IMHO it's sour grapes from someone that tried to game the system but didn't get the prize they wanted.
Aside from grades and AP scores, it's a lot of "showing up" dressed up as accomplishment. JV track explains itself, the debate stuff is the equivalent of getting third place in one track event at one regional meet, and Eagle Scout is impressive but IMO doesn't show anything that doing well in school doesn't already show.
Everyone applying to CMU CS or Harvey Mudd has high GPAs, high standardized test scores, and lots of 4s and 5s on AP tests. So the extra curricular stuff really does matter, because there are way fewer seats than people with good grades and test scores. And in this applicant's case, the ECs just are not there.
The applicants who are setting themselves apart via debate are consistently doing well at the best national tournaments in the most demanding and competitive formats for years; not getting 3rd place in Congressional at one regional tournament. The ones setting themselves apart with track are participating in Varsity at least a few years, doing well at State, and a likely courting at least D2 athletic scholarships. The ones who are setting themselves apart via scouting are going way beyond the minimum requirements for Eagle Scout.
Also, Northeastern and Amherst have fantastic CS programs and getting into CS programs like those at Harvey Mudd or CMU is probably harder than getting into ivies these days.
> The ones setting themselves apart with track are participating in Varsity at least a few years, doing well at State, and a likely courting at least D2 athletic scholarships
Sports (especially track and field) don't set you apart at all as an applicant for unless you're good enough to make the college's varsity team. That's the sole metric highly selective schools are using to assess athletic ability unless you have some extenuating circumstance that makes your participation in the sport especially meaningful.
I think his point was that any kid of any race other than Asian with identical stats would have been accepted.
And my point is that this is not true.
His scores are near the median for those cohorts, and only a tiny fraction of students with those scores are admitted. Test scores are literally the only non-average thing on his resume for college applicants in general, and among CMU CS/HM CS they don't set him apart from anyone admitted or even tons of other people rejected.
Now, if he received an NDT bid and/or made it deep into nationals? Placed in State and had D1 track scholarship potential? Special distinctions from the Scouts? Sure. Those might raise my eyebrow. But he has average scores _for the cohort_ and nothing else of note on his resume other than participation in a few after-school activities.
Schools like CMU CS and HM can demand both his scores and also excellence in other dimensions. They have tons of applicants with NDT bids in policy/PF/LD and similar or better scores. They have tons of applicants who are on Varsity track teams, even do well at state, and have similar or better scores.
Even more importantly, they have tons of applicants who do really interesting and unique things outside of the official college prep extra-curricular stuff -- run apps/websites with tons of users, OSS packages with lots of stars, various types of civil society involvement, and so on. Those students also have similar or better scores.
And they turn down a lot of those applicants who have the same scores as this student but are also top percentile at their extra-curricular activities.
Good test scores aren't enough to get into CMU CS/HM, and that's all this student has. It's not racism. It's merit.
Again, this discussion is about a real person and it's a shame his dad entered his resume into this discourse non-anonymously.
But the narrative is just wrong. The bar is absurdly higher than this dad thinks it is. Period.
Maybe it should be different--for example, I'm at a loss to understand how athletics might predict success in computer science programs (grit, maybe?)--and there's probably a reasonable argument that the four-factor (academic, extracurricular, athletic, personal) model creates more systematic biases than it avoids. But what you're saying is pretty accurate.
Grit, leadership, team work, the crucible of (a different type of) competition, tactics and strategy, etc. Again, not sports in general, but specifically being good enough at a sport to get a D1 or D2 scholarship, requires significant discipline and inter-personal skills.
(I also think tech folks under-appreciate that physical movement is a type of intelligence that might just correlate well with certain types of high-stress/low-information decision making... at least as well as IQ correlates with similar types of things... but that's an evidence-free conjecture on my part.)
> there's probably a reasonable argument that the four-factor (academic, extracurricular, athletic, personal) model creates more systematic biases than it avoids. But what you're saying is pretty accurate.
That's definitely true -- eg a student from outside the college-going class or without enough economic capital wouldn't be able to participate in niche sports and become elite by virtue of big fish/small point dynamics. And their parent wouldn't have friends who could give advice or open doors. But, do note that the student in the referenced paragraph is not a victim of that type of systematic bias. His father, a partner at IBM, is exactly the type of person who is positioned to provide those unfair advantages.
(edit: my posts above should be referring to TOC not NDT.)
Try: speculative, imaginary, and unsubstantiated by evidence. Stereotypical, if you’re feeling adventurous.
I’m not discounting that you could be right, just that you could be right in a totally contrived scenario.
And this is not a "totally contrived" scenario. The guy is posting his kid's resume on some blog post about SAT scores in another state. That's very strong evidence as to his involvement and importance he placed on college admissions.
https://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/Boy-Scouts-Repo...
If a kid does that of their own volition then it's evidence of something.
If a kid does it because their parents made them do it in order to put it on their college application then it's meaningless.
Seriously. Let's compare to scouting, which starts young. Every year, 4.14 million students participate in track across all age groups. There are at most 9,516 D1 track and field scholarships. That's a maximum 0.2% (not 2%, 0.2%), often lower. Again, good enough for a D1 partial scholarship is often the "bar" for consideration of athletics in admissions beyond "participation item". And even then, it's not automatic admissions. It's just the bar you need to clear for them to care. To consider it as part of the package. You probably need something else, in addition to this and great scores.
And, to be clear, the difference between 5% ability and 1% ability is HUGE. The difference between 1% and 0.5% is again huge. In many activities, there's an exponential curve in terms of talent and effort. So we're not merely talking about a few percentage points, we're talking about a very qualitatively significant difference in kind.
The other issue with scouting in particular is that it's not competitive and the requirements are, honestly, mostly box checking. And the ones that aren't pure box checking are subjective and opaque.
Now, don't get me wrong. Scouting is a worthy endeavor and achieving Eagle Scout is RIGHTFULLY a crowning achievement for many youth! It's something to be proud of and which should be awarded!
But here, the sour grapes are not about good or even great schools. It's about admission to the absolutely most competitive departments at the absolutely most competitive schools. And in those cases, Eagle Scout just doesn't move the needle as much as people here assume. It's the minimum to even start taking scouting seriously as a resume item, not a needle mover.
For reference, you probably have to be in the 0.2 percentile of track and field athletes (plus have a raving letter for your coach about your leadership of the team) in order for these types of departments at these types of schools to factor your athletic accomplishments into their decision making. But 5% of scouts make it to Eagle Scout. And going from fifth percentile in something to 0.2 percentile in something is... absolutely huge. In most endeavors, 5% is "show up, work hard, and care" while 0.2% is "be absolutely exceptional".
That doesn't mean that making Eagle Scout or doing well at regional track meets is a non-accomplishment. It just means that you're competing to be one of a few hundred or at most a few thousand in the entire ocean, not the pond or even the lake.
The kid got a big scholarship at a very excellent school. It's not like his effort was not rewarded. He just wasn't one of the 1K best in the country.
To me, it says that a kid had ambition, intelligence, determination, and conscientiousness, but to each his own.
Getting good grades is "gaming the system" now?
But either way that's just one part of the resume. It's all the extra curriculars that look like blatant box checking without any real accomplishment.