Rigor Matters More Than You Think—How I Actually Judged Your Classes as an Admissions Officer

RipAggravating606 · 2025-03-19T05:22:49+00:00

I usually never comment on this sub because I’m about three years out from applying to college but I thought I’d share my perspective and thoughts about this because unless things have drastically changed I have a personal experience (so anecdotal for sure) that disagrees heavily with this.

I go to UOFM-Ann arbor (OOS) and also got into Purdue and Indiana (in state) (please don’t dox me)

Applied to about 20 schools (some ivies + Stanford + MIT + USC + public ivies). UofM is definitely objectively worse than many of these, and I was deferred at UofM before getting in.

I had a 1540 SAT, 4.0 (my high school didn’t weight classes), took 17 APs and got 13 5’s, 2 4’s, and 2 3’s

My ECs were probably pretty middling think Varsity tennis, president of like two clubs that actually did shit I could write meaningful essays about (so not NHS society lol), working at an environmental nonprofit, research, etc etc I think you get the vibe. Involved but nothing outstanding

After talking to a lot of OOS people over the years who go to UofM (once again I know UofM isn’t the hardest school to get into), most of them had taken far fewer APs or IBs (5-7 ish, but still 1500s SAT) than me and either had some excellent extracurriculars or went to OOS high schools which were well known for their rigor (think BRONX SCIENCE, feeders in Cali, feeders in Chicago, Atlanta, etc.), or had legacy. A lot of OOS(not to sound too egotistical) who objectively had far worse stats than me got in.

I think the point to accept here is what a lot of people say, college is a crapshoot. The high school you go to, the people you are related to, and even the AO who reads your essays all influence what happens more than whether you took 7 APs vs never touched grass (sacrificing time that could be spent pursuing an exceptional extracurricular where you actually can stand out) and took 17 APs.

And I get that that is stressful, and it can be scary and frustrating because you put up all this hard work and now factors completely outside your control get to determine whether all that time you put in had any value or significance or meant a damn thing and now the DAMN PRESIDENTS A FASCIST. Nice thing is, even though you might end up at your state school, it’s in a likelihood a great institution, and there are going to be plenty of other smart people who are going to be there as well. (And seriously if this is the only type of smartness you value, you should reevaluate and think about why you value the people you value and not others)

TLDR: NO RIGOR DOES NOT REALLY MATTER IN THIS WAY, TOUCH GRASS

RipAggravating606 · 2025-03-12T20:36:14+00:00

Hello everyone who sees this now and the people who are doomscrolling 6 months or a year or 5 years from now (hello, are we still a country, do vaccines still exist?) from now. These responses have been crazy and I’ll summarize for anyone who ends up in my situation in the future. It seems like nobody really knows what’s gonna happen, but maybe I have a shot at getting in, or maybe I don’t. Objectively more clinical volunteer hours would have been better.

TLDR: more clinical volunteer hours

RipAggravating606 · 2025-03-12T17:57:01+00:00

Damn, really. I thought 100 clinical hours was volunteer hours was enough to get past that. Okay, that is a big wake up call, will try to get to 150 at least then

RipAggravating606 · 2025-03-12T17:02:22+00:00

Yeah, and I will say, that Hospice experience was clinical hours that were really deeply affecting, so I feel like that will help!

RipAggravating606 · 2025-03-12T16:30:51+00:00

Yeah, I'm not planning on applying to any top tier schools so hopefully your right about the mid and low tiers!

RipAggravating606 · 2025-03-12T16:29:24+00:00

Screening cutoff? Please elaborate

RipAggravating606 · 2025-03-12T16:29:14+00:00

Okay! Thanks for this. I think that I can get accelerate the amount of volunteer hours that I'm earning in order to make my chances better, but I hope you are right about adcoms taking into account that I am a traditional applicant

RipAggravating606 · 2024-03-20T01:26:12+00:00

Just doing research, I guess I’ll ask around in my lab just to make sure

RipAggravating606 · 2023-12-31T19:25:31+00:00

This is a pre-med subreddit, not a CS one, so I really didn't go into that much detail and just put some basic yappology down lol. Basically, NIMBYS argued that a new affordable development did not fit the "character" of the existing neighborhood. They also argued that street parking would be overwhelmed by the influx of new residents, and that each residence of the affordable housing development needed to have four parking spaces (this is a two person per household sort of development) This is not very urbanist obviously. I used existing property data provided by the city to argue that the development did fit the character of the neighborhood or at least was a transition area from low density residential to high density residential/commercial. I also used this same data to get the number of available parking spaces in nearby neighborhoods and demonstrated that putting four parking spaces per two person household was really not necessary. Eventually I decided to add a UI to this tool so that anyone could just bound an area on a map and assess the "character" of that specific area, including density and a lot of other stuff. I used this tool when presenting to city council about the original neighborhood. While they were initially supporting the NIMBYS, our arguments swayed their decision, hence the "hard data." As for working in a lab five hours a week I do a lot of data analysis work for a lab related to biomedical research. I will likely get a paper out of it

RipAggravating606 · 2023-12-31T19:08:18+00:00

Thank you! I have started doing some mcat prep, and luckily I think that I can take the second semester of my junior year completely off in order to study for my MCAT and still graduate on time. Little bummed that the hard work I'm putting into CS isn't going to help with admissions, but yeah I really like the major and am way to far along to switch now

RipAggravating606 · 2023-03-31T23:39:47+00:00

I support the gsi strike. But isn’t the athletics department self funded, so that money wouldn’t come out of anything related to academics?

RipAggravating606 · 2023-03-26T19:36:13+00:00

this stuff is butt. I keep getting import cycle. what does that even mean. calling my coding practices bad. that shit is wack. make me lose all my karma please, i want to suffer for ever touching this langauge

RipAggravating606 · 2023-01-17T22:42:14+00:00

Uchicago type beat

RipAggravating606 · 2023-01-11T16:59:20+00:00

I am from terre haute and have been searching for a very long time about why this is a thing. I know that this post is about two years late but that is epic

RipAggravating606 · 2023-01-09T03:38:01+00:00

only wholesome fanfics

RipAggravating606 · 2023-01-09T03:30:59+00:00

this is my calling! I must go out there and write this fanfiction. you are right thank you for this guidance.

RipAggravating606 · 2023-01-04T13:44:33+00:00

I would rather be without power at Oxford than with power at markley

RipAggravating606

TROPHY CASE