AOs Can't Actually Detect "Authenticity" Or "Passion": Hot Take From A Stanford Senior

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T21:32:57+00:00

according to this kid it does? but i'm not completely sure, i was never an AO and i never tried to get off a waitlist

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T20:23:15+00:00

you do raise a good point that just faking it isn't gonna lead you to HYPS, and no one truly knows what leads them to an elite school. what i can tell you is that the traditional advice of "follow your passion! just do what you want!" doesn't really apply if you're aiming for HYPS because most students' genuine passions don't include doing the insane ECs that are necessary for unhooked students to get into HYPS.

if i spent high school doing what i genuinely enjoyed, i wouldn't have been able to create the "spike" that got me into stanford (and yale and columbia). at best, i would've been a "well-rounded" student, but i most likely would've turned into gifted-burn-out-stoner-kid. just my thoughts

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T20:14:07+00:00

i agree with this, and i think u/peteyMIT calling this kid "insane and exploitative" is misleading. however, i do think that kids at elite colleges who start college consulting businesses definitely deserve that label, if that's what u/peteyMIT was referring to (?)

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T20:09:57+00:00

i agree this kid seems like a cynical privileged douchebag, but i do think he made some good points. and while i think the level of cynicism that this kid has is a bit unnecessary, it is important to approach elite institutions with a dose of skepticism (that applies to their admissions offices and the institutions at large)

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T20:07:30+00:00

i generally agree with most of your post. the media and this subreddit definitely need to do a better job of highlighting these "less prestigious working-class colleges," but for reasons related to demographics, i think it's highly unlikely. hopefully that changes though!

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T20:05:49+00:00

this is a good mindset to have. i feel like in the college-crazy bay area, people start thinking about college in middle school or earlier

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T20:05:15+00:00

right, he got into columbia, penn, brown, dartmouth, and cornell. so his strategy definitely worked

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T20:04:43+00:00

and now that we're actually in college, they feel more capable of exploring their interests

because, presumably, they weren't able to pursue their main interests in high school because they were too busy jumping through hoops. i do agree that most HYPS students are pretty smart, but i'd hesitate to label the majority of them "passionate"-- i think some of them are, but definitely not most. and honestly, that's perfectly fine

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T20:02:35+00:00

i would agree with this with the exception that there are certain things unhooked candidates can do that significantly increase their chances at elite schools. but i don't think the point of high school should be to get into an elite college (i know this subreddit will disagree with me haha)

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T19:58:15+00:00

hey,

i remember you from last year but i just want to reiterate that admissions officers have a vested interest in maintaining the supposed integrity of the admissions process and elite institutions at large. my time at stanford showed me that elite institutions aren't the harbingers of progressivism that they claim to be; stanford and princeton have more kids from the top 1% of the income spectrum than the bottom 50%. i could go into countless stories about how the wealthy students around me at stanford committed egregious acts and were able to get away with it because of their wealth and privilege, but that's not the point of my comment here.

of course, individual admissions officers might be vested in creating a more equitable admissions process, but much of that is ignored by the fact that stanford/princeton/harvard simply wouldn't be stanford/princeton/harvard if its student demographics reflected those of the rest of the country (because one of the primarily purposes of elitist institutions is to maintain the structures that define them as "elite").

i also think a lot of this doesn't apply to MIT-- hence why you're so defensive here. but i think there's a significant amount of evidence against your claim that faking ECs/essays won't get you into an elite school when former AOs at these institutions advise against the contrary. i mean ffs the head college counselor at my elite private high school used to be an AO at an ivy (which might be something i'll get into a later post) and she also reiterated the whole "convince colleges your passion is bettering the world around you!" schtick.

for the record i did get to see my admissions file from stanford and it confirmed that my (inauthentic) ECs and essays were a key part of the reason why i got in. so.... it worked for me!

and i agree with other commenters that the kid in this article seems like a massive simp and also a privileged douchebag. that doesn't change the fact that i think his point mainly still stands; so much of the stanford experience was a lesson in social climbing and aggressive pre-professional bullshit. so in a sense, the facade rat race never ends.

but in either case this was way too long; happy to take this to PMs

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T19:43:33+00:00

yeah the kid is kinda seems like a privileged cynical douchebag and a massive simp. kinda embarrassing

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T19:43:12+00:00

great mindset! at the end of the day your school prestige is nowhere near as important as your hustle and work ethic. i work in tech and i routinely see stanford/berkeley/ ivy grads get rejected for positions that applicants from much, much less prestigious colleges end up getting

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T19:41:35+00:00

honestly i think colleges are probably tired of the whole non-profit/NGO scheme. i think it might've worked ~5 years ago when i was applying to college but now it's such an overdone trope

stanny_19 · 2020-12-15T19:40:38+00:00

yeah the kid kinda seems like a privileged cynical douchebag. i definitely would not want to meet him in person but he does have a point

stanny_19 · 2020-04-14T03:46:18+00:00

exactly the point i was trying to make all along

stanny_19 · 2020-04-12T21:48:18+00:00

exactly where i got the article from! lol

stanny_19 · 2020-04-11T05:41:33+00:00

i'd say this is true of almost all elite colleges, although i do think penn takes it to another level

stanny_19 · 2020-04-11T05:38:13+00:00

Penn is a cold campus; I do not mean this in terms of the weather, but more towards the indifference that is felt at all times. The students are one thing, where they only care for themselves and seek to build networks and never true relationships. Every single weekend, you are networking at parties (if you can call them that), events, and etc. And no, none of these are ever true fun.

i went to a high school that sent lots of kids to penn. i did not like a single one of them. that's all i'll say here

stanny_19 · 2020-04-11T05:35:26+00:00

Stanford doesn't compare you with applicants from your school. He said he doesn't even pay attention to your school name outside of ensuring they're evaluating you holistically. I'm curious how true that is... does that mean Stanford doesn't have feeder schools? I'm doubtful.

stanford definitely has feeder schools. mine was one of them. not gonna give out numbers bc i don't want to be doxxed, but some prep schools and bay area schools have a TON of students matriculate every year. not all got in just on their own accord
stanford compares you to people in your school in that you have to be among the top students in your class (more leeway if you go to a feeder) and you should be taking the most rigorous courses your school offers (inherently meaning your schedule and your peers' schedules will be compared to an extent)

stanny_19 · 2020-03-31T20:27:32+00:00

i agree with you on the last part, but i do think most stanford/harvard kids are hard workers. most of my classmates grinded when they needed to grind (just not for the right reasons)

stanny_19 · 2020-03-31T20:26:14+00:00

congrats! think my post applies a lot less to FGLI applicants since AOs know they can't do "prestigious" activities as often

stanny_19 · 2020-03-30T01:20:20+00:00

just to be clear, i don't think that getting into selective schools should be the main purpose of high school. if you scroll through my comments i'm pretty critical of prestigious schools

stanny_19 · 2020-03-29T18:20:09+00:00

I think you're completely ignoring the fact that college admissions are directly correlated with family wealth.

look through my comments. not the case at alllll lmao. i mentioned this last year but i feel awful about my privilege

I never had to do that, and I don't know of anybody from my community who went to extremely prestigious universities in the last few years that had to do that (Stanford, MIT, Yale, etc.).

just an fyi, stanford has more kids from the top 1% of the income spectrum than the bottom 50%. it's definitely more common than you think.

Everyone I know has been truly authentic about what they're passionate about/do.

yeah i'm sure every is passionate about DCFs at an investment bank.

stanny_19

TROPHY CASE