Shameless Self-Promotion

A little more than a week ago I had a great conversation with someone who is high up in Facebook. He told me about a relatively new site that he believes will transform the educational world: Quora.com

Quora is what the US is currently best at doing. It started in the part of the US that is actually creating wealth and being innovative. It is no surprise then that its population base is largely from the West Coast, and even more focused on Silicon Valley and the start-up revolution. The New Yorker has just published a piece on this very issue. It underscores what my friend at Facebook said. Investment banking is great, but for excitement and passion, and job satisfaction the West Coast is where it is at. I think he may well be right.

I hope some of you will go to the site and then let me know if you agree if this group of people and these opportunities to network do have transformative power.

In the meantime, I will post here a response to a great question (and one of the most frequently asked to admission officers) about whether it is better to attend an elite boarding school or magnet high school  as opposed to a local high school when trying to gain acceptance to highly selective colleges and universities. I will have quite a bit to say on this topic in future posts. 

Now that I no longer have a university affiliation I am much more at liberty to talk in terms that will be useful, albeit controversial. To revert to my Facebook friend, he said if my questions and responses do upset (his metaphor was actually much more graphic) people, then I am not asking good questions or providing  good answers. I will take him at his word.

College and University Admissions: For top students at elite prep and magnet high schools, how important are extracurricular activities for admissions to top-tier universities?

Do such students need to be Intel STS finalists and chess champions like students from not as well-known private and public high schools? Is it sufficient for a top 5% student at Choate or Stuyvesant to edit the school paper and be the president of a club on campus? Even if a Choate student wanted to be active outside of the classroom, how would she get access to events off grounds without having a car?

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As an associate dean of admission at a highly selective university for nearly 30 years I feel that I have some experience if not wisdom to tackle this question.

I should also add that my daughter attended one of the top 3 (I think it is the best, but I will be nice), boarding schools in the northeast. She will be attending a highly selective university this fall as a part of an honors program.

I will start with a question I asked the director of college counseling at my daughter’s school. “Are you telling the parents of these kids the truth?’ He said “What do you mean”, and I said:

“Well you guys get up in front of all your accepted students and their parents on revisit days and underscore again and again all those great stats about acceptances to Ivies. It sounds great. But we both know stats are always slanted. You get lots of kids into Ivies but here is the profile of the ones that do:

Geniuses, almost all of whom are international students from China or Korea

Legacies who have given millions

Kids of Politicians or Movie Moghuls (see Dan Golden's book The Price ofAdmission. He names and won a Pulitzer for doing this.)

Hockey players, rowers, and other athletes

Underrepresented poor kids who are on full scholarship to your school

And a tiny tiny number of others”.

He said “this is true” but they don’t put this confirmation in the brochures. That is my rather weak attempt at humor. Here is what I say to people who are looking to put their kids in to elite boarding schools.

If you want one of the best possible educational experiences in the world, then send your kid to one of these places. The teachers, facilities, and opportunities are life-changing. I have seen it with my own daughter and many others over the years  and I would not change this experience for her for the world. From this perspective, the education there is worth every penny. On the other hand, if you are planning to decorate the ivy dorm room as a result of this huge investment, think again. The ivies are under pressure not to take too many kids from the elite boarding schools. It makes them look elitist (which is ironic as that is exactly what they are but they can’t just come out and say it. I say this in a good way. If you take the best and the brightest from around the world then you are, at least by my definition, elitist and you should be proud of it).

So if ivy dreams are what you want, then stay at home (and the further away from the northeast you live the better. Or Montana.)

I think the whole ranking thing is kind of sick anyway. Just look at Gladwell’s dissection of the US news methodology in February’s New Yorker.  It means nothing to the quality of the education. It is, indeed,  a great brand that will open doors,   If a kid does well or can make great networking contacts. That is true. But in terms of being life changing in what I would call the right ways—teaching how to think and how to love to learn and to reach out and do new things, then there are hundreds of great places for that. At least the US is still number one in having hundreds of place like this. With all the funding issues, however, this may change in the next generation I am sad to say.

So I still have not answered the question. If you are a great squash player (the NY times did an article a few years ago on how this was the new way to get into ivies and I really saw Asian moms sign kids up for private lessons the next week:

 Or if you can spin setting up a non-profit with a billionaire that will help save lives in Sudan (Brad and Angelina perhaps?), then these are the extras which will get you in Ivies. Otherwise, as the cliché goes in every college brochure in the world, find your passion. Pursue it like a demon with all of your heart and mind. And get that across to people like me. It will be a huge factor. As for Choate, they take people places(literally and figuratively)  if they have a good reason. They are one of the places that provides great opportunities. Given the cheating scandal at Stuyvesant recently, their stock just went down, but my guess is it will rise when push comes to shove. But then one of the predictable things about admission and the stock market, there are always surprises. If you do not think the people in admission at Penn State are going to have endless meetings this next week, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I will sell you for a relatively cheap price.