the Sam Jackson College Experience

[14:13:57] me: i’m so pissed i’m going to have to pay CB another 9.50 on thurs to send off my new scores
[14:14:09] Ned Bennett: I KNOW
[14:14:13] Ned Bennett: STUPID
[14:14:18] me: stupid or CAREFULLY PLANNED?
[14:14:25] me: i.e. BRILLIANTLY EXPLOITATIVE
[14:14:28] Ned Bennett: hahaha
[14:14:31] Ned Bennett: obnoxious

Hooray for College Board. I’ll be back posting more later this week.

Today the entire senior class spent faculty meeting (a free block for students this morning) performing ‘mock admissions’ with their counselor groups. We had three former Exonians’ common applications in front of us and were given an academic profile for a school–we were to serve as individual readers. We had 10 minutes for the first person, 7 for the next, and 5 for the last kid–this was to illustrate the crush for time that selective admissions has. The school we were simulating had a 35% admit rate the year before. Afterwards one person would volunteer (or was volunteered) to speak for one of the kids, as if they were from his / her docket, and we had a discussion… all in all very neat.

This is the first time the CCO has done this with students: it is normally done with parents over “CCO Upper Weekend” and there are real-live deans / officers from schools there for those. All the college counselors have been on such committees before, too.

It was very interesting to see what we students looked for and didn’t notice–many people overlooked some things that were important, e.g. the socioeconomic element of diversity, an especially prevalent selection factor at extra-selective schools these days. We were only allowed to admit 1 of the three students so we did the usual process of giving them ‘reader ratings’ for academics / extracurricular, so forth and so on.

Lastly Ms. Dolan asked us (our group) if we thought it was a good idea to do it now for the seniors, since it hadn’t been done before. The general consensus was that while it was an interesting and useful activity putting it the week before early deadlines didn’t really help anyone with stress–late upper year was a preferred time, my group felt.

Haven’t had time to see how other people felt about it yet, probably a range from ‘waste of my free period!’ to ‘very interesting.’

A week ago I railed against early cum laude, the practice at Exeter where the top 5% of the senior class is recognized early in the year. However, it turns out that that 95% is more directly ranked than I had at first thought. Our dutiful friend Ryan Caro has once again enlightened me–this time, with a link. Ms. Dolan was just finishing this up when last I met with her, and here it is in nicely polished form:

The 2006 Phillips Exeter Academy College Profile.

It details five grade ranges for two, three, and four-year seniors–not comprehensive enough for a complete basis of rank, but enough to get a pretty good picture of where any one student lies. There were also the SAT I and SAT II scores for the class of 2005. A few fun tidbits were thrown in, like the number of National Merit semifinalists and commended scholars for 2006 and a distribution of AP scores (47% 5’s, for example). Complete information available within the 4 page document.

This report is not a surprsie to me because it has been alluded to before–colleges have this as a “picture” of PEA students to complement what they might make for themselves from their Exeter applicant pool. I am not alarmed by this as I would be by exact rankings; each has a wildly different attitude / philosophy behind it, and different possible uses. Nice presentation here.

Christopher Murphy, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Yale University, stopped by to talk to us this past Tuesday evening. I was initially very concerned by the fact that the session was scheduled for the assembly hall, thinking that this choice of venue must have meant that the Yale applicant pool was approximately the entire senior class. I think more reasonably it was sited there because there was a Georgetown information session scheduled immediately beforehand in Mayer, the usual location. A reminder to those interested that the complete Exeter CCO schedule (more or less) can be found on the CCO website. It’s the one part of the website you don’t have to log in to see–the least exciting part. Still handy: n.b. two days of Harvard interviews, etc.

Murphy has been at Yale for 37 years, so he said he “knew where all the skeletons were.” Halloween is coming up but all the same we didn’t have any ghouls or skeletons appear. It was nice to see Mr. Murphy because so far I have only seen Rob Jackson–he was in charge of both my information session when I visited and the Multicultural Open House–and Murphy had some new things to say. Surprisingly, there were only 25 people there–Tuesday nights are busy, but Georgetown’s session was better populated (by all seniors, mind you). The 8-9 timeframe is no struggle for most seniors, I think, so I’m still mystified as to where everyone went.

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All day today I was struck by how the entire senior class seemed to be wasting away intellectually, crushed beneath the mental burden of college applications with ED / EA deadlines looming and the SAT so recently behind us. I described myself as “on edge” this morning, after my math test; several of my friends agreed. A better example still came at club soccer, when another friend described herself as having an “angry day.”

I’ve seen individual cases of college related stress, but this is the first occasion I’ve seen the entire class suffering all at once. At the senior photo we took this morning, a fistfight over an inconsequential point very nearly broke out. Patience needs some time to replenish itself.

This is funny as it comes right after I sent a series of email to Joe Malchow and his Dartblog about the way Exeters CCO humanizes the process and makes it less awful… which is still true.

Everyone is just under a lot of stress.

My e-mail to Joe after the break.

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