[Akash Rastogi]

I'm not sure what students/parents expect here. Dean's List is a great award, but in the end it is a tiny facet in the student's application. The greater reward is how the student will use it on a resume once they try to earn a job, and heck, they get a large scholarship out of it. The scholarship is the greater reward, in my opinion. I don't think FIRST is claiming anything about the award that isn't true.

As Grim Tuesday pointed out, plenty of students who don't have a Dean's List award go to impressive universities. 3929 has students who have either been accepted to or are currently attending UPenn, Yale, Columbia, CalTech, etc... For what it's worth, we are also a public school. However, these students are all distinguished scholars in their school, athletes, National Merit Scholars, and leaders on our team as well as many other clubs/organizations.

I don't think FIRST has to correct what they say about their award, students should know that it is not a "golden ticket" or something like that, and I bet most of them do. For all we know, the students did not "sell" their experiences in FIRST well enough in the application. There are also many times where some students discuss FIRST TOO much in applications. It can be so arbitrary. (source: Masterman School and friends/family who work at or attended Cornell, MIT, & Harvard)

Random examples: On 11 a few years back we had a student who was waitlisted by RPI, but was accepted by MIT. Another friend of mine was accepted to Columbia but waitlisted by MIT. 3929's captain was accepted by CalTech and Wharton at UPenn but waitlisted by MIT. Admissions is too random to correlate to small things like Dean's List, I think.