Half of the graduating seniors at our public school have all As. Most have taken the exact same classes. Now you have hundreds of kids from even one school with the same academic credentials.

What school system is this? Is it one of the Maryland districts where you can get an A in the class with an 85 as long as your quarter grades are 80, 90, 80, 90? Or are they just grades that are artificially high due to COVID-19 grading policies?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Voluntourism trips

Those scams likely cost you a point or two.

No they don't, they help immensely in writing both about experience and service.

DP - Sorry, you are wrong there, read any book by an admissions officer. They are a negative bellweather. You can do them, just leave them out of your application.

But what if volunteerism and Services a thing your kid actually cares about? Why is that a bad thing?

It isn't, but the discussion was about the "pay to travel for a week" kind of volunteerism.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Voluntourism trips

Those scams likely cost you a point or two.

No they don't, they help immensely in writing both about experience and service.

DP - Sorry, you are wrong there, read any book by an admissions officer. They are a negative bellweather. You can do them, just leave them out of your application.

But what if volunteerism and Services a thing your kid actually cares about? Why is that a bad thing?

NP. Service is always a good thing. But there are appearances, and volun-tourism can have the appearance of something a wealthy high school kid did for the purpose of apps. It depends on what and how it is written about. It can be done well, e.g. I know someone at Princeton who wrote about his experience with service in a third world country, but can very easily be done poorly.

Local service opportunities where the student connects directly with the poor and disadvantaged may be more useful in the long run, both for the actual impact and for app purposes. It's all in the thinking, what impact the student had and how that experience furthered the student's self-development.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Voluntourism trips

Those scams likely cost you a point or two.

No they don't, they help immensely in writing both about experience and service.

DP - Sorry, you are wrong there, read any book by an admissions officer. They are a negative bellweather. You can do them, just leave them out of your application.

But what if volunteerism and Services a thing your kid actually cares about? Why is that a bad thing?

Do it in your own community/state. And don’t brag about it to your friends.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Voluntourism trips

Those scams likely cost you a point or two.

No they don't, they help immensely in writing both about experience and service.

DP - Sorry, you are wrong there, read any book by an admissions officer. They are a negative bellweather. You can do them, just leave them out of your application.

But what if volunteerism and Services a thing your kid actually cares about? Why is that a bad thing?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry - wrong link. I’m following too many threads. https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-yearfreshman-applicants/standardized-tests

Led me here, to academic preparedness: http://admissions.divisions.caltech.edu/apply/first-yearfreshman-applicants/academic-preparation-requirements While it is unlikely that any high school will be prepping kids for Caltech specifically, the part about math topics students should be prepared for learning is interesting. It would be ironic if all this change in admissions were to somehow influence what - or how - high schools teach. If that actually happened, if colleges themselves had an influence there, I'd say it's about time.

Thanks for the link. While my kid is not interested in / is not a candidate for CalTech, I nevertheless found this information illuminating .

It's an unvarnished, incredibly detailed explanation of how tip top schools think.

This allows the university to focus on their bottom line. Legacies and children of donors will have an edge. Everyone else? Not so much.

Anonymous wrote:Sorry - wrong link. I’m following too many threads. https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-yearfreshman-applicants/standardized-tests

Led me here, to academic preparedness: http://admissions.divisions.caltech.edu/apply/first-yearfreshman-applicants/academic-preparation-requirements While it is unlikely that any high school will be prepping kids for Caltech specifically, the part about math topics students should be prepared for learning is interesting. It would be ironic if all this change in admissions were to somehow influence what - or how - high schools teach. If that actually happened, if colleges themselves had an influence there, I'd say it's about time.

Anonymous wrote:extracurriculars, internships, jobs, essays, life story, geography, diversity

This is what smaller, selective colleges have always done. Will be interesting to see how it plays out for the big schools. Will they really be able to hire enough app readers to actually do this? Now they can first filter by test scores/GPA. GPA alone, esp with the inflated GPAs because of lenient grading during the shutdown, will be hard to filter on. I'd expect them to put a higher floor on GPA to trim down the apps they actually look at holistically.

extracurriculars, internships, jobs, essays, life story, geography, diversity

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Voluntourism trips

Those scams likely cost you a point or two.

No they don't, they help immensely in writing both about experience and service.

That's not what admissions officers say. They know that those trips are resume building exercises for UMC and wealthy kids. They aren't sincere expressions of who the kids are. I doubt they cost points, but they don't add much.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Voluntourism trips

Those scams likely cost you a point or two.

No they don't, they help immensely in writing both about experience and service.

DP - Sorry, you are wrong there, read any book by an admissions officer. They are a negative bellweather. You can do them, just leave them out of your application.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The degree to which you can claim victimhood of one form or another will be key.

Take your thinly-veiled politics out of the college forum.

It’s directly relevant. One major reason to move away from the SAT is to allow more holistic measures to overtake objective measures on which different demographics perform quite differently. Without SATs, it becomes harder for Asians to show they are being discriminated against, for example.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Voluntourism trips

Those scams likely cost you a point or two.

No they don't, they help immensely in writing both about experience and service.

Sorry - wrong link. I’m following too many threads. https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-yearfreshman-applicants/standardized-tests