article by former Harvard interviewer

[wapiti]

Ivy League Admissions are a Sham:  Confessions of a Harvard Gatekeeper

 

 

But if the force of your pushy little personality fails to shine through in the rest of the application, then I have to try and draw it out in the interview. It's not psychoanalysis by any stretch. I just want to hear that you like certain things and dislike others, that you've run into obstacles and heard the word "no" on occasion. Don't tell me everything is great, because it's not. Don't tell me everything is terrible, because it isn't. And most of all, prove to me that you've spent some time thinking about a big brand-name in education, and what it can do just for you.

 

Then I can give you a strong recommendation.

 

...

 

In my admissions tenure, I've learned to understand the process as the soft con that it is. On the one hand, it's utterly opaque and more than a little arbitrary. On the other hand, it has huge consequences for the tens of thousands of young people who get sucked into it every year, and for the multi-billion-dollar institutions that live off of those students' money. And throughout the whole process are the unpaid, underappreciated, probably not impartial people like me, who get to make a lot of questionably appropriate, marginally legal, rational-until-it's-totally-arbitrary decisions. It makes very few people look good, but makes a lot of people pretty rich.

 

I've endured year after year of privileged sameness, with no sign of the non-millionaires whom I wanted to help.

 

 

[Jen in NY]

Hmmm......

 

So tired... can barely think .... had rehearsal until 11 and then cleaned an office until 2am.... (ahhh, the luxurious life of an Ivy League family.....)

 

I am not sure about all these millionaires she's talking about. The *average* financial aid package at Harvard for freshmen is like $50,000. If they were *all* millionaires, then.....?

 

I get the complaint about arbitrary admissions..... but what else would happen when 35,000 people apply for maybe 2,000 spots (at Harvard)? Is she really upset that people are trying to make a good impression at an interview? What would she have them do? Come in unshowered and with their fly down because that's how they look on a normal school day?

 

Really trying to sort exactly what her complaint is, but my brain is bordering on the nonfunctional. Is it that a lot of rich kids apply? Cuz, yes. But 33,000/35,000 kids get rejected, and lots of them are probably rich. I come back to the finaid awards. So at least *some* people (lots of people?) getting into Harvard and other Ivy Leagues aren't rich. Hence the office cleaning in the middle of the night.

 

I'll try and come back to it tomorrow after I get some time to sleep.... maybe tonight after rehearsal? Or at 2pm when I hopefully get back from the garage after having my 13 year old car with 211000 miles on that smells like gas at the moment repaired. Again.

 

The Ivy League has been kind to us in a lot of ways. It doesn't feel like a sham at the moment.

[In The Great White North]

 

 

Then I can give you a strong recommendation.

 

 

It took her all the way down to the end of the article (and the end of her " career"  as an alumni interviewer) to realize that it doesn't matter if she gives a kid a strong recommendation or not.

 

There have been a few threads about alumni interviewers on here.  Unless you report that the kid lied, cheated on his SAT, had someone else write his essays, and said he really doesn't want to go there, your interview report is unlikely to have any effect at all.  I think her beef was that she had no real power in the process and the one kid she really wanted to help didn't get in.  When she realized that was how it worked, she quit.

[madteaparty]

I stopped reading at Louboutin shoes. Takes one to know one? Let me guess, does the author have a book to shill?

[Barbara H]

Arg - tons of inaccurate and misleading statements. The part that got me most is that the volunteer's "tenure" as an alumni interviewer "gatekeeper" was her description of the one lower income candidate she ever interviewed. The student has lower scores and "when I asked him questions—about school, sports, family, TV, whatever—his answers lasted barely five seconds. When I asked him why he wanted to go to Harvard, he shrugged and said, "Dunno." Yet she feels compelled to be charitable in her recommendation but he still doesn't get in. So, therefore she concludes the system is a sham.

 

As an alumni interviewer she's not seeing what the full range of candidates look like nor does she get a good overall sense of the applicant pool. Alumni interviewers are assigned by region. So, if she lives in a rich area and she's interviewing exclusively rich candidates that hardly seems surprising. It doesn't mean that all successful applicants to Harvard are the same. Just in the very little slice of the homeschooling world we have a diverse group lower and mid income students who ARE competitive candidates for top schools. They have the test scores. They have the accomplishments. And, they can certainly answer more than "dunno" to every question. If somebody's answer to every question is "dunno" they don't belong at Harvard. About 30% of Harvard's students are below the $80,000 threshold, meaning they pay next to nothing for the education. Yes, millionaires are way overrepresented and that's part of why families up to $200,000 in income can still often get financial aid. The fact that she assumes lower income candidates can't articulately answer interview questions based on the ONE student she met in this category is incredibly insulting.

 

 

 

[Reefgazer]

I don't know....every college is going to admit its "best", right? In that, they are no different than any other college. Most students applying to Harvard are going to present themselves in their best light also, and with good reason, after all; dunno-boy was rejected because that attitude isn't a winner. It's never been a surprise the children of the wealthy have opportunities to showcase their talents, to get coaching for tests and for interviews, and they often grow up in an environment where presenting themselves in the best professional light is set by example.