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I'm currently going through the painstaking task of getting all my essays, transcripts, test scores, and applications together to apply to college (university) here in the good ol USA. However, the more I read and learn about how the US system of college admissions works compared to other countries, the more angry I become. Some might say that we have the best universities in the world, which is probably true, but I think that this is in spite of, not because of, how we admit people in to college, specifically the top colleges. Allow me to rant a little bit (okay actually a lot) about why the US system sucks.
Sports are fun and a good way to relax and socialize while maintaining your physique, but for whatever reason the USA fetishizes high school and college sports to an unhealthy degree. It gets to the point that a lot of schools and even many universities become more about sports than anything else. I'm sure, regardless of where you're from, you've read about the stereotypical American high school with the popular jocks and cheerleaders and the loser nerds. Well, we actually do tend to glorify sports that much. Even some of the best schools in the country, such as Harvard (which lets in 200 recruited athletes per year, 10% of admitted students and WAY TOO MANY) decide to forget the reason that they exist in the first place as institutes of higher learning and lower standards to let in athletes. Ofc not all athletes are dumb, but they aren't on average smarter than the rest of the students at Harvard either, and they get admitted in an unfair way (they are now, in October, already getting commitments, while the results for mere mortals like me don't come back until December or March). I'm sure some of the athletes at Harvard are smart and would get in anyway, but their admission effectively locks out other people who are smarter and more likely to actually put a university education to good use (or better use).
But sports are just the beginning. Universities in the US purposefully make the application process very nebulous and confusing. Aside from being a recruited athlete, there is no real way for anybody to know if they will get in to the top colleges (e.g. ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Vandy, Duke, Chicago, and more) before they get their admission results back. They do this for a few reasons, partly to lower the admission standards for certain ethnic groups while raising the standards for others in search of "equality" without explicitly stating it (please google affirmative action if this does not make sense), partly to get a lot of applications to increase the hype of the school and the prestige of the accepted, and partly so that the people who do get accepted are the most likely to show up (this is called raising yield).
In countries like China, from what I understand you basically just sit for the gaokao and that determines where you go to school. That seems kind of strict, though perhaps fair. In the US, your objective stats (your subjective ones are what schools dangle over your head to keep you worrying and to give them leeway for themselves) are basically just your test scores and transcripts (grades). We have grades, usually on a 4.0 scale with an A as a 4.0, B as a 3.0, and so on. I'd say maybe 2-3% of people get 4.0s (with actual hard schedules)in a given year, and in some schools there are more than others. Since you can choose a lot of classes that you take in high school, it is much better to take a lot of challenging, "college-level" classes to show that you are smart, so if you want to go to a good school you better take a ton of AP/IB classes (sidenote: as a white guy having taken/taking 13 AP classes I've noticed that students of a particular ethnic group tend to adore me because of some weird fetishized concept of AP classes). Then you gotta take a lot of tests. You take the PSAT 1-2 times to try to get a good enough score to get a full-ride/free/reduced tuition to some colleges that are good but not the best, and only the time you take it as a junior counts. Then you take the ACT and/or SAT 1-3 times to try to get a good score for the college you want to go to, and then SAT Subject tests to show that you also know what the fuck a parametric equation is. Even after all of those tests, most of which you have to pay money for yourself if you are not poor, colleges still pull the same bull year after year where they don't weigh them very much. Even a perfect SAT/ACT (less than .1% of population) with perfect grades (4.0) has a less than 50% of getting in to colleges like Harvard.
Aside from test scores and grades and sports, the elite colleges have several other ways to make you think you have a chance. You need 2 teacher letters of recommendation, so you better ask for one from a good letter-writer or from one who will let you write it for them, because if the teacher is uninformed or a bad writer then the universities will for whatever reason think that the teacher is not fully endorsing you and is sending some subliminal message that the applicant is not good. You have to write essays talking about how you would just love to study at Princeton and the library is just so pretty oh and winston churchill used to go there and he was like my favorite president ever, this essay is so "unique" and "glowing." You also have to write about your background, so if you grew up in Detroit this is your chance to get in even if you don't have the grades, scores, or anything else really. You can write about a curious anecdote from your life detailing that wonderful time you tutored poor old Jimmy, the kid who was failing out of 9th grade, bringing his grades all up to As and his parents to tears, but it was no big deal really, you did it for him and not for yourself. Oh yeah, and you have to write about extracurricular activities so I hope your parents could set you up to clean test tubes in some professor's lab or made a useless nonprofit for you, this totally unique NPO that raised 5k that did something that one weekend. Its also probably a good idea to create a bunch of clubs at your school, make yourself president, and use other positions as bartering tools to get other offices. Oh yeah and don't forget that you have not one, not two, but (count em) THREE varsity letters.
Anyway, that's all waving around your head, you submit everything either due Nov. 1 or Jan. 1 and get results back either sometime in December or in March. You didn't get in to Harvard. Well, let's see why not:
200 spots go to recruited athletes
200-400 spots go to under represented minorities who would not have got in otherwise, all of which would have totally been smarter if they had been of another race (in all honesty, how is this not racist?)
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that legacies at schools like Princeton have over a 40% admissions rate, so add another 100 there.
International people, which are usually actually super smart/super super rich, 200
100 spots go to Siemens, Intel STS, ISEF, and international olympiad people. If your school doesn't offer olympiad tests or your parents don't know a professor, sorry about our luck
300 spots go to the people that are actually going to spend $60k per year studying Philosophy, religion, sociology, french literature, etc.
So out of 2000 spots, we have from 1000 to 1200 left, and I didn't even include some stereotypical things like artsy people and NPO starters. Good luck competing against those 30,000 other people even with good grades.
Personally this all just pisses me off, since I'm not one of those people who goes out and does all this shit just for college (actually a lie, I do the test tube thing) but I do well enough in school/on tests that by all metrics I should be able to go wherever the hell I want. It pisses me off that some crew kid from Hartford, who studied at Exeter of course, is studying economics at Harvard so that in a few years he can get a job at Bain or Merril Lynch or Goldman Sachs when someone who could actually change the world just didn't "pop out of the page" or whatever BS college admissions people like to spout.
I know someone will inevitably say "if you don't like the schools admission policies, don't try to go there" but that represents an idealistic view that I don't agree with. If I do get in to a nice college, great, now I have lots of resources to help me, a strong network, access to some of the brightest minds in any given field, and lots of smart potential friends. But it seems silly to me that some of this access is going to people who objectively don't really seem to deserve it.
Sorry for subjecting you all to my teenage angst but hopefully you come to understand that I'm an incredibly anxious kid who is about to make a bunch of really important decisions, and I have no way of knowing what that decision will be until March of April. If you want to talk about college in general or tell me how much of an ungrateful bastard I am, go ahead.
  
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Think of it this way: What do YOU have to offer to an university?
An athlete can help the school's athletic teams and overall program, which can lead to revenue. The super rich are more likely to make donations, etc.
Second, don't get caught up too much on college admissions. After all, this is only undergraduate. Once you get a graduate degree, this undergraduate degree you have will matter much much less. And once you start working, it'll lose even more significance.
Don't let a college application board determine your destiny.
Finally, best of luck. Enjoy your final few months of high school, and enjoy your years at college. It is truly an amazing time, and make this a period of your life where you look back with pleasant nostalgia.
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to show that you also know what the fuck a parametric equation is
Made me smile 
Yes, school admissions is annoying, and perhaps unfair if it favors some groups of people.
But most of the other stuff you ranted about (which is typical for a junior/ senior in high school, don't get me wrong), stems from the competition that other students and families create, not just because the schools have stupid rules or are too strict. Every school wants the best and brightest; every school wants diversity and variety. Because why would they want to settle if they don't have to?
The only advice I can give you is to focus on what a school can offer you, and attend a university that will help you take that next step towards becoming an adult. You can party at any university, but not every Top 50 university has the best material for you. You may not even want to go to Harvard.
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In my experience there are a few unwritten guarantees. If you, for example, place in the top 30 on the USA Math Olympiad in junior year you will get into MIT. I don't know what you mean when you say that your school needs to offer Olympiad tests. In this age of the internet it should be possible to find some place to take the test, and the Computing Olympiad is entirely online. Anyway, good luck with the admissions process!
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On October 15 2013 12:03 Bagration wrote:
Think of it this way: What do YOU have to offer to an university?
An athlete can help the school's athletic teams and overall program, which can lead to revenue. The super rich are more likely to make donations, etc.
Second, don't get caught up too much on college admissions. After all, this is only undergraduate. Once you get a graduate degree, this undergraduate degree you have will matter much much less. And once you start working, it'll lose even more significance.
Don't let a college application board determine your destiny.
Finally, best of luck. Enjoy your final few months of high school, and enjoy your years at college. It is truly an amazing time, and make this a period of your life where you look back with pleasant nostalgia.
Yeah but that's not what a university is about. Do you seriously not see the idiocy and corruption of making universities a place of sports and daddy's money? It's frankly disgusting.
On October 15 2013 12:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Made me smile Yes, school admissions is annoying, and perhaps unfair if it favors some groups of people. But most of the other stuff you ranted about (which is typical for a junior/ senior in high school, don't get me wrong), stems from the competition that other students and families create, not just because the schools have stupid rules or are too strict. Every school wants the best and brightest; every school wants diversity and variety. Because why would they want to settle if they don't have to? The only advice I can give you is to focus on what a school can offer you, and attend a university that will help you take that next step towards becoming an adult. You can party at any university, but not every Top 50 university has the best material for you. You may not even want to go to Harvard.
I think no school on this planet would have to settle to admit me, which is actually really scary when put in the context that I am less likely than not to be admitted to any of the "best" universities in the US. And I understand what you're saying when it comes it what is basically fit, but since I tedn to be sort of dismissive of a lot of people, definitely a personal fault of mine, I'd like to go somewhere where I'd have less of a reason to be dismissive of the average person, if that makes sense. But it certainly would not be the end of the world to go to my state school. I actually do think that MIT has probably the best material for me but I will never know for sure since I will not be a student at every university in the United States.
On October 15 2013 12:07 Muirhead wrote:
In my experience there are a few unwritten guarantees. If you, for example, place in the top 30 on the USA Math Olympiad in junior year you will get into MIT. I don't know what you mean when you say that your school needs to offer Olympiad tests. In this age of the internet it should be possible to find some place to take the test, and the Computing Olympiad is entirely online. Anyway, good luck with the admissions process!
I am aware of this, I actually did this. I started both the math and chem olympiads at my school. I did pretty well in the chem one but missed the AIME by one question, which made me feel super stupid.But I had no idea that these even existed before the beginning of my junior year. I feel like if I had done the AMC 10 for my first two years of HS I could have done way better on the AMC.
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On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 12:03 Bagration wrote:
Think of it this way: What do YOU have to offer to an university?
An athlete can help the school's athletic teams and overall program, which can lead to revenue. The super rich are more likely to make donations, etc.
Second, don't get caught up too much on college admissions. After all, this is only undergraduate. Once you get a graduate degree, this undergraduate degree you have will matter much much less. And once you start working, it'll lose even more significance.
Don't let a college application board determine your destiny.
Finally, best of luck. Enjoy your final few months of high school, and enjoy your years at college. It is truly an amazing time, and make this a period of your life where you look back with pleasant nostalgia. Yeah but that's not what a university is about. Do you seriously not see the idiocy and corruption of making universities a place of sports and daddy's money? It's frankly disgusting.
Thing is, a lot of universities you listed are private universities including all the ivies. It's perfectly fine for them to do that and the model seems to have worked so well over the past decades. I don't see it as being idiotic and full of corruption when some of their admission policies are both realistic and legal. More revenue/income a university gets the better for them. There are probably thousands of the best and brightest around the world that each of these universities can choose. They won't miss out if they didn't select you or 90% of the applicants as harsh as that sounds.
I wouldn't say the admission system is disgusting, but seems like you're most disgusted at your own chances. I'm sure if you or another person was admitted, a thought that the admission is "comprehensive" and "holistic" would be given the chance instead. Not that it matters, once you start college, wherever that may be, you like other millions of incoming students, won't care about admission standards at all. If you think the undergraduate admission is disgusting, wait until you see what graduate admissions is like.
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On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 12:03 Bagration wrote:
Think of it this way: What do YOU have to offer to an university?
An athlete can help the school's athletic teams and overall program, which can lead to revenue. The super rich are more likely to make donations, etc.
Second, don't get caught up too much on college admissions. After all, this is only undergraduate. Once you get a graduate degree, this undergraduate degree you have will matter much much less. And once you start working, it'll lose even more significance.
Don't let a college application board determine your destiny.
Finally, best of luck. Enjoy your final few months of high school, and enjoy your years at college. It is truly an amazing time, and make this a period of your life where you look back with pleasant nostalgia. Yeah but that's not what a university is about. Do you seriously not see the idiocy and corruption of making universities a place of sports and daddy's money? It's frankly disgusting.
I don't see too much of an issue. For many people, college sports are an integral part of the college process (pre-gaming and tailgating Saturday football games). And colleges need funding. :p
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On October 15 2013 12:28 BirdKiller wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:On October 15 2013 12:03 Bagration wrote:
Think of it this way: What do YOU have to offer to an university?
An athlete can help the school's athletic teams and overall program, which can lead to revenue. The super rich are more likely to make donations, etc.
Second, don't get caught up too much on college admissions. After all, this is only undergraduate. Once you get a graduate degree, this undergraduate degree you have will matter much much less. And once you start working, it'll lose even more significance.
Don't let a college application board determine your destiny.
Finally, best of luck. Enjoy your final few months of high school, and enjoy your years at college. It is truly an amazing time, and make this a period of your life where you look back with pleasant nostalgia. Yeah but that's not what a university is about. Do you seriously not see the idiocy and corruption of making universities a place of sports and daddy's money? It's frankly disgusting. Thing is, a lot of universities you listed are private universities including all the ivies. It's perfectly fine for them to do that and the model seems to have worked so well over the past decades. I don't see it as being idiotic and full of corruption when some of their admission policies are both realistic and legal. More revenue/income a university gets the better for them. There are probably thousands of the best and brightest around the world that each of these universities can choose. They won't miss out if they didn't select you or 90% of the applicants as harsh as that sounds. I wouldn't say the admission system is disgusting, but seems like you're most disgusted at your own chances. I'm sure if you or another person was admitted, a thought that the admission is "comprehensive" and "holistic" would be given the chance instead. Not that it matters, once you start college, wherever that may be, you like other millions of incoming students, won't care about admission standards at all. If you think the undergraduate admission is disgusting, wait until you see what graduate admissions is like.
Maybe I just have some strange idea of what a university should be be then. Yes, it is entirely within any college's rights to operate as they see fit (to a degree) but that doesn't mean it's a good way to run it. I have this notion that universities should be about learning and not just a business that wants to make as much money as possible. I guess most of the best universities would disagree with me in this day and age.
I actually have good chances relative to most people, probably about 40/60 (maybe less, hubris and all that )at any given school because of my test scores and grades. But it's weird that even with high stats nothing is for sure. And I know about 10 people that have been accepted to this level of university and they don't make me glad that the process is holistic, nor would my own acceptance make me glad for that. Holistic is an excuse for arbitrary and subjective masking of hidden intentions and initiatives. It was actually originally invented to keep the Jews out of top schools, since they were scoring so well.
On October 15 2013 12:34 Bagration wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:On October 15 2013 12:03 Bagration wrote:
Think of it this way: What do YOU have to offer to an university?
An athlete can help the school's athletic teams and overall program, which can lead to revenue. The super rich are more likely to make donations, etc.
Second, don't get caught up too much on college admissions. After all, this is only undergraduate. Once you get a graduate degree, this undergraduate degree you have will matter much much less. And once you start working, it'll lose even more significance.
Don't let a college application board determine your destiny.
Finally, best of luck. Enjoy your final few months of high school, and enjoy your years at college. It is truly an amazing time, and make this a period of your life where you look back with pleasant nostalgia. Yeah but that's not what a university is about. Do you seriously not see the idiocy and corruption of making universities a place of sports and daddy's money? It's frankly disgusting. I don't see too much of an issue. For many people, college sports are an integral part of the college process (pre-gaming and tailgating Saturday football games). And colleges need funding. :p
I like football games as much as the next guy but any sizable school could have a team. I've read that most schools (not bama and co.) actually lose money from football programs, which along with basketball programs are the real shows. I'm sure all other sports also lose money. Also, does anybody really care if Harvard has a good team or not? Aside from the game vs Yale I don't even know if people watch harvard football too much. It just seems like a way to keep an old boys club going strong at the expense of other things.
I have no problem with recruiting at huge schools that are easy to get in to, but I think at some schools recruiting probably is detrimental to the student body as a whole, and unfair for people who are smarter than recruits but not big sports stars.
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Yep, applying to college sucks. On the bright side, I can almost guarantee you that you won't care about any of this crap by this time next year... everything's going to be fine.
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Haha, if only college admissions were that predictable. Come spring, you'll find that while the things you mentioned correlate well with admissions prospects, none of them matter past a certain point. I had friends with a higher GPA, higher SAT get into places I didn't. I had friends with a lower GPA, lower SAT get into places I didn't. I got into places that someone with a higher GPA, higher SAT didn't. Or mix and match any one of the parameters you mentioned. College admissions predictions are filled with people overfitting a small sample size.
But of course, I pay tribute to the obligatory dick waving contest:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=204700¤tpage=4#75
(also was a National Merit Finalist)
(UC GPA means University of California GPA, which is capped to 8 semesters of weighted courses).
(Uncapped: ~4.25)
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On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 12:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:to show that you also know what the fuck a parametric equation is Made me smile Yes, school admissions is annoying, and perhaps unfair if it favors some groups of people. But most of the other stuff you ranted about (which is typical for a junior/ senior in high school, don't get me wrong), stems from the competition that other students and families create, not just because the schools have stupid rules or are too strict. Every school wants the best and brightest; every school wants diversity and variety. Because why would they want to settle if they don't have to? The only advice I can give you is to focus on what a school can offer you, and attend a university that will help you take that next step towards becoming an adult. You can party at any university, but not every Top 50 university has the best material for you. You may not even want to go to Harvard. I think no school on this planet would have to settle to admit me, which is actually really scary when put in the context that I am less likely than not to be admitted to any of the "best" universities in the US. And I understand what you're saying when it comes it what is basically fit, but since I tedn to be sort of dismissive of a lot of people, definitely a personal fault of mine, I'd like to go somewhere where I'd have less of a reason to be dismissive of the average person, if that makes sense. But it certainly would not be the end of the world to go to my state school. I actually do think that MIT has probably the best material for me but I will never know for sure since I will not be a student at every university in the United States.
Out of curiosity:
1. What do you want to study/ what's your ideal future profession?
2. What are your grades/ scores/ stats like (as far as your college applications go)?
3. What makes you good/ unique enough to attend any top tier school (besides great grades, scores, and stats, assuming you have them)?
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On October 15 2013 13:09 Loser777 wrote:Haha, if only college admissions were that predictable. Come spring, you'll find that while the things you mentioned correlate well with admissions prospects, none of them matter past a certain point. I had friends with a higher GPA, higher SAT get into place I didn't. I had friends with a lower GPA, lower SAT get into places I didn't. I got into places that someone with a higher GPA, higher SAT didn't. Or mix and match any one of the parameters you mentioned. College admissions predictions are filled with people overfitting a small sample size. But of course, I pay tribute to the obligatory dick waving contest: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=204700¤tpage=4#75(also was a National Merit Finalist)
damn dude it's scary that you didn't even get into UCB. I'm not applying to the UCs since they are really pricey for non residents, but still. Tbh tho I don't think NMF is such a big deal since 15k get it every year. But it's still really shocking to me that an STS semifinalist was denied from some UCs. Did you end up going to UCLA?
On October 15 2013 13:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:On October 15 2013 12:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:to show that you also know what the fuck a parametric equation is Made me smile Yes, school admissions is annoying, and perhaps unfair if it favors some groups of people. But most of the other stuff you ranted about (which is typical for a junior/ senior in high school, don't get me wrong), stems from the competition that other students and families create, not just because the schools have stupid rules or are too strict. Every school wants the best and brightest; every school wants diversity and variety. Because why would they want to settle if they don't have to? The only advice I can give you is to focus on what a school can offer you, and attend a university that will help you take that next step towards becoming an adult. You can party at any university, but not every Top 50 university has the best material for you. You may not even want to go to Harvard. I think no school on this planet would have to settle to admit me, which is actually really scary when put in the context that I am less likely than not to be admitted to any of the "best" universities in the US. And I understand what you're saying when it comes it what is basically fit, but since I tedn to be sort of dismissive of a lot of people, definitely a personal fault of mine, I'd like to go somewhere where I'd have less of a reason to be dismissive of the average person, if that makes sense. But it certainly would not be the end of the world to go to my state school. I actually do think that MIT has probably the best material for me but I will never know for sure since I will not be a student at every university in the United States. Out of curiosity: 1. What do you want to study/ what's your ideal future profession? 2. What are your grades/ scores/ stats like (as far as your college applications go)? 3. What makes you good/ unique enough to attend any top tier school (besides great grades, scores, and stats, assuming you have them)?
1 I can't decide between CS, EE, or chemistry. If I study EE or CS I'd probably get a masters and then start working in the private sector, maybe once I figure things out try to start my own thing in CS since that's the hot thing to do. If I study chem I might try to get a phd. I've read the post and thread about PhDs and I can honestly say that, from what I know so far about it, chemistry interests me enough that I do get of kind of an itch for it. I suppose I don't NEED a super selective school for any of this but I might not want an MS in CS and I'd also like to be around smart people and smart girls 
2 pretty good. I'll spoiler them, shhhh + Show Spoiler +4.0 unweighted GPA w 12 Ap classes (some my senior year), 36 ACT, 800Math2, 800 USHist, 780 Chem
3 If I write too much here it'll give me away probably. But I do stuff outside of school that is cool and I'm pretty internally motivated. My parents actually want me to go to the local catholic university. I wish I could say I was doing Intel STS but my project fell through so I can write about research but I won't have an award per se.
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If you want a "Harvard" education bad enough, you will get it. Simple as that. You might not get enrolled into the university but at any point in your life you can opt to read the same books they read and do the same questions and subjects they did. If you're lucky, you can even get online lectures off your Harvard friends! You won't get a nice piece of paper in the end but my experience so far is that I tend to be more motivated when I'm learning for the sake of learning.
If you want to / have the motivation to excel, no "lower-tier" degrees from other universities can stop you.Don't pull the "but Harvardites get better job opportunities" as well since you just condoned the Exeter (whatever this is) guy for going to Harvard just to get a job.
I apologize if this comes out mean or bad logic, I'm really sick and nauseous due to inner ear pressure ( blocked nose ) today so I may have omitted some pleasantries. Anyways, good luck and I hope you get what you want!
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On October 15 2013 13:28 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 13:09 Loser777 wrote:Haha, if only college admissions were that predictable. Come spring, you'll find that while the things you mentioned correlate well with admissions prospects, none of them matter past a certain point. I had friends with a higher GPA, higher SAT get into place I didn't. I had friends with a lower GPA, lower SAT get into places I didn't. I got into places that someone with a higher GPA, higher SAT didn't. Or mix and match any one of the parameters you mentioned. College admissions predictions are filled with people overfitting a small sample size. But of course, I pay tribute to the obligatory dick waving contest: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=204700¤tpage=4#75(also was a National Merit Finalist) damn dude it's scary that you didn't even get into UCB. I'm not applying to the UCs since they are really pricey for non residents, but still. Tbh tho I don't think NMF is such a big deal since 15k get it every year. But it's still really shocking to me that an STS semifinalist was denied from some UCs. Did you end up going to UCLA? Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 13:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:On October 15 2013 12:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:to show that you also know what the fuck a parametric equation is Made me smile Yes, school admissions is annoying, and perhaps unfair if it favors some groups of people. But most of the other stuff you ranted about (which is typical for a junior/ senior in high school, don't get me wrong), stems from the competition that other students and families create, not just because the schools have stupid rules or are too strict. Every school wants the best and brightest; every school wants diversity and variety. Because why would they want to settle if they don't have to? The only advice I can give you is to focus on what a school can offer you, and attend a university that will help you take that next step towards becoming an adult. You can party at any university, but not every Top 50 university has the best material for you. You may not even want to go to Harvard. I think no school on this planet would have to settle to admit me, which is actually really scary when put in the context that I am less likely than not to be admitted to any of the "best" universities in the US. And I understand what you're saying when it comes it what is basically fit, but since I tedn to be sort of dismissive of a lot of people, definitely a personal fault of mine, I'd like to go somewhere where I'd have less of a reason to be dismissive of the average person, if that makes sense. But it certainly would not be the end of the world to go to my state school. I actually do think that MIT has probably the best material for me but I will never know for sure since I will not be a student at every university in the United States. Out of curiosity: 1. What do you want to study/ what's your ideal future profession? 2. What are your grades/ scores/ stats like (as far as your college applications go)? 3. What makes you good/ unique enough to attend any top tier school (besides great grades, scores, and stats, assuming you have them)? 1 I can't decide between CS, EE, or chemistry. If I study EE or CS I'd probably get a masters and then start working in the private sector, maybe once I figure things out try to start my own thing in CS since that's the hot thing to do. If I study chem I might try to get a phd. I've read the post and thread about PhDs and I can honestly say that, from what I know so far about it, chemistry interests me enough that I do get of kind of an itch for it. I suppose I don't NEED a super selective school for any of this but I might not want an MS in CS and I'd also like to be around smart people and smart girls 2 pretty good. I'll spoiler them, shhhh + Show Spoiler +4.0 unweighted GPA w 12 Ap classes (some my senior year), 36 ACT, 800Math2, 800 USHist, 780 Chem I'm not really weak in ECs or awards but at the same time I am not unique enough to really standout in my estimation 3 If I write too much here it'll give me away probably. But I do stuff outside of school that is cool and I'm pretty internally motivated. My parents actually want me to go to the local catholic university. I wish I could say I was doing Intel STS but my project fell through so I can write about research but I won't have an award per se.
In terms of the being around smart people, please chill out. Thankfully, there are more smart people in this country than can fit in its "top tier" institutions (and as you pointed out, there are a decent number of not particularly smart people at these schools) and there are also a ton of smart people who consciously choose not to be at those hyper-prestigious schools. A rejection from Harvard does not consign you to a fate of only being around dullards.
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Life's tough, get a helmet.
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Your complaint about athletes surprised me. There is the principled disagreement, but I don't think it represents a large percentage. 10% seems a bit high. And, from what I've heard, apart from football/basketball/baseball, most athletes are pretty good students.
I do agree that the process is pretty bullshit. I myself was 2nd in my class at a high school that routinely made top 100 in the nation and had every conceivable sort of accolade. I was rejected by Princeton and put on the waiting list by Rice while some other classmates got into Harvard, Rice, etc despite being ranked lower and having nowhere near the resume I had, most likely because they were Hispanic and concocted a better sob story about being disadvantaged. I agree it's a pretty terrible way to run a higher learning system by trying to use it as a tool for social justice instead of trying to find the best and brightest. I would suggest, though, that there are a few factors here that the admissions office can't be blamed for.
The first is that, obviously, American secondary education is just too decentralized to have a standardized admission process. Every high school is different and tests are inadequate. In some ways, the mathematics students and to a lesser extent the natural science students have it better in that there are several ways they could prove their chops via tests and certain competitions. Are you the next Cormac McCarthy? GLHF translating that into a college admission. Additionally, liberal arts classes are (duh) subjective and less susceptible to "brute force" and so are held to a lower standard. Why did I get second in my class you may ask? Because my only competition was somewhat better at math than me and the English and History teachers could not adequately reflect the extent (even if they had bothered testing for it) to which I stomped their guts out in prose and analysis. In short, the qualities that you would expect to find in a model student of higher education are not tested at all in high school. With a mass of students all with identical ranks and scores, who could blame them for trying to find any sort of distinguishing factor?
The second part is that I believe the American University system needs an overhaul. It faces the simultaneous problem that too many people are going to college and not enough people are being educated. Maybe trained is the better word. My solution is that there needs to be a major segregation. This would shield the true academics from the fickleness of the current system and lower the threshold for students who would not normally attend a 4 year college but would benefit from further education.
-The university system would be for students that expect to continue to graduate school: Dedicated Liberal Arts students, mathematics students, prospective MBA, Law, pre-Med/Pharm, engineering, some CS, etc
-The second system would be for students that much of university is..for lack of a better term...wasted on. The goal here is to be vocational: Natural science drones. Business drones. people who did LA because they didn't know what to do with their life, and you could have IT and managerial classes and maybe even coopt some vocational education like Farm/Ag and welding, etc.
The first thing you might think is that there would be intense competition to get into the higher tier, but I think there would be a good deal of self-selection. I think most people try to sell themselves as highly as possible because they want to have some cushion in case they fall a bit. How many students write undergrad essays about wanting to be doctors and how many actually take the MCAT? Students would be more realistic because they wouldn't be trying to compete against the cream. Furthermore, this would allow a system of promotion/demotion so students could switch horses midstream. The second issue is how would you identify the top tier students. You could suggest tests or even argue that there should be a similar segregation in high schools, but I think that the students themselves could self-direct. In graduate school, you don't just show up and say 'teach me!'; you're expected to have an area of interest and have done some reasonable amount of work in it. Undergrad should be the same way to a lesser extent. You can actually ask students to write about something they are interested in and give them a chance to sound intelligent instead of asking them to respond to some b.s. quotation.
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On October 15 2013 13:28 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 13:09 Loser777 wrote:Haha, if only college admissions were that predictable. Come spring, you'll find that while the things you mentioned correlate well with admissions prospects, none of them matter past a certain point. I had friends with a higher GPA, higher SAT get into place I didn't. I had friends with a lower GPA, lower SAT get into places I didn't. I got into places that someone with a higher GPA, higher SAT didn't. Or mix and match any one of the parameters you mentioned. College admissions predictions are filled with people overfitting a small sample size. But of course, I pay tribute to the obligatory dick waving contest: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=204700¤tpage=4#75(also was a National Merit Finalist) damn dude it's scary that you didn't even get into UCB. I'm not applying to the UCs since they are really pricey for non residents, but still. Tbh tho I don't think NMF is such a big deal since 15k get it every year. But it's still really shocking to me that an STS semifinalist was denied from some UCs. Did you end up going to UCLA? Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 13:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:On October 15 2013 12:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:to show that you also know what the fuck a parametric equation is Made me smile Yes, school admissions is annoying, and perhaps unfair if it favors some groups of people. But most of the other stuff you ranted about (which is typical for a junior/ senior in high school, don't get me wrong), stems from the competition that other students and families create, not just because the schools have stupid rules or are too strict. Every school wants the best and brightest; every school wants diversity and variety. Because why would they want to settle if they don't have to? The only advice I can give you is to focus on what a school can offer you, and attend a university that will help you take that next step towards becoming an adult. You can party at any university, but not every Top 50 university has the best material for you. You may not even want to go to Harvard. I think no school on this planet would have to settle to admit me, which is actually really scary when put in the context that I am less likely than not to be admitted to any of the "best" universities in the US. And I understand what you're saying when it comes it what is basically fit, but since I tedn to be sort of dismissive of a lot of people, definitely a personal fault of mine, I'd like to go somewhere where I'd have less of a reason to be dismissive of the average person, if that makes sense. But it certainly would not be the end of the world to go to my state school. I actually do think that MIT has probably the best material for me but I will never know for sure since I will not be a student at every university in the United States. Out of curiosity: 1. What do you want to study/ what's your ideal future profession? 2. What are your grades/ scores/ stats like (as far as your college applications go)? 3. What makes you good/ unique enough to attend any top tier school (besides great grades, scores, and stats, assuming you have them)? 1 I can't decide between CS, EE, or chemistry. If I study EE or CS I'd probably get a masters and then start working in the private sector, maybe once I figure things out try to start my own thing in CS since that's the hot thing to do. If I study chem I might try to get a phd. I've read the post and thread about PhDs and I can honestly say that, from what I know so far about it, chemistry interests me enough that I do get of kind of an itch for it. I suppose I don't NEED a super selective school for any of this but I might not want an MS in CS and I'd also like to be around smart people and smart girls 2 pretty good. I'll spoiler them, shhhh + Show Spoiler +4.0 unweighted GPA w 12 Ap classes (some my senior year), 36 ACT, 800Math2, 800 USHist, 780 Chem I'm not really weak in ECs or awards but at the same time I am not unique enough to really standout in my estimation 3 If I write too much here it'll give me away probably. But I do stuff outside of school that is cool and I'm pretty internally motivated. My parents actually want me to go to the local catholic university. I wish I could say I was doing Intel STS but my project fell through so I can write about research but I won't have an award per se.
Intel STS is hyped up way more than what it is. Here's the thing. STS results come out in January, past the application deadline for pretty much every school. For schools where something like that could have made a difference for me (UCs), it did jack shit because UCs don't consider anything after November 30th. To make it matter for privates, there better be some awesome follow-up in your mid-year report about how amazing your project was in addition to you getting the prize for it to be more than a drop in the bucket. Your stats put you in the running everywhere--and that's what's important. Stressing over the details is useless. Focus on writing great essays. What I really regret is perhaps not aiming higher. I applied to so many safety schools that I probably would never attend (it's easy to transfer in California from a CC) that I didn't really explore all my potential options. In the end, wherever you end up, you'll probably find that you're surrounded by under-qualified people.
And yeah, I'm at UCLA. Hoping to go somewhere else for grad school though.
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Sometimes the school you get into is just hard and not very rewarding. If you need to learn something you can learn it by yourself if your major is one where technology is involved. In many ways self teaching is better than going to college given today's resources. You don't have to jump through hoops doing mindless tasks for points or learn useless outdated material.
A lot of people burn out. Many in the first semester of college realize that the major or school the chose wasn't for them and change.
College admissions will seem so trivial a year from now.
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the lesson you should be learning is two-fold
you're not a special snowflake
and life's not fair
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In France, there is an interesting system (which also has its flaws) to get into high-ranked "colleges" (they're not actually colleges, they're called "Grandes Ecoles" which you would, I guess, translate as "Great Schools".
Contrary to the american way, they are not much research-focused, they really are schools. Of course they have evolved and some of them offer good research opportunities, but that's more the exception than the general rule.
You can get into some of them right after high school, by sending an application, very similar to your system.
However, the top-ranked ones require you to spend the equivalent of your two undergrad years in prep school - well that would be quite a dumb translation as it's very different from prep school in the US (see wiki) so I'll use the term CPGE to avoid any confusion.
Basically you do a first selection right after high school, but primarily based on academical performance during high school (very few, if any, bypass for sob stories and/or athletes. For most CPGEs it's an algorithm that takes your grades and ranks you against everyone else to make a selection.
The interesting part comes next : you spend 2 or 3 years in CPGE, with a big national contest at the end of the 2nd year (technically, there are several of them, but they are all in the same timeframe). If you do well on the written contest, you're selected for oral tests, and you get a final rank, which gives you schools where you are allowed to apply. If you're not satisfied with what you got, you can try again, once (that's why you can spend 3 years in CPGE sometimes).
The interesting point about all of this is that, for the most part, your admissions are deterministic and centralized : if you get good grades, you're in, if you don't, try again (at most once). The bad point is that if you fuck up on contest day, you're done.
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(This is directed at the OP)
Affirmative action is complete trash, I agree with you.
It is literally harmful to everyone involved.
In case OP ( or anyone else) wants to learn more about it / have material to beat down people who support it, I wrote a speech on it (obv not anything MLK level, but it's a nice compilation of evidence at the least). I can pastebin it if anyone wants it, just PM.
That being said, the people in my school who got into the Ivies and stuff, I can see why they got in. All of us had > 4.5 GPA and > 2350 SAT, but the guys who were at the top of our class were really amazing. I can't really say they got into the places they did (MIT, princeton, harvard, stanford, yale, etc) because of unfairness in the process.
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-there are a lot of reasons to admit athletes, competitive drive, commitment to self improvement, etc. but my favorite is that athletes are better looking. no one wants an ugly student body.
-SAT tests, AP classes/tests, the ACT, etc. are all way easier than actual college classes, even at non-Ivies.
-other countries have much harder admissions tests, so they can actually use those as a basis for who should attend top colleges.
-the hypothetical white upper-middle class suburban kid from public school who gets into harvard ahead of the exeter kid and studies econ will not change the world, but will make a lot of money and send his kid to exeter.
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Harvard is pretty garb for undergrad anyway.
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Make a philosophical argument and say that you weren't lucky enough to be born to parents who went to Harvard, thus giving you no chance at legacy admission, and say that justice has to prevail! Go check out Michael Sandel's Harvard lecture on affirmative action on YouTube.
Life is just unfair I guess, and we have to make do with what we've got in the end. The admission system in the US sounds very harsh to me, and I'd probably have the same objections as you if I were put in your place. Here in South Africa admission still depends on your race and gender, but it isn't all that hard to get admitted into a decent university (granted, we only have a select few true universities, which are all up to standard). The university I'm currently studying at is the Univeristy of KwaZulu-Natal, and all they asked of me were my grades at the end of my final year at high school. That's it. I received my letter of acceptance around early January and off I went.
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Think of it this way: What do YOU have to offer to an university?
See, thats the difference.
In my country Universities have only two purposes.
First is to teach science to students and the second is to perform science with their staff mostly.
I dont have to offer anything except willingness to learn.
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On October 15 2013 15:05 opsayo wrote:
the lesson you should be learning is two-fold
you're not a special snowflake
and life's not fair
Sorry OP, but this is the truth.
Play the hand you're dealt as best as you can. You'll be a lot happier not worrying about the injustices in the world.
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Yeah, it honestly seemed pretty bad to me too over there, sorry for you man.
Thank god it's not like this in France.
You're better, you're in, and it's free (I even got paid for it :D). That's it :D
After your education's done, it's not all that bright though :/
there are a lot of reasons to admit athletes, competitive drive, commitment to self improvement, etc. but my favorite is that athletes are better looking. no one wants an ugly student body
Gotta admit this makes me smile. This all seems so foreign.
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Someone should put the discussion thread up early this year
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On October 15 2013 14:40 Loser777 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 13:28 Chocolate wrote:On October 15 2013 13:09 Loser777 wrote:Haha, if only college admissions were that predictable. Come spring, you'll find that while the things you mentioned correlate well with admissions prospects, none of them matter past a certain point. I had friends with a higher GPA, higher SAT get into place I didn't. I had friends with a lower GPA, lower SAT get into places I didn't. I got into places that someone with a higher GPA, higher SAT didn't. Or mix and match any one of the parameters you mentioned. College admissions predictions are filled with people overfitting a small sample size. But of course, I pay tribute to the obligatory dick waving contest: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=204700¤tpage=4#75(also was a National Merit Finalist) damn dude it's scary that you didn't even get into UCB. I'm not applying to the UCs since they are really pricey for non residents, but still. Tbh tho I don't think NMF is such a big deal since 15k get it every year. But it's still really shocking to me that an STS semifinalist was denied from some UCs. Did you end up going to UCLA? On October 15 2013 13:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 15 2013 12:21 Chocolate wrote:On October 15 2013 12:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:to show that you also know what the fuck a parametric equation is Made me smile Yes, school admissions is annoying, and perhaps unfair if it favors some groups of people. But most of the other stuff you ranted about (which is typical for a junior/ senior in high school, don't get me wrong), stems from the competition that other students and families create, not just because the schools have stupid rules or are too strict. Every school wants the best and brightest; every school wants diversity and variety. Because why would they want to settle if they don't have to? The only advice I can give you is to focus on what a school can offer you, and attend a university that will help you take that next step towards becoming an adult. You can party at any university, but not every Top 50 university has the best material for you. You may not even want to go to Harvard. I think no school on this planet would have to settle to admit me, which is actually really scary when put in the context that I am less likely than not to be admitted to any of the "best" universities in the US. And I understand what you're saying when it comes it what is basically fit, but since I tedn to be sort of dismissive of a lot of people, definitely a personal fault of mine, I'd like to go somewhere where I'd have less of a reason to be dismissive of the average person, if that makes sense. But it certainly would not be the end of the world to go to my state school. I actually do think that MIT has probably the best material for me but I will never know for sure since I will not be a student at every university in the United States. Out of curiosity: 1. What do you want to study/ what's your ideal future profession? 2. What are your grades/ scores/ stats like (as far as your college applications go)? 3. What makes you good/ unique enough to attend any top tier school (besides great grades, scores, and stats, assuming you have them)? 1 I can't decide between CS, EE, or chemistry. If I study EE or CS I'd probably get a masters and then start working in the private sector, maybe once I figure things out try to start my own thing in CS since that's the hot thing to do. If I study chem I might try to get a phd. I've read the post and thread about PhDs and I can honestly say that, from what I know so far about it, chemistry interests me enough that I do get of kind of an itch for it. I suppose I don't NEED a super selective school for any of this but I might not want an MS in CS and I'd also like to be around smart people and smart girls 2 pretty good. I'll spoiler them, shhhh + Show Spoiler +4.0 unweighted GPA w 12 Ap classes (some my senior year), 36 ACT, 800Math2, 800 USHist, 780 Chem I'm not really weak in ECs or awards but at the same time I am not unique enough to really standout in my estimation 3 If I write too much here it'll give me away probably. But I do stuff outside of school that is cool and I'm pretty internally motivated. My parents actually want me to go to the local catholic university. I wish I could say I was doing Intel STS but my project fell through so I can write about research but I won't have an award per se. Intel STS is hyped up way more than what it is. Here's the thing. STS results come out in January, past the application deadline for pretty much every school. For schools where something like that could have made a difference for me (UCs), it did jack shit because UCs don't consider anything after November 30th. To make it matter for privates, there better be some awesome follow-up in your mid-year report about how amazing your project was in addition to you getting the prize for it to be more than a drop in the bucket. Your stats put you in the running everywhere--and that's what's important. Stressing over the details is useless. Focus on writing great essays. What I really regret is perhaps not aiming higher. I applied to so many safety schools that I probably would never attend (it's easy to transfer in California from a CC) that I didn't really explore all my potential options. In the end, wherever you end up, you'll probably find that you're surrounded by under-qualified people. And yeah, I'm at UCLA. Hoping to go somewhere else for grad school though.
Nothing wrong with UCLA bro.
BTW, on a positive note, there have been studies shown that given the same level of talent, attending an "elite" school vs an "average" school makes no statistically measurable difference in lifetime earnings.
To the OP, I get it. Affirmative action works against you. You feel the need to outdo your friends and realize the expectation of your parents. At the end of the day if you really want to make a difference in the world, it's irrelevant where you go for undergrad.
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On October 15 2013 16:09 chairmobile wrote:
(This is directed at the OP)
Affirmative action is complete trash, I agree with you.
It is literally harmful to everyone involved.
In case OP ( or anyone else) wants to learn more about it / have material to beat down people who support it, I wrote a speech on it (obv not anything MLK level, but it's a nice compilation of evidence at the least). I can pastebin it if anyone wants it, just PM.
That being said, the people in my school who got into the Ivies and stuff, I can see why they got in. All of us had > 4.5 GPA and > 2350 SAT, but the guys who were at the top of our class were really amazing. I can't really say they got into the places they did (MIT, princeton, harvard, stanford, yale, etc) because of unfairness in the process.
Depends on the type of affirmative action. I agree that the current system's a wash though.
There were a lot of great students at my school who got into great places, then some mediocre students who got into great places, and then some some great students who didn't get into great places. It did seem like kind of a crapshoot to me, results all across the board. No glaring example of affirmative action really affecting much though.
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College "rankings" are all bullshit anyway. Especially for undergrad, it truly doesn't matter where you go as long as you get the degree you want and talk to people (who will get you in the door and connected with people in your field). Where you go for postgrad depends on your field and interests; if you're looking to do a job you actually like and want to do, its better to go to the college/university where you'll get the training you want and with a supervisor who has an interest in your research area rather than going for a prestigious school but with a supervisor who doesn't give a shit about you or your research.
People will get you opportunities and jobs, the bit of paper is just to show proficiency (and not even a very good way of doing so, at that). And if you're slogging your way through a Masters or doctorate, a good supervisor is worth far more than the name on a bit of paper.
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Nice statistics there champ
Maybe you don't get in colleges because you make grand statements without backing them up
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for real you sound like a spoiled white kid who has never had any adversity in their life
if this is the most "unfair" thing that you ever go through in your life
you are a fucking lucky individual
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On October 15 2013 22:59 cam connor wrote:
for real you sound like a spoiled white kid who has never had any adversity in their life
if this is the most "unfair" thing that you ever go through in your life
you are a fucking lucky individual
Are you talking about OP? Because if I had to guess my money is on him being Asian...
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Hrmm, I'm just a few years out, but I'll say one of the benefits of a little more age is a chance to reflect on the "system" of admissions when you're not actively involved in trying to get into a good college.
For everything, there is a System. Admissions is no different. The problem is the "How?" of the system, especially for top schools, is really quite hard to understand. It's rarely possible to get good insight into the functionality of it, actually. This is why "legacy admits" would have an advantage in the first place, regardless of a preference to them. (Of course, if you're a half Asian, half Jewish guy, you're probably just screwed anyway for top schools; that's the 3 worst application categories mashed together.)
The other problem, and this is something you're a few years from finding out: the top 50 undergrad schools are pretty indistinguishable. Yes, I know parents (and you) want to make it into a top-flight College, but the situation has changed, especially at most of the Ivies. The Graduate schools are where the names matter now. A top 50 college or university, with a supremely high GPA & awards, will serve you far better than getting a "Degree of Incredibly Questionable GPA" at Harvard. That's what Grade Inflation has done.
The next problem is that most students create a "College Application" with all of their activities. That's mostly a waste. It's just a document that attempts to sum up your current potential, which is why "lesser" students come across "better" than others. It's all in how you Sell the application & categories they fit you into. Which puts you in a place of building an application towards something that, truly, doesn't exist. You aren't building your application to a School but an Ideal. That trips up a lot of people.
Then there's the other issue with Mass Applying: do you know if you even like the school? This is likely to be the 2nd most costly purchase you'll EVER make in life. Do some research & get to know the schools. You might get into an Ivy League school, but what happens when you find out you hate the campus? Of course you're just going to absorb the problems and keep going. And probably kill your Liver in the process of college.
My brother & I both had a much more enjoyable application experience by doing the work over our Freshmen & Sophomore years to narrow down the schools we wanted to attend. He went to a top Engineering school (he makes 6-figure as Engineer for a major company) and I went to a top 20 private college, but we both really wanted to be *at* those schools. That served us both much better than getting into the "best" school we could.
Then there's the problem of "hoop jumping". You're very good at that. Be proud! But realize those hoops are mostly worthless to you after you hit the real world. What "skills" have you built? How well do you interact with people? Can you hold a room? Do you know how to manage your own finances (and budget!) really well? How's your time management? Do you have backup plans in the case that something blows up in life? (I.e. 150k for Law School is rarely a wise idea) You'll get much further, in any career, if you can interact with people better than someone of similar technical ability. (It's still merit, it's just that people then associate your merit positively)
I wish you good luck in your college applications, but realize that once you're "in the door", everything else is different. So just accept it as a hoop to jump through and make the most of the opportunities you have.
(Side-bar: The Olympiad Testing still makes me face palm, especially the Mathematics one. If you're capable of doing well in the testing, you're more than capable to already be taking college-credited classes. I was actually ineligible by the time I was 16, which really surprised me the first time I heard about it. If you can handle the Math, just go take the college classes. It's far more valuable.)
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Likewise, don't go to hte best school you get into for just that reason. Visit and seriously consider if you want to be there.
Also, it's undergrad, it's not too important. I know a girl who went to a school which is barely top 200 in USA and she's going to LSE for PhD work. Nobody cares she went to Sonoma state now.
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If I could design a system of deserving, it would center around people who are do well in the best case scenario. An example might be lots of hard tests, only count the highest. The current system looks for dedication and consistency, but intelligence past a certain point gives diminishing returns. I get why it's like that. People who are more consistent will have more integrity and stability as a group. It also seems fair to most people; deserving is based on work. Not to me though. It is true that under my system I would do better than under the current system, I should add. This being my reaction to what you say.
So: Yes, it is unfair, and no that is not to be expected. You do have a genuine grievance here, but you appreciate the system excluding the exceptions and I cannot relate.
Good luck
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Don't get your hopes up. I went through this exact same shit last year; I applied to 13 schools, including Harvard, Cornell, etc.
I thought I had the "full package," pretty good athlete, very good academics, ECs and whatnot.
I got into 2 schools: Franklin&Marshall, and Dickinson. These were my safety schools (they're pretty good in general, just compared to Harvard...).
Spring break was one of the hardest weeks, receiving 6 rejections in 3 days. I was very down, and not excited for F&M or Dickinson.
Long story short-- I am attending F&M and playing football on the school's team, and i'm LOVING it. I've met a lot of cool people, my classes are fun, etc. (And no, I was not one of those athletes you rightly identify as needing help to get in).
Moral: If you've done your research and genuinly like every school you're applying to, you'll enjoy your undergrad experience no matter where you go. Don't get caught up in "what ifs".
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On October 15 2013 21:53 c0ldfusion wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 15:05 opsayo wrote:
the lesson you should be learning is two-fold
you're not a special snowflake
and life's not fair Sorry OP, but this is the truth. Play the hand you're dealt as best as you can. You'll be a lot happier not worrying about the injustices in the world.
Maybe I'm just too young, but in my opinion a defeated attitude and just a willingness to accept things the way they are is pretty destructive. There is inequality and unfairness in life, but there are also changes we can do to make them go away just a little bit. You can't just say that inequality is always going to exist and there's nothing we can do to address it; if we didn't do that there would be loads of things still wrong with our society.
On October 15 2013 22:55 cam connor wrote:
Nice statistics there champ
Maybe you don't get in colleges because you make grand statements without backing them up
for real you sound like a spoiled white kid who has never had any adversity in their life
if this is the most "unfair" thing that you ever go through in your life
you are a fucking lucky individual
Well if I understand you then you are calling me a liar. I don't really know what to say other than that academics and school are basically the only things that I'm really good at, but you don't have to believe me if you don't want to. And of course this isn't the most unfair thing I will experience in my life but since it's a systematic thing it feels more unjust than discrimination by some thugs or random people.
On October 15 2013 23:12 c0ldfusion wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 22:59 cam connor wrote:
for real you sound like a spoiled white kid who has never had any adversity in their life
if this is the most "unfair" thing that you ever go through in your life
you are a fucking lucky individual Are you talking about OP? Because if I had to guess my money is on him being Asian...
Nah I'm white but if you looked at my application without knowing my race you might think I were Asian.
On October 16 2013 03:35 Froadac wrote:
Likewise, don't go to hte best school you get into for just that reason. Visit and seriously consider if you want to be there.
Also, it's undergrad, it's not too important. I know a girl who went to a school which is barely top 200 in USA and she's going to LSE for PhD work. Nobody cares she went to Sonoma state now.
I've visited some of the "best schools" and I actually did really like MIT the best, like I honestly think I would fit in there and be happy, or at least as happy as you could be at MIT . I think I can honestly fit in at a lot of places, since I don't have this romantic concept of some perfect college for me that's out there waiting to be discovered.
On October 16 2013 07:22 darthfoley wrote:
Don't get your hopes up. I went through this exact same shit last year; I applied to 13 schools, including Harvard, Cornell, etc.
I thought I had the "full package," pretty good athlete, very good academics, ECs and whatnot.
I got into 2 schools: Franklin&Marshall, and Dickinson. These were my safety schools (they're pretty good in general, just compared to Harvard...).
Spring break was one of the hardest weeks, receiving 6 rejections in 3 days. I was very down, and not excited for F&M or Dickinson.
Long story short-- I am attending F&M and playing football on the school's team, and i'm LOVING it. I've met a lot of cool people, my classes are fun, etc. (And no, I was not one of those athletes you rightly identify as needing help to get in).
Moral: If you've done your research and genuinly like every school you're applying to, you'll enjoy your undergrad experience no matter where you go. Don't get caught up in "what ifs".
Well I remembered reading your blog and feeling for you, my man. It's good to know that you are happy at your safety, I'm happy for you and hopefully if I find myself in the same situation I'll be able to manage.
Anyway I'm sorry that I sounded like a whiny little bitch but hopefully I'll have reason not to whine so much once March and April roll around.
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its a good thing im not applying to any really good schools LOL. common app ftw!
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On October 15 2013 15:05 opsayo wrote:
the lesson you should be learning is two-fold
you're not a special snowflake
and life's not fair
So true.
The whole "college wants a well-rounded student" thing is a lie.
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how do you know that crew kid isn't going to make a bigger difference in the world than you?
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To assume that you deserve to go to Harvard or MIT or a similar place is an extremely entitled position to take. Not everyone can go. Thats it.
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Sorry but this blog is laughable. Nobody gives a shit about where you go to college, not in the real world. And lol if you think investment banking analysts are people to be envied. They work 80 hours a week writing reports and presentations that nobody reads.
By the way, most people, even in this country, are lucky to be able to go to college at all. Most people wouldn't even dream of having the money to go to any of those "elite" private schools. Amazing how you entitled brats can be so oblivious to the world outside your gated communities.
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On October 15 2013 22:24 babylon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 16:09 chairmobile wrote:
(This is directed at the OP)
Affirmative action is complete trash, I agree with you.
It is literally harmful to everyone involved.
In case OP ( or anyone else) wants to learn more about it / have material to beat down people who support it, I wrote a speech on it (obv not anything MLK level, but it's a nice compilation of evidence at the least). I can pastebin it if anyone wants it, just PM.
That being said, the people in my school who got into the Ivies and stuff, I can see why they got in. All of us had > 4.5 GPA and > 2350 SAT, but the guys who were at the top of our class were really amazing. I can't really say they got into the places they did (MIT, princeton, harvard, stanford, yale, etc) because of unfairness in the process.
Depends on the type of affirmative action. I agree that the current system's a wash though. There were a lot of great students at my school who got into great places, then some mediocre students who got into great places, and then some some great students who didn't get into great places. It did seem like kind of a crapshoot to me, results all across the board. No glaring example of affirmative action really affecting much though.
Very true. The speech is about reforming it to class-based instead of race-based aff action.,
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Hey OP, you're wrong.
Look:
If a Harvard athletic team is recruiting me, do I have to go through the same admissions process as other applicants? Yes. All prospective student-athletes must be accepted by the Harvard Admissions Office in order to play for a Harvard athletic team. Since all Ivy League schools do not award athletic scholarships, there are no signing dates for the National Letter of Intent. You will be notified of your acceptance into Harvard at the same time as all other applicants. To learn more about the application process, visit http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/.
Yeah.
This blog is full of unsupported evidence and reeks of little but bitterness.
And what the heck? You say if we read your application, we'd think your Asian? How does that not reek of racial profiling and racism on behalf of the OP?
Moreover, your point about student athletes is wrong. Look up evidence of student athlete GPA at top schools. Also, prove to me that starting some little club on campus where you solve chemistry problems is more worthy of admission than leading a champion water polo team. University is about fostering a lot more than just how good you are at solving something on paper. You're forgetting leadership, motivation, inspiration, and a host of other traits that student athletes tend to embody.
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When you understand the system you can easily be capable of gaming the system. Schools don't check stories for fraud if you make it believable enough. With today's image editing tools and internet, craft whatever you like!
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On October 16 2013 15:32 Elegy wrote:Hey OP, you're wrong. Look: Show nested quote +If a Harvard athletic team is recruiting me, do I have to go through the same admissions process as other applicants? Yes. All prospective student-athletes must be accepted by the Harvard Admissions Office in order to play for a Harvard athletic team. Since all Ivy League schools do not award athletic scholarships, there are no signing dates for the National Letter of Intent. You will be notified of your acceptance into Harvard at the same time as all other applicants. To learn more about the application process, visit http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/. Yeah. This blog is full of unsupported evidence and reeks of little but bitterness. And what the heck? You say if we read your application, we'd think your Asian? How does that not reek of racial profiling and racism on behalf of the OP? Moreover, your point about student athletes is wrong. Look up evidence of student athlete GPA at top schools. Also, prove to me that starting some little club on campus where you solve chemistry problems is more worthy of admission than leading a champion water polo team. University is about fostering a lot more than just how good you are at solving something on paper. You're forgetting leadership, motivation, inspiration, and a host of other traits that student athletes tend to embody.
You are technically right, but ivies and schools like stanford are able to say this because they don't officially offer admissions before the normal letters go out. They actually send out these things called likely letters that are basically unofficial offers of admission with the caveat that students don't do anything stupid like get straight Ds or get arrested. Also, coaches are given a rough allotment of people they can accept each year as long as their mean (or median, I don't remember) is within one standard deviation of the academic index of the college as a whole (AI is a way to combine grades, scores, etc. into one. see this article).
And I think it was pretty stereotypical for me to think my application would make it appear I was a member of a certain race, but I did really well in this competition called the US National Chemistry Olympiad that would suggest that I was Asian, just from past results. If I did just a bit better I would have ben invited to their camp. You can see their names here. There have also been years where the entire camp was Asian. And I fit the stereotype with a lot of my after school activities like math team, academic teams, etc. Sorry if I offended you.
If you can find average gpas of athletes at top colleges then I'd like to see it. But I honestly think that a lot of those colleges would probably not willingly release that information.
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On October 16 2013 11:04 iamho wrote:
Sorry but this blog is laughable. Nobody gives a shit about where you go to college, not in the real world. And lol if you think investment banking analysts are people to be envied. They work 80 hours a week writing reports and presentations that nobody reads.
By the way, most people, even in this country, are lucky to be able to go to college at all. Most people wouldn't even dream of having the money to go to any of those "elite" private schools. Amazing how you entitled brats can be so oblivious to the world outside your gated communities.
You're probably right, but it's hard to think that way when you are a high school senior and all of your friends and teachers expect you to be able to go to certain schools. And honestly, I wouldn't mind going to some of these schools anyway.
I wouldn't mind doing IB but that's only because of the opportunities it opens up, not the starting job itself. If IB were like a terminal career with no room for growth I don't know if anybody would do it.
I don't live in a gated community  . And those elites schools are pretty easy to afford for most people. If your family makes less than 65k per year then they give you a full ride. If your family makes 180,000 or less then they don't like to charge more than 20k. It doesn't take money to go to those schools.
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hey, you're into chem too! what schools are you applying to?
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On October 17 2013 03:35 Chocolate wrote:
If your family makes 180,000 or less then they don't like to charge more than 20k. It doesn't take money to go to those schools.
Yeah...about that...
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On October 17 2013 03:55 Vegetarian Wolf wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 03:35 Chocolate wrote:
If your family makes 180,000 or less then they don't like to charge more than 20k. It doesn't take money to go to those schools. Yeah...about that...
family income 100k before taxes, and providing financial support to my father's parents. College tuition was 50 a year, but financial aid slashed it to 26, so no. your views are completely scewed and this is only going to come up in the form of more problems throughout the years
edit: with this mindset, I wouldn't be suprised if you didn't get into any ivy league schools or the equivalent of that after this is all said and done
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On October 17 2013 04:37 Smurfett3 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 03:55 Vegetarian Wolf wrote:On October 17 2013 03:35 Chocolate wrote:
If your family makes 180,000 or less then they don't like to charge more than 20k. It doesn't take money to go to those schools. Yeah...about that... family income 100k before taxes, and providing financial support to my father's parents. College tuition was 50 a year, but financial aid slashed it to 26, so no. your views are completely scewed and this is only going to come up in the form of more problems throughout the years edit: with this mindset, I wouldn't be suprised if you didn't get into any ivy league schools or the equivalent of that after this is all said and done
Where did/do you go to school? I was talking about schools like Harvard, Princeton, etc. I wouldnt exect anyone to get much financial aid with that kind of family income at most schools. It also depends on your non-retirement, non home assets and can get screwy if your family runs a business. I might have exaggerated a bit on the 180k point but if you want to see for yourself you can go to any school's online net price calculator and see for yourself.
We'll see, I suppose.
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On October 17 2013 03:20 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2013 15:32 Elegy wrote:Hey OP, you're wrong. Look: If a Harvard athletic team is recruiting me, do I have to go through the same admissions process as other applicants? Yes. All prospective student-athletes must be accepted by the Harvard Admissions Office in order to play for a Harvard athletic team. Since all Ivy League schools do not award athletic scholarships, there are no signing dates for the National Letter of Intent. You will be notified of your acceptance into Harvard at the same time as all other applicants. To learn more about the application process, visit http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/. Yeah. This blog is full of unsupported evidence and reeks of little but bitterness. And what the heck? You say if we read your application, we'd think your Asian? How does that not reek of racial profiling and racism on behalf of the OP? Moreover, your point about student athletes is wrong. Look up evidence of student athlete GPA at top schools. Also, prove to me that starting some little club on campus where you solve chemistry problems is more worthy of admission than leading a champion water polo team. University is about fostering a lot more than just how good you are at solving something on paper. You're forgetting leadership, motivation, inspiration, and a host of other traits that student athletes tend to embody. You are technically right, but ivies and schools like stanford are able to say this because they don't officially offer admissions before the normal letters go out. They actually send out these things called likely letters that are basically unofficial offers of admission with the caveat that students don't do anything stupid like get straight Ds or get arrested. Also, coaches are given a rough allotment of people they can accept each year as long as their mean (or median, I don't remember) is within one standard deviation of the academic index of the college as a whole (AI is a way to combine grades, scores, etc. into one. see this article). And I think it was pretty stereotypical for me to think my application would make it appear I was a member of a certain race, but I did really well in this competition called the US National Chemistry Olympiad that would suggest that I was Asian, just from past results. If I did just a bit better I would have ben invited to their camp. You can see their names here. There have also been years where the entire camp was Asian. And I fit the stereotype with a lot of my after school activities like math team, academic teams, etc. Sorry if I offended you. If you can find average gpas of athletes at top colleges then I'd like to see it. But I honestly think that a lot of those colleges would probably not willingly release that information.
Well, look it up then.
New York Times says that the average math athlete (recruited) has 0.2 less points on his gpa (3.04 to 2.84).
Good luck trying to prove your statement here: "but their admission effectively locks out other people who are smarter and more likely to actually put a university education to good use (or better use)."
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/grading-college-athletes/?_r=0
A small decline in the average GPA means that that non-athletes are putting their college education to better use? Do you realize how silly that sounds?
Considering that the admissions process is NOT only about GPA and test scores, your points are both unfounded and ridiculous.
Again, there is more to college than what score you got on a test, or your overall GPA. You need to understand this.
You are also trapped in the naive belief that the specific ranking of your undergraduate education has some important, practical benefit later in life. In all seriousness, it really doesn't.
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If you go to the campus of a top school and ask students there if they think the athletes are dumber than they are, you won't receive a resounding, "Yes." In fact, you'll probably receive a resounding, "No."
Actually, if you go to the campuses of a top school and ask students there if they can list off anyone who they think don't deserve to be there, I'd be surprised if you get more than five names (and I'd be doubly surprised if they are all people who got preferential treatment during the admissions process).
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On October 17 2013 07:09 babylon wrote:
If you go to the campus of a top school and ask students there if they think the athletes are dumber than they are, you won't receive a resounding, "Yes." In fact, you'll probably receive a resounding, "No."
Actually, if you go to the campuses of a top school and ask students there if they can list off anyone who they think don't deserve to be there, I'd be surprised if you get more than five names (and I'd be doubly surprised if they are all people who got preferential treatment during the admissions process).
I would never say that to someone I don't know either. You would never make friends in real life if you constantly looked at your friends and peers and decided if they were deserving or not, especially if you said it aloud. But I'm online and don't know any of you people so I can actually voice my opinions without being shut down for not giving in to the American obsession with sports.
On October 17 2013 06:44 Elegy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 03:20 Chocolate wrote:On October 16 2013 15:32 Elegy wrote:Hey OP, you're wrong. Look: If a Harvard athletic team is recruiting me, do I have to go through the same admissions process as other applicants? Yes. All prospective student-athletes must be accepted by the Harvard Admissions Office in order to play for a Harvard athletic team. Since all Ivy League schools do not award athletic scholarships, there are no signing dates for the National Letter of Intent. You will be notified of your acceptance into Harvard at the same time as all other applicants. To learn more about the application process, visit http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/. Yeah. This blog is full of unsupported evidence and reeks of little but bitterness. And what the heck? You say if we read your application, we'd think your Asian? How does that not reek of racial profiling and racism on behalf of the OP? Moreover, your point about student athletes is wrong. Look up evidence of student athlete GPA at top schools. Also, prove to me that starting some little club on campus where you solve chemistry problems is more worthy of admission than leading a champion water polo team. University is about fostering a lot more than just how good you are at solving something on paper. You're forgetting leadership, motivation, inspiration, and a host of other traits that student athletes tend to embody. You are technically right, but ivies and schools like stanford are able to say this because they don't officially offer admissions before the normal letters go out. They actually send out these things called likely letters that are basically unofficial offers of admission with the caveat that students don't do anything stupid like get straight Ds or get arrested. Also, coaches are given a rough allotment of people they can accept each year as long as their mean (or median, I don't remember) is within one standard deviation of the academic index of the college as a whole (AI is a way to combine grades, scores, etc. into one. see this article). And I think it was pretty stereotypical for me to think my application would make it appear I was a member of a certain race, but I did really well in this competition called the US National Chemistry Olympiad that would suggest that I was Asian, just from past results. If I did just a bit better I would have ben invited to their camp. You can see their names here. There have also been years where the entire camp was Asian. And I fit the stereotype with a lot of my after school activities like math team, academic teams, etc. Sorry if I offended you. If you can find average gpas of athletes at top colleges then I'd like to see it. But I honestly think that a lot of those colleges would probably not willingly release that information. Well, look it up then. New York Times says that the average math athlete (recruited) has 0.2 less points on his gpa (3.04 to 2.84). Good luck trying to prove your statement here: "but their admission effectively locks out other people who are smarter and more likely to actually put a university education to good use (or better use)." http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/grading-college-athletes/?_r=0A small decline in the average GPA means that that non-athletes are putting their college education to better use? Do you realize how silly that sounds? Considering that the admissions process is NOT only about GPA and test scores, your points are both unfounded and ridiculous. Again, there is more to college than what score you got on a test, or your overall GPA. You need to understand this. You are also trapped in the naive belief that the specific ranking of your undergraduate education has some important, practical benefit later in life. In all seriousness, it really doesn't.
Those are only for D3 sports. Ivies, Stanford, etc. mostly have D1 sports teams. Most selective schools I can think of with D3 teams don't do hardcore recruiting, like MIT. You also don't know what their estimation of a selective college is. They might consider the U Oklahoma selective, and also MIT, so they both go in the same category, even though there is a world of difference. I went on the website of the organization where that article got its data and didn't find how they categorized certain schools.
Yes, the admissions process is indeed not only about gpa and test scores. I think it's fine to have some consideration for what you do in your free time. But that does not mean we should elevate athletes to a higher status than others and give them a streanlined process. I'm not too caught up in the ranking of colleges, in my opinion, but I realize that at this point in my life going to a nice college is a good way for me to affect my future earnings and get involved in interesting research and that, you know, I actually want to go to school with mostly smart people. I know someone will accuse me of elitism, but oh well.
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Right, but you're missing the point.
You have no ability, right, or evidence that student athletes are, in any way, dumber than the rest of the student body. Moreover, since the admission process is holistic and includes things other than grades, you have no right to say that student athletes deserve their college education any less, nor do they value it any less than non athlete students.
You need to understand that schools want more then just booksmarts. Again, your blog stinks of jealousy or bitterness against student athletes. You go as far as to say that they don't value their education as much as other students, for God's sake...
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Oh, you're one of these:
"300 spots go to the people that are actually going to spend $60k per year studying Philosophy, religion, sociology, french literature, etc"
Perhaps you should realize that fields other than hard sciences have validity. Such ignorance of your part. You wouldn't day things to an admissions officer, would you?
So studying economics isn't going to do anything to the world, so what majors are? Make a list of what is worthy studying, how about that. The audacity of your ignorance and unjustified elitism boggles my mind.
OP, I think much of your silly rant stems from the fact that kids like you are, in the eyes of Harvard, a dime a dozen. You don't do anything that a thousand others don't do better.
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On October 17 2013 07:48 Elegy wrote:
Right, but you're missing the point.
You have no ability, right, or evidence that student athletes are, in any way, dumber than the rest of the student body. Moreover, since the admission process is holistic and includes things other than grades, you have no right to say that student athletes deserve their college education any less, nor do they value it any less than non athlete students.
You need to understand that schools want more then just booksmarts. Again, your blog stinks of jealousy or bitterness against student athletes. You go as far as to say that they don't value their education as much as other students, for God's sake...
I honestly don't know why being book smart should be valued over being book smart and athletic. :/ It's not as if they accept B-class students just 'cause they're athletes; I'm sure most of the athletes at the top schools are smart as fuck and did very well in HS, anyhow, while juggling their sports practice on top of it all.
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On October 17 2013 08:15 babylon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 07:48 Elegy wrote:
Right, but you're missing the point.
You have no ability, right, or evidence that student athletes are, in any way, dumber than the rest of the student body. Moreover, since the admission process is holistic and includes things other than grades, you have no right to say that student athletes deserve their college education any less, nor do they value it any less than non athlete students.
You need to understand that schools want more then just booksmarts. Again, your blog stinks of jealousy or bitterness against student athletes. You go as far as to say that they don't value their education as much as other students, for God's sake...
I honestly don't know why being book smart should be valued over being book smart and athletic. :/ It's not as if they accept B-class students just 'cause they're athletes; I'm sure most of the athletes at the top schools are smart as fuck and did very well in HS, anyhow, while juggling their sports practice on top of it all.
Yep. If I was in charge, I'd take an active water polo captain who is a leader, confident, and can juggle the harshness of water polo with academic success over a kid that got a 0.2 higher GPA.
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On October 17 2013 07:51 Elegy wrote:
Oh, you're one of these:
"300 spots go to the people that are actually going to spend $60k per year studying Philosophy, religion, sociology, french literature, etc"
Perhaps you should realize that fields other than hard sciences have validity. Such ignorance of your part. You wouldn't day things to an admissions officer, would you?
So studying economics isn't going to do anything to the world, so what majors are? Make a list of what is worthy studying, how about that. The audacity of your ignorance and unjustified elitism boggles my mind.
OP, I think much of your silly rant stems from the fact that kids like you are, in the eyes of Harvard, a dime a dozen. You don't do anything that a thousand others don't do better.
/thread. You are a dime a dozen on paper. The sooner you realize this the better.
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On October 17 2013 07:36 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 07:09 babylon wrote:
If you go to the campus of a top school and ask students there if they think the athletes are dumber than they are, you won't receive a resounding, "Yes." In fact, you'll probably receive a resounding, "No."
Actually, if you go to the campuses of a top school and ask students there if they can list off anyone who they think don't deserve to be there, I'd be surprised if you get more than five names (and I'd be doubly surprised if they are all people who got preferential treatment during the admissions process). Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 06:44 Elegy wrote:On October 17 2013 03:20 Chocolate wrote:On October 16 2013 15:32 Elegy wrote:Hey OP, you're wrong. Look: If a Harvard athletic team is recruiting me, do I have to go through the same admissions process as other applicants? Yes. All prospective student-athletes must be accepted by the Harvard Admissions Office in order to play for a Harvard athletic team. Since all Ivy League schools do not award athletic scholarships, there are no signing dates for the National Letter of Intent. You will be notified of your acceptance into Harvard at the same time as all other applicants. To learn more about the application process, visit http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/. Yeah. This blog is full of unsupported evidence and reeks of little but bitterness. And what the heck? You say if we read your application, we'd think your Asian? How does that not reek of racial profiling and racism on behalf of the OP? Moreover, your point about student athletes is wrong. Look up evidence of student athlete GPA at top schools. Also, prove to me that starting some little club on campus where you solve chemistry problems is more worthy of admission than leading a champion water polo team. University is about fostering a lot more than just how good you are at solving something on paper. You're forgetting leadership, motivation, inspiration, and a host of other traits that student athletes tend to embody. You are technically right, but ivies and schools like stanford are able to say this because they don't officially offer admissions before the normal letters go out. They actually send out these things called likely letters that are basically unofficial offers of admission with the caveat that students don't do anything stupid like get straight Ds or get arrested. Also, coaches are given a rough allotment of people they can accept each year as long as their mean (or median, I don't remember) is within one standard deviation of the academic index of the college as a whole (AI is a way to combine grades, scores, etc. into one. see this article). And I think it was pretty stereotypical for me to think my application would make it appear I was a member of a certain race, but I did really well in this competition called the US National Chemistry Olympiad that would suggest that I was Asian, just from past results. If I did just a bit better I would have ben invited to their camp. You can see their names here. There have also been years where the entire camp was Asian. And I fit the stereotype with a lot of my after school activities like math team, academic teams, etc. Sorry if I offended you. If you can find average gpas of athletes at top colleges then I'd like to see it. But I honestly think that a lot of those colleges would probably not willingly release that information. You are also trapped in the naive belief that the specific ranking of your undergraduate education has some important, practical benefit later in life. In all seriousness, it really doesn't. I realize that at this point in my life going to a nice college is a good way for me to affect my future earnings and get involved in interesting research and that, you know, I actually want to go to school with mostly smart people. I know someone will accuse me of elitism, but oh well.
I like how entitled you think you are. People don't get involved in 'interesting research' unless you can prove that you are better than the other students or if you know the people in charge, even then, you have to be at least relatively intelligent. If you are better than the other students you won't have a problem.
'I actually want to go to school with mostly smart people', this statement is so ignorant.
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On October 17 2013 08:15 babylon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 07:48 Elegy wrote:
Right, but you're missing the point.
You have no ability, right, or evidence that student athletes are, in any way, dumber than the rest of the student body. Moreover, since the admission process is holistic and includes things other than grades, you have no right to say that student athletes deserve their college education any less, nor do they value it any less than non athlete students.
You need to understand that schools want more then just booksmarts. Again, your blog stinks of jealousy or bitterness against student athletes. You go as far as to say that they don't value their education as much as other students, for God's sake...
I honestly don't know why being book smart should be valued over being book smart and athletic. :/ It's not as if they accept B-class students just 'cause they're athletes; I'm sure most of the athletes at the top schools are smart as fuck and did very well in HS, anyhow, while juggling their sports practice on top of it all.
book smart athletes are sexy now, all of them are the next Andrew Luck until proven otherwise.
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On October 16 2013 08:48 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 21:53 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 15 2013 15:05 opsayo wrote:
the lesson you should be learning is two-fold
you're not a special snowflake
and life's not fair Sorry OP, but this is the truth. Play the hand you're dealt as best as you can. You'll be a lot happier not worrying about the injustices in the world. Maybe I'm just too young, but in my opinion a defeated attitude and just a willingness to accept things the way they are is pretty destructive. There is inequality and unfairness in life, but there are also changes we can do to make them go away just a little bit. You can't just say that inequality is always going to exist and there's nothing we can do to address it; if we didn't do that there would be loads of things still wrong with our society. Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 22:55 cam connor wrote:
Nice statistics there champ
Maybe you don't get in colleges because you make grand statements without backing them up
for real you sound like a spoiled white kid who has never had any adversity in their life
if this is the most "unfair" thing that you ever go through in your life
you are a fucking lucky individual Well if I understand you then you are calling me a liar. I don't really know what to say other than that academics and school are basically the only things that I'm really good at, but you don't have to believe me if you don't want to. And of course this isn't the most unfair thing I will experience in my life but since it's a systematic thing it feels more unjust than discrimination by some thugs or random people. Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 23:12 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 15 2013 22:59 cam connor wrote:
for real you sound like a spoiled white kid who has never had any adversity in their life
if this is the most "unfair" thing that you ever go through in your life
you are a fucking lucky individual Are you talking about OP? Because if I had to guess my money is on him being Asian... Nah I'm white but if you looked at my application without knowing my race you might think I were Asian. Show nested quote +On October 16 2013 03:35 Froadac wrote:
Likewise, don't go to hte best school you get into for just that reason. Visit and seriously consider if you want to be there.
Also, it's undergrad, it's not too important. I know a girl who went to a school which is barely top 200 in USA and she's going to LSE for PhD work. Nobody cares she went to Sonoma state now. I've visited some of the "best schools" and I actually did really like MIT the best, like I honestly think I would fit in there and be happy, or at least as happy as you could be at MIT . I think I can honestly fit in at a lot of places, since I don't have this romantic concept of some perfect college for me that's out there waiting to be discovered. Show nested quote +On October 16 2013 07:22 darthfoley wrote:
Don't get your hopes up. I went through this exact same shit last year; I applied to 13 schools, including Harvard, Cornell, etc.
I thought I had the "full package," pretty good athlete, very good academics, ECs and whatnot.
I got into 2 schools: Franklin&Marshall, and Dickinson. These were my safety schools (they're pretty good in general, just compared to Harvard...).
Spring break was one of the hardest weeks, receiving 6 rejections in 3 days. I was very down, and not excited for F&M or Dickinson.
Long story short-- I am attending F&M and playing football on the school's team, and i'm LOVING it. I've met a lot of cool people, my classes are fun, etc. (And no, I was not one of those athletes you rightly identify as needing help to get in).
Moral: If you've done your research and genuinly like every school you're applying to, you'll enjoy your undergrad experience no matter where you go. Don't get caught up in "what ifs". Well I remembered reading your blog and feeling for you, my man. It's good to know that you are happy at your safety, I'm happy for you and hopefully if I find myself in the same situation I'll be able to manage. Anyway I'm sorry that I sounded like a whiny little bitch but hopefully I'll have reason not to whine so much once March and April roll around.
Nah, i completely understand where you're coming from. Just work with what you get and you'll end up happy
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On October 16 2013 15:32 Elegy wrote:Hey OP, you're wrong. Look: Show nested quote +If a Harvard athletic team is recruiting me, do I have to go through the same admissions process as other applicants? Yes. All prospective student-athletes must be accepted by the Harvard Admissions Office in order to play for a Harvard athletic team. Since all Ivy League schools do not award athletic scholarships, there are no signing dates for the National Letter of Intent. You will be notified of your acceptance into Harvard at the same time as all other applicants. To learn more about the application process, visit http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/. Yeah. This blog is full of unsupported evidence and reeks of little but bitterness. And what the heck? You say if we read your application, we'd think your Asian? How does that not reek of racial profiling and racism on behalf of the OP? Moreover, your point about student athletes is wrong. Look up evidence of student athlete GPA at top schools. Also, prove to me that starting some little club on campus where you solve chemistry problems is more worthy of admission than leading a champion water polo team. University is about fostering a lot more than just how good you are at solving something on paper. You're forgetting leadership, motivation, inspiration, and a host of other traits that student athletes tend to embody.
Oh, come on. I know from first hand experience that while Ivies say this, it does not totally work like it.
I spoke with a recruiter from UPenn during my college search who explained that every school has specific "bands": a certain # allotted slots per GPA/SAT range. For example, UPenn could only recruit one student with (let's say...) a 1750SAT/3.3GPA, but could recruit 8 players from the 2000SAT/3.7GPA range and so on up the scales.
Those specific band numbers are made up, but the point remains. It is much easier to get into an Ivy if you're recruited.
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Anyone who considers themselves a science or math person should probably prove their competence through the Olympiads. They are the most objective way to essentially guarantee admission, and if you don't do them you are surrendering to the fact that you will need some other hook and a lot of luck to get in. I think at MIT, coming in about 1/5 of math majors were top math Olympiad folks in high school. At the end, something like 4/5 of the top 10-15 math majors leaving were Olympiad people when they came in, and I am repeatedly amazed by the strength of that other 1/5.
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United States10328 Posts
On October 18 2013 13:25 Muirhead wrote:
Anyone who considers themselves a science or math person should probably prove their competence through the Olympiads. They are the most objective way to essentially guarantee admission, and if you don't do them you are surrendering to the fact that you will need some other hook and a lot of luck to get in. I think at MIT, coming in about 1/5 of math majors were top math Olympiad folks in high school. At the end, something like 4/5 of the top 10-15 math majors leaving were Olympiad people when they came in, and I am repeatedly amazed by the strength of that other 1/5.
huh, 1/5 of incoming math majors being Olympiad people seems sort of low; maybe it's true of the *domestic* math majors... basically 100% of the foreign math majors are IMO people @_@
But yeah, I completely agree with the rest of that, except perhaps the first sentence: if you are really smart and get lucky, you can substitute good research for good competition results ~_~
Anyway, yeah, it's hard to stand out. As people have said, there are tons and tons of smart kids who have good grades and good scores and good ECs and good recs and good leadership and some sports.
It's hard to stand out
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On October 18 2013 13:25 Muirhead wrote:
Anyone who considers themselves a science or math person should probably prove their competence through the Olympiads. They are the most objective way to essentially guarantee admission, and if you don't do them you are surrendering to the fact that you will need some other hook and a lot of luck to get in. I think at MIT, coming in about 1/5 of math majors were top math Olympiad folks in high school. At the end, something like 4/5 of the top 10-15 math majors leaving were Olympiad people when they came in, and I am repeatedly amazed by the strength of that other 1/5.
Okay, I found out about the chemistry and math one at the beginning of last year, so I signed up my school for them. In the math one I didn't even make the AIME (I missed it by one question, yes I know I'm dumb) but I got a really high score in the first chemistry one which broke a few records where I'm from (highest in the state, highest score in history of region), but on the second test I didn't do well enough to even make honors, which was weird because I felt good about the test coming out of it. I'm taking both again this year, and I'm probably going to take the biology and computational ones as well, but as far as I know the results of them will come out after my acceptances/rejections are in. I wish I had done better in both of them, but I didn't. If I get waitlisted (which is probable), do you think making the camp for chemistry would be strong enough to make it off the list, provided anyone gets off the list? The rest of my app is strong, but I have no olympiad results that could make me a lock. I'm going to take a practice AMC from 2006 or something today to see how I do, because I want to at least make the AIME next year, but at this point it doesn't really matter how well I do. if by some miracle I advance to the USAMO I will probably only get 1 right.
On October 18 2013 19:46 ]343[ wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2013 13:25 Muirhead wrote:
Anyone who considers themselves a science or math person should probably prove their competence through the Olympiads. They are the most objective way to essentially guarantee admission, and if you don't do them you are surrendering to the fact that you will need some other hook and a lot of luck to get in. I think at MIT, coming in about 1/5 of math majors were top math Olympiad folks in high school. At the end, something like 4/5 of the top 10-15 math majors leaving were Olympiad people when they came in, and I am repeatedly amazed by the strength of that other 1/5. huh, 1/5 of incoming math majors being Olympiad people seems sort of low; maybe it's true of the *domestic* math majors... basically 100% of the foreign math majors are IMO people @_@ But yeah, I completely agree with the rest of that, except perhaps the first sentence: if you are really smart and get lucky, you can substitute good research for good competition results ~_~ Anyway, yeah, it's hard to stand out. As people have said, there are tons and tons of smart kids who have good grades and good scores and good ECs and good recs and good leadership and some sports. It's hard to stand out
Ha, I have no illusion of being one of the best math majors at MIT, I'll probably sign up for a high level math class first semester just to see how hard it is (if I get in ), or one of the courses that I've studied on my own.
The only thing that makes me truly stand out are my scores (the common saying that MIT could fill its class with perfect scores is not true, there are only 1000 perfect scorers on the ACT and SAT every year and not all of them want to go to MIT anyway. I've met about 8 perfect scorers and only 3 want to go, but this could be affected by my state) but they aren't going to get me in alone.
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Well, shit.
I've been waiting about two months for this machine to come in for me to be able to complete my research, and it still isn't here (the people running a lab own a business and also want to use it commercially, so lawyers are doing their thing).The people at the lab don't want to give me anything else to research for the time being (funding sucks and I am, after all, only some high school kid). So now if I want to do research for Intel I either have to find a new lab in the next week or do some theoretical research.
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On October 19 2013 01:25 Chocolate wrote:
Well, shit.
I've been waiting about two months for this machine to come in for me to be able to complete my research, and it still isn't here (the people running a lab own a business and also want to use it commercially, so lawyers are doing their thing).The people at the lab don't want to give me anything else to research for the time being (funding sucks and I am, after all, only some high school kid). So now if I want to do research for Intel I either have to find a new lab in the next week or do some theoretical research.
I hope you find a research opportunity you enjoy! At this point I think nothing you do will improve your chances, besides potentially persuading your letter-writers to write better letters. It sounds like you come from a somewhat out-of-the-way state, which could be a point in your favor. Definitely mention (but only briefly) the Chemistry Olympiad stuff, and pretend like you've never heard of the AIME. I hope you make it to MIT, because we could always use more Starcraft players . I still attend the Starcraft club every week even though I am an alumnus now. If you don't make MIT, it doesn't really affect your future options for anything except possibly investment banking. Just like in high school, the difference will be that you won't have as many people around you to compare yourself to or know how competent you have to be to achieve certain feats like getting into a good grad school. If you do motivate yourself to do such things though, you'll have a much easier time getting personal attention from professors at a place where you stand out.
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On October 19 2013 01:25 Chocolate wrote:
Well, shit.
I've been waiting about two months for this machine to come in for me to be able to complete my research, and it still isn't here (the people running a lab own a business and also want to use it commercially, so lawyers are doing their thing).The people at the lab don't want to give me anything else to research for the time being (funding sucks and I am, after all, only some high school kid). So now if I want to do research for Intel I either have to find a new lab in the next week or do some theoretical research.
you know this kind of thing happens to grad students on a regular basis. except that it only ruins their careers.
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On October 27 2013 15:47 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2013 01:25 Chocolate wrote:
Well, shit.
I've been waiting about two months for this machine to come in for me to be able to complete my research, and it still isn't here (the people running a lab own a business and also want to use it commercially, so lawyers are doing their thing).The people at the lab don't want to give me anything else to research for the time being (funding sucks and I am, after all, only some high school kid). So now if I want to do research for Intel I either have to find a new lab in the next week or do some theoretical research. you know this kind of thing happens to grad students on a regular basis. except that it only ruins their careers.
Well, I feel bad for them as well. It sucks. I don't know what you want me to say. Sorry if this has happened to you.
I managed to get another project but we are going to be working right up to the deadline. It's going to be very !FUN! But right now I'm swamped with essays for schools with Nov. 1 deadlines.
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I was able to submit to Intel.
I accidentally sent my SAT scores to Caltech late so they might defer me solely on those grounds. However, since I know that Caltech is probably one of the most selective colleges out there (not % wise, but the group that applies is very self-selecting) I'm glad that I was able to bump up a Chemistry score by a bit.
Early admissions info comes out in two weeks asdfqwieb. I'm preparing to get deferred from both MIT and Caltech and probably accepted to all my match schools, but perhaps not with an invitation to the big merit scholarships. Hopefully I'm pleasantly surprised. GL to everyone else in the application process right now.
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EPT
