Her college rejection !

Valid point. In your case, you can guess why you were not selected for an interview. However, taking one step back we can say that GM, Ford, and Chrysler management in the preceding decades was the real root problem, not you.

 

This is just another whiney 'my failure is not my fault' lazy excuse by another moral coward and self-deluded loser. I would donate to a fund to 'tie her tubes' because her first premise is that a college of her choice dictates the rest of her life.

Bob Wilson

 

of course, her rejection was someone else's opportunity...

 

Her rejection improved the gene pool at the college.

Bob Wilson

 

Back in the day, the University of California had a quota system such that high grades and scores did not guarantee admission. I was turned down by UC San Diego, which was my 'backup plan'. Don't know how the UC system does things now, but I suppose that every college has some system (public knowledge or not).

Publicly funded schools need to follow state law. Privately funded schools can throw darts for selection, AFAIK.

I don't begrudge the rejectee publishing her letter. Free speech and all. If it was really her dream to go Ivy League she probably should have applied to all of them. More advice: if you are hot for a particular school, visit before the admissions deadline and make yourself known (in a good way) to the administrators. They know her name now, of course, but reversing the decision seems unlikely. More advice: all schools require some sort of essay about you, right? Put some real effort into that such that it reveals your personality and is enjoyable to read. Admissions officers have to wade through a lot of 'meh'. They will notice good work.

 

The letter was her essay and I have no doubt Liberty University or Regent University would be happy to have her.

Bob Wilson

 

I'm sure it was not, Bob, since being written after the fact. It is certainly not a letter I'd want to read as an admissions officer.

The saltine cracker bit has potential, and could have been developed in a positive way. But not the talk about what you didn't or couldn't do.

 

even if colleges and universities only went by grades and sat scores, those are a farce as well these days, and the 'best and brightest' wouldn't necessarily get in to the school of their choice.

 

My daughter finished High School with a 4.6ish GPA, was in the top 10 of her large class, and had a résumé that included successful debate and music at our (admittedly mediocre) state level. She was an SAT national merit finalist, and an AP national scholar.

Neither she or I thought she was a strong Ivy school candidate. I estimate that if she had applied to all the Ivies she had perhaps a 20% chance of admission.

Her fraternal twin brother probably had better admission chances. He had completed 2.5 years of chemistry and math majors with a 4.0 GPA at our state flagship by the end of High School. Similar GPA, perfect SAT, and better national recognition. Daughter had a realistic basis for comparison.

Neither child applied to Ivy, both are happy at colleges they chose. Both expect to be competitive candidates for grad or professional schools -- at least as competitive as as their talents allow. Oh, and the cost of attendance is reasonable due to merit scholarships.

 

Sure, but 99.9% of Ivy grads do not grow up to be Presidents or even CEOs.

Perspective, please.

Ivy school benefit is also confounded by simply having superior students rather than the education itself:

The Value Of An Ivy League Education

It seems fair to say that an Ivy education is excellent, although poor economic value. People that think their life and career are over if they do not attend an Ivy are either misinformed and/or lack analytic skills.

E.g., Prof of Economics at Harvard Greg Mankiw summarizes the question of whether Ivy helps one in the corporate rat race in his blog by calculating that an Ivy grad has about a 10 fold greater chance of becoming a CEO than a generic college student. However, if we remember that Ivies pretty much restrict their admissions to students in the top 2%, if not 1% of the student pool, the Ivy 'advantage' evaporates.

Even the popular theme that Ivy education gives a young person the connections used for later success is more than debatable. GwBush is a shining example of someone who walked into an Ivy because of his family's social circle, and whose later success in politics was more of the same. The Ivy school did not give him connections, it just rubber stamped them.

 

The student's WSJ essay is often described as satire and I'm having trouble with that. It impugns that other students who go 'way out there' in terms of extracurricular activities are padding their resume.

This might be true, but it disagrees with my world view. My opinion is that students with much extracurriculars are doing things that they really enjoy, feel motivated to do, or are getting lots of direct positive feedback from doing. Of course I may be optimistic or even Panglossian.

Whatever one does beyond classes, this is what the admissions officers want to read about, and in your own words. This is not to say that they are all-seeing and all-wise. In fact I know few people in that role.

The main point is what motivates extracurricular efforts, and I think our topic lass here is wrong about it.

 

The frustration being expressed is the lack of transparency in the admissions process. What students should demand and receive is a defined path to admission that starts in about the 9th grade and is reviewed annually to confirm requirements are being met and adjustments made.

 

At the end of the day, the same percentage of applicants will have to be culled and, short of requiring that the admissions offices explicitly cite the reasons for the rejections, the rejected students will feel every bit as cheated as what's-her-name here.

 

What transparency are you hoping for ?

A standardized test that misses important characteristics and can be gamed ?
An acknowledgment that subjective grading of essays matters ?

Your demand is a pipe dream. The best we can hope for is that it is in the interest of these colleges to take the "best" students. Whatever that means.

 

Sagebrush, I think you are struggling with my post.

Every college has their own goals for admissions. My local state university is bound by law to accept any student in the top 10% of their public school graduating class, regardless of the courses taken or their score on standardized exams, often at the expense of admitting the top 1% from alternatives. Some schools try to achieve a diverse group of entrants from around the globe. Others strive to maximize revenues and some specialize in under served groups.

The pipeline into any particular school is well understood at each institution, just not by the students and their parents. College counselors can bridge the gap for many but a counselor has limited experience to lean on to bridge the gap between a few hundred students and thousands of colleges.

as an aside, I was impressed by a group of high school students about 10 years ago that formed themselves into a group and applied to a handful of colleges, insisting on priority access to a specific group of instructors at each institution, sort of a Plan II without the boundaries of a campus. I tried to recruit from the group while they were in graduate programs.