andrewjs42

My kid is never going to Chuck e Cheese

When hostess went out of business I bought 150 dollars of twinkies and snacks worth to see if I could resell them. Ate them all....

Grades and transcripts are meaningless on their own. I could send you my college transcripts, and you'd say to yourself, why in the fuck did he get a degree in psychology then take two more years of science? High school kids are no different. You'll probably see interests and classes all over the place and you might think, this kid is smart and involved, but you know absolutely nothing about the person themselves.

However, if I were able to write to you, I could explain that my transcripts were pre-reqs to be a health care professional. I could tell you about the work I've done in hospitals and agencies, and how someday I plan to work in primary care. I could tell you about how much I was able to see in other countries and learn from my professors outside of what's typed on my grade report. This summer I did the third hardest day hike in the US, and that isn't on my transcript. To succeed you need to be able to say look, that application is just a piece of paper, this is who I am, and this is what I care about.

In the same way, the essay gives students a voice. All of you know a 4.0 student who is dull as a rock. All of you know a 2.5 student who is one of the most interesting people you've ever met. If I'm an admissions officer deciding between the kid who got a 3.1 and a kid who got a 3.3, maybe one of them has a compelling story or driving passion that got in the way a little bit of the extra .2 points.

If you treat the admissions essay as a "hoop to jump through", then that's what it is. If you want to bore the officer half to death and send them a rehashed summary of your transcripts, you might get in anyways but you've squandered an opportunity. If you're a high school student writing that essay, just remember there's a person on the other side, and your goal is to make a connection.

Do you have a source on influenza causing gbs more commonly than the vaccine? I would really like to have that evidence on hand.

It's not even so much the weaponizing as the bio defense labs, considering there is no discernible difference between developing strains for defense or offense.