Advice for my daughter.

Parents Forum
21

First problem is that, despite junior year being when you start to think harder about colleges, look at your resume, worry about improving scores… that doesn’t mean a 16 year old brings any experience or rational view to any of this. Many are babes in the woods, knowing the general goals, but not how to get there. Unless you help, she may be trying to process what her friends think- and that’s not reliable. They’re kids, too.

Get out to visit some of the very happy safeties around you, in VA and DC/MD. Let her see she can fit, thrive, and be happy. Help her visualize. You may need to do the leg work on this. Eg, if she likes some activity, be able to show her a college’s strengths in that.

If you go with a therapist, she still needs your help navigating. And make sure it’s a counselor adept at working with this age group. Ime, that’s critical.

Yes, LoRs matter. But take bjkmom’s post to heart. At a competitive hs, most teachers will write the best letter they can.

22

My son was (and pretty much still is) the “Strong, silent type.” He wasn’t sure what he was looking for in a college, so those first visits were pretty hit and miss.

He didn’t even want to get out of the car at one campus because “it looks like a bunch of old cabins in the woods.” In the meantime, as we drove through, I kept thinking he would love this one, because it reminded me so much of all our vacations in Lake George.

I learned to ask him two questions as we got into the car: 1. What didn’t you like? and 2. Can you see yourself attending this school?

When we found the keeper, I knew it the moment we got back into the car.

Our mantra last year for our daughter was “You will bloom where you’re planted.” And she has.

23

Does she have one teacher that she feels comfortable with? My daughter went to an ultra competitive high school and she was surrounded by a lot of “big mouth”/“know it alls”. My daughter wasn’t shy, but she was more thoughtful and wasn’t always the first one to blurt something out. She could never get a word in on discussions and started to feel like she didn’t belong on the track she was on although she understood and was very engaged in the material being taught and had a strong grade. On a whim one day after being really frustrated, she spoke with one of her teachers after class about how she was feeling and it changed everything for her. The teacher was so thoughtful, gave her some good advice and also became more aware of how she was handling the situation. She also told my daughter (in a professional way) that all the people that seem like they have it all together and know everything don’t. She knew some of them were using Spark Notes and that she could tell from my daughters work that she wasn’t. It had an amazing impact on my daughter’s confidence that carried over to all of her classes. In the end, this teacher did write her recommendation although that’s not what she was seeking when she approached her. Sometimes what you see on the surface isn’t exactly what it appears to be. I hope that you’re daughter is able to find a great fit for her and enjoy the rest of her HS experience.

24

Counseling is an excellent idea. But there are some things you can do as well. I have often used the " What if" strategy to help my kids drill down into their thinking to get them to see beyond the surface of their concerns. So many times, kids are just overwhelmed - overwhelmed with their expectations, parental expectations, and peers expectations. Writing down concerns, asking what if’s, and having her realize that there are many paths to take can give her a fresh perspective and lift her spirits. What if she doesn’t get into dream school? What if her friends go to “better” (perceived) schools than she does? After continued questioning, she will discover for herself that she is on her own path, not a path dictated by her school. We live in Virginia and I know the pressures student feel.

25

If teacher recs are the big hang-up then consider schools that do not require recs. The UCs for example not only don’t require recs, they refuse to accept them. There are a small minority of UC applicants to specific programs who are asked for recs as part of a supplemental application, but in general UC = No Recs.

I’m sure there must be other good schools that also do not require recs or put little emphasis on them if they do.

26

hi @violinist018 i also have a junior in HS, at a “top” high school in PA. I think I feel something close to your pain. The amount of BS that the know-it-all kids sling around astounds me. I keep reminding my own, more subtle kid that they are kids too and they actually have little to no idea what they are talking about. For example, they continually downgrade the institution I work for. Oh really? on what criteria? Why would I work there if it was truly crappy? (it is actually one of the OOS flagship “it” colleges here on CC). Of course, like others mentioned, my kid doesn’t really listen to me as much as other adults.

In addition to whatever helpful suggestions you might find in the thread I really recommend getting student involved more closely with one of the teachers.This can make a huge difference. Luckily for us, kid has really found a friend in one of the teachers this year. I complained a little bit about this hire…another substitute teacher? in a core subject? Boy was I wrong, and I am glad. Teacher is excellent. I will advise my student to get a letter of rec quick this may before substitute might move on to another district. Our kid also is reinforced tremendously by one of the AP teachers. They didn’t want to take this AP course, but I insisted because I like the woman that teaches it. I think I said “If Mrs. C is teaching AP window washing, you will take AP window washing”. Kid hasn’t converted to a “window washing” major but the mentoring and encouragement from this teacher is bringing out the best in our kid.

I try not to be negative, but in our town (and probably in yours) there are a lot of seniors that state they will go to exotic out of state destinations for college, such as Ohio State, Florida State, and even University of Virginia. And a lot of those kids end up at Penn State Behrend, or Bloomsburg State, or another local (and great) college – either it was all just big talk or else they couldn’t afford it after all. The exciting big name colleges that “everyone” is talking about are not good for everyone and that is a fact. Does your daughter know any college “veterans” with 1-2 years experience behind them that can give her a realistic and still positive view of what is out there for her?

27

We also live in an overcompetitive NOVA HS district. My DD came home freshman year saying that one of her friends told her that “if you get a B, you can’t get into college”. Argh! We set her straight on that one, but it is an example of the kinds of things they are hearing at school from peers (who hear them from their parents, I’m sure)

Some ideas:
Talk to her guidance counselor and perhaps have her talk to your DD–having seen the whole picture of college admissions for your HS, she will be in a position to give her a realistic picture.

Our school had a whole school read of Where You Go Is Not Who You"ll Be by Frank Bruni. You could read this together (it gets a bit repetetive, so even if she only reads a few chapters, she’ll get the message)

Help her start a college search personalized to HER, not her fitting into “name” schools admission requirements. What is she looking for in a college? What setting will make her happy? Does she like the city? the country? STEM? Humanities? Cold weather? Hot weather? Big sports teams? Small personalized classes? Would she do well being the big fish in a small pond? (My own child said that she was tired of going to school with “child geniuses” and that drove our search to less competitive schools (that all offered her a ton of merit aid which was a huge ego boost for her) Maybe having some ideas of colleges that will fit her will help her shift her focus. Also talk about finances and college costs, if that will be an issue for you–our list was limited by this factor, and my DD understood when I showed her the numbers. I put together a starting list for my DD and we visited a few that were close by (and applying to at least 2 state schools was non-negotiable).

Colleges That Change Lives follow a philosophy that is very student-centered and may be helpful to hear, regardless of whether she applies to one or not. They do a round of college fairs that might be worth attending. The DC one is on May 20 this year.

If you can get her to find a hobby other than checking CC and Naviance, that would be great, but easier said than done. Perhaps shaping her online time to searching for colleges that fit her requirements–or trying different requirements and seeing what schools pop up will be a more productive use of her time. And then she can spend her time researching specific colleges once she has a list of possibilities.

And some counseling to address her stress (and anxiety, it sounds like) around this will also be helpful (but again, easier said than done–check with your pediatrician for recommendations, or use you EAP if available for a start)

Good luck!

28

I am also a NOVA parent with my third and final child graduating this year.

Here’s something I told my kids. We are really lucky to live in Virginia which has a wide range of excellent schools from UVA down through Nova community college. If you can graduate from high school in Virginia, you can go to college somewhere and get a great education.

Repeat this mantra as necessary. Tell her it is too early to worry about which VA school she attends but just to do her best academically and enjoy high school. Not that you have to restrict yourself to VA public schools but it can be a huge relief to know that those are an excellent option.

Yes, her classmates will look down on a lot of those options so address that angle too. Start asking around to your friends and coworkers and find as many successful adults as you can who went to non top tier school. Tell her about them or even better have them tell her if you can finagle it.

Use whatever social networks you have to reinforce this message and shield as possible for hyper-competitive college circles. My church was great for this. I could gently steer her to conversation with highly successful people who were very happy to talk to my kid about the no name college they attended or that their best employees attended .

29

@violinist018 I wish I could give your daughter a hug and tell her it will all work out fine. I agree with previous advice that a counselor might be helpful to get her out of this trap of (false) inadequacy.

I have been teaching for a very long time and I can tell you most instructors do get to know their students quite well through observation, even if the student is quiet and unassuming. Some of my favorite students are the hard workers who pull out a A-/B+ through consistent effort and who don’t dominate class discussions with flashy comments. I am quite certain that there are plenty of teachers who recognize your daughter’s worth and she does not need to go out of her way to cultivate them. News flash - students that suck up to the teacher purely to advance their self-interest are easy to spot and not always likable.

As for college choice, my D17, now at a LAC, opted out of the higher-stakes options and applied to only one T-20 school. The rest were a notch or two lower in the rankings, a mix of publics and privates, in state and OOS. She was very happy with the range of acceptances available to her. A number of her similarly high-achieving classmates aimed higher and were disappointed.

30

Thank you everyone for your kind and helpful advice, this has really helped us. We’ve been working on changing her mindset and focusing on her finding colleges that are right for her, and she has been receptive to it; I already notice a change in her happiness and stress.

We’ve been talking and she told me that overall, it is the uncertainty of college admissions that stresses her out, and the fact that her class rank is “low” (11%). She really wants to go to UVA, VT or UMich and she thinks this will keep her out (I don’t think it will; we’re still working on reassuring her about this). But this definitely helped, she is changing her focus to being happy and doing what is best for her.

Thank you all.

31

Good news! A number of colleges don’t ask for more than 1 teacher recommendation, and they don’t give them as much weight as you fear. Pitt’s admissions website, for example, went so far as to say that they’re sure your teachers love you - so instead, don’t send us any of those letters and just answer these three short answer questions. Among the schools whose sites I checked out extensively this year, the only ones that requested 2 teacher recommendations were Ivies and the most elite LACs. Everybody else asked for a rec from someone - IB admin, guidance counselor, teacher, you choose. The most common request was for 1 teacher rec plus one counselor rec.
And those teachers do not have to be in your intended major - I’ve seen awesome recs from band teachers written for science majors.

32

@violinist018 All your posts/threads prior to this one were posted by your student, so are you sharing her account and/or posting together?

33

@violinist018 That’s a very encouraging report. One saving thing for my kids is that they took zero interest in college discussion boards and college rankings. The same was not true of me! But they weren’t reaching for the most prestigious schools; rather for high-quality best-fitting schools.

So while I purchased some guidebooks and followed discussion boards, my kids never looked at either! Senior year in high school is stressful enough, with all the tests and so forth (in my daughter’s case, the need to build an art portfolio). They didn’t care where their classmates were applying to college. It wasn’t a competition in that sense. It helped also that they were virtual automatic admits to flagship colleges in our state (though our daughter strongly wanted to go out-of-state, and both kids ended up in out-of-state colleges).

34

@violinist018, it is understandable to be worried about acceptances. Everyone has heard at least one story of someone who “should” have gotten in somewhere being denied or waitlisted. That unknown is definitely the most stressful part for everyone. How about having her spend her time looking for some “likely” schools that she would be happy at as well. Have her think about the things that attract her to her preferred schools and see if she can find similar characteristics in other schools with higher acceptance levels. Make sure they are financial “safeties” as well as admission safeties, whether that means lower cost overall or generous merit aid. Having a variety of options will lower her stress level and she may even find a school she likes just as much as her current favorites.

35

I’m so glad you approached this head on and that your daughter is feeling better. In many ways, I feel like we’re putting such unreasonable stress on our kids. My daughter’s get top scores and grades, but it still seems like it’s not enough - she hasn’t started a non-profit, won a national award, or cured cancer. Her twin brother, who’s bright but unorganized, was ready to give up on college b/c he’s a B student.

One suggestion is to limit college conversations/research to x hours a week…my daughter and I have started having a lunch/dinner/coffee out one night a week to look at brochures, visit web sites, etc. It’s a fun night out and then we drop it.

I feel like these poor kids have been told exactly what to do most of their lives, and now they have this huge decision to make. No wonder they’re overwhelmed! I’m glad you’ve been able to step in and help change her perspective.

My daughter makes fun of me for being on CC, but I’m glad she’s not on here. :slight_smile:

36

Just as an anecdote, my D sounds similar to yours – a wonderful person, a bright and hard-working student in a very competitive and high achieving HS. My D is smart, but definitely was not at the very top of her class. Many of her friends were in that top group and ended up at all the usual suspect colleges (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, CalTech etc.).

From the start I talked to my D and worked hard to keep the focus on finding a group of schools (including safety schools) that would be great fits for her. With this attitude, she was able to be happy for her friends and also be happy for herself when she got into a LAC she truly loved ED. And as things turned out my D had among the happiest, best college experiences of her HS friends. My D’s college suited her so well – not only academically, but socially, in terms of ECs, allowing her to do research with professors that was published etc. And FWIW she recently finished up her MS at an Ivy school (not that an Ivy degree is needed for success, but just to give an indication of her choices for grad school) and embarked on a great career.

So stick with your plan in post 29 – keep the focus on finding the right group of schools for your D. There are so many amazing colleges and universities out there.

And one thing I’d add that helped both my kids is to try to find a couple of match/safety schools that have non-binding EA or rolling decision – if she can get a nice admission in the door by December it takes a ton of pressure off the rest of the process.

37

OP, MD/VA schools are a sinkhole of stress – I live on the other side of the river where there’s also the same hypercompetitive mentality. My sons for the most part didn’t play along with it, and their transcripts had a fair sprinkling of Bs in competitive magnet programs. It worked out fine. Colleges know what these kids are dealing with. Her focus should be on what she wants her college experience to be like, and finding a variety of places that would meet those needs. If she hasn’t looked at SC area schools yet, I’d suggest visiting a variety to get a feeling of what she likes – large, small, urban, rural, public, private, liberal arts, engineering programs, etc. It’s less abut the specific schools and more about the characteristics that she should evaluate for herself. This is a good time for introspection about what matters to her.

Both my sons (not in the top 10%) got into every school he wanted (and they were all great schools FOR THEM). My feeling is that they were successful in that regard because each knew himself and what he wanted, and made his essays sing it loud and clear.

And +1 on Early Action/rolling decision schools – having a decision in December made life so much more pleasant, and by April 1, neither cared about the rejections.

38

Across the river here too. Every year that Happykid was in high school, the last issue of the student paper included the graduating seniors’ names and their post high school plans. Of the students who shared their plans with the paper, the single largest group every year reported that they were headed to Montgomery College - usually twice as many reported that as reported they were going to UM-CP (the second largest group), and the third largest group was comprised of those heading to other MD community colleges or public universities. Despite the high school’s reports of X admissions offers from FamousNameU out of Y applications, at the end of the process the local institutions turned out to be where most of the students reported they would be attending.

So to help her get a reality check, have her ask her guidance counselor for the actual enrollment numbers, not just the acceptnce numbers. My bet would be that more end up at NOVA than anywhere else, and that a fair number of people she knows will be in that group. I’d expect that George Mason turns out to be the number two draw as the closest public 4-year.

On the sanity front, it also will be helpful if you sit down with her and run the Net Price Calculators at several of the places currently on her radar screen, and then talk about how you expect the costs of her education to be covered. Depending how the numbers work out, her list might quickly shrink to NOVA then transfer.

39

Looking at her threads, she has asked to be chanced for business at UVA and VTech in-state, and the stats she presented seem to indicate that she’s well on track for both, so maybe something more is going on. I mean, she is looking at good matches, and is doing well, so perhaps she is feeling uncomfortable about her choice of schools, which are excellent schools, BTW, or perhaps something else.

Re: relationships with teachers. Teachers are not boy/girlfriends, and they do not need to be exclusive. Just because they have good relationships with some students doesn’t mean that they cannot get close to other students.

Still, this also tells me that more is going on. have a talk with her, and, as others have written, she will benefit from meeting with a counselor/therapist, and have that happen sooner rather than later.

40

A few years ago, my kid applied to the business schools at about 10 largish state universities…Michigan State, Alabama, Nebraska, Florida State, Kentucky, West Virginia, etc. Not Ivy caliber, but all respectable schools with proud alumni, where if you do well in your business classes you will probably get a decent job.

Several things surprised me:

Few of them required any letters of recommendation at all. Their web sites often explicitly said, “We do not consider letters of recommendation.”

How easy these colleges were to get into. Kid got no rejections or wait lists. The student-age population has dropped in recent years, so only a small % of colleges can afford to reject applicants with records like your daughter’s (top 11%).

How loosey-goosey the application process is at some schools. Two name-brand universities accepted the kid and awarded serious merit scholarships even though the applications weren’t completed.

Given that information, & other posters’ comments about how unimportant LORs are at most colleges, I’d say your daughter’s concerns about them are unfounded…

…unless she’s truly fixated on prestige, in which case the ap process is indeed more brutal.

But, it is not too late to rid her of this obsession. I’ve lived all over the U.S., & from what I’ve seen, the college-prestige virus exists mostly in the Northeast, coastal CA, and in swanky suburbs in Flyover Country.

In most other places, college is seen as a means to getting a job & a place to throw parties, not a source of prestige. In other words, there are millions of people who are perfectly happy to go to Western Michigan, South Florida, or Northern Colorado…people for whom even sub-flagships like Michigan State, Florida State, & Colorado State offer way more prestige than is necessary. If you can get your daughter to see how happy & serious students are at some less-than-elite colleges (e.g., Iowa, Alabama, Pittsburgh), perhaps she will be able to oversome the prestige virus.