“Last house we bought, we second guessed ourselves until after we moved in.”
You do like your house now, right? So if the kid acts doubtful, you can use that as an example of how people can over-think things.
D is extremely disappointed with turn out in her college acceptances, she was waitlisted at two and really wanted to attend Boston College…but it seems like it won’t be a possiblilty since they are only using their waitlist sparingly. Not sure what happened top ten in her class great grades well rounded lot of CS and EC. Did the extra interest letters…so no the whole process has been heartbreaking for me to watch her blaming herself and there’s nothing that I can say to lift her spirits when she reads all the post on CC from accepted students. Don’t get me wrong we are thrilled that others have received offers…just really fustrating thats all!
I’d also like to add that I do still have quite a few FB friends/IG followers from Quinnipiac…but I did lose a few IG followers on May 1st and I also left the FB group as soon as I announced where I would attend. I also unfollowed the official FB and IG pages. The method of disconnecting yourself from all other schools except where you’re going is a very effective one indeed.
@bordertexan MIT and Rice are very different. The good news is, if he does well at MIT but still regrets not choosing Rice, he’ll probably be able to transfer. Doing the reverse would be much harder.
OP, Please tell your son that it is completely normal to feel what he is feeling. I made a decision in the opposite direction! I really had a hard time turning down Georgia Tech for Rice, which sounds crazy because it would be a no-brainer for most people. I live very close to Tech, drive past it at least once a week, and where I live it might as well be more prestigious than Rice. There were many things that I loved about Tech that I had to leave behind (real “state school” athletics and school spirit, co-ops, friends at the school, close to home, and a larger and (according to U.S. News) slightly better ranked program in my major. These things may seem trivial but they made leaving Tech behind very hard for me. Ultimately Rice was a better fit for me than the school I LOVED for much longer and much harder than Rice.
I have no doubt your son will do great things at MIT. Making my decision tore me up, and I know he put just as much thought if not more into making his. If he still feels called to Rice, the transfer prospects are much better in this direction anyway!
PS: Choosing not to attend a school doesn’t mean leaving the school behind completely. I’ve already made plans this year to attend a few Georgia Tech football games, and visit some friends at the school. If he’s ever home and has the desire to come to a Rice sporting event, we could always use more people in the stands 
My DD also turn down Yale and Harvard for Stanford and we felt exactly the same way. Esp since Yale was her first choice for so long it was hard to say goodbye.
@myyalieboy Yes—Yale does such a good job of making accepted students feel a part of the community and conveying its spirit. I looked at a few of your previous posts—as I recall, I myself steered clear of that “disappointed in your student’s choice” thread!—and completely understand. It’s hard to make people understand that even though your kid got into a bunch of top schools, the choice can still be really difficult and heartbreaking. I’m trying to focus on the very rational reasons my son chose Stanford over Yale, and I really can’t fault Stanford for anything—they’re doing a great job right now, and I do think they have some of that “warmth” that’s such a strength of Yale. That lack of warmth and less cohesive/supportive undergraduate community, along with the focus on graduate education, were the main reasons we didn’t find turning down Harvard particularly difficult, despite its strength and prestige. I never felt that Harvard would be a good fit for my son, and I was very relieved that he ended up having better options in that respect. At this point I’m trying to let go of the regret about Yale and focus on the future with Stanford, which is looking very bright. In retrospect, I wish my son had applied early to Stanford, as he originally planned to, so that neither of us would ever have fallen in love with Yale and spent months assuming he would end up going there.
@Planner While I did feel that Yale really strived to make a students experiences better, I think it was a little contrived.
I think they definitely over market the aspect of happiness because there will be a good amount of students who are having various difficulties, unhappy, and who ultimately transfer.
The way the students presented Yale made me extremely wary. It felt as if they were talking more about what they felt the school should embody rather than their own experiences. At Harvard I liked how students spoke for themselves.
It wasn’t obvious, but I got a nagging feeling that some students may feel the need to appear to be happy because they should seem so, but they might not be.
@dancelance, your nagging feeling is so completely different from my experiences with Yale that I was actually taken aback. As I reflect upon my college application process (to pay it forward for the Class of 2020 and, yes, senior slump has hit me), I can honestly say that I was open to letting it take me wherever the fit was going to be right. And my parents, if they had “nagging feelings,” respected the process enough to keep it to themselves from Day 1 as I hope you and the other parents did/do as well.
I applied to Yale RD along with three other Ivies (Harvard, Princeton, UPenn) + MIT, Johns Hopkins, and 2 safeties. It was 100% Yale from that first warm email I received from my interviewer (who would have thought a request for an interview would be warm but it truly was, he thanked me for the opportunity to interview me and we communicated a couple of more times) on through an informative and positive interviewing experience then the thoughtful note at the bottom of my Yale acceptance letter from the admissional officer who read my application and right into my 3 days at Yale’s admitted students (Bull Dog) Days. I have a couple of classmates who will also be attending Yale and we all coincidentally had similar Yale-is-absolutely-where-we-want-to-spend-the-next-four-years inner peace nothing contrived or nagging or pretentious feelings (including one friend who turned down offers from both Harvard and Princeton to attend Yale).
So as a real Yale Class of 2019 person, please allow me to speak for those I met at Bull Dog Days and continue to chat with on Facebook that we are really happy to be going to Yale.
My brain tells me that there must be some students who are unhappy at Yale, but I have never met one. Seriously, I have never met one.
@cttwenty15 Harvard too sent hand written notes like Yale, and they were in an actual thick card with a picture of Harvard in the front. While I don’t typically care for these marketing gimmicks, I just wanted to point that out for other people.
It wasn’t Harvard or Yale, but I had an amazing interview with another school and even after not getting into that school, I called them after my acceptance and he talked me through.
At Harvard, I had the same experience you had at Yale and I really liked I met a ton of people who turned down Yale for Harvard, and while they were really excited about selling Harvard, they didn’t hate on Yale. I didn’t not find the opposite at Yale (there was a lot of covert and overt stuff), so yeah I see we had the opposite experiences which is totally fine with me.
@dancelance, Glad you have no regrets about turning down Yale, different strokes for different folks, I personally LOVE Yale!