I don’t care about the story a kid told. Let’s talk about my (hypothetical) kid. He is not fat because he eats healthy and plays sports. He is not gay or Mexican because of his DNA (or whatever accident of birth).
Because he is a regular kid who went to high school and got good grades, he gets a markdown? That’s facially absurd.
It’s absurd that a kid across town that worked just as hard as your kid, who is just as talented and well-liked, gets marked down because of the accident of THEIR birth. Not just when it comes to college applications, but for the rest of his life.
Nothing is stopping your hypothetical kid from writing a compelling essay about something that speaks to his own identity. Racial minorities are not the only ones who have ever experienced how it feels to be “outsider”. I’d actually have some concerns about an individual who has NEVER had this experience before.
I don’t have any experience reading college essays. But I’m guessing a story JUST about how it feels to be a member of a minority group does not qualify as “compelling” anymore. Hence, why a fat Mexican may be able to get away with it, but a skinny Mexican might be encouraged to write about something else.
He doesn’t, if he can write about whatever experiences shaped him with wit and humor and grace and insight. I’ve read tons of dreadfully boring, ineffective essays about “compelling personal stories”, and they don’t do well.
How is this kid marked down solely because he can’t write about being fat, gay, and/or Mexican? Why are any of those three things important for a college application?
My hypothetical kid has a 4.0, is in the honor society, quarter back and captain of the football team, is white, straight, and in shape. He has never suffered anything. He gets laid by cheerleaders every Friday and is loved by the community. He has no essay to write about overcoming anything. He is successful in his young life.
Why is this a negative for him in the admissions process. Remember, under my proposal, the fat, gay, Mexican kids gets judged by his GPA and SAT scores as well.
Amazing, isn’t it, how Cambridge manages to deliver excellent education without considering any “compelling personal stories” or any extracurricular activities in its admission criteria.
He can still have a story-- it will just need to be a different story. How has he challenged himself? How has he displayed commitment to a cause or goal? Given his clear intellect, how has he used it? It’s not really the topic of the story that is important, it’s the personal qualities displayed in that story.
Now, if what he did with his life was glide through without challenging himself, then yes, he doesn’t belong. Smart people are a dime a dozen, and rarely achieve much. The smart coasters are the ones that drop out the first time they take a tough class.
The kinds of smart people these schools are looking for will never have a dull story, because they are naturally driven to take on the biggest challenges they can conceive of. And there are basically no limits on what a bright kid from a good family can set out to achieve. And you know, sometimes that is playing football. But he is going to have to sell it to the reader.
Again, universities are not handing out cookies for good grades-- just like a job interviewer isn’t in the business of handing out cookies for good qualifications. They are trying to find the people who will contribute the most- to campus life, to intellectual life, to the school’s reputation, or to the school’s endowment.
Yes, your conclusion is facially absurd. It is farcical even.
He gets points if he can tell a good story about who he is and why he is interesting and different than the bulk of the other candidates. Indeed he does not a get any extra marks up just for being another middle class suburban kid with decent grades with lots of support … the class is full of them. Yes, being privileged is his cross to bear. Of course the fat gay Mexican kid didn’t get marks up for being fat gay or Mexican … but for telling a story about his identity formation that entertained while demonstrating self-awareness and insight.
I have no hypothetical children; only four actual ones. Two through college already and one in the process of deciding where to transfer. One just starting High School.
For most big schools it is mostly a numbers game.
Smaller ones care about the extra-curriculars in terms of rounding out the class as much as anything else: do they need a French horn player in the band? More who will likely staff the student paper? So on. The essay? Only an occasional exceptional one might stand out and make a difference. Most I am sure are just a bore to read and slog through.
The elites are, after taking the big monies and legacies, looking at a large pool of candidates that are amply “qualified”, more than able to handle the academics, and from that group want to choose people who are also interesting and who will make for an interesting mix.
Should they not be allowed to do so?
Okay they define those who hail of the most wealthy and most generous of the most wealthy families as interesting by definition … green is a very interesting color when you have a program to run. But of the others they don’t want all similar stories and attributes. Straight A near perfect SAT piano or violin playing and award winning multiple AP classes with 4s middle class kids, going into sciences or math or physics or econ? Whatever the skin color they only want to so many of them.
Between them Princeton, Harvard and Yale admit under 4500 students each year, out of 5.25 million kids entering colleges overall in the country. In the big picture what they do is of little import, even for the top 1% of students or even fraction thereof. Most of that top academic 1% will succeed just fine going elsewhere, even without golden ticket of a Harvard/Princeton or Yale diploma in hand.
Yes, Terr. Rags to riches, overcoming obstacles, humble beginnings … is a particularly American affectation, part of our particular mythology. The concept of a broad liberal arts education as something that colleges offer is also something currently foreign to Cambridge or English colleges in general, for that matter. You are comparing different beasts inhabiting different cultures. Interesting thing about Cambridge though … Asian applicants secured “AAA at A-level” at 78.8%, higher than the 74.8% for Whites. But Asian acceptance into Cambridge was 22.7% while White applicants were accepted at an 30.1% rate. Huh. They have that in common anyway!
Amazing how Cambridge requires a personal statement, as do all of the schools in the UCAS system. They also want to see if you have held a job as well. They also might have an interview.
Everything is covered here:
(Just went through all of this with my son - the UC application that got him into Berkeley and UCLA, and the UCAS which got him into University of Edinburgh and St. Andrews).
Yet they do not care about your “compelling personal story” or extra-curriculars. What they do care about is your academic credentials and test scores. In their web page they say, basically, sure, include your compelling personal story in your statement. If it is not relevant to your field of study, we will ignore it.
Universities–particularly competitive ones–do, and must, use race-alone criteria for the purpose of maintaining race-alone diversity.
Without race-alone affirmative action criteria, almost no US blacks would qualify for admission to elite medical schools, for example.
Using opportunity as a winnowing device does not work because highly privileged black students still underscore poorly privileged whites and asians.
What this means at a practical level is that a smaller percentage of asians with high test scores will be admitted than any other self-identified race group. There are a finite number of spots, so preferentially admitting one group effectively denies other groups.
Race-based AA is absolutely necessary, and we should keep it, because all race groups are not of equal potential for all skillsets. Therefore no amount of cultural adjustments will ever mean outcomes are equivalent in groups whose average gene pools for the source populations have been separated by tens of thousands of years.
Of course Harvard has racial bias for admissions, and it should. We need a society that protects all groups equally, and we can find ways to let all groups participate in the benefits of the society we build. Harvard–nor any other higher institution–will not easily expose its data, and for obvious reasons. The data will not show a color-blind admissions process (nor a legacy-blind one either, for that matter). But we need to look past that and understand that there is a greater good at play.
Why do you think an essay has to be about “overcoming” to be compelling? No one has said that except for you.
Your hypothetical kid could write about his biggest role model. He could write about the first time he decided to say “no” to his friends or to his parents, or about how the premature death of his favorite uncle affected him growing up. He could write about being deeply religious when all his friends are non-believers.
If your hypothetical son has NO stories to tell, “compelling” or otherwise, then what does he have to offer an elite university? Out of struggle and adversity comes the real learning. A person with an easy life, with zero problems, is a person who hasn’t learned anything except for what he’s passively absorbed. Why would a university want such a student?
If you want your hypothetical to have a story to write about, challenge them. Push them. Encourage them to leave their comfort zone. With all the opportunities out there to learn new things and meet new people, it’s actually harder to boring than interesting nowadays.
What an absolutely ridiculous statement. Sometimes I despair when I think that this kind of stupid crap passes for educational policies in the US. Apparently we don’t need world-class engineers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists etc. etc. etc. in the United States. No, we need a bunch of less-than-stellar specialists who “overcame adversity”. Because overcoming adversity is what’s important. Not ability or talent.
And yet…who has the best universities in the world? By a long shot?
We do, even among engineers and mathematicians, need people with reading comprehension. How you could misread what monstro wrote so badly buggers the mind.
Again, to restate, explicitly “overcoming” adversity is not critical. Having a story to tell is. Challenge does not need be externally imposed but meeting challenge head on … seeking it even and growing from the experience … makes you a more desirable part of an elite group. Yes there is a place for some whose challenges were all the usual application c.v. ones … taking the hardest classes and such. But a class full of them is boring. You want to be part of the special club without having the hereditary ticket of admission (1%er and/or legacy)? Then demonstrate why you are more than the typical high achieving middle class kid (of whom they have many thousands to choose between), convince them of what makes you interesting enough to add to their collection.
What challenges did you seek out? What have you learned beyond classwork? Yes, your grades are great. Test scores near perfect. We have lots of those in our collection. Lots of people who became CEOs. If you are to join our elite club without the ticket of 1%er or legacy then give us hope that you might have some spark of creative greatness not just plenty of discipline and study habits. Nothing? Nothing. Well move along then.
Last time I checked, engineers and scientists are supposed to be problem-solvers. They ask tough questions and grapple with the answers.
They aren’t passive. They seek challenges.
A kid who has it easy in life does not know what a problem is. If you’ve never experienced a problem, how can you even begin to call yourself a problem-solver? How can you say you’re naturally curious if you’ve never stepped out of your comfort zone and asked questions?
Hell, if you don’t have a authentic story to tell, there’s no rule that says you can’t be creative and exaggerate a little! A person who can’t bullshit when it counts doesn’t belong at Harvard either.
Yeah, because Cambridge, that does not take into account any “compelling life stories” about “adversity” is not one of the best, is it?
Yes, we all saw that documentary with C. Thomas Howell.
And if it is? They *don’t *ignore it? I’m sorry, but I’m finding this line of “Cambridge doesn’t care about their students as individuals” argument to be complete shite. You might consider moving on.
I’m not opposed to your stances here, and not arguing with you per se, but don’t forget Cambridge, Oxford, (and LSE?), the Sorbonne, Queen’s, McGill, etc.
Also, I think it’s relevant to this conversation that Terr has indicated in another thread that he thinks there is no substantial racial discrimination in the US, and that the racial disparities in socioeconomic well-being are due to “victim culture” and things like that.
On top of that, Chief Pedant, WTF?
The main focus of interviews is to explore your academic potential, motivation and suitability for your chosen course. Questions are designed to assess your:
problem-solving abilities
assimilation of new ideas and information
intellectual flexibility and analytical reasoning
It’s important for you to remember that interviewers won’t be trying to ‘catch you out’, but will be challenging you to think for yourself and show how you can apply your existing knowledge and skills laterally to unfamiliar problems.
Interviews help selectors to gauge how you would respond to the teaching methods used at Cambridge. Interviews are similar in many ways to supervisions.
… and
Are extra-curricular activities taken into account?
While achievements in particular extra-curricular activities may be impressive, getting an offer of a place isn’t influenced by them. However, interviewers often ask about other interests or experience that you mention in your application where they’re of relevance to the course that you intend to study.
Amazing, isn’t it? For Cambridge, the fact that you overcame being fat, gay and Mexican apparently is not relevant. And yet, somehow, they still manage to be one of the best universities in the world. How do they do it? Don’t they know that you’re supposed to overcome adversity in order to “bring something” to the university?