What's this op-ed missing?

I had that same exact thought.

I don't know whether to weep for America or to kick myself for having become the grumpy old guy who hates today's entitled youth.

 

This girl had a 4.5 GPA, 2120 on her SAT and had done an internship as a U.S. Senate page. She was clearly sophisticated enough to know the game and to have tried to play it (and sophisticated enough to write this for the WSJ). As you said, it's just really difficult to get into those schools now. She didn't do anything wrong. They get a ridiculous number of applicants for very few spots. I am assuming she will end up at Michigan (one of the Big Ten schools she got into), and I agree with everyone on here, boo fucking hoo. There are a gazillion kids who would have given a body organ to get into Michigan (which has gotten more competitive, too, just as the schools she wanted have).

The strategy now, is to decide on your top choice and apply early decision. When you apply early decision, you have to go to the school if you are accepted. If you have the credentials, your chances go by making it your early decision choice. You just get one chance, though.

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, all know that they are getting the same applicants and that those kids can only pick one school. They each like to boast about how selective they are, so they don't want to admit kids who then decide to go elsewhere (which makes you have to admit more kids, period). So you boost your chances a great deal (you still need the credentials) with your early decision application. The kid I mentioned that I helped this year got into the school he applied to early decision. If he hadn't, I expect he would have seen a bunch of rejection letters. He had the credentials, but so did a gazillion other kids.

It's a much tougher game to be a part of than it was 20 to 30 years ago. I think a lot of parents who went to some of these schools have gotten hit hard with that reality. Which is the overall topic fits the WSJ demographic perfectly, even if the op ed is lame / a bad attempt a satire / whiny, or whatever it is.

 

I have only watched bits and pieces. I can't take it. There is a lot of sexuality, I think, it's just not sexuality I really want to be watching.

 

I believe that. I have heard people throw out the (unrealistic) experimental idea of one of the Ivy's putting together their pool of their qualified applicants. ... and rather than picking kids subjectively from that group of applicants, using random straws to decide who gets in.

You could then go back in 10 year increments and see if those kids do any better or worse than the kids they are currently admitting because they decided that subjectively one kid with stellar grades and perfect SAT scores had something another one didn't.

 

It's very difficult to get into a lot of schools, so you can do everything right and still not get into your choice.

At the same time, you can certainly do a lot to hurt your chances.

Without knowing anything, I wonder if that was the case with the girl who wrote that op ed. From the tone of her piece, I could imagine her writing essays that missed the mark somehow (thinking she was being cute or irreverent) or showing up for an interview and thinking she was being "candid," when she was really demonstrating a lack of tact.

I don't know if that is true, but it's a possibility.

When I was an undergrad, I knew a guy who was brilliant, but way too full of himself. Cocky as all hell. He wanted to go to medical school, and he had great credentials. I am pretty sure he had a 4.3 GPA in a life sciences major and he had perfect MCAT scores. Kt was a good university. He was a superbright guy. Just arrogant, especially if you didn't know him, he could rub you the wrong way.

He put together a list of the top medical schools in the country and sent his applications, and he was sure they would all be banging down his door. The first hurdle with medical school is getting the interview. He got all the interviews.

But after he started going for interviews, rejection letters started trickling in. We all wondered just how big of a dick he was at the interviews. I could totally see him interviewing them, making them try to convince him why he should grace them with his presence.

He is a guy who took a can't miss application and turned it into rejections from a couple of schools he would have liked to go to.