<p>With curm here. Great job. Good luck to your D.</p>
<p>Wow. Good job, CBK. Your story is so frustrating! It's amazing what a good gc can do for a kid ... and what a bad one can do, as well. Your D's gc needs to be put into a position where she can't harm any more kids (yes, she IS harming kids). Good for you for following up on this. You knew something was really wrong, and you didn't let up. I really hope it works out well for your D. Keep us posted.</p>
<p>CBK, Glad to hear that the situation is beginning to turn around. As I said earlier, get your daughter well placed then deal with the incompetent GC. Good luck and keep us posted.</p>
<p>Thanks all for the well wishes, though it might be all lip service, as I was on the phone the "estimated wait time was 25 minutes", so they might just say the same to all calling up complaining. Who knows.
A job not for the faint of heart thats for sure. </p>
<p>A lesson for those to follow, NEVER EVER depend on schools to do the right thing, we have one GC at school and I swear she could get the most underachieving kid to shine like a diamond to admissions, ecourages them to the high heavens, of course a mom with kids who has done this process 3 times. Unfortunately she doesn't cover our section of the alphabet. But you can bet my younger children will be under her care the next time.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And a nice letter from the Vice Principal to send along with all the missing forms is not too much to ask for in my opinion.
[/quote]
Great suggestion. I'm SO glad that D is being given a chance to properly present herself. </p>
<p>I don't know if this is a silly idea or not, but maybe contact a UMD professor & get the research to him or her? If it sparks the professor's interest, D might have an advocate in UMD who would like to bring her on board.</p>
<p>Well now we all feel just a little better.</p>
<p>Once your D is settled (best of luck, her story is infuriating!) how can you deal with the real damage this GC most certainly will CONTINUE to wreak in the future? Can the vice principal do anything? </p>
<p>This is where I have trouble. In my business, you get fired for gross, obvious incompetence such as this. Or at the very least, reassigned. Most of my kids' teachers were good. A few were awful, like this CBK-GC. Year after year the same few got all the complaints, everyone including the principals were well aware, yet they continue on damaging kids and frustrating parents.</p>
<p>"I don't know if this is a silly idea or not, but maybe contact a UMD professor & get the research to him or her? If it sparks the professor's interest, D might have an advocate in UMD who would like to bring her on board."</p>
<p>This isn't a bad idea: you just never know what's doing to help.</p>
<p>Good luck to you and your D, CBK. Something's going to come right by spring.</p>
<p>CBK, I'm glad to hear that UMD is reconsidering your daughter's application. </p>
<p>Does her GC office have some form of checks and balances? In my son's high school, we are required to fill up a form for every college application, and indicate clearly what we want the GC to send. A parent has to sign the form. At the bottom of the form, there is a section to be completed and signed by the GC to indicate that all items have been sent, plus the office assistant has to double check, and sign, too. They send everything by priority mail, with postcard confirmation. If anything is missing, they want the kids to let them know, and the GC follows up directly with the school. We pay a small "processing" fee for each application, actually just enough for the priority mail postage. Son goes to a small parochial high school.</p>
<p>I don't know if you talked to a secretary at Maryland or to an admissions counselor, but I would suggest you speak to at the very least the regional admissions director for your area. This would be the person that had the first read of your daughter's application.</p>
<p>After the new information has been sent, double check with this rep and make sure all has arrived. Your daughter can email her rep to make sure her application is now complete. A copy of the email to the admission's director explaining the screw up at your high school would not be out of line either. As someone mentioned above, that letter could come for your HS principal. Maryland would take note of that!</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Son goes to a small parochial high school.<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>This would explain why our school does none of this...we go to a big, public high school! </p>
<p>In the past, one counselor has handled the Honors/AP kids. She was very organized, conscientious and wonderful (but it was a lot of work for her and the other counselors didn't get much experience working with the high end kids). Now the kids are parceled out by alphabet. Luckily, since I volunteer in the College and Career Center (which is under the wing of the Counseling Office), I know D's counselor well and am confident in her abilities. Plus, I can always pop my head in and check on things.</p>
<p>Still, things get lost on the university end too. (Experience with older D) Always best to check if the university doesn't send a check up card.</p>
<p>Hey CBK,</p>
<p>Saw this yesterday with no time to reply. I think you're right, there was a mistake made somewhere (perhaps several places?) along the line. I have some info for you. My D just got into MD last Saturday. Here are her stats:</p>
<p>top 20% of her class
760 V / 600 M / around 650 - 700 W (can't remember exactly)
730 USH, 710 lit
2 AP's completed (4/5 on tests), 3 this year</p>
<p>Frankly your D's scholastic achievements looked better to me than my D's. That said, my D is a truly great kid personality-wise who will be an asset to any community she joins (not implying that yours is not!). I am pretty sure that D's reccomendations were stellar.</p>
<p>D did get her app in a few days after priority deadline, and UMD apparently had some trouble finding her transcripts for awhile (we got an email that they didn't have them, even though the guidance office had written documentation that they had been received). This was straightened out after a few days. We weren't expecting to hear anything until March.</p>
<p>Sounds like your GC is a real piece of work. I would be venting here too. But in your younger kids' interests, just in case they might get stuck with her, I think you need to stick to factual demonstrations of INCOMPETENCE / POOR PERFORMANCE. Like the "young man" in D's recommendation letter. And not sending math teacher's recommendation. Don't remember everything you said. Stay away from "GC doesn't like my daughter" kind of thing - too subjective, you don't want anyone you have to work with focusing on that and getting stuck on wondering if it is true.....and then playing down the demonstrable INCOMPETENT acts. If you specifically demand competence and decent performance for your younger kids, you're more likely to get it.</p>
<p>Also for next time(s) ... it's a good idea not to let things get too close to the deadline. I know that they all send in stuff at the last minute - mine did too - but consider a couple of things. (1) Both my kids got the best results (painless application process and acceptances) from the schools where they got the app in way before the deadline. Places where they applied at or near the deadline tended to lose their stuff and/or waitlist them and/or reject them. I'm not saying that all of this was a direct consequence of a last-minute app, but I don't think it helped. (2) Both HS guidance offices and U admissions offices are still set up for the number of apps they were handling 3-5 years ago. With significantly more apps today, I'll bet they are really overwhelmed by the last-minute flood. And that's when more mistakes tend to be made.</p>
<p>Just my two cents. Best of luck to your daughter.</p>
<p>WaterDaughter,</p>
<p>Congrats to your daughter, and totally agree with not being last minute, however in my daughters case, she wasn't. She handed in all her stuff 6 or more weeks in advance. She was working OT on the Intel stuff,finishing the second 20 page paper, as well as 8/9 essays for that, as well as for Siemans etc. So unfortunately, that whole INTEL thing was totally overwhelming for the past 3 years(definitely will not encourage 2nd child down this path, not worth it). Over the summer it was about 20-30 hours a week of research papers as well as tabulating statistics had to self teach herself how to use Graph prism etc. Now her GC totally dismissed this whole 3 years of work as if all kids do this, and stupid me, thought many do when in fact they don't. We defintiely do not go to a science oriented school,so I suppose the lack of clue about how much work these projects are was to daughters detriment. So daughter ended up with 2 college level research papers 20 pages each under her belt that her time would have been better spent obsessing over SAT scores I guess. Please forgive my "tude", as I am still so angry and disappointed in this rat race. Her AP calc teacher blew a gasket the other day when daughter said her rec was missing, wasn't even in the file in Guidance office. She wrote another one, which probably wound up stronger than the first, but most likely will be for nothing anyway.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Now her GC totally dismissed this whole 3 years of work as if all kids do this, and stupid me, thought many do when in fact they don't.
[/quote]
CBK. I don't think you have an attitude. You have an absolutely legitimate reason to be anygy. Even if your kid WAS from a science school that spoon feeds kids research opportunity & sets them up with mentors, the research is a huge commitment. The fact that your D has been handling this on her own for three years speaks volumes about her. THe GC is either an incompetant jerk or a saboteur. Luckily, you have an angry calculus teacher who may help speed up this woman's removal. I do hope your D will be reconsidered with the COMPLETE picture of what she has to offer. Keep up posted.</p>
<p>This is one of the saddest threads ever on CC. The guidance counselors at my kids' school didn't see it as their role to do much actual advising for good students, but they sure as heck saw it as their role to make certain the school's materials got sent out on time and complete. I never heard of anything like this happening. I think if it had there would have been some kind of NHS riot. The AP classes would have emptied as the ambitious students tarred and feathered the offending GC and carried him out of the school on a rail, with the vice principals' preatorian guard (and maybe a vice principal or two themselves) in the lead.</p>
<p>well as I sit here laughing about the tar and feathering, we are left with a young girl with her self esteem in the can, and honestly, knowing her personality, and how much it has taken to get her to this place of feeling confident to present in front of an audience, and now to be at the bottom of the confidence mode now, who knows how it will affect her choices in life later on and how "into" anything she will ever get again. I don't see it happening again. </p>
<p>Glass ceiling in academia as well as financial earning power. Next time coming back as a male :)</p>
<p>CBK, the UMD decision was a mistake, in the sense that it was based on the mistaken and incomplete information supplied by the GC! I can guarantee you that at least half of the science faculty at UMD would be quite upset by the problems your daughter is experiencing in gaining admission there. I'd invite her to apply to my university (and grease the way for her application), but I don't want to "poach" on UMD, if that's her choice.</p>
<p>I'm pretty certain that the Intel project was intrinsically worth the effort, and it would still have been worthwhile, even if your daughter had not been a semi-finalist. The SAT score is not relevant--I don't believe it had any effect on the decision at all.</p>
<p>CBK: This is a perfect time/opportunity to teach your D to stand up for herself and not let others undermine her accomplishments. There are steps to take and it sounds like you are headed there. She needs to be a bit angry, energized and logical. Tell her to think like a lawyer who needs to present a case. Clear thoughts and decisive actions.</p>
<p>You are helping her through the steps for an appeal of the decision. Help her learn how to navigate. Empower her! This can be life changing in a positive way. There will be many times in her life that she will have to stand up for herself. Nothing like getting started now. You both need a pep talk!</p>
<p>QuantMech & Sax</p>
<p>Surely it was worth it for her personal growth,(I just cringe at all the hours she spent on it) her teacher for that course is female, and I wrote her a letter on how positive the experience was for her about 3 weeks ago,clearly expressing that if my child turned out 1/2 as dynamic as she was I would be thrilled and again, its just me wallowing for her loss so bear with my woe is us.</p>
<p>Nope, no time to wallow. Sorry. Takes too much energy and you have a battle on your hands. Get up, shake yourselves off and march on! :)</p>
<p>I am certain your D will be a stronger student because of the research she has done. She will not see that in the short term (she will most likely wonder why she bothered ... that's a normal reaction). However, she definitely will realize it importance as she progresses through college. The research has NOT been a waste of time, even if it feels that way right now.</p>
<p>I hope you realize, after reading all these supportive posts, that you absolutely have a reason to pursue a reevaluation of your D's admission. You also have a right to an answer from the high school as to how & why this could happen. Don't be afraid to step on toes ... your D's toes were stomped on! You can be gracious, of course, but you deserve an explanation of what happened ... and you deserve intervention from the school on your D's behalf.</p>
<p>Even if your D decides to go to another college after all is said & done, you owe it to you & her to get this matter resolved. The gc does not do favors for students ... it is her job to get students into college. If she fell short in such a major way, she needs to be held accountable. A decent, otherwise capable person who made a mistake would admit it, apologize, and try to make things right. The gc's response will be quite telling.</p>