselves and didn't do community service for the sake of college apps. (and I'll fess up that I did push my kid for the sake of college apps.)

Didn't even want to track their hours and didn't list any community service on their common app.

Got into their ED school.

.

Yes but nobody cares about your third tier SLAC where you were full pay and them letting your kid in with a 28 ACT.

And a cheerful holiday season to you as well! (Woke up on the wrong side of the tree?)

Anonymous wrote:I'm glad my DC stayed true to themselves and didn't do community service for the sake of college apps. (and I'll fess up that I did push my kid for the sake of college apps.)

Didn't even want to track their hours and didn't list any community service on their common app.

Got into their ED school.

.

Yes but nobody cares about your third tier SLAC where you were full pay and them letting your kid in with a 28 ACT.