Tag Archive: Admissions

  1. After Harvard rejection, family sues admissions counselor

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    Many complain about the cost of college today, but there are few who can rival the costs that face Hong Kong couple Gerald and Lily Chow.

    The couple had funneled over $2 million to U.S.-based college admissions consultant Mark Zimny after he promised to use his connections and advice to get the Chows’ two sons into Harvard University. But when their sons did not receive admission letters, the Chows decided to take their issues to court and are charging Zimny for fraud, breach of contract and unjust enrichment.

    The Chows allegedly met Zimny during one of their sons’ graduation ceremonies, when Zimny told the Chows that he was a Harvard professor who owned a college counsulting firm “IvyAdmit” that would guarantee both sons’ acceptances at the university. Zimny affirmed that he would “grease the admissions wheels,” according to the Boston Globe.

    While some people may deliberate the morals of a man who counsels high school students on getting accepted to a college where he teaches, the Chows were bold enough to enthusiastically accept Zimny’s offer.

    The Chows initially wired at least $8,000 a month to Zimny’s company as IvyAdmit tutored, mentored and allegedly wrote papers for the two boys while they attended New England preparatory schools.

    In one case, Zimny told the Chows that American universities and elite boarding schools treated Asian donors as “outsiders” and were more suspicious of them, the Globe reported. He said the family should build relationships with elite universities through intermediaries that held preexisting relationships.

    But $2 million later, the Chows’ sons are still not Harvard-bound. And, in an act of what some would call incredulous chutzpah, IvyAdmit’s website continues to remain operational. Zimny still responds to company emails, including one that the Globe reporter had sent while investigating the story.

    Had the Chows ever Google searched ‘Mark Zimny,’ they might have realized that Zimny had left Harvard two years before the two forces first met.

  2. Law School dean weighs race-based affirmative action

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    This Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the first oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case that could restrict or eliminate a school’s right to pursue race-based affirmative action. In anticipation of the hearing, Yale Law School Dean Robert Post LAW ’77 and Harvard Law School Dean Martha L. Minow LAW ’79 have written a joint opinion piece in the Washington Post arguing that restricting educational institutions from considering race in the admissions process would be a “tragedy” and “disservice to our law schools and the legal profession.”

    When considering the best students, Post and Minow write that they are looking for both “character” and “a commitment to use the advantages of one’s education to give back to society.” Both of these qualities often can be gauged in an applicant’s life circumstances and how well he or she has responded to such challenges, a factor that they say is influenced in large part by race.

    “We need to select a class in which students have different perspectives, diverse aspirations and complementary strengths,” they wrote. “Law students learn not only from faculty and books but also from each other… Race is sometimes an important and relevant factor in group discussions both inside and outside of the classroom.”

    Post and Minow also argue that forbidding race considerations in the admissions process would be difficult. A significant component of law school applications are essays and personal recommendation letters, many of which mention or explicitly discuss how race has affected an applicant’s life. Minow and Post ask — somewhat cheekily — whether advocates of ‘race-blind admissions’ would also mandate censoring such statements.

    Thirty-two percent of the Class of 2015 at Yale Law School identify as students of color, while 39 percent of the Class of 2015 at Harvard Law School do so, according to each school’s online admission statistics.

  3. YouTube video can’t get deferred senior into Yale

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    Even though her four-minute music video plea for admission racked up 27,000 views on YouTube, Philadelphia-area high school senior Jackie Milestone will not be coming to New Haven in the fall.

    In a response to a comment from mosiemo13 asking whether she’d been admitted, Milestone wrote on Friday via her YouTube account that she “didn’t get in.” “I gave it my best shot, though, so I feel good at least knowing that,” she added.

    In response to another comment, Milestone wrote that she has “several great options” for college next year and will “spend some time” before deciding where to enroll.

    You gave it a great effort, Jackie. Cross Campus wishes you the very best of luck.

  4. Yale offers admission to 1,975 applicants

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    Yale accepted 1,975 applicants to the class of 2016, bringing the admissions rate down to 6.8 percent, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel told the News Thursday afternoon.

    The University offered 1,001 applicants a spot on the waitlist, Brenzel said, up slightly from the 996 students offered a spot on the waitlist for the class of 2016. Last year’s admission rate was 7.35 percent — 2,006 of 27,283 applicants — before any waitlisted students were admitted. A total of 2,109 students eventually received offers of admission, yielding a class of 1,351, plus 36 students who deferred for a year.

    Between early and regular admissions, the College received a record 28,975 applications this year, up 5.8 percent from 2011. The University offered 1,001 applicants to the class of 2016 a place on the waitlist.

  5. Times columnist Kristof features Sudanese Yale freshman

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    Over 28,000 Yale hopefuls will be getting their admissions decisions on Thursday. But the story of Arkangelo Paul Lorem ’15 — profiled on Thursday by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof — puts college admission in a whole different perspective.

    Kristof’s column recounts Lorem’s life story, from his childhood in a refugee camp in South Sudan, to academic success in Nairobi, to Yale.

    Lorem nearly died of tuberculosis at age 5, Kristof writes. Seeking treatment for their son, Lorem’s parents brought him to the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. His parents returned to the village and later died.

    Now an orphan, Lorem grew up in the refugee camp, raised by older boys who encouraged him to attend school as a means to a better life. He moved to a middle school in Kenya and learned Swahili for high school entrance exams. He transferred on scholarship to the African Leadership Academy, a prestigious boarding school in South Africa. Near the end of high school, he traveled all the way back to his home village to bring his younger siblings to the refugee camp, so they could share in his opportunities.

    “How I got to Yale was pure luck, combined with lots of people helping me,” Lorem tells Kristof. “I had a lot of friends who maybe had almost the same ability as me, but, due to reasons I don’t really understand, they just couldn’t make it through. If there’s one thing I wish, it’s that they had more opportunity to get education.”

    Lorem plans to return to South Sudan to help his country after graduation. It’s hard not to be inspired by this story, so we encourage you to tell Lorem he is the boss/unbelievable, and give him a high-five. If you’re not one to be so public, or if you don’t know Paul Lorem, at least be reminded that we’re all lucky to be here.

  6. Cost of attending Yale up 4.9 percent

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    The cost of attending Yale will jump 4.9 percent this year, according to the 2012-’13 term bill released this Tuesday.

    Tuition will cost $42,300 — up from $40,500 — while room and board will cost $7,150 and $5,850, respectively — up $6,700 for room and $5,500 for board.

    With the rise in overall cost, Yale’s undergraduate financial aid budget will increase $120 million, up 2.5 percent from $117 million in 2011-’12.

    Freshmen on financial aid will be expected to contribute $2,700 to their education, down from $3,000. Self-help for upperclassmen is up to $3,200.

    See all the changes here.

  7. Meet the brains behind “White and Blue for You”

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    Last Tuesday, high school senior Jackie Milestone released a music video about her hopes to attend Yale after being deferred early action. Her video racked up over 10,000 views and has been featured on CBS News. The News got in touch with Jackie at her home outside Philadelphia.

    Dan Stein: How did you think of doing a video?

    Jackie Milestone: Well I guess it was that I’ve been songwriting for a while. It’s one of my biggest hobbies. When I got deferred, I was upset for a while but I wanted to do something that would make me stand out. I figured there were a couple ways that I could go with it when I decided to write a song. I didn’t want to come off as pompous, but I wanted to feature my creative ability.

    DS: Where did all that Yale swag come from?

    JM: Every single piece of that belongs to my sister or my dad. My sister did a summer session at Yale — she filmed and edited the video for me. She’s a junior at Bennington College up in Vermont. I actually don’t own any Yale paraphernalia. But I asked my dad to bring out his stash and 21 shirts later, there it was.

    DS: What’s your favorite lyric in the video?

    JM: My favorite lyrics are the ones that reference the summer that I was there, my memories from Yale are at the top of my all time list. When I reference those experiences they make me smile.

    DS: What classes did you take during your summer at Yale?

    JM: I took two courses, a modern American literature class and the “Art of Poetry.”

    DS: What’s your favorite part of Yale that made you apply?

    JM: If I had to pick one thing, I find the academics to really be a perfect fit. Something my dad (a Saybrook alum) talked about a lot was that he learned just as much from his peers as his teachers. So I want to feel inspired.

    DS: Do you think the video will help you get in?

    JM: I’m hoping that this video will give me that extra standout factor, but the fact of the matter is that there are so many qualified people who applied. Hopefully it will show that I’m a unique and creative individual.

    DS: Fun fact?

    JM: Whenever I hear some bad things about the video — whenever you make something public like this, that happens — I put on the song “Up, Up and Away” and brush it off!

  8. Times article features Yale prefrosh at Stuyvesant

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    Rudi-Ann Miller may just be like any other prefrosh admitted to Yale’s class of 2016. But at Stuyvesant High School, she doesn’t even have to try to stand out.

    According to an article published in the New York Times on Saturday, Miller is one of just 40 black students currently enrolled at the Lower Manhattan high school. At Stuyvesant, 1.2 percent of 3,295 students are black, while 72.5 percent are Asian.

    To gain admission, Miller scored well above the cutoff for Stuyvesant, whose acceptance rate is well under those of Harvard or Yale. The racial discrepancy at Stuyvesant can be attributed to the admission system for New York City’s eight specialized high schools, the article shows.

    It also shows Miller staying up all night, two nights in a row, to get her work done — a skill that will no doubt come in handy when she arrives in New Haven next fall.

  9. Deferred senior makes viral vid about Yale

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    What would you do to get into Yale? For Jackie Milestone, the answer is a four minute smorgasboard of singing, guitar and Yale apparel.

    After being deferred this fall, Milestone uploaded a song about her Yale deferral to Youtube on Tuesday. The catchy hook comes from the line: “Yale, you’ve made me white and blue for you.”

    “Yale is more than just my first choice school, it is a school I know well and have dreamed of attending ever since I discovered that colleges existed,” reads the video’s description.

    At the two minute mark, Milestone takes a break to order chocolate milkshake and pizza from Yorkside to her home in Philadelphia (though clearly she’s not a Yalie yet, otherwise it would have been moosetracks). In the lyrics of her song, it appears that her father was a Saybrugian.

    Jackie currently has over 300 views and a number of supportive comments. From her possibly unintentional key change to the undulations of her waterbed, we wish her all the best of luck.

    Watch the video below:

  10. Yale admission makes Chinese girl media darling

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    Not all Chinese mothers are Tiger mothers, at least according to an article in the China Daily on Monday.

    Chen Yunyi, a 17-year-old Chinese student, has become the “latest household name” in China after scoring admission to Yale, the China Daily reported Monday. But Chen’s parents did not use “traditionally Chinese” parenting methods for raising their daughter, and instead opted to give her more freedom.

    “Neither is my husband a ‘wolf father’, nor [am] I a ‘tiger mother’,” Chen’s mother told the Sanxiang Metropolitan News. “In fact, we have both been busy with our work and have had not much time to keep an eye on her.”

    Chen’s mother added that “every child is a genius” and encouraged parents to listen to their children and “allow them to grow gradually.” Chen, for her part, said she likes reading and thinking.

    The “tiger mom” concept hit the national spotlight after Yale Law School professor Amy Chua published an excerpt from her memoir “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” in the Wall Street Journal. The excerpt, titled “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” recounted Chua’s experiences employing strict parenting tactics.

    The “wolf dad” idea, meanwhile, comes from Chinese father Xiao Baiyou, who wrote a book originally titled “Beat Them Into Peking University,” according to Slate. The title has since been changed to “So, Brothers and Sisters of Peking University,” the National Public Radio reported.

  11. Law schools see decline in applications

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    The American Bar Association Journal reported last week that, as of Jan. 13, law schools had received roughly 15 percent fewer applications than at the same time last year.

    The ABA Journal cited a thin job market as the cause for the lower numbers, though it quoted Wendy Margolis, a spokeswoman for the Law School Admission Council, saying that the numbers could fluctuate before the admissions cycle is over.

    “The caveat is that we are very early in the cycle,” Margolis said in the article. “So these numbers change considerably.”

    Yale Law School Spokeswoman Janet Conroy declined to state the number of applications received at Yale Law until the application deadline passes. Applications to Yale Law School are due Feb. 15.