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What is included with this book?
| Introduction | p. ix |
| Author's Note | p. xvii |
| "He's quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor" | p. 1 |
| "If colleges look at absences, I'm pretty much screwed" | p. 24 |
| "Success breeds success" | p. 51 |
| "I'm scared I'll like the school too much" | p. 74 |
| "Waiting suuuuucks!" | p. 94 |
| "Congratulations, you were rejected" | p. 113 |
| "This isn't supposed to be an endurance test" | p. 133 |
| "No rejections...yet:)" | p. 156 |
| "I have an Asian fan club" | p. 180 |
| "It's okay if you need to stop by a metaphorical gas station and get directions" | p. 200 |
| Resources: How to Use "How To" Books | p. 219 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 223 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 225 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
Chapter One
"He's quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor"
Felix
Felix Zhang is wearing one of his many Harvard sweatshirts. "I've always loved the school," he says, "not just because it's Harvard, but because it has everything in one place." It is the third week of September. Felix and I are eating chocolate brownies in the Barnes & Noble café in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, a posh suburb fifteen miles west of Philadelphia. Berwyn is on the Main Line, a term that is shorthand for desirable real estate. Many wealthy families in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan region seek out this cluster of exclusive suburban towns in close proximity to the convenient commuter rail.
At first glance, Berwyn could easily be caricatured as the perfect place to raise a family. With large homes and manicured lawns, more than half of the residents are married with children. The town is remarkably homogenous: most residents are rich (the median family income is about $90,000 a year, almost twice as much as the average American household earns) and white (a whopping 92.26 percent). Only 2 percent of Berwynites are Asian American like Felix.
Felix embodies the term "big teddy bear." It's not just physical. Though he is broadly built with an innocent round face, the gentle teddy bear vibe actually resonates from deep within. He's friendly to everyone, the kind of kid the other kids feel safe asking for help with their homework.
Felix has been preparing to go to Harvard for sixteen years, and there's no question that he's done everything right. Going into his senior year, he has already received a perfect score of 5 on Advanced Placement tests in Physics, Calculus, American History, European History, Statistics, English Language and Composition, and Biology. He also has straight As in all of his accelerated courses and a 780 in Math, 750 in Critical Reading, and 710 on the Writing sections of the SAT.
Felix knows that it takes more than just good grades and test scores to get into Harvard, and at only sixteen years old, he is already a distinguished pianist, whose talent has taken him across the globe, from Cincinnati to China. He has been a featured soloist on National Public Radio on more than one occasion, and at the age of fourteen, he was the youngest student selected to study at the Julliard School International Summer Music Academy in Leipzig, Germany. Felix has also performed for some of the world's best musicians, including Harvard professor Robert Levin, for whom he will play in the fall. Faculty endorsements are rare in the under¬graduate admissions process because very few teenagers have the capacity to make an impression on the top experts in a given field. If all goes well, a positive review from Professor Levin could distinguish Felix's application and carry considerable weight with the Harvard admissions committee.
Despite his impressive musical accomplishments, Felix is seeking an alternative professional path. "People who do music have a need to share their music," he explains. "I don't really feel that need. Even though I love piano, I also want to do other things." Like both of his parents, Felix plans to become a physician and has been doing research with a renowned professor at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia for the past several years. Though it is not uncommon for Ivy League applicants to have some experience in academic research, Felix's work really stands out. He was even named as the lead author on a paper that the lab recently submitted to a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, a distinction that is usually reserved for hardworking graduate students or professors themselves. The study was designed to investigate whether estrogen substitutes inhibit neuronal cell death associated with Alzheimer's disease in postmenopausal women. Most teenage boys don't even know what postmenopausal means.
Though piano and research are two of Felix's primary passions, he is also involved with a myriad of other activities outside of his classes at Conestoga High School, which has been consistently recognized as one of the best public schools in the state. He is a volunteer EMT at the Berwyn Fire Department, captain of the quiz bowl, debate, and model UN teams, editor in chief/founder of SciSpot Online Science Magazine (his school's first science-focused newsletter), president/founder of Young Artists for People (a club that organizes talented high school musicians to perform in local retirement homes), and a three-year veteran of the Student Council.
On the surface, it might seem that Felix is a shoo-in for admission to Harvard. However, as an Asian American, Felix is also a member of a group that is overrepresented in the Harvard applicant pool, which could be a disadvantage in the admissions process. In the past two decades, selective colleges have been repeatedly accused of a bias against Asian Americans, and several students have gone so far as to file official complaints with the federal government at the Office for Civil Rights. No university has ever been convicted of discrimination, but an investigation into the admissions process at Harvard in the early 1990s uncovered a number of offensive remarks written by the staff in regard to Asian American candidates, including glib descriptions such as "he's quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor."
A more recent study published in Social Science Quarterly, which analyzed data from 124,374 applicants to three highly selective colleges, found that qualified Asian American students had lower admission rates at these top schools than any other group of students. In addition to being overrepresented in the applicant pool, Asian Americans also tend to be excluded from many of the institutional priorities that guide the selective college admissions process. As immigrants or children of immigrants, they may be less likely to have a parent who attended a selective American college and may not benefit from the advantages of legacy in college admissions. They also do not qualify for most affirmative action programs and are a rarity on athletic teams. In fact, the only category in which Asian American students are likely to be given a boost in the admissions process is for high SAT scores, which is still a key variable in admissions decisions. Even so, the researchers projected that eliminating preferences based on legacy, race, and athletics would increase Asian American acceptances by approximately 30 percent at the three highly selective schools they studied.
Fat Envelope Frenzy
Excerpted from Fat Envelope Frenzy: One Year, Five Promising Students, and the Pursuit of the Ivy League Prize by Joie Jager-Hyman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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