- #1
Mépris
- 850
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Over the past few months, I've been looking into applying to college in the US. I've been reading up on stuff on the internet, asking a couple of questions on the forums here and also been on CollegeConfidential a few times. A huge portion of the applicants there sound like they've totally lost it and go nuts with their "chance" threads. I see things like "chance me and I'll chance you back!" being thrown around various threads. How is that even allowed? I don't think I've seen anything as annoying as that.
I doubt that kind of behaviour is common only on College Confidential. I've seen whole books solely about college admissions (A is for Admissions springs to mind), when I was looking for SAT books on Amazon.
Also, what is the big deal about extra curricular activities? Who cares if you've logged 76.4645 hours of community service. Apparently an admissions committee wants to know what kind of person the applicant is - does "x hours doing y thing" explain all of that? I find listing every other activity one has undertaken to be atrocious, to say the least. If one of the activities I engaged in, had a profound effect on me, I'll write down on an essay. Else, why should you care whether I do pottery or clean the streets in my free time?! On that note, anyone can *lie* about doing these things. How would they know? Sure, people are going to bring up the Adam Wheeler example but his lies were...http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/18/adam-wheeler-resume_n_580523.html".
Reading through posts on a couple of forums, I often see applicants thinking that writing a heart wrenching essay is somehow going to win over the admissions committee. Now why would anyone want to lie so they come across as one of those "abandoned crying puppies" you see in cartoons?! It's crazy. Even then, why would anyone want an emo kid who'd go even more emo when they can't maintain that 4.0 in their school...?
I can totally get being concerned about where one is going to end up for college - after all, it's four years of one's life that's going to be spent there. But this...damn, does that suck. Anyway, I hope that things aren't like that everywhere and that my opinion is what it is because of my limited exposure to US-college applicants.
/rant
I doubt that kind of behaviour is common only on College Confidential. I've seen whole books solely about college admissions (A is for Admissions springs to mind), when I was looking for SAT books on Amazon.
Also, what is the big deal about extra curricular activities? Who cares if you've logged 76.4645 hours of community service. Apparently an admissions committee wants to know what kind of person the applicant is - does "x hours doing y thing" explain all of that? I find listing every other activity one has undertaken to be atrocious, to say the least. If one of the activities I engaged in, had a profound effect on me, I'll write down on an essay. Else, why should you care whether I do pottery or clean the streets in my free time?! On that note, anyone can *lie* about doing these things. How would they know? Sure, people are going to bring up the Adam Wheeler example but his lies were...http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/18/adam-wheeler-resume_n_580523.html".
Reading through posts on a couple of forums, I often see applicants thinking that writing a heart wrenching essay is somehow going to win over the admissions committee. Now why would anyone want to lie so they come across as one of those "abandoned crying puppies" you see in cartoons?! It's crazy. Even then, why would anyone want an emo kid who'd go even more emo when they can't maintain that 4.0 in their school...?
I can totally get being concerned about where one is going to end up for college - after all, it's four years of one's life that's going to be spent there. But this...damn, does that suck. Anyway, I hope that things aren't like that everywhere and that my opinion is what it is because of my limited exposure to US-college applicants.
/rant
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