Be yourself, get accepted ... it can be done!
New York Times June 6, 2007
Getting Into College, Strumming His Own Tune
By Samuel G. FreedmanDOYLESTOWN, Pa.
Attention, all helicopter parents and pressure-cooker children. I mean the ones who’ve been sucked into the vortex of college admissions anxiety. I mean the ones who fear that without paying thousands of dollars for tutors, consultants, test-prep classes and maybe a moonlighting graduate student to ghostwrite the essays, the future will surely be hopeless.
Let’s head out together to eastern Pennsylvania, to Central Bucks High School West, off the main drag in Doylestown. And while we make our visit, keep a particular phrase in mind. It will be our mantra. Repeat after me: Reality check.
Meet Kevin Robinson. He’s the senior with wispy blond hair and sunburned cheeks, in his international relations class, discussing the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war with a classmate wearing a Notorious B.I.G. T-shirt. There’s Kevin a couple of periods later, playing guitar with the school’s jazz ensemble, getting ready for a gig tonight in the cafeteria.
Notice how Kevin looks kind of relaxed, at peace with himself? That equanimity isn’t a case of senioritis. Back in April he got accepted to a very good college, George Washington University. And he did it — I kid you not — on his own merits through his own efforts.
Check this out. Other than some free test-prep classes the high school provided, Kevin didn’t do anything to game the system. He decided to live or die with who he was. Statistically speaking, that meant a 3.6 grade-point average, a class rank in the top 20 percent, a score of 1950 out of a possible 2400 on the SAT.
AND here’s the beauty part. He wrote his admissions essay about “Parliament Funkadelic,” comparing George Clinton to Shakespeare and “Atomic Dog” to a fugue. Not even his mother read the essay before he sent it in, though she is a pretty big P-Funk fan.
Read the rest of the article.
posted by caroline at
10:08 PM
3 Comments:
I'm glad to hear that there are other people in the country who are at high-performing schools and don't take $1000 SAT classes. Take the free ones! Glad I'm not alone. :D
While this is a great article giving hope to those who feel being yourself isn't good enough I dare say the article wouldn't have been written at all if (a) he had gotten into non of his choices or (b) the college he had been accepted to was not a big name school like George Washington.
George Washington is not super selective and his numbers look about right for it. BTW my son got into Pomona writing an essay on video games, and looking through the test booklet the night before for his SATs.
He did have a lot of AP classes. That was 6 years ago. Right now his GPA would be too low as they are down to accepting about 16 %.
Post a Comment
<< Home