I remember how it was -- JR
Harvard has a secret back door for ultra-rich kids with lousy grades
What does Harvard University do when faced with well-connected applicants — the children of mega-donors or other highly influential people — who have less-than-ideal SAT scores and GPAs?
They put them on the Z-List, according to a college admissions coach.
That means the students are advised to matriculate after taking a gap year, making them so-called “data ghosts” — meaning their lackluster academic statistics are not reported in the incoming freshman class.
That way Harvard doesn’t take a hit to its stellar academic averages — or institutional rankings.
“If Harvard doesn’t want the student hurting their US News and World Report ranking with their GPA and test scores, they admit them through the Z list,” Brian Taylor, managing partner of Manhattan-based college admissions firm Ivy Coach, told The Post. (While Harvard’s Law and Medical Schools both pulled out of US News and World Report’s college rankings, the university at large has not.)
“It often means that the student really doesn’t qualify for admission on their own.”
According to Ivy Coach’s website, roughly 60 students get a spot on the Z list annually, and are sent a letter that effectively says “we will be pleased to consider your admission in one year.”
“They’re not reapplying,” Taylor explained. “They’re admitted, and they’re guaranteed a spot in a year.”
In his practice, Taylor says he sees a client admitted on the Z List roughly every other year — though he estimates they account for a single-digit percentage of the students he works with who get into Harvard.
“It’s for people who are important,” he said. “We’ve had clients who have been admitted on the Z list who are close friends or family of major world leaders or major donors.”
Inevitably, he said, it’s for students who he tells at the beginning of the admissions process: “I don’t know if you’re going to get into Harvard, but the list is your only hope.”
He adds that there are some strong tell-tale signs that a student was on the list.
“When students take a gap year in between their high school years and college, it’s a good indication that they may have been admitted to the Z list,” Taylor explained.
A spokesperson for Harvard did not return a request for comment.
Although Harvard is the only school with a so-called “Z-List,” Taylor said other elite schools exploit similar loopholes to get students with inconvenient stats in the door.
The most common way is exploiting the transfer process.
Because US News and World Report doesn’t count transfer students’ statistics in their ranking calculations, some schools funnel in lower-performing students that way.
According to Taylor, Cornell exploits a “guaranteed transfer” system in which applicants with sub-par test scores or GPAs are told to do their freshman year of college elsewhere then re-apply.
If they maintain a certain grade point average during their freshman year — typically a B-average — they’re guaranteed admission to Cornell as a second-year transfer student.
“I don’t think it’s right that Cornell does that. It’s not fair to their peer institutions,” Taylor said.
Columbia University uses its School of General Studies to admit more veterans whose GPAs and test scores do not impact institutional rankings.
https://nypost.com/2023/11/06/news/harvards-secret-backdoor-for-ultra-rich-under-qualified-kids/
****************************************************Teachers unions only have themselves to blame for rise in home-school numbers
In the clearest possible thumbs-down on the entire American educational establishment, homeschooling is booming.
The Washington Post last week estimated that it’s risen from 1.5 million children in 2019 to up to 2.7 million now.
Since 2018, it’s up 103% in New York, 108% in Washington, DC, 78% in California — all areas with laws hostile to homeschooling.
Public-school enrollment has crashed by millions more, since most parents simply pulled their kids to private and parochial schools — or, where possible, to public charter schools.
Across the board, it’s a reaction to what parents learned during COVID.
They saw that remote learning (despite the heroic efforts of a few truly dedicated educators) was a total farce, with all too many schools not even trying to truly teach.
And that teachers unions — with the backing of local school districts, especially in big cities — put the adults’ interests’ first, all across the board, keeping schools closed even long after the vaccines rolled out with teachers given priority access.
Heck, we now know American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten used her influence with the Biden White House to slow the nation’s return to in-classroom instruction.
Other factors play a role, but union fingerprints are all over those, too: The AFT and National Education Association are all-in on the dubious Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mandates forcing (progressive) racist nonsense into education, and on the extremist LBGT+ agenda, too.
In much of the country, parents simply wanting to opt out of that madness see no choice except homeschooling.
So its appeal spans every divide of politics, geography and demographics.
Indeed, the unions (shamefully) went along with the rollback of school discipline that’s led to rising violence, especially in urban schools.
The NEA/AFT response is to push their media allies to churn out “news” about the perils of homeschooling, and to finger right-wing extremists as driving the broader push for parental control.
But shouting “vast right-wing conspiracy” doesn’t cut it.
Students across America lost years of academic ground, as measured by National Assessment of Educational Progress testing.
Parents across the spectrum know that politicians, school leaders and teacher unions failed their kids.
That trust is hard to regain — and Randi & Co. aren’t even trying.
So expect homeschooling, and every other alternative to union-run education, to keep on booming until America’s parents have real reason to believe the public schools are actually being run in the children’s interests again.
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Scientific Method restored to science education in North Carolina
As a physicist, John Droz holds in high regard the Scientific Method, a 400-year-old approach to investigating reality.
Rooted in Isaac Newton's work, which included creation of the calculus, the Scientific Method has long underpinned examination of the physical world and technological advancement.
Quite understandable it is, then, that Droz, who holds degrees in mathematics and physics, was prompted to do some investigating of his own after learning that his state of North Carolina had abandoned the teaching of the Scientific Method for the promotion of a faddish theory of entirely unscientific inquiry.
"Upon reading a review of the North Carolina K-12 Science Standards, I was concerned that nowhere was the Scientific Method even mentioned," says Droz, who retired at 34 as a successful investor and launched a 40-year career as a "citizen advocate" of wide-ranging pursuits.
Having a particular concern about the current state of critical thinking, Droz ultimately filed a written complaint with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
"They subsequently said that they had received some 14,000 inputs on the Science Standards, and apparently, I was the only one bringing up the issue," said Droz, whose varied interests include climate science and election integrity.
The controversy had its beginnings in 2012 when a newly formulated Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) began nudging out the Scientific Method from much of public education. Politically inspired by progressive ideology and backed by the National Research Council, National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the NGSS gained favor with the education bureaucracy of 45 states. The Scientific Method was replaced by something called "Science and Engineering Practices."
Much of the public might not appreciate the implications of the Scientific Method's fading from public education's officialdom, but the loss is no less than a disaster to scientists and adherents of the traditional tenets of critical thinking.
The Scientific Method requires that questions be asked, observations made, and hypotheses formulated, tested, and proven or rejected. Conclusions are always subject to challenges with new evidence and insights.
The NGSS scraps this centuries-old process for computer models whose products are proof of nothing unless they are verified against real-world data and survive the challenges of new information. However, those criticizing the findings of this corruption of objective inquiry are often dismissed as "science deniers."
Nowhere have the dangers of this travesty been more manifest than in climate science where a paganistic fervor has supplanted rigorous investigation and open debate. Challengers of the status quo are more likely to be met with ad hominem than data. Ideologically driven activists use flawed computer models to justify political actions like banning gas-powered cars, shutting down pipelines and spending trillions on "green" energy subsidies that provide no benefit to society.
In classrooms, students are encouraged by the NGSS to conform to politically correct views: Solar and wind energy are good. Fossil fuels are bad. Catastrophic global warming is the future. Carbon dioxide, a gas necessary for life itself, is pollution. Computer models that fail to predict weather days or months in the future can divine the behavior of the climate, Earth's most complex system, in the next century. Questioning the most absurd of hypotheses is heresy.
Fortunately for North Carolina students, two members of the 18-person State Board of Education embraced Droz's view that the Scientific Method should be restored to the state's Science Standards, which it was in July. Droz said the support of the board members was instrumental in correcting the deficiency in state standards.
"I'm optimistic that the Department of Public Instruction will soon address my second major concern that the state Science Standards need more specificity regarding critical thinking," says Droz. "It should be clear that there is an intimate connection between critical thinking analysis and the universal problem-solving procedure of the Scientific Method."
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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