The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
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The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
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Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#2I picked David because his achievements seemed more concrete. The "marketing" and "sustainability" stuff sounded like fluff to me. I didn't read much more of the article after I found out he chose the other guy.
Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#3What's the deal with these joke admissions to American universities. President of some silly high school club? Who cares?
Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#4I picked David because his achievements seemed more concrete. The "marketing" and "sustainability" stuff sounded like fluff to me. I didn't read much more of the article after I found out he chose the other guy.
It's not just that he picked the other guy, he expects everyone to agree with him, and yet like you I chose the "wrong" guy.
Explaining the "amazing" reason that everyone picks his choice seems much less impressive at that point, particularly as it mostly seems like an ad for a book.
Does anyone actually talk like this (from the comments):
It’s interesting that you mention science fairs. I actually have a chapter in my new book where I take the awe-inspiring resumes of two Intel winners, then break down, step by step, the reality of their achievement
Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#5whats unimpressive is all the spelling mistakes in the article. the end.
Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#6What's the deal with these joke admissions to American universities. President of some silly high school club? Who cares?
There's just not a lot to go on. The SAT score is one of the few nationally comparable objective measures, and obviously measures only a specific kind of aptitude. High-school GPA is objective but hard to compare across schools, and measures only specific things as well (ability to do well in high-school classes). Essays might give you more information, but might be written by someone other than the student. You end up falling back on some sort of evidence that the student has independent interests/motivations, whether president of some club, or webmaster of some site.
Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#7A better way of saying this is: “I worked a lot on X” is less interesting/impressive than “A bunch of adults acted on something I did.”
To be honest though, this article’s premise (I should figure out how to efficiently get into college) seems pretty stupid. It’s just as stupid as college counselor’s premise, and really basically the same.
Instead of “drop the 5th and 6th AP course from your schedule and put your attention toward becoming an insider”, how about trying to learn as much as you can from your classes (emphasis: learning not some irrelevant number), build cool stuff, and try to make it have a real-world impact because they are intrinsically valuable things to do?
Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#8I thought Steve was impressive because he was uncommon. By definition, every high school with a track team has a captain of the track team; you're likely to see hundreds of Davids in a given college admissions department. It's much less likely that you'll encounter someone who worked with an NGO or the UN--even if Steve's abilities or perserverance weren't exceptional.
Still, I think there's something to the model. It is difficult to envision how one might become an advisor to a UN NGO! That was definitely a factor in my evaluation.
Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#9I picked David because his achievements seemed more concrete. The "marketing" and "sustainability" stuff sounded like fluff to me. I didn't read much more of the article after I found out he chose the other guy.
I also choose David over Steve. Maybe it's because I have a disdain for politics.
The ability to cause havocs in UN meetings would more impressed me. Competing with the United States Post Office and then crushing them is also an incredibly impressive to me.
What I would search for, as a college admission office is people who is likely to defy authorities and be massively right. If I can get that guy into college, then that's the greatest achievement I could hope for, because this guy will have massive positive impact in this world.
I don't need Obamas people, but I would like more Talebs people in my school.
Re: The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
#10What's the deal with these joke admissions to American universities. President of some silly high school club? Who cares?
There's just not a lot to go on. The SAT score is one of the few nationally comparable objective measures, and obviously measures only a specific kind of aptitude. High-school GPA is objective but hard to compare across schools, and measures only specific things as well (ability to do well in high-school classes). Essays might give you more information, but might be written by someone other than the student. You end…
Also, in the case where you have a 2 students with perfect 4.0 (or better) GPA's, both got perfect SAT scores, etc- i.e., match eachother blow for blow, the only way groupthink people have thought of to get ahead is to have extracurriculars.
Ideally GPA and SAT scores would make the distinction for us. The top X% of students would range from 3.5-4 in their GPA, or something like that. Unfortunately, grade inflation and test coaching is compacting an increasing percentage of the 'top' students into the tiny tiny bracket around 4.0 and 2400 (SAT). Greater-than-4.0 GPA's attempted to extend the headroom, but much like raising the level cap in WoW this didn't help much.