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Comment by VWWHFSfQ | Hacker News Reader

> The notion of a "well rounded student"

...

> is a legacy of blue blood WASP culture

First of all, I don't know what "blue blood WASP culture" is. Explain that please.

Second, there's nothing wrong with expecting students to participate in extra-curricular activities like music and art as a basis for admission. MIT is still going to evaluate those things.

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Selecting for students whose parents can afford formal music, art and sport lessons is selecting for wealth. Having extra-curriculars you can document costs money and time.

Poor kids are getting 'well rounded' by spending summer break at work, saving enough money to survive the school year.

> Poor kids are getting 'well rounded' by spending summer break at work, saving enough money to survive the school year.

This is an interesting point: why shouldn't work count towards being well-rounded? If anything, work is much more grounded in reality, and a lot of kids who never had to work in high school and college would come off as out of touch (at least to me, as someone who did work thru high school and college). It would be nice if work experience (even if unrelated to a field) was valued as much as being part of a silly club.

It does. I've helped with college applications to Ivy League where the "volunteer opportunities" are "working summers for minimum wage, looking after my younger siblings and/or helping at the family convenience store".

Those kids got in.

I think the point is to show you offer something more than just being good at school. It doesn't have to be volunteer opportunities or something expensive.

Who says it isn't? Being in a silly club hasn't worked as well as people think it does for quite a while now. Admissions see tons of this bullshit and I bet their eyes glaze over.

I recently went through grad school applications and waded through dozens of sample essays and tips for writing a great “statement of purpose essay”.

Based on the admissions decisions the school made (as reported by Reddit) and the changes to content length made over the years, I suspect the school cares about precisely four things.

- Can your write a coherent essay?

- Can you clearly state what your qualifications to pursue the academic program are?

- Can you clearly articulate why you want to complete a 3 year program?

- If there is a problem in your background e.g. a low GPA, can you clearly state why you don’t think this will be a problem going forward?

I suspect everything else was entirely ignored.

Graduate admissions processes are very different from undergraduate admissions in exactly that way though. Undergraduate admissions are trying to select on a pretty wide definition of "successful", basically trying to find students likely to graduate then make the university look good. Graduate admissions care about one thing only: how good are you at generating published research in the department you're applying under. It's much more similar to a job application than an undergrad application.

If you get great test scores, and you go to a school that does not send many students to the ivy leagues et al, you will get noticed; this helps a lot of smart low SES urban or rural students gain entry.

> spending summer break at work, saving enough money

is going to count in your favor

if you go to a competitive high school that sends lots of kids to top universities, then you need to stack up your extra-curriculars to stand out wrt all the other kids in a similar position

In the U.S. public schools offer students all kinds of extracurricular activities that cost the families either very little or nothing at all. I attended a low- to middle-income public elementary and middle school where I was able to practice violin for several years, and it didn't cost my family anything.

Costs aren't always direct "pay this much to participate in this thing" costs.

Having to arrange separate transportation home because you stayed after school past when the buses leave is also a cost.

None of those will stand out on a college application.

One thing that might stand out is a complete lack of interest in doing anything besides studying. It seems like it may be a sign of low social intelligence

Why is that necessary to get educated?

It's not.

But elite schools select for (1) students who will enrich the experience for their classmates and (2) who are likely to have an outsized impact on the world as adults and bring prestige to the institution.

There are some people who are so quantitatively intelligent that a lack of social skills/intelligence doesn't matter (geniuses), but these people are so exceptional they can't be really measured by a test like the SAT. It's too easy to get a perfect score.

Instead they'll distinguish themselves by excelling at STEM competitions (eg. Math Olympiad, programming contests, the Putnam).

Putnam is a collegiate event, on which most students in the math department of elite colleges (except MIT) score approximately 0.

I’d also like to add an anecdote: while my family wasn’t necessarily poor, I pretty much spent all my extra-curricular time doing things like coding and design, and neither of them were really in a way that was documentable. There was no “coding” club or “graphic design” club and if there was something similar that popped up in high school the physical gathering nature of most clubs was odd when applied to things like internet coding. So the clubs tended to be a waste of time more than anything, and most students participated knowingly just to pad college applications.

WASP is White anglo saxon protosant and is to indicate that a "right" and "proper" person ought to know music and etc, but only in so much depth that it demonstrates there wealth. Which is how extra-curricular creep sometimes shows up when people apply to college and were President of X club and play Y sport, while not really having a deep interest in the activity. When you are treating an activity as a resume builder rather than an activity or experience to invest deeper in to me that shows a lack of intellectual curiousity (but does show a thought process of understanding procedualism and bureaucracy (not the students fault when its what the system values))

How can you tell whether someone is treating an activity as a resume builder or if they genuinely value it and enjoy it

Competitions (when they exist) and/or impact.

Usually if someone has an impressive extracurricular that is tough to document, one of their recommendations will mention it in a compelling way.

As a simple example, a relative of mine was a co-founder and editor of the school newspaper at his high school… and it got banned for uncovering shenanigans within the administration and board of education.

That would stand out in an application.

How do you know that about trigonometry or precalculus?

> First of all, I don't know what "blue blood WASP culture" is. Explain that please.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants

See also: https://www.hbo.com/the-gilded-age. These are the folks who founded Harvard, Yale, etc., and created the ethos of higher education that remains nearly universal in America today.

> Second, there's nothing wrong with expecting students to participate in extra-curricular activities like music and art as a basis for admission. MIT is still going to evaluate those things.

It’s pointless and classist.

It's a complex issue. On one hand, what differentiates universities from trade schools is teaching students how to learn/do their own research vs. acquire specific skills/knowledge: demonstrating some kind of self-motivated achievement aside from strict academic requirements helps universities select students who are receptive to this. On the other hand, yes, it selects for more well-off students who have the free time, inclination, and means to pursue their interests.

Harvard was founded in 1636 and Yale was founded in 1701, over 150 years before the gilded age. And why is the blood of WASPs blue?

He's talking about white aristocrats, so called blue-blood because they were fair enough to see their veins, according to legend.

Sorry, to clarify for people who haven’t watched the show. The show is about a Gilded Age new money family in New York City trying to break into the social scene composed of affluent families who traced their ancestry in America back to the 1600s. It’s these sorts of families (who were “old money” back in the Gilded Age) who were intimately involved with the inception of Harvard and Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elihu_Yale

So basically this is just a completely fictional account for entertainment with maybe some historical context thrown in for dramatic flavor? What is one supposed to take away from that?

The WASP elite are a completely historical group of people deeply involved with our Ivy League universities. The show is just a pop culture illustration of the point. (Though maybe not as popular as I thought.)

having a sun tan, was associated with field laborers, so rich people of the time did every thing they could to retain the whitest of skin to demonstrate their richness. When you have very pale skin the veins are more easily seen which carry un-oxygenated blood back to the heart, giving a blueish hue.

Of course, now the term blue blood, just means wealth that has established generational history.

Check out this song by Henry VIII

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastime_with_Good_Company

More seriously, it’s fairly well acknowledged that most of the ivies started as seminaries or were modelled after english places of HL.

https://www.britainexpress.com/cities/oxford/stuart.htm

Blue Blood and WASP generally refer to people who come from rich/prominent families. Whether it's fair or not, the stereotype is a polo playing, boat shoe wearing type who has a vacation house somewhere fancy and family connections into good jobs etc.

You could've googled that pretty easily and found out in less time it took you to write that comment.

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