Behind the Ivy Curtain: A Data Driven Guide to Elite College Admissions | Hacker News Reader

Behind the Ivy Curtain: A Data Driven Guide to Elite College Admissions

amazon.decenturl.com

8 pointssignaler5 comments

Hey mods!

The "decenturl.com" domain forwards to amazon, where "davihigg" is getting a referral.

I would suggest a replacement link, but there are only 12 google hits ("Behind the Ivy Curtain" Upadhyay) for it and none of them are any good.

I find it disagreeable that you call my referral link out first before even mentioning the book. Have you even heard of network marketing? This is not news, and I happen to own a copy of this book and have recommended it to others. This is not some random submission BTW.

URL shorteners are generally frowned upon. The book is not notable - no one has written anything about it. And outside of "Show HN", HN is not a marketing platform.

At the very least take the time to write a thinly veiled native advertising blog post/review. If you give us original content that contains referers (that directly link amazon instead of sleazy shorteners) people usually do not complain about referers.

It's a book about how to compete in a pointless arms race between applicants and the zero-sum admissions office of Harvard? Does such activity add any value to the world? It's like a book on how to predict the stock market.

Author here - the way I see it, a lot of kids are going to put time and effort into this. Might as well be efficient about it. This book was written for public school kids and parents who would never have access to the info that kids at top private schools do. Going to a top school gets you big scholarships, is usually cheaper than even going in-state, and could literally change your life.

And a large part of the book talks about how you should combine unique activities to stand out instead of doing what others are doing, and to not stress over grades/scores past a certain point.

So yeah, I'm damn proud of my work here.

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