Posted on 01/27/2009 9:01:48 AM PST by bs9021
College Recruiting Roulette Rules
by: Deborah Lambert, January 27, 2009
Kathleen Kingsbury, in a Daily Beast exclusive, lets college admissions officers tell their personal stories about why some students make the cut and others don’t.
She advises students who’ve mailed off their applications to “recalibrate your expectations based on your race, your wealth, and whether the NFL team in the city where that college is located is on a losing streak. The shadowy world of college admissions has left millions of confused and frustrated rejects in its wake. (So stop practicing the oboe.) Current and former admissions officers from colleges and universities across the country talked to the Daily Beast about why attending a good high school can hurt your chances, the perils of too many recommendations, and why white girls from Jersey barely have a chance.
On the arbitrary nature of admissions
Former admissions officer at elite, small liberal arts college in the Northeast, age 25
“One year I had a student with a near-perfect SAT score and straight A’s. I’d originally put him in the submitted pile, but then we had to reduce the list. I reread his essays and frankly, they were just a little more boring than the other kids. So I cut him. Boring was the only justification that I needed and he was out.
I got sluggish in the afternoon after lunch, so maybe I wasn’t as scrupulous about a candidate as I would have been if I were fresh. Or even if my favorite sports team was in a slump, it affected who made the cut....
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
Most colleges and universities in this country today are highly overrated puppy mills, and the admissions people understand this better than anyone.
i’m actually worried that my child will be hurt getting in a top college
because he is in high school republicans. they don’t want that
kind of diversity.
I was lucky to go to a college that believed that the professors should teach classes and had very few TAs or adjuncts teaching the lecture classes. They were generally restricted to running labs and grading papers.
Why do you want your child to get into a “top” college?
Actually, some of the best college instructors I’ve ever had were adjuncts and some of the worst were full professors. Adjuncts who have real jobs bring a clue about the real world to the classroom and course management. Of course there are also adjuncts who are struggling academics, yearning for a position that will put them on the track to professorhood, but unable to land anything but one-off, temporary (often last-minute) “teach this course and we’ll give you a check” deals.
Because i like small classes and the intellectual give and take one
can establish early on. i went to a large university, and while i loved
it, it was more of a sink or swim place. if my son goes to a large
school, that will be fine. my husband went to small for undergrad and
and large for grad and we just feel his undergrad was a better
experience.
But “top” doesn’t correlate with “small”. Berkeley is huge, Penn is large, Middlebury is small, but all three have the admissions insanity associated with “top” schools. There are also very large and very small schools in the practically open admissions category.
well, you gotta point. i should have done a better job of making my point.
my son will apply to several ivy league schools as well as some small
and some midsize liberal arts schools. He will also apply to several
large universities including our state university. he does have extremely high
test scores and good grades. i assumed that the ivy league schools
and liberal, liberal arts schools may hold his membership in high school
republicans against him. however, i do not know that for a fact. i may
be wrong. if my child should be accepted to our state university, i will
be perfectly happy with that. i do know the lefties scratch each others backs
on admissions, internships, etc,
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