Admission to the Favorite College Is an Unworthy Goal for Students

Parent Cafe
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<p>I've been reading various threads in various places about students who are heartbroken because they didn't get into their favorite college in the early round. I've written about this to other parents, and I thought I'd share my thoughts here. </p>

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<p>What do you think? </p>

<p>Best wishes to all of you parents with children applying to colleges with daunting admission odds. Don't take an unfavorable decision personally.</p>

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<p>I agree 100%. When the college process started, H and I tried very, very hard to make it clear to our son that having a “favorite” is not the way to go. Unfortunately, it turned out otherwise and he had to fall in love with a highly selective school. We supported his decision to go ED (we asked a million times, “Are you sure about doing ED?”) and he was deferred. He has bounced back beautifully, though, and his second choice has ED II but he told us he refused to apply ED again. He felt ED was too heart-wrenching, that you put too much of yourself into it. I am sure he would feel differently if he were accepted. I have no clue how we could have prevented how strongly he felt about his ED school. His words on our visit, “The kids here are so much like me. I belong here,” made me wince. Of course, it did not help that this same school has the program he was looking for. All is well right now, so maybe he had to go through this experience for reasons that will be evident as time goes by.</p>

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<p>Why must kids be protected from disappointment? Disappointment, rejection, sadness, grief, are a part of life. Experiencing them and learning to overcome them or learning life goes on, builds strength and character and maturity. No one wants to see their kids hurt. And there are very good reasons to always have back up plans, but I don’t agree with directing kids around avoiding the risk of temporary psychological pain (in any endeavor).</p>

<p>Also the one plus of specific goals is motivation. Decades of empirical motivation research shows having challenging but specific goals is far more effective for performance than general or vague goals. Of course I would agree performance is not everything, so that may not be worth considering. </p>

<p>I think having a specific dream, trying your best, and having good back up plan(s) is the way to go. Most great things in life are tons of work, never assured, and always somewhat of a crapshoot.</p>

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<p>That’s a very interesting response. </p>

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<p>I’ll have to think about this. So your point is that the specificity can provide motivation, and provide better life lessons besides? I wonder if I’ll change my mind about what I said at the beginning after some more participants jump in.</p>

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<p>I happen to agree with both of you…the only glitch in the argument that exploringMOM makes is that with most of life’s disappointments, one “believes” they have little control over the outcome…While in reality college admissions is the same thing, students essentially do not have control…BUT they are led to believe if they do all the right things, get the right grades, participate in the right activities they can control their destiny…Unfortunately, in this day and age, that is not the case…</p>

<p>How about the idea that you can have your favorites, but understand that the process is essentially out of your control? Deal with the disappointments as an opportunity to make the most of your other opportunities…</p>

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<p>I totally agree that disappointment and resentment are inevitable parts of life. I was rejected to colleges I would have loved to attend. I have been rejected from some jobs and internships. But I got into a college I am very happy with. I was given an internship position that gave me invaluable experience in my field. For all the disappointment and apprehension, there is good that can come out of it. If anything, the sting of rejection only drives me to try harder next time. Don’t fear disappointment and rejection, learn from it.</p>

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<p>exploringMOM, you are exactly right. Students have a right to aim high, be disappointed and heart-wrenched if it doesn’t go well, and from this, gain invaluable life experiences that will hopefully make one more realistic and mature in life.</p>

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<p>I would agree that one shouldn’t let rejection get you down. As a college freshman who just got through first semester, it took me a long time to learn that rejection isn’t the worst thing in the world. My advice would be to apply to a lot of places that look interesting to you and see where you get in. A person shouldn’t ‘fall in love’ with a college until he or she actually gets into it. I did that myself. It wasn’t even for my EA college. It was for a slightly less selective college that waitlisted me (as did my EA college, :p). I spent a semester obsessing about transferring to that school but one really bad class had ruined my chances of doing so till at least sophomore year. However, over the semester, while I haven’t formed a strong love for the college I am at now, I have made myself feel comfortable at where I’m at and believe that I can have four awesome years at where I am now. It all matters by what you make of your college experience. There will be people who will be happy with anything and there will be people who won’t be happy with anything.</p>

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<p>Sorry for being a student poking in here, but…</p>

<p>The logic here is quite troubling. “the best way to protect young people from the disappointment of not getting into School X or School Y is to keep that from being their goal.” Should we apply that to other areas of life? “The best way to protect people from being disappointed they don’t get the job they want is to keep that from being their goal?”</p>

<p>One can certainly succeed graduating from the most ordinary state school, but we all know the advantages, cēterīs paribus, a Yale graduate will have over him. What college one goes to is important - as is keeping the importance of that in perspective. I see nothing wrong with setting admission to a certain college as one’s goal, as long as one goes about it in a reasonable, measured fashion.</p>

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<p>I tell D to do the best she can without making herself miserable. If you’re miserable in high school chances are good that you’ll always be miserable. I believe that if she does the best she can, she WILL go to college with her intellectual peers. Let’s do the math. If there are twice as many “top students” than there were 30 years ago but the same number of “top spots”, then half of those top students must go somewhere else. It is my contention that wherever that “other half” of the “top students” ends up going gets better BECAUSE those “top students” go there. </p>

<p>While she may not get to go to her first choice, there are many great colleges and she’ll be able to learn whatever she wants with her intellectual peers wherever that may be. Graduate school seems more merit based because the actual faculty make the decisions based on who they want to work with.</p>

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<p>In reading all the posts here, I want to clarify that I agree there should be no clear favorite as what happened with my son. Shielding children from disappointment? Reality is, no matter how much we try, we could not do so. Kids forge ahead no matter what we say, and yes, they surprise us to no end with their resilience. This whole college process has been as much of a learning experience for our S as well as for us; a very interesting, and humbling growth experience. In short, a rite of passage.</p>

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<p>I agree with ClassicRockerDad that there are many more colleges with a high caliber of students than there were even ten years ago; one of our state colleges is known to my generation as the place “where all the kids who cut classes to smoke pot got in” but in actuality, the kids who are accepted now are straight A students with high SATs who engage in far more constructive activities. Parents need to recognize that there are many ways for their child to succeed in life and getting into a top college is no guarantee. While some of my classmates at an Ivy have had extraordinary financial success, I also know some who are schoolteachers, librarians or stay-at-home moms and are very happy with their lives. I also know some who are often unemployed and struggle with mental illness. More emphasis should be placed on having a fulfilling life in general, and not the college acceptance process.</p>

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<p>I am an enormous fan of my alma mater, but we do NOT know, “ceteris paribus”, that a Yale graduate will have any advantages over a graduate of Brand X State, except perhaps whatever advantages derive from having an especially beautiful educational experience for a few years.</p>

<p>I think there is a difference between aiming high, being ambitious, etc., and making one specific college your goal. If there is one thing I notice time and again on CC, it’s that students waaaaay overvalue comparatively minute differences among institutions that have far more in common than not.</p>

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<p>I agree with Tokenadult. We always assumed that should our sons do well in school, they should aim for a highly selective college. But what they did in school was not done with the specific aim of looking good to adcoms. In fact, S1 actively resisted some suggestions by his GC regarding course selection and came out none the worse for it. What each did academically and extra-academically was done because it seemed worth doing.</p>

<p>Neither had a “dream school.” Nor did they feel they “deserved” to get into their dream school or even top school. They realized that each school has its good and not so good points. They also knew that if they did not get into one, they would get into another and be quite happy there.</p>

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<p>“waaaaay overvalue comparatively minute differences…”</p>

<p>Some applicants overanalyze USNWR data rankings as opposed to using it as a starting point and then conducting a personal investigation. I’ve seen a lot of CC threads trying to quantify prestige “Is Amherst more prestigious than Williams?” When I applied to college I had the Yale Insider’s Guide which didn’t (still doesn’t) rank but gave a clear picture of how selective colleges were so I thought of them in clumps instead of specific rank; (colleges I’ll never get into; colleges I might get into; colleges anyone with a pulse gets into…) and then could figure out which ones had desirable characteristics for me.</p>

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<p>I think the trick is to strike a balance, and that is the tricky part. Definitely being able to handle rejection and disappointment is a very important part of growing up. Many adults can’t handle this! But I also think that one should broaden one’s goals and not focus solely on one college, job, apartment, etc., as there is no way to control many of these processes. The goal might be to handle the process in a flexible way so as to minimize the desolation that comes with rejection. Feel the pain, process the pain, change what you can, and then move on to the next challenge. As a teacher in a private school I see too many kids who feel they are entitled to the best grades, and the best of everything. As one mother once said, these kids feel they are the belly-button of the world. To them, they are! We have to help them broaden their focus to include the rest of us.</p>

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<p>I think Bartleby raises a good point. There is nothing inherently wrong in having a goal — even a lofty goal. Goals provide direction and help people motivate themselves. The problem comes when the goal becomes “The End” rather than simply one more success on an individual’s life path. I tell my kids that no-one has made more mistakes than me, but that I’ve become very adept at recognizing failure and correcting my path. (Naturally they have no clue as to what I’m trying to say, but that’s another story.) Just because one isn’t accepted at Yale doesn’t mean one won’t have a successful life.</p>

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<p>There is only ONE MIT. Sure, Caltech, Stanford & even Berkeley engineering will provide world class educations, but only one of the four aforementioned schools enables a student to cross register at the rather old college in Cambridge.</p>

<p>If it’s all about FIT (the standard parent mantra), then certain schools will rise to the top. A parental goal of “protecting” kids from a disappointment at age 18 is rather silly, IMO, bcos the obvious response would be ‘don’t apply’. Instead of ‘protection’ per se, it’s far better to ensure a kid has options.</p>

<p>A goal of a “challenging secondary education” is ed-speak, and means absolutely little, bcos Sarah Lawrence & Bard offer a challenging education as does MIT</p>

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<p>But really, how many do? And there are surely other terrific schools of engineering besides those? </p>

<p>Of course, we need to ensure our kids have options. But far too many kids think there is one and only one school where they feel “I belong here” and are devastated when they do not get in, overlooking so many other great schools, and feeling that all their hard work was for naught. AP Calculus or AP-US H for naught? Just because one did not get into one’s dream school? I don’t get it. Even regarding the issue of fit, there are plenty of schools that are similar enough to fit the bill (pardon the pun). Kids are resilient and adaptable.</p>

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<p>DS began his search early by looking at schools with strong programs in his intended majors. He visited, talked to profs, peers from some of the ECs/programs he has participated in, etc. He and friends shared college visit reports. Wound up with eight schools by the spring of junior year, and that list remained consistent over many months. He liked all of them and felt that each school could convince him to attend any one of them over the others. Prestige was not a factor. He has tinkered with the list a little bit recently. </p>

<p>ECs were done solely based on his interests – and it paid off for him because a) he was happy and passionate about the things he did; b) that enthusiasm carried over to his essays; and c) the long-standing interest in his ECs reaped awards and other goodies. He took classes that interested him, not that would get him the easy grades. (That paid off, too.) He did not focus heavily on the test scores, but paid enough attention so that his scores would make him competitive anywhere he chose to apply.</p>

<p>He has a couple of schools that stand out in his mind. However, the goal has never been “to get into X.” The goal has been to find schools that meet his personal criteria for academics, personal development, etc. The result may be that he gets into School X, but that was not established as the goal or the be-all, end-all.</p>

<p>We have tried to temper expectations about financial aid, the admissions process, etc. over the past four years so that we were all on the same page.</p>