EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis):  This is probably the bottom of a truly disturbing trend for American higher education.  It is very painful for all of us who – coming from across the oceans – jumped every possible obstacle to reach the dream of attending an American University… Yes, the competition was international and it was a major factor that “made America Great”… The young lady in our main photo, Kaitlyn Younger, had an almost perfect SAT score (1550 out of 1600) among a myriad of other distinctions.  At other times, maybe two decades earlier, Ivy League schools would fight with each other to get her to be their student.  Yet this year she was not accepted by any of them!!

Many of us would agree for the government to provide measured financial support to underprivileged students.  But when excellence and merit are replaced by racial or gender or other characteristics, have no doubt, this is the end of the once-famous American academic system.

Not that privilege didn’t play a role before… Politicians’ children and other powerful families internationally always found it easy to get into Ivy League schools despite their utter mediocrity (prime example for Greece, the now prime-minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a Harvard graduate despite his less than mediocre IQ and overall performance)… Starting with “affirmative action programs” the academic standards that made American universities by far the best in the world eroded… 

But we now have reached a moment when the whole educational system is permeated by preferential standards and meritocracy is out of the question.  Thank God, graduate studies are still holding up – but mostly in the so-called “hard sciences”. Elsewhere this is not the case and Law Schools, for example, are full of incompetent students…

This is very disappointing personally for me in more than one way – but I will have to explain this interesting personal angle at a later moment.

BELOW IS THE STORY OF KAITLYN YOUNGER FROM WSJ.COM

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To Get Into the Ivy League, ‘Extraordinary’ Isn’t Always Enough These Days

A star student found herself with a pile of rejection letters from top schools during the most competitive college-applications year on record

By Douglas Belkin | Photographs by Laura Buckman for The Wall Street Journal

Kaitlyn Younger has been an academic standout since she started studying algebra in third grade.
She took her first advanced-placement course as a freshman, scored 1550 on her SATs as a junior at McKinney High School near Dallas and will graduate this spring with an unweighted 3.95 grade-point average and as the founder of the school’s accounting club. Along the way she performed in and directed about 30 plays, sang in the school choir, scored top marks on the tests she has so far taken for 11 advanced-placement classes, helped run a summer camp and held down a part-time job.
“She is extraordinary,” said Jeff Cranmore, her guidance counselor at McKinney High School.
Ms. Younger, 18 years old, was cautiously optimistic when she applied to top U.S. colleges last fall. Responses came this month: Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern all rejected her.
“I expected a bunch wouldn’t accept me,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be this bad.”
The responses are part of a wave of rejections swamping top students who applied to many highly selective schools during the most competitive year on record. Now, students have until May 1 to let schools know where they will attend.
At Harvard University, the latest acceptance rate is 3.2%.
PHOTO: ADAM GLANZMAN/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Harvard received a record 61,220 applications during the current admissions year and accepted 1,954 (3.2%). Brown received a record 50,649 applications and offered admission to 2,546 (5%). Yale received 50,015 applications and admitted 2,234 (4.5%). University of California, Los Angeles, received a record 149,700 applications, 10,000 more than last year; the school’s acceptance rate wasn’t available.
A reason applications were so inflated is because more than three-quarters of colleges and universities have stopped mandating entrance exams. With that barrier removed, more students tried their luck at selective schools that placed greater emphasis on grades, academic rigor, and racial and socioeconomic diversity.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. But but…parents accepted it. They accepted it because it’s easier to sit back and do nothing. We are now a nation of fat couch potatoes who depend on AI and psychopathic leaders who tell us what to do and think!

    Glory, glory, to thee oh God. Look at us! We are a bunch of fools.

  2. Jane–it’s the woke culture doing the devil’s work! Had she had even one-quarter of latino, hispanic, black-she’d have a chance-as going to ivy league now amounts to checking off a race card identity box!

    • I don’t agree that Affirmative Action is the key culprit, especially in her case, because she is a female and because despite Affirmative Action, it’s not as if most Ivy League students are black or hispanic. I recall that there are a high level of Asian students at good schools nowadays, and probably Affirmative Action isn’t an issue.

      I do think that it looks pretty odd when she can pass ELEVEN AP exams and not get into any of those top schools. It makes it look like there is some other issue going on besides merit.

      My guess is that one factor in why she didn’t get accepted is that she got under 1600 on her SAT and because her school (I am guessing) is a public one. I am guessing that if they got an applicant from a big name private school with parents who are high on the corporate ladder then she would get in with recommendation letters. It still looks weird because if her school has an accounting club, it sounds like it would be a good school. The Greek leader going to a US Ivy League is a good example.

  3. Absolutely disgraceful! This poor girl should know she has done nothing wrong, but everything right! Kudos, her parents must be so proud of her accomplishments. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
    Another example of reverse discrimination. It will only get worse, we are truly the hated minority. Equity for all, even though most applicants can barely read! I personally have felt the evil discrimination causes in the workforce, for my race and my gender. Horrifying and unjust.

    My wise grandfather used to say, every obstacle is for the best. She will find her way, in that I am confident….keep the faith, Kaitlyn! 🍎

  4. Well just look at mediocrity of GOA clergy ruining the church & turning it into a Greek version of PC Episcopalians.

  5. Sir G. —the academicians -some — not all— it’s the academicians that have tried to episcopalianize us… wrong move on so many levels— free speech is here– thank you Elon Musk!

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