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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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I'm guessing there's some set of highly qualified kids who get rejected from all schools they applied to.

Seems like it did happen.

https://www.wsj.com/story/she-scored-1550-on-her-sats-top-us-colleges-still-rejected-her-68767071

False. Did not get rejected everywhere. Going to Arizona state. Not a great school, but I predict that founding a brand new private school better than Arizona state will be harder than we think it is.

  1. I didn't say anything about the difficulty of creating an alternate education system. Even though I don't think its as onerously difficult as you claim it is, nor do I think its as easy as many others think it is.

  2. It's not too difficult to imagine an alternate reality where this girl did not Apply to ASU or Rice. And did infact get rejected from all the colleges she applied to despite being very accomplished. Ofcourse that can happen to anyone who doesn't choose a safety school, but its more than likely that this time around AA has something to do with it.

In the comment I replied to you said

Seems like it did happen.

Now you're saying it hypothetically could have happened in an alternate reality where an obvious gunner didn't do basic best practices, like applying to safety schools.

The standard when I was a kid was seven, two reach two safety three target. That number just keeps getting bigger, I advise kids I know to apply everywhere, if the application isn't free send a letter to the dean asking for a free application and they'll give it to you 90% of the time, you never know who might give you money and money from one school you don't really want to go to can be leveraged against a school you do want to go to. Among kids gunning for ivies, they're going to be following best practices, the average among my AP friends was around 12 undergrads applied to in high school.

Fwiw, AA obviously plays a role in every marginal candidate's fate, but can never really be pointed to as playing a decisive role. Until you're applying your fate is always in your hands, you could always just be better.