I would not have applied early if it had been binding, but my school strongly strongly urges us to go if we get in. We're really reminded that our early school should be our first choice school and we are more or less expected to go if we get in. This is a 'philosophy' and not a policy. Our CCO will still send out transcripts for EA admits, if they insist, but if you got into your first-choice school, why would you? This gives our college counseling office the ability to tell an Early Action school, 'psst, if you admit this kid, you can go argue at committee that they're going to come because Exeter does it such-and-such way.' Works well for everyone--more kids get into their first choice schools, schools get better yields, and more people have more chances in RD. This philosophy might also be why the percentage of our class that applied early was lower than some otherwise similar private schools.

Why then would it have made a difference if yale were EA vs. ED? Financial Aid was not the primary concern, since I'd matriculate and be poor, if nothing else. Essentially, though Yale was, as of nov 1, far and away my first choice, I wanted to retain the possibility of choice later on. I wasn't comfortable with the idea of being bound to attend. Hypothetically, I thought to myself, I could still apply elsewhere even if I got in, if I really really wanted to even if I had no intention of doing so. This was because even if I really, really, wanted to go to Yale Nov 1, or even Dec 16th, might things not change by May 1?

Over the course of the 45 day wait, I grew more and more emotionally attached to Yale. This made waiting really fun. By Dec 14 I almost felt that I would have applied ED had the application deadline been right then. I was, of course, dizzy from the anxiety right after finals leading into the Dec 15th decisions--so I wouldn't exactly have called myself mentally fit to make those sorts of decisions.

Now, of course, it's Dec 21st, and I already did send back my reply card. Did all those yearnings for choices evaporate? Not at all. Instead, I 've just looked at things as a matter of probability. Certainly, it was tempting to drop all other schools just on the basis of application workloads, but that wasn't reason enough (a few of the schools, e.g. Harvard, required no new essays, and I'd already written a few). A different sort of logic was employed.

If I got in anywhere else I might apply--and I had 12 other schools on my list--would I go to any of them, over Yale? Some of the schools offered merit aid--would I have gone to any of them over Yale even if I got a full ride? The answer was, "probably not" and it was in light of that heavy lean towards "not" that I decided that I would enjoy my break and not apply anywhere else. Plus, with twelve more schools on my list, it was quite possible that I could be denying someone else admission at a school they really wanted to attend if I got in and ended up just going to Yale.

I have always felt regret that when I applied to Exeter, I applied only to Exeter and didn't so much as research or visit any other private schools, boarding or day, anywhere in the country. At the time I was told that Exeter was the best high school I could possibly attend; that was good enough reason for me. I think my time at Exeter has been valuable, but I wonder sometimes if there might be somewhere else better suited to me. There were pangs of that as I thought about sending in the Yale reply card, but I banished them away when I thought about just how many hours I've spent on the college process. Visits, research, reading, talking, questioning--everything adds up to one fact, one which says: Yale is the best school for me.

Let's just hope that's turns out to be true!

I'm publishing this to the web since it is, after all, already out in the world thanks to the Exonian. Very interesting. I expect that with that many people applying, some must have applied early to Columbia (which put out results yesterday afternoon) but I don't know who they are or how many of them there were.

Crazy!

The common app website "info page" is full of terrible lies. I checked for some of my schools and while some matched up with the addresses there, others were quite different. As such this page is not to be trusted in my mind so I had to go and find independent confirmation for every address. This is something that I should have done earlier but it is also something that schools should make simpler. I find myself despairing under a tsunami of paper and it's not even as if I'm printing out any applications (yet)!

You don't believe me, do you? Or, if you've spent time volunteering for political parties, you are probably scoffing at this sort of envelope stuffing. Fine. I know it isn't that bad but it's tedious and frustrating--especially since this is one instance where people should be really trying to help you find their address. Colleges shouldn't make it a puzzle or riddle just to find out where to mail things. I can only imagine the misery anyone disabled might have trying to get this information. I know not everyone has 15 schools on their list, but this is still ridiculous. Even half the time I have spent is far too much. Do I blame the common app? I don't know. It helped, certainly, for the 10 schools that used that form. A little. If I were at home the labels would be printed out and we'd just do the postage on the machine, so it would be faster. Too bad.
Look, an envelope-fan.

No farther along.

Or, untrue: I know now exactly how much I have to do, which is a lot. Not unimaginably-much, but still a significant amount of work.

I was supposed to have a) written all my essays and b) pared down my college list from 15 to something less than that over break. I did neither!

It's b there which annoys me the most. I don't have any legitimate reasons to take any school off my list right now, and reasons to keep them all. I don't think of it as risk containment or choice-enabling, just as "these are all places that I could be happy attending." If you have arguments FOR a particular school which might make me more inclined to favor it over the others (no negatives attacks here!) feel free to share them. I know lots of you go to school at places on my list, or at least work there--I can see you through the internet. So feel free to speak up.

In the meantime, I have essays to write. Sorry to abandon all you readers to the inhospitable wastelands of non-updated blogs, but it's purely temporary. If I write my goal of two essays by tomorrow lunchtime, I should be back on track. As it is, most of my essays for these schools (those that remain unwritten, that is) are of the short-response variety. Could be worse!

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.'

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.

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.

From Joe's post, emphasis mine:
> > Filling out forms in triplicate and sending registered mail and
> > obtaining various forms of legal identification are not torturous
> > things, and neither is sitting down in an armchair and figuring out
> > where, among your options (if you are so lucky as to have options),
> > you ought to go to school. None of these things is sadistic, even if
> > your “CCO” is DOA. They’re basic things that a person ought to be able
> > to do. But I know where Sam is coming from, because I imagine what
> > makes these things seem sadistic is the acidic atmosphere of
> > competition at a place like Exeter, yes?

No-o-o.

There is no particularly unique competition at Exeter; this may surprise
you as much as it surprised me when I first came here. No, what makes
college admissions sadistic is the dehumanizing of prospective
applicants as each individual is encouraged to turn themselves into sets
of numbers--this many APs, or that many points composite SAT, or such
and such extracurricular leadership-hours of work. These days more and
more college admissions offices are recognizing the harm they have done
to young people and are trying to reverse course (see Marilee Jones of
MIT).
At information sessions they will remind applicants that they "want you
to have a life" and so forth. The 'sadistic' quote is something I took
from a Yale student at the multicultural open house I went to a short
while ago; more specifically it refers to the selection from the
school-side of things, as for every applicant offered admission at top
schools there are many more equally qualified who must be rejected.

The applicant's perspective reveals a different kind of trouble, the
negative obsession instilled in many of us by US News and the amplifying
effect of colleges saying "we are so hard to get into therefore we are
so good therefore you will be rejected." Combine this with the number of
applicants, which is peaking soon, and the number of schools those
applicants each apply to, which is continually increasing, and you have
a recipe for frequent disaster.

I'm sorry I didn't offer this example before: The Exeter CCO looks over
the entire docket sent out to any one school and makes sure that no
counselor says the same thing about any one student that anyone else
might say--they make sure that everyone appears as a distinct individual
in their written recommendations etc. It's that sort of effort which
makes the college admissions coming from Exeter feel/ less/ like we are
competing with one another and more like we are all just applying at the
same time to many of the same places.

I don't know where you're looking at it from, but colleges do their
share to make the process a more arduous one than it need be, having
bought into the short-term marketing effects of rankings binging etc.

That's half the reason I write on my blog--because I want to get across
to an audience of many admissions officers and marketers that they need
to think of prospective students more as living people and less as numbers.

Thanks again,
Sam Jackson

Ta da.

Let me take a moment here to thank IvyGate and IvyLeak for keeping me up to date on these miniscule but still interesting little details. Were it not for these and other sort-of-gossip blogs, I'd have to exhaustively read the school newspapers to keep up with whatever issue was sweeping campuses. Sure, sometimes they feel more like tabloids than anything else. All the same, they're a valuable perspective.

In any event, I thought the fact that these things were issues on campus was rather interesting and said so, which led to a fun conversation about the students' activity and level of protest. The logical progression, from there, was for me to mention my 333 topic from last spring term: the Columbia student uprisings in 1968.

To my delight, I was told to "send it along" ! I did so this afternoon, and though I don't reasonably expect anyone to just sit through the 17 pages, I'm always happy to have my hard work read by others. I think it's a pretty fun read, actually. It's just too bad my history teacher last term didn't quite agree with me.So, the real question: who else wants a copy? The epigraphs are great.

I don't know that this is "supplementary material" --it seems to me that that concept requires a whole bevy of forms I never filled out. Still, I see sections on some applications for "please attach your second completed manuscript in this space" or something to that effect: your personally choreographed music video that appeared on MTV, the moon lander you sent to Phobos, very impressive accomplishments. From The Gatekeepers (which I'm made to understand is not so tell-all as we might all be told) it seemed that Wesleyan admissions staff, at least, did not read through everything they were sent because they were too busy. I cannot imagine Joanna or anyone else having lots of free time at this time in the fall, but if she wants to use my history paper to relax and decompress, more power to her.

Ted O' Neill, director of admissions for the University of Chicago, came last Tuesday to do interviews (mainly for anyone applying early); that evening, he stayed around to give us a little bit of information about U of Chicago and to answer any questions we had about the school.

My only real interaction with the University of Chicago has been my glancing contact with their application, more through their great blog (Chicago's Uncommon Application, 2007-2008) than through the actual application itself. I've looked at the essay questions and absolutely love them; they're very creative and demand even more creative responses, in stark constrast to the prompts from other schools or off the common app--prompts which a lot of the time can be parsed to mean "be narcissistic and self-aggrandizing: 500 words." Aside from really liking the application, though, I hadn't really gotten to explore Chicago--I wanted to visit, but it was too "midwest" to be driveable in the time I had over the summer for visits.

From everything I've researched about the school, though, I definitely feel I am going to apply: Chicago students seem to have a sort of "passion" in the sense that they work and play hard. O' Neill reinforced this notion when he spoke about (or was asked about) the student body.

There were 18 people gathered in Mayer to ask questions and hear from Ted, which was a smaller crowd than I would have expected. Tuesdays are busy nights, though, and I didn't have anything to base my expectations upon. Interesting, the lead off was that the University of Chicago is a school that "matches up with Exeter nicely" in terms of similar truths and untruths about both--in work, in character, so forth and so on. This was the intro to the general heme of rigorousness and seriousness which did permeate some of the talk.

I asked my 'interdisciplinary' question (What does the school do to encourage / support interdisciplinary study?) and got a rather indirect answer; O' Neill spoke about the way in which the Core was itself interdisciplinary. There was an additional allusion to some interdisciplinary majors, but nothing really concrete: the 'world-famous interdisciplinary committees' were also named, but weren't really explicitly described. Looking these up later, I did learn a good deal. The $200 million spent on a new interdisciplinary studies building (I think?) seemed like good evidence towards interdisciplinary studies being supported.

The only problem I had was that too many questions seemed to go back to "Core core core core!" as the answer. I understand that the Core, as its name implies, is at the heart of the University's curricula--but it was a little bit tiring to keep hearing about all its virtues and wonders. I'm not opposed to Cores, mind you, but they scare me a little bit sometimes and hearing so much about them can get me a little jittery sometimes. Ted trashed distributional requirements later on as being good if you're "responsible" but not otherwise, since you don't take courses you don't want to and therefore lack necessary components of a liberal arts education. Makes sense, I suppose.

I had one other question I asked: "does the rigor lead to competitiveness?" Thankfully the answer was a resounding "no," although I'm not sure anyone would want to answer that question honestly. "Collaboration" is such a buzzword. If I were going to an MBA graduate school information session, though, that would sure be a fun question to ask (n.b.: recent study showed 50%+ mba grad students confessed to having cheated in the last year).

One last note, which touches on marketing (again!) ... someone (Kelly Hoffer, perhaps?) brought up the postcards which the University of Chicago has been sending out, which often include a sample creative essay question from the uncommon app or some other clever written vignette of some kind. O' Neill said they "turned off 10 for every 1" but it seemed like everyone in the crowd there was a "1" as we all did like the postcards. I certainly did.

The University of Chicago sounds very cool, but I would like now to talk to some current students to get another perspective on it. Maybe I will go look for some on college confidential...

In addition, Angela Henson, an Exeter and Harvard alumna, was there to offer her thoughts "not from an admissions perspective." She was not a particlarly recent alum of either but her insight was of course still valuable.

We were asked which of the two should begin first, and after much vacillation (for clearly the crowd did not want to express an outright favor for either one) someone said "Ladies first" which gave Champagne the clear to start her abbreviated stump. One word, first: I had Sally Champagne do my info session back in March when I went one fateful afternoon down into Cambridge. Truth be told, it was not my favorite info session of the last year. I was therefore pleased by the difference I heard this evening; it just goes to show how an impression can linger long after one individual's 'off day' has passed.

Champagne started by saying her school was sometimes seen as a victim of the "terrible toos" --"Too expensive, too far from home, too hard to get into." I'd never heard of Cambridge / East Coast being too far from home, but that must be because 10 miles from downtown.

Fun fashion watch: John Yoshida, class of 2008, was wearing a Princeton t-shirt! This was much joked about, and I think by the end he was regretting his decision. Mike Maruca, 2007 class president, was wearing an "Animal House" 'College' shirt himself. He got a playful rubbing about that one, too. A dreadfully high number of people were still in dress code--I assume to impress the admissions officers. All the same, it does break my heart to see people supporting that unnecessary vestige of Exeter's past. Then again, I won't drone on about my strong feelings about dress code; you can check out my whole vice presidential campaign about that.

It was Walsh's first time outside of California, apparently--he was San Francisco born and bred, and touched my heart by mentioning the similarities between the "bay area" and the "bay state" --although he was doing so in reference to Harvard, not my life.

Champagne started with numbers. 3500 courses, 40 concentrations, seminars of 12 people or fewer, etc etc. From there she went into less statistical observations, which I felt were much more valuable. I had already heard the spiel so I was just picking out little pieces which I felt echoed what I recalled from the first time I heard her speak; sadly, the index card notes to that March session disappeared in the muck of spring term.

Martin Walsh went right afterward. He was very cavalier about recognizing the spin Stanford's marketing put out; he asked if "they could say 'entrepreneurial' any more" in the viewbook. He mentioned the 'Silicon Valley' aspect of Stanford--fast moving, which is good and bad. He described an "intellectual vitality" about the place--people were were passionate about something and who generally came to Stanford with an idea already. He wanted to know why someone might get on a plane and choose to go to the west coast, as far as exeter applicants were concerned--Stanford draws more from west of the Mississippithan east.

Best of all, he acknowledged that there are "a million great schools" and that it was important to find the one feel where you could thrive. This is not the first time I've heard an admissions officer remind students they should be looking somewhere based on "fit," but I still like to hear it. It's rare. It deviates from a purely promotional script in some ways. My one word impression of Stanford, from his talk: Vitality.

Then questions; particularly boring questions this round, too many which could have been answered by a visit to the website or print materials of either school. I asked the same interdisciplinary question of Champagne that I had back in March (trouble with big, excellent science departments inhibiting interdisciplinary collaboration?) but in the rush of the question stampede I didn't get a really clear answer. Too bad.

To conclude, Mike Maruca asked a ridiculous question about the problem of "ego" and "arrogance" among students at these top schools. Champagne spoke about the 'H-bomb' effect, where students won't tell people what school they attend. Single funniest moment, though? Martin closed by telling us to "enjoy the process" since it is a "very special time in our lives."

My unasked question?

"How do students deal with the confluence of preprofessionals--engineering, nursing, Wharton--and plain 'ol liberal arts undergraduates?"

When I was at UPenn, I was blown away by the zeal which the school seemed to have for interdisciplinary work, so I was really enticed. After talking to Ms. Dolan, I realized that there could be some stratification or at least unpleasantries in being surrounded by people heading all off in specific directions, rather than going towards the broader-based education I would be looking to have. Obviously I would still have a perfectly great education--that's not the issue. It's always an issue of people, and in this case, whether I would want to surround myself with so many preprofessionals.

There were some very encouraging words about public transportation in West Philadelphia--buses, trains and such. I had wanted to ask how the new big extension Penn is working on would affect me if I were to apply and matriculate.

I'm still interested in the very selective, very rigorous, very neat Huntsman, Jerome Fisher dual degree programs; I also heard for the first time about the Vagelos program which is Life Sciences + Management but one degree. You choose to have either a Wharton stamp or College stamp depending on where you focus more of your time. That sounded pretty neat and I know my Dad would love for me to do that... it did sound intriguing.

The talk of tech transfer was interesting in light of recent studies (or at least Chronicle articles) suggesting it might not be all that great for most schools.

Alfred University, Bard College, Barnard College, Belmont Abbey College, Binghamton University, Bryn Mawr College, Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western University, College of William & Mary, Colorado College, Columbia University, Dalhousie University, Davidson College, Dickinson College, Eckerd College, Gettysburg College, Green Mountain College, Harvey Mudd College, James Madison University, Johns Hopkins University, Lafayette College, Lewis & Clark College, Lyndon State College, Merrimack College, Mitchell College, New York University, Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Pitzer College, Reed College, Rollins College, St. Joseph's College (ME), Sarah Lawrence University, Scripps College, Seton Hall University, Simmons College, Smith College, St. Lawrence University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, Trinity College, Tulane University, University of Aberdeen, University of Buffalo, University of King's College, University of Miami, University of Rhode Island, Vanderbilt University, Vassar College, Wake Forest University, Washington & Lee University, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, Whitman College.

Bolded again are those that are still on my list.

UChicago, UPenn, Harvard, and Stanford all have people coming for little info sessions this week. I have some interesting things to say and ask about those, too.

At this college fair we had this past spring, I spent my time grabbing good-looking promotional material from schools I already had on my (then even lengthier) list while pausing to exchange playful banter with the reps from schools I did not and would not consider attending--the University of Texas, for example. How could I help myself--the rep and I shared the same last name! I will say that retrospectively it was perhaps in poor taste to make jokes about the recent construction-related deaths over at Emerson with the Emerson rep; she was good humored about it but apparently doesn't share my attitude that laughter heals all wounds, even those inflicted by several stories of scaffolding and masonry.

What I should have been doing, rather than having quite so much fun, was trying to hear more from the people at each school I was legitimately interested in. The trouble was that these tables were busy because I didn't want to go anywhere unpopular. The people from smaller colleges looked so lonely, and I felt that in the large hall full of so many schools, giving them a little attention--however false--was simply a courtesy, after some of them came from so far away. In some cases, I did learn useful information from places I hadn't known about. I didn't know much about any of the Santa Clara colleges, and so a rep there revealed a good deal of information. I still wasn't interested in going to school there, but at least I was better informed.

Now, the other day I received the packet of treats which the College Counselling Office had sent out a short while ago. In it was the most recent CCO newsletter, a reminder to do homework on colleges, a nicely formatted college list for our parents, that sort of thing. The best part, though, was a sheet labelled “Grade Distribution List.” !!! This is a lot like the sheets that departments present at faculty meeting each term, where they give the grade breakdown for their courses and overall and things–Wesley Chen would steal those sometimes and then gloat about this fantastic thievery afterwards, having ‘liberated’ the papers from the recycling bin after the closed meetings. Very extreme, Wesley.

Regardless, this pink sheet was infinitely more interesting because of how targeted it was–it was only for the Class of 2007, updated through June 2006. Fantastic bit of data at my fingertips. Now, I won’t publish the entire thing because it might make the CCO very very angry you know, as they were when the Exonian published some numbers taken from the website. Understandably this form and indeed that entire packet did not have the terms of use or privacy policy so expressly defined, I don’t really want to incur the wrath of the administration unnecessarily. I can convey the same awesome power without it. I mean, I can’t publish the actual numbers, obviously. So instead I’ve made (all by myself!) a graphical representation thereof. It’s not a graph, or a chart, obviously, because that would be a representation of the data in a human readable form. No, this is just a vague approximation (I swear to god I didn’t enter it into Excel, really) of the grade distribution.

Um, okay. Now to discuss the ah… “artistic merit” of these nondescript forms. We can call them, for the sake of discussion and plausible deniability, “bars.” No affiliation with a bar graph, mind you. Right–now, on this bit of art here, I was trying to place myself in the world [of PEA class of 2007 grade distribution current through June 2006]. If we divide this picture into thirds, you know, to approximate the golden ratio, I’d see myself right around the third “bar.” It’s pretty funny because that reminds me of something I saw earlier… no clue what might have inspired this artwork, no. It came to me in a vision.

I found myself at 9.5-9.99, in terms of cumulative GPA groupings. For those of you not from Exeter, you may be confused. Exeter works on an 11 point system, unweighted. So an A is an 11, an A- is 10, so forth and so on. To get back to a normal 4.0 system you need only multiply, then, by 4/11ths. Easy and easily mortifying). There were 49 other people in my club with me, and 37 total in the two above it.

I was fairly shocked / surprised to discover that 20% of the grade had marks below 7.9. That’s just something I never really realized. The curve is quite distorted upwards, centered around a B.

Our Powerpoint presentations were all presented by one Ms. Tasker; we were reminded of this fact as the start of each, as the title slide included her name and “presented by.” Why anyone would want to be associated with that sordid affair, I know not why. She was fine until 10 minutes in she ran out of words and started reading off the slides.

One note on grammar: I wish the SAT asked fun grammar questions, like “What should the correct complete predicate be?” or “how do you use a semicolon, you stupid teenager?” You know, useful things.

I think I may go to the next one, which covers the reading and essay–n.b. I got a 12 on the essay when I took the SAT last spring for fun, and did fairly well on the reading… yet I persist.