Maybe you should be sending Westwood the check…
As far as I am concerned, they are the one and same. My niece, once an adopted little baby from China, overcame a lot and is now a Freshman there!!! I know I never sniffed close to a 4.3 gpa!!!
I went down to visit UCLA last summer, and there were a bunch of students sun-bathing in the fountain there… Bikinis galore.
Did you think the UCLA campus was one of the better ones you have seen or been to (never mind all of the beautiful people there)?
UCLA does look very pretty, but USC is not bad either. Both look better than Berkeley. Berkeley’s buildings look a bit haphazard, too much of a hodgepodge of different styles.
Well, despite going to school down there I never did actually step on USC ground to know. It may be nice but the surrounding area is not correct? Which is why Westwood and Brentwood across Sunset Blvd there by UCLA is as prime as one can ask for.
Ms. Younger wrote in the applications about her history of depression and anxiety to explain the two B’s she earned during her sophomore year.
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Except that’s what sells to the college admissions officers.
And the truth is that even more/better qualified kids got just as many rejection letters… Because the Ivy’s aren’t looking for exceptional, they’re looking for “diverse”.
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Won’t get them in unless they’re “diverse” or they’re a recruitable athlete.
The next couple of years in college admissions are going to be pretty brutal until people push back on the holistic admissions crap.
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the whole point of that article/video is to say parents are putting too much pressure on the kids.
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But it’s really the colleges that are the problem. It’d be one thing if the pressure to do well paid off, but the colleges and universities are putting such unreasonable demands on non-diverse applicants while at the same time being the gatekeeper for jobs that require a degree. The parents are panicking and rightfully so.
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sorry I don’t agree, mental health of your kid should be prioritized over what school they get into - at the end of the day their value and job isn’t 100% tied to what college they went to so time to let that go
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Pressure in American schools? What pressure?
Try the Korean 10-to-10 treatment for size.
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Can you take the exam a second time?
I have no idea if Korean kids can take those exams a second time. But usually taking it the second time won’t change the result too much, unless there were some accidents the first time around like falling sick or family emergencies. I can’t imagine anybody has the stamina to go thru that torture not once but twice in a row.
I get that we parents should not pressure kids too much. But on the other hand, having grown up and gone to school in Asia, I look at what amounts as “pressure” in American schools and can’t help myself thinking “what a bunch of snowflakes”.
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The big difference is that you presumably know what you’re getting in exchange for working hard in the exam-based countries, and you probably get feedback as to where you stand.
In the US now, you could be one of the smartest kids in the US and not get into the top universities because things you can’t change are weighed more heavily than things you can change like your schoolwork. I feel like that creates a more destructive stress - a combination of a sense of unfairness, futility, and the unknown - the feeling that the rules you’ve been told are not actually the rules. “Work hard and get into a good college” is NOT correct. It’s “grow up a minority in a small state, be good at a sport or something really unusual, and get as far as Calculus BC and you’ll get into MIT” but “Grow up a majority in CA or NY, take >10 APs, perfect grades, science fair finalist, National Merit Semifinalist, and publish research papers” will probably not get you into MIT.
How are kids in California NOT supposed to be stressed by that? The three things they can’t change - where they live, what their race is, and whether their parents went to college matter more than anything else.
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I watched Try Harder. Brings back a lot of memories. I can relate and associate. I went to Lowell HS; then UC Berkeley. Of course at that time, just needed grades and test scores. It wasn’t easy; just more predictable.
I feel sorry for some of these kids. In additional to pressure they put on themselves, they have to deal with pressure from their parents.
Luckily, my parents didn’t give me any pressure. Studying hard and doing well in school was important. But they were working class, so they didn’t know anything about college. And I’m the type that doesn’t listen anyways, so I’m fortunate my parents were hands off.
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