Hmmm, might want to pass your comment on to Fitzsimmons at Harvard. He has been using the expression for years. And no I don't actually think this kid is a diamond in the rough. I think he is an enormously accomplished, very capable student.

Anonymous wrote:First of all the kid got a real 2250, not a Prep Matters spend ten grand to boost your score 300 points, 2250. Look this kid deserves it. He is the exact diamond in the rough Ivies look for. William Floyd High School is not a good school. There are many less desirable areas of Long Island and Shirley and Mastic Beach are on that list. I know, I lived in both.

I know that you're trying to be helpful, but this is a bit patronizing.

First of all the kid got a real 2250, not a Prep Matters spend ten grand to boost your score 300 points, 2250. Look this kid deserves it. He is the exact diamond in the rough Ivies look for. William Floyd High School is not a good school. There are many less desirable areas of Long Island and Shirley and Mastic Beach are on that list. I know, I lived in both.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was talking to my husband about this kid last night. Our kid went to an Ivy. 2250 would not get most white kids into an Ivy (w/o a hook that is). 2250 would get the average white kid into Middlebury or Bowdoin.

The black kid's parents are from Ghana. The Ivies like minorities with direct Afrian roots and less so for African American kids. This kid's EQs were not stellar..but fine.

Simply put, w/o being black, he would not have gotten into 8 Ivies...maybe 2...Cornell and Brown.

Which reminds me of these facts that everybody knows:

1. If you're black, and you get into a fancy school, it's because you are black, and you didn't deserve to get in.
2. If you're not black, and you get into a fancy school, you deserved to get in! Congratulations!
2a. If you're not black, and you get into a fancy school because your parent(s) went, and/or you're an athlete, that doesn't count as affirmative action.

I would hope that no one says this kid doesn't "deserve" to get in to top schools.

But I hope you are myopic rather than disingenuous if you contend that selective college admission offices don't give points or preferences for minority applicants, all things being equal.

Selective college admission offices give points or preferences for all kinds of things. But people only ever talk about one of them. (Hint: it's the "you're black" one.)

Anonymous wrote:I was talking to my husband about this kid last night. Our kid went to an Ivy. 2250 would not get most white kids into an Ivy (w/o a hook that is). 2250 would get the average white kid into Middlebury or Bowdoin.

The black kid's parents are from Ghana. The Ivies like minorities with direct Afrian roots and less so for African American kids. This kid's EQs were not stellar..but fine.

Simply put, w/o being black, he would not have gotten into 8 Ivies...maybe 2...Cornell and Brown.

A white kid born in GHANA with two parents who are nurses very well might have been accepted at all 8.

Which brings something to mind...um, a Bulgarian white boy got into Harvard from Howard Co...poverty, "war", immigration, the works.

Anonymous wrote:I was talking to my husband about this kid last night. Our kid went to an Ivy. 2250 would not get most white kids into an Ivy (w/o a hook that is). 2250 would get the average white kid into Middlebury or Bowdoin.

The black kid's parents are from Ghana. The Ivies like minorities with direct Afrian roots and less so for African American kids. This kid's EQs were not stellar..but fine.

Simply put, w/o being black, he would not have gotten into 8 Ivies...maybe 2...Cornell and Brown.

Just checked w/ SIL whose kids got into Yale and Cornell, and one got into Princeton, white and Jewish. Neither daughter was above 2250, but she did not have the exact numbers. I sent her this thread.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was talking to my husband about this kid last night. Our kid went to an Ivy. 2250 would not get most white kids into an Ivy (w/o a hook that is). 2250 would get the average white kid into Middlebury or Bowdoin.

The black kid's parents are from Ghana. The Ivies like minorities with direct Afrian roots and less so for African American kids. This kid's EQs were not stellar..but fine.

Simply put, w/o being black, he would not have gotten into 8 Ivies...maybe 2...Cornell and Brown.

Which reminds me of these facts that everybody knows:

1. If you're black, and you get into a fancy school, it's because you are black, and you didn't deserve to get in.
2. If you're not black, and you get into a fancy school, you deserved to get in! Congratulations!
2a. If you're not black, and you get into a fancy school because your parent(s) went, and/or you're an athlete, that doesn't count as affirmative action.

I would hope that no one says this kid doesn't "deserve" to get in to top schools.

But I hope you are myopic rather than disingenuous if you contend that selective college admission offices don't give points or preferences for minority applicants, all things being equal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2250 and top 2% of class at leading LI public. Being minority did not hurt. I don't care if you are white, yellow or green, those stats will get you serious consideration at all the top schools. No reverse discrimination here.

It is not even close to a "leading Long Island high school". Over 30% farms.

More of a reason his scores are impressive. Had he been at a top LI school, maybe he would have done even better. If anything the supposed affirmative action was geographic.

He isn't poor. His family comes from Ivies.

Still does not mean they are well off. Two college professors can easily make less than 150K combined.

Well I doubt he was from the ghetto and on FARMS which is what someone else was trying to point out.

His parents went to local, public colleges and got nursing degrees. He has a few uncles/cousins who got accepted to ivy league schools (no word on whether or not they attended). That really has no bearing on his own immediate family's financial status.

He's a well-rounded kid (music, volunteering, athletics, academics) from an unusual background, who wrote a strong essay and probably interviews well (assuming he had interviews for any of the schools). I'm thrilled that this is the college admissions story this year, rather than that ridiculous Pittsburgh spolied brat from last year.

This article offered this perspective:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/31/ivy-league-admissions-college-university/7119531/

But Enin has "a lot of things in his favor," says college admissions expert Katherine Cohen, CEO and founder of IvyWise, a New York-based consulting firm.

For one thing, he's a young man. "Colleges are looking for great boys," Cohen says. Application pools these days skew heavily toward girls: The U.S. Department of Education estimates that females comprised 57% of college students in degree-granting institutions last year. Colleges — especially elite ones — are struggling to keep male/female ratios even, so admitting academically gifted young men like Enin gives them an advantage.

He ranks No. 11 in a class of 647 at William Floyd, a large public school on Long Island's south shore. That puts him in the top 2% of his class. His SAT score, at 2,250 out of 2,400 points, puts him in the 99th percentile for African-American students.

He will also have taken 11 Advanced Placement courses by the time he graduates this spring. He's a musician who sings in the school's a capella group and volunteers at Stony Brook University Hospital's radiology department. Enin plans to study medicine, as did both of his parents. They immigrated to New York from Ghana in the 1980s and studied at public colleges nearby. Both are nurses.

Being a first-generation American from Ghana also helps him stand out, Cohen says.

Anonymous wrote:I was talking to my husband about this kid last night. Our kid went to an Ivy. 2250 would not get most white kids into an Ivy (w/o a hook that is). 2250 would get the average white kid into Middlebury or Bowdoin.

The black kid's parents are from Ghana. The Ivies like minorities with direct Afrian roots and less so for African American kids. This kid's EQs were not stellar..but fine.

Simply put, w/o being black, he would not have gotten into 8 Ivies...maybe 2...Cornell and Brown.

Which reminds me of these facts that everybody knows:

1. If you're black, and you get into a fancy school, it's because you are black, and you didn't deserve to get in.
2. If you're not black, and you get into a fancy school, you deserved to get in! Congratulations!
2a. If you're not black, and you get into a fancy school because your parent(s) went, and/or you're an athlete, that doesn't count as affirmative action.

Exactly pp. And for the earlier poster touting his public school background, that issue is moot for an AA kid with a 2250. Most AA kids do not score anywhere near that. With that score he could have gone public/private/home school. Similarly, a white kid with those scores wouldn't have gotten into those 8 Ivies regardless if they were public or private.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, he's not quite the profile of "I patented a cure for cancer, took my company public when I was 15 and then gave away all my proceeds to African orphans" that you would expect is required to get into 8 Ivy schools!

Yes, he's not quite the profile of "I patented a cure for cancer, took my company public when I was 15 and then gave away all my proceeds to African orphans" that you would expect is required to get into 8 Ivy schools!

The student had a very respectable applicant profile, but not earth-shattering. Being AA didn't hurt, plus he's first generation (his parents are from Ghana) and first in his family to attend college. Selective college admission offices eat that stuff up.

I think it is interesting that this kid comes from a…wait for it…PUBLIC school! There is so much talk on these threads about parents going into debt/risking their future in order to send their kid to an expensive private school so that, among other things, the kid will get into a great college.

Hmm. Interesting that this fabulous story of achievement challenges that whole way of thinking! Go public school. Smart kids will excel in public schools and great colleges will reward them for doing it.

I was talking to my husband about this kid last night. Our kid went to an Ivy. 2250 would not get most white kids into an Ivy (w/o a hook that is). 2250 would get the average white kid into Middlebury or Bowdoin.

The black kid's parents are from Ghana. The Ivies like minorities with direct Afrian roots and less so for African American kids. This kid's EQs were not stellar..but fine.

Simply put, w/o being black, he would not have gotten into 8 Ivies...maybe 2...Cornell and Brown.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2250 and top 2% of class at leading LI public. Being minority did not hurt. I don't care if you are white, yellow or green, those stats will get you serious consideration at all the top schools. No reverse discrimination here.

It is not even close to a "leading Long Island high school". Over 30% farms.

More of a reason his scores are impressive. Had he been at a top LI school, maybe he would have done even better. If anything the supposed affirmative action was geographic.

He isn't poor. His family comes from Ivies.

Still does not mean they are well off. Two college professors can easily make less than 150K combined.

Well I doubt he was from the ghetto and on FARMS which is what someone else was trying to point out.