Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Include your polo events and write an essay about how you lovingly care for your polo horses yourself, grooms be damned? Lacrosse will look like you're positively slumming it by comparison
DD sails with her father and rides on horseback. Applications that look full pay are not looked down upon these days, OP.
Your kid is not getting a poverty boost if he lives in this area and your family is more than lower working class. He's white so he's not getting a ethnicity boost either. Thus: dwelling on the low caliber of his lacrosse team is unhelpful. It will just mean your kid is bad at his chosen sport - don't do that to him, please.
Huh? It sounds like your kids have lots of resources to be engaged in elite activities. And if that is part of who they are, then reflecting it in their application is reflecting reality.
If you're a sailor or a polo player or a lax player that does not come from a high level of resources, you might want to take care that your application reflects your reality. Why have the admissions Department misunderstand the reality of an applicant?
What about "the white middle class doesn't get a pass" don't you understand?
The pass is given if:
- you're very poor (not just poorer than your wealthy friends!).
- you're very not white (bonus for recent immigrants).
- severe disability or traumatic childhood (and it needs to be severe).
That's it. A middle class white kid IS NOT GETTING ANYTHING. It's ridiculous that OP wants special consideration just because her kid didn't have it as good as more privileged kids!!!
Within that context, it will disadvantage your kid to dwell on the team not winning stuff. The college admissions officer will read it and think "OK this kid couldn't make the best teams, so maybe he's not hard-working enough or not intelligent enough". You do not mention how modest the candidate's achievement is, unless you have the passes mentioned above, to explain that the achievement is actually spectacular given the starting point. Here the starting point is the AVERAGE starting point.
OP's error is thinking that their situation is indicative of some kind of hardship. It's really, really, not.