Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Do you list DYS on a college application?

A lot of the posts in this thread have been in reference to Ivy League schools and how difficult it is to gain admission. A great education and a good career can be had outside of those schools, so why bother with a system that drives people nuts? There are lots of other quality choices.

Because the perception is that these schools allow you access to jobs, such as I-banking, wall street finance, and business consulting that allow you to potentially climb the SES ladder and escape the grinding mediocrity and despair of middle class existence without having to go to med school and get one of the ROAD specialties. (I think I have this one right.)

Well, that and they *are* important if you have the insane idea that you want to go do law school because the status of a Good School makes it much easier to get into to a Good Law School. It's kind of entertaining to watch the entire Law School Complex slowly implode, but that has nothing to do with this.

What's interesting here is that the desire to get into such schools because of how the game is played after college is the very reason many people are complaining about getting into that college.....how the game is played. We could take this a step further with, "It's unfair that getting lawyer positions are based off of where one goes to college, it should be based off of the bar exam scores and nothing else!"

If the game wasn't played that way with a specific college determining / helping to determine who gets those high paying jobs, then there wouldn't be such a big deal about getting into Ivy League schools and we wouldn't have to worry about making made to order admissions applications. There's a top down problem for people to solve.

I'm not quite certain that the Ivy League graduates will be happy to fix the system so that their credentials and status are devalued. In part, I'm basing this on what I call the "Amy Chua" archetype. Watching her bail on Duke to climb the Law Status ladder was fun.

I'm more confident that the College Debt Industrial Complex (and Medical Debt Industrial Complex) will implode sometimes within the next 10 to 20 years.

My current hobby is to watch the Law School Complex implode.

... I entirely agree with you, Jon.



Which is why we've opted out of the game, actually. We encourage DD to do things that matter to HER, or seem to provide a chance to mature in healthy ways. I notice that 4-H activities aren't on Harvard's list, nor is any sort of animal training aside from equestrian activities... so in short, being a student leader, a competitive dog trainer and handler in several events, a math tutor, an intermediate jazz pianist, and working with kids in community activities all counts for nothing in the face of another applicant who is, say... an openly transgendered cheerleader with an active interest in pole-dancing. Apparently, I mean.

George Fox or even the local public Uni is looking better and better, tyvm.

What I'm getting from you then is, "If the system is as flawed as we think it is, it will sort itself our within a couple of decades"? I'm not disagreeing with you, just seeing if my perception is clear of what your mindset is. That's pretty much what I've been saying as well. If it's that flawed, then don't play the game. If you're that concerned about the flawed system, you can search for the cure but before you change the world of college admissions, if it is indeed as flawed as you think it is, then it will self correct before you can have any effect on it.

It appears that participating in 4-H and similar activities hurts your chances of getting into competitive private colleges. One is of course free to set different goals or not mention such activities on a college application.

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html
How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others
By Russell K. Nieli
July 12, 2010

...

But what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call "career-oriented activities" was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student's chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. "Being an officer or winning awards" for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, "has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions." Excelling in these activities "is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission."

From an institution's standpoint, this makes perfect sense.

In order to grow your endowment and sustain your position, you want to stock up on potential future wealthy donors.

Activities that show a student having an interest in going into farming are probably not going to become wall street traders. The risk is that they will never be able to make that $2,000,000 donation to Elite U. The same is true for ROTC. There is little money in being a service member.

Also, I think that the *entire* educational system (particularly K-JD) as it is currently configured does very little to help people develop into being better people. It needs to be replaced with a better "system", meaning less bureaucratic and more flexible.

It's current weakness is that it's larding people up with massive non-dischargable debt. That crisis is just beginning obvious, which means that it's not going to become a political problem for years.

I was playing with the hypothesis that the primary selection criteria is "projected size of future endowment" that study seems to support it.

What I find ironic about that, though, is that this may be mostly a matter of where such programs have typically continued to thrive, Bostonian.

My own locale is anomolous there-- the county has probably 10-20% of the state's 4-H leadership positions at any one time, but is one of the bluest places on the west coast (and I think it's obvious that such a statement is really saying something, no?). It also has a very high per capita participation rate in 4-H, and a land-grant institution with both a vet and pharmacy school. Faculty brats abound in our 4-H program here, let's just say.

So these are kids being raised in an extraordinarily left-leaning environment.

SCOUTING, I could see included there, as there is a definite ideological bias implied (scouting is not very big here, as one might imagine). FFA I'd also agree is "career-oriented" in the way that seems to be implied. 4-H, though? Not-so-much. It's a little Norman Rockwell, sure... but the national message about the mission? "Youth development." Period-- not about anything else other than developing kids into conscientious, responsible, and resilient young adults with some ability to act in leadership roles.

It's frankly crazy to me (and I've seen 4-H programs up close and personal for quite some time now) that elite colleges would deliberately shun such students. Kids who keep with the program through their high school years tend to have a truly phenomenal work ethic, which is something sadly lacking in many college-bound students.

I'm guessing that 4-H is included primarily because it is seen as a proxy for kids that haven't had any high dollar opportunities. Which kind of proves my point all over again re: high SES.

Or it's possible that relatively few of those students apply to Ivies in the first place, being rather more pragmatic about higher education. Also possible that the demands of 4-H (which are admittedly high in some project areas like equestrian events or community service clubs) preclude some of those flashier activities, leading to a relative lack of things like crew or golf.

Or-- 4-H is available in places and to kids that don't have those other opportunities. We'd have to drive 78 mi one way to access decent fencing instruction, for example.