now, im a senior in high school, just got back my decision results: into carnegie mellon and a couple other places. i’ll probably end up at carnegie, which i’m fine with. now for the most part i’ll be content, congratulate people when they get in, but not worry too much about the whole process. But there’s one kid who that won’t quite work out for. He’s a total ass, a slimy, greedy, pompous bastard, in addition to being a thoroughly mediocre student, utterly unexceptional in every way. He is universally reviled, and rightly so. Now this kid probably applied to everyone of the top 15 schools on those college rankings, and a bunch more of course. I would think most admissions departments are fairly reasonable, and this kid rightly saw rejection come in after rejection. Not just to stanford, duke, the usual suspects, but pretty easy places to get into. besides one place in the midwest, he was SAL. But here’s where harvard comes in. Now both his parents went there, in addition to his sister. It had given him an air of entitlement, as if going to the school was completely inevitable. Now we all figured that while being a legacy must help, it surely couldn’t be the difference between universal rejection and acceptance into the most elite school in the country. But of course, he got in. Fuck you harvard, for taking away a spot from some hard working, smart student and giving it to this undeserving, idiotic sleazebag. WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING? did the admissions officers have to wince when they selected “accepted?” WHY THE FUCK SHOULD YOUR PARENT’S SCHOOL IMPACT WHERE YOU GET IN? jesus christ, you snooty inward looking ass hats
It sucks, but it happens.
My former best friend was accepted into Yale because she fulfilled their affirmative action requirements. My year’s top student was rejected by Yale, but former friend got in even though her GPA was lower, she scored lower on tests, and she had less extra curricular activities. Former friend was still outstanding- just less outstanding than our top student.
Former best friend got a huge head for being accepted by an Ivy league college. She was reveled as the golden child by everyone in the school and drank all that attention in, she LOVED it. However, it was short-lived. Just because a person gets accepted to the college doesn’t mean that they have what it takes to stay in. A lot of the kids are the golden fish in the small pond, but once they’re dumped into a huge pond with other golden fishes, they get the shock of having to compete with others like them in an intense environment.
Like I said, stuff like that happens all the time. Former friend eventually dropped out of Yale, but it sucks that she took up a slot and scholarship space instead of somebody (such as the top of my class) that really deserved it.
Perhaps he uses paragraphs and punctuation?
Yeeeeeah, those things help.
You cannot possibly expect anyone to seriously entertain your rant against an academic institution when you’re not even a little bit arsed to make your post look like it wasn’t written by a kindergartener who hasn’t learned to punctuate or capitalize properly.
And don’t whine at me about how this is just a message board, not something you’re writing for cash and prizes. Everything you write publicly is your face to the world and if you don’t care enough to even try a little, then don’t be surprised when this kind of crap gets you nowhere.
The subject of your post may very well be an entitled ass, and the admissions people at Harvard may very well be stupid, but you’re the only one who is providing actual evidence of stupidity here.
D+
It would have been an F, but you might have a point, even in the face of flagrant text message like writing.
It’s nice that you’re trying to comfort the OP, but life continues to be unfair for the duration. I have some high school classmates who went to Ivy League schools and skated through for their Gentleman’s A or B. I worked my ass off at a just-barely-not-quite-an-Ivy, and was lucky to escape with a 3.45 GPA. But while I was there, I met my future wife, made some awesome friends, and did stuff that I would never have been able to do anywhere else. And in the long run it turned out that my GPA didn’t matter.
I got rejected from Princeton, and a classmate of mine who didn’t understand that not all electronics can be recharged by leaving them in the sun (think about that for a moment!) got in, and an early acceptance at that. Another classmate of mine who nearly got electrocuted using a cafeteria fork to help plug in Christmas lights, and who had trouble remembering which of the World Wars had Pearl Harbor in it? Yale.
Duke wouldn’t take anyone at all from my year, because the three geniuses who went there the year before us all managed to fail out freshman year – our school was blacklisted on Duke’s admissions list for three years for that. Think about that for a moment: a kid who is a triple-legacy to Duke could have been rejected if he had the misfortune to be born the year after a world-class fuckup who happened to choose the same high school as him.
The entire college admissions process eats a giant bag of dicks. It’s grossly unjust, appears arbitrary or capricious, seems to favor the stupid-but-lucky over hardworking-but-slightly-flawed, and generally places undue weight on a whole host of made-up factors while ignoring the most basic common sense indicators of success.
So tough shit. There are no guarantees in life. Go to whichever school seems like the best of your options, do the best work you can do, enjoy all four (five? six…?) years, and never forget that college is not something to do to prepare for life – it is part of your life, so keep living while you’re there, and for heaven’s sake don’t be bitter about where you could have gone.
You sound kind of entitled yourself, toots. You’ll fit right in at CMU.
It is sad that so many of you care more about the punctuation and capitalization of a post than its content. Are you too stupid to grasp the meaning without capital letters to show you where new thoughts begin? It’s too bad that so few of you were accepted by an institution as good as the one that took the OP.
I’m just pissed at Harvard not because they rejected my PhD application (in fact, the more I hear, the happier I am about that), but because they had the most poorly designed and unnecessarily complicated online application form, they charged me up the wazoo for the privilege of applying, and then couldn’t be bothered to send me a courtesy “you’re out” email. At least they replied when I emailed and asked them for a status update, unlike Stanford, who decided I didn’t exist.
So, yes, Harvard can bite me. Oh, and my dad got his MBA there.
And also the OP sucked.
On this board, punctuation and capitalization count for something. It’s the way it is.
Why pit Harvard now? Has the fact that dumbfuck legacy admissions erode academic credibility suddenly become worse than it’s been for the past 30 years?
I suppose you should get cut some slack because you’re only 17-18 (although, to pile on, you write like you’re 12). But come on, you’ve got to realize that not only will Mr. Dumbfuck Legacy go to a better school than you, he’ll also get a better job than you upon graduation, and probably outdo you over the course of your life.
Completely hypothetically, Mr. Dumbfuck Legacy will end up going from Top Ivy to Top Ivy Business School despite drinking, driving, and snorting cocaine, then inherit a large oil fortune, the Texas Rangers, and then find Jesus, get elected governor of Texas, President of the United States and retire in style. It’s the American Way. :mad:
We’re in the pit, brownie55, so I can tell you to fuck right off.
Asinine punctuation apologist.
Guy bemoans the fact that he was rejected by starting a thread titled “i pit harvard.”
What’s not to ridicule?
Oh yeah, definitely. Believe me, I know about that, I didn’t mean for it to sound like all dummies will get their comeuppance or anything. I was just saying that there are some people who will get in unfairly and make it through but there are also others that can’t take the heat and crash and burn. Either way, it’s unfortunate that it’s one less spot for a person who could have truly put it to good use.
I’m in a similar boat. Going to a really tough college, pulling a 3.4 (so close to a 3.5!) but I would be outshone by my friend (had she not dropped out) just because of the name recognition. But like you said, life’s not always fair. The sooner the OP realizes that, and stops focusing her efforts on griping about others and starts focuses them on bettering her own situation, the better.
Whoa - where your parents went to school counts for admission? WTF! What does that mean about you - smart people can have dumb kids. What a stupid rule.
Sounds like you are caught up in prestige.
Get over it and yourself. There is nothing wrong with colleges that aren’t located on the east or west coast. Who the fuck cares where someone else goes? Worry about yourself.
Regardless of how well the OP was crafted, it raises some important points.
All I can say is that, IMHO, graduate admissions are a bit fairer and more merit based. If they can’t figure out how to take the LSAT, MCAT, or GRE well at some point, simply having a Harvard BA alone isn’t any sort of golden ticket. I know plenty of people that went to Ivy Leagues that have had less success than a number of students I know that went to CU-Boulder. Sure, it might help, but it isn’t everything, and it certainly isn’t a guarantee of success in life. CMU is a fine school as are any number of research-oriented state universities that provide rigorous (probably more so than Hahhvahhd) and complete undergraduate experiences that are still plenty easy to get into. Don’t worry about the whores from Harvard’s admissions office that can still defend legacy admissions in the 21st century.
He may also end up like a dumbass legacy buddy of mine. Nice enough guy to hang out with, but the cerebral fortitude of a bag of hammers. Dad was apparently the real deal, collecting several MAs and PhD before going on to become a kinda-sorta third-world dictator. Despite all of dad’s influence and contributions, junior was finally expelled for academic and disciplinary violations.
Granted, I’m sure junior wants for nothing right now and living a life of luxury. Other legacies I knew worked their asses off like everyone else and graduated with honors they earned for themselves.
But hey, who am I to complain? I may not have had the legacy advantage when I went, but my son will. And I’m certainly going to encourage him to use every tool at his disposal.
Welcome to the world of American private universities.
They know that if they reject the kids of alumni just because the kids are as dumb as a bag of hammers, the alumni won’t hand over large wads of cash to the institution.
You can’t be serious, brownie55… a rant about academic admissions written in in a form that looks like if it had been long hand would have been in crayon?
Sod off.
There isn’t any credibility in the content when the OP doesn’t even TRY to put his best face forward. A typo here or there, or some misspellings are nothing to fret about.
Or maybe it is his best face, in which case, ranting about someone else getting into an ivy league over him is the height of hilarity and begs for ridicule.
Also, asking if we are too stupid to read it as it is is just being a jackass.
Upon rethinking my first post, though I would like to say to the OP, this hasn’t been the warmest of welcomes. I’m sorry about that. In the pit, sometimes I don’t remember that the new kids haven’t yet cut their teeth on the culture of this particular forum. So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, mea culpa. You don’t sound like an idiot, so in the future, don’t write like one and you’ll be fine.
Yeah, we should be be judging the OP by the colour of his skin, not the contents of his characters!