Comment by williamDafoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by williamDafoe | Hacker News Reader

These people are trying to create an American cultural revolution, like China's, in the 1960s.

My son went to the toughest high school in California. He didn't become a national merit commended student because "oh Californians are just simply smarter than Iowans so we have moved the goalposts for California kids". He scored 34 on the ACT = 1500 on the SAT because of hard work and sacrifice but he wasn't allowed into ANY "selective" schools because "oh your ZIP code indicates you are privileged and you must have crammed for the SAT. And hey did you hear the news? The SAT means nothing! ". He only did 4 hours of homework per night but was in a school district which educated kids from arguably the #1 University in the USA so the competition was stiff. He was embarrassed and shamed by his friends for having a B+ GPA.

He was forced to go to a state school 3000 miles away which accepts 70% of applicants - at huge tuition cost - because it was a backwards state school not implementing "The new cultural revolution!". He applied to 12 schools - none "most selective", none "extremely selective", 1 "highly selective", and 9 "moderately selective" and was admitted to 2 of the lowest schools on the "moderately selective" list. The next rank lower is "admits everyone".

Meanwhile I know parents who pulled their kids out of the toughest high school because class rank is THE ONLY THING that universities care about. They sent their kid to a low income school and their achievement test scores plummeted. Their strategy was to "win by slackibg," in the new cultural revolution! This is so they could get into Harvard and so that Harvard could feel good about itself and assuage its white guilt.

My son's dad is self made, losing his own dad at age 13. The dad took many financial risks and moved twice to be in better school districts, to challenge the son. His mom came from dirt in China (daughter of a hotel maid). Their hard work has been classified as "privileged background" by virtue of their zip code. The parents inherited $50k total and were both self made and lived like paupers until age 35 to advance their educations, then took high risk unstable jobs to catch up in life...

Wait, who told him about this? I was a NMS finalist (which is as far as you can get on test scores alone) but no one mentioned to me why I didn't get further.

The NMS has different PSAT score requirements by state.

Yes, but check your sibling comment. I had a high enough score but that's not the only requirement. And no one gave a specific reason I wasn't chosen, I just got a form letter saying none of the sponsors picked me.

Getting a scholarship past finalist status is kind of subjective and dumb. 2/3 of them (scholarships) are from corporate sponsors. Meaning you get them if you’re a finalist and your parent works at a sponsor org.

The money is small either way, but you can leverage the finalist title hard at some schools. I, somehow, got a full tuition ride for that stupid test. My school stopped offering that much a year later but I’m sure there are others that still do.

What program/field did your son want to enter? I know of at least one engineering school (mine) that would have accepted him in a heartbeat and is decently selective for a public school.

On the otherhand, the story of being a high acheiver/worker and getting basically no aid or 'scholarships' rings a bell. I'll never understand why a single income family deserves more in aid then a two income family when having a second income is often just preference and not necessarilly financial hardship or difficulty finding a job.

The aid system is all messed up. I looked at going back and am wondering why I'm considered to the IRS, but not schools

Based on past experiences, I wonder if you had a daughter would they have an equal amount of struggle. I'm guessing there would still be zip code discrimination but it wouldn't be as large.

Could depend on the school and the major. Seems like women have an easier path to get into top engineering schools, whereas men have an easier time for top liberal arts colleges.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/1...

There is so much misinformation here on college admissions.

First, class rank is not reported by a majority of high schools, and many top high schools specifically for the reasons you mentioned. Beyond that, the class rank statistics don't often apply to top schools because regional admissions officers know the schools well and would rather have a middle of the pack student from a top high school than a top 10% from school X. Regional adcoms exist exactly for this purpose, and the top schools have more than anyone else. Colleges weigh GPA, test scores, course rigor, essay, and extracurriculars the highest by far.

You list your son's test scores, but don't list his GPA and course rigor beyond B+, which if I take that on a 4.0 scale is a 3.3ish. That sets him up to be an imbalanced applicant (by test scores compared to GPA) for most schools in the top 50ish by selectivity, especially if he wasn't taking the highest course rigor available to him. I'm guessing the "moderately selective" schools were hanging around a 30-45% acceptance rate yeah? UC's are tough for instate Californians (plenty of issues there but it's not a cultural thing or zip code thing).

> he wasn't allowed into ANY "selective" schools because "oh your ZIP code indicates you are privileged and you must have crammed for the SAT. And hey did you hear the news? The SAT means nothing!"

Go pull up the Common Data Sets for all the schools he was rejected from. You'll find top SAT/ACT scores all over it. You'll also find top other things too. Your son was rejected because college admissions are getting more and more selective and his GPA didn't match his test scores. Essay and EC's can always factor in as well, though it's hard to know how those affected him. But I can assure you his zip code was not a factor - the most geographic diversity colleges look for is by state.

By the way, your son didn't have to pay much tuition with its scores. Many schools give out automatic scholarships for those test scores, regardless of NMF status.

The national merit scholar thing is stupid on many axes. For one, its just a formula on your SAT score, we already have an SAT score, why is there some official entity awarding prizes based on a simple function of that score? Colleges can use whatever function they want. The whole thing should go away.

Despite the name, the National Merit Scholarship program is a private entity affiliated with Northwestern University.

It isn't official in any way; it is simply a scholarship for students with high scores on a particular test.

The only effect that it 'going away' would have, would be to discourage intelligent students from attending colleges they otherwise could not afford.

National Merit status is based on your PSAT score.

Be advised that as SOON as you pay the $80 admission fee to that college, the college's rank (and bank account) goes up.

You either raise the stats of the student body, and get admitted.

Or you would lower the stats of the student body, therefore, you are rejected, RAISING the "selectivity" of the college.

One of those stats is number of national merit scholars, finalists, and commended students. Believe it!

It never made any sense to me either. I scored 1600 on the PSAT and got a stupid letter. Big deal. It didn't matter then and hasn't mattered since.

All of my time before and during college would have been better spent focusing on meeting people and forging relationships with successful people than worrying about academics.

This is the secret unspoken script underlying the whole dialog about college admissions. Membership in an exclusive club. I got into a good school and blew it because I didn't have the wisdom to see through the tatemae about college and academia generally. Don't be foolish like me.

Lots of schools don’t even report rank, and you’re fine to not include it, so that can’t possibly be the only thing they consider

This year, 8x more people got a PERFECT score on the SAT, than just 3 years ago. So the universities decided - rather suddenly - to ignore achievement, hey let's use another metric, like zipcode and class rank and gpa, to determine admissions!

The SAT changed the scale, that's why.

Wouldn't a perfect score be perfect regardless of the scale?

You can actually get questions wrong sometimes, but they also made the questions easier.

So don't send your kid to the toughest high school in California?

You now that inheriting $50K is a bit privileged, right?

And NMS Commended Scholar doesn't mean anything?

Have you considered you are actually Hispanic, but didn't know it?

Census Definition: "The 2010 Census asked if the person was "Spanish/Hispanic/Latino". The United States Census uses the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race."

"other Spanish culture" can mean literally anything. I personally consider California heavily influenced by Spanish culture, so by virtue of you living there, you are Hispanic according to that definition. Race is not a component of of being Hispanic, only culture.

> Hispanic, but didn't know it?

The flip side of this is that my son can legitimately (in the eyes of anybody who might question that legitimacy) claim hispanic heritage: his mother immigrated to the US from Mexico 25 years ago. I’m pushing him to study as hard as he can because I suspect that any college he applies to will accept him just to tick the “admitted a hispanic” checkbox on their annual diversity report, and I’m worried that he’s going to end up surrounded by people who have more academic achievement than he has and find himself struggling to keep up.

Only you and your family will know how well your son is prepared. It's up to you to help guide him into the best decision.

Bitter much? Admissions is complicated and golden tickets are rare.

The PSAT based National Merit designations vary by maybe 10+/- points across states because they normalize to the top 1% per state rather than the top 1% nationally, and to the extent that National Merit means anything it's not entirely nonsensical to do so.

That said, being a one-track academic box checker is only going to hurt your child in the long run, as will dwelling this kind of thing instead of making the best of it.

Likewise, I know many people who got into pretty solid colleges and programs despite being "flawed gems" as their interests and accomplishments more than made up for the fact that they maybe had specific subject weaknesses or weren't carbon copies of every other high-GPA box-checker.

I also know many people who turned down prestigious schools (Cornell, University of Chicago, etc.,) to do interesting and fairly unique programs at less known schools and who have done quite well.

Also, parents having tough backgrounds isn't the same as children having tough backgrounds. By your own words you skimped and sacrificed to give your kid advantages, and that those advantages are recognized is only reasonable.

And if despite all those advantages your kid hasn't developed any aspect in particular to set them apart (and let's face it, for the most part test scores and grades are more about being par than being apart or ahead), why should anybody be going out of their way to recruit them? (For many out of state schools the only reason they bother is more tuition money.)

> Bitter much?

This is really tone deaf.

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