Great essay on college rejection

Bottom line. You'll never know, and it matters a lot less than you think it does.

That is a great essay. And the last bit is one of the best lessons I have learned in life:

Sometimes things don’t go your way. And even when they don’t, they usually turn out just fine.

Being rejected is sometimes a blessing. I was reading about a disgruntled Cincinnati bus rider who is ticked because they took away his later bus routes home.

He has a $14 an hour job downtown and $200K in student loans and no car.

Someone should have turned his application to wherever he went down.

https://www.wcpo.com/news/loca...trands-him-regularly

quote:

He has a $14 an hour job downtown and $200K in student loans and no car.

Someone should have turned his application to wherever he went down.

Mik, I don't think we have enough info about this guy to really say anything about him or his situation.

The whole point of having bus service is that people who don't have cars can use the bus to get around for work and shopping. People make all kinds of plans about where to live, where to work, where to go to school, based on available mass transit options. And I don't think there's anything wrong with expecting a scheduled bus service to come as scheduled.

So I don't get your reaction here at all.

My daughter is one of those people. She does not drive and has always had to find places to live/jobs to work at that she could either walk to or get mass transit to. And sometimes things happen that make getting to work or school really difficult, after you’ve gotten settled. These are things tha those of us that have always driven/had cars don’t usually think about. You are right that we don’t know enough about that man’s situation, though my first thought while reading was that maybe he should take a job as a bus driver - it might pay more!

quote:

Originally posted by jodi:
That is a great essay. And the last bit is one of the best lessons I have learned in life:

Sometimes things don’t go your way. And even when they don’t, they usually turn out just fine.

So very true. We have a local billionaire who never graduated from high school. He lives modestly and gives generously to the University of Montana (the stadium was named after him and his wife) and other community causes. Somehow, not going to college at all never got in his way.

I don't think where you go to college matters very much if you are a person with drive, talent, and discipline. And if you aren't that kind of person, well, connections can only get you so far.

Let me see …

Student applicants:

Reason I’m admitted: I’m a stable genius!
Reason I’m rejected: Everyone is unfair to me!


College admission consultants:

All other times: write about what you can do to get admitted; after all, you won’t spend money on college admission consulting services if you don’t believe that there is something you can do to affect the outcome.

Right after admission decision announcements: explain why nobody could have known what to do to make a difference, hoping the rejected applicants (who presumably are the majority) won’t think to reevaluate how utterly useless those college admission consulting services have been.

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

quote:

He has a $14 an hour job downtown and $200K in student loans and no car.

Someone should have turned his application to wherever he went down.

Mik, I don't think we have enough info about this guy to really say anything about him or his situation.

The whole point of having bus service is that people who don't have cars can use the bus to get around for work and shopping. People make all kinds of plans about where to live, where to work, where to go to school, based on available mass transit options. And I don't think there's anything wrong with expecting a scheduled bus service to come as scheduled.

So I don't get your reaction here at all.

$200K in student loans and a $14 an hour job. There's a disconnect there.

They missed lots of examples. For instance, if you play oboe really well, if School A's current first chair oboe is a senior, and if they don't have a long list of good oboe players in the queue. Likewise, school B might have a prodigy oboe player who's a fresh-person, and another prodigy applying who is a legacy.

However, this essay is, as far as I can tell, misleading. You CAN affect your odds. A better essay is more likely to improve your odds; a terrible essay is more likely to reduce your odds. That doesn't mean it'll tip the scales, but it'll affect the probabilities.

People want to know "how can I make X happen?" In this case, X is admission to a particular college. The answer is, you can't. But you CAN improve the odds of X happening. How much you can improve the odds may be unknowable.

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
They missed lots of examples. For instance, if you play oboe really well, if School A's current first chair oboe is a senior, and if they don't have a long list of good oboe players in the queue. Likewise, school B might have a prodigy oboe player who's a fresh-person, and another prodigy applying who is a legacy.

However, this essay is, as far as I can tell, misleading. You CAN affect your odds. A better essay is more likely to improve your odds; a terrible essay is more likely to reduce your odds. That doesn't mean it'll tip the scales, but it'll affect the probabilities.

People want to know "how can I make X happen?" In this case, X is admission to a particular college. The answer is, you can't. But you CAN improve the odds of X happening. How much you can improve the odds may be unknowable.

Yep. This is what passes for journalism these days.

A) Boekenstedt is not a journalist. He's an admissions VP.

B) This is a blog post, not a book. It's an extraordinarily good one, in my view. It makes a small set of points and makes them very well. I'm sorry it doesn't meet your high standards for completeness in every detail.

C) Boekenstendt's blog offers practitioners and scholars great access to data that informs critical thinking. My next project was stimulated by a data-rich post of his a few weeks ago.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
A) Boekenstedt is not a journalist. He's an admissions VP.

B) This is a blog post, not a book. It's an extraordinarily good one, in my view. It makes a small set of points and makes them very well. I'm sorry it doesn't meet your high standards for completeness in every detail.

C) Boekenstendt's blog offers practitioners and scholars great access to data that informs critical thinking. My next project was stimulated by a data-rich post of his a few weeks ago.

Is my point about being able to affect the probabilities, in a greater or lesser way, wrong? Because if I'm not wrong, he doesn't say that. What he says is "your ability to control things is far less than you think", leaving implicit the idea that you may be able to affect the outcomes even if you cannot control them, that it's a roll of the dice everywhere and you can improve the odds, and that you should consider whether it's worth your time, money, and effort to improve the probabilities.

And, if I'm not wrong, it changes the entire tenor of his blog post from "you can't control the outcome, and sometimes things aren't going to go your way ... life lesson" to "you may not be able to control the outcome, and there's lots that is outside of your control, but you can affect the probabilities, so you should decide whether it's worthwhile to do so, recognizing that, no matter what you do, you'll never know if it was worth it or not". Because the other side of the point is, even without all that extra effort, you might have gotten in anyway, because they needed a good oboe player this year.

quote:

Originally posted by Mikhailoh:

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

quote:

He has a $14 an hour job downtown and $200K in student loans and no car.

Someone should have turned his application to wherever he went down.

Mik, I don't think we have enough info about this guy to really say anything about him or his situation.

The whole point of having bus service is that people who don't have cars can use the bus to get around for work and shopping. People make all kinds of plans about where to live, where to work, where to go to school, based on available mass transit options. And I don't think there's anything wrong with expecting a scheduled bus service to come as scheduled.

So I don't get your reaction here at all.

$200K in student loans and a $14 an hour job. There's a disconnect there.

Perhaps, or maybe that's the only job he could get. There would be plenty of people who would be yelling at him to get a job ("go flip burgers if you have to, you lazy slob") if he'd held out for something higher paying.