<p>
</p>
<p>However, the chance of admission to various super-selective schools is not an independent roll of the dice for each school. The characteristics that increase the chance of admission at one such school often increase the chance of admission at another such school, so “all/many or nothing” results may be more common than if the admission were random independent events.</p>
<p>I completely agree, which is why you see some kids getting multiple offers while others get nothing, which is what you just said.</p>
<p>The commonly tossed around numbers of 7% for Harvard and 8% for Yale are completely meaningless as are the numbers for any school. Those are the numbers for the random app tossed in over the wall, but some/most of those individual apps are near zero and others are much higher. The only number that means anything is YOUR number, not the number of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who applies.</p>
<p>I guess the real questions are, what are the odds for qualified applicants, and are you one of the qualified?</p>
<p>My DS has a list of non-elite schools that have great programs for his area of interest and are financially feasible. One is a local LAC that is up-and-coming but not nationally known. My boss knows we’re visiting there because I’m taking half a day off work, and his response was, “nothing wrong with that school, nothing at all.” So now I’m wondering what’s wrong with it!</p>
<p>SouthernHope: The best advice: Smile and nod.</p>
<p>you may also run into the issue where the people with whom you’re conversing have a different set of college targets than your kid – thus their kid’s dream school might be your kid’s safety school. Can be awkward. Keep your cards close to the chest! Good luck!</p>
<p>It certainly is a different world. I don’t remember this process being so scary in the 80’s. I applied to 4 schools and really, there was only one that I worried I might not get into (and I still did.) My eldest has much higher stats and achievements and yet, there is a good chance she won’t get into my Alma Mater.</p>
<p>I admit, when I heard about how many schools kids applied to these days I scoffed! That is, until my daughter started the process. She’s applying to 10 schools lol… a good mix of safeties, likely’s and reaches but really, what she’s doing is casting a wide net in hopes someone will throw her a decent financial aid package. Now I get it!</p>
<p>More kids go to college these days. More kids NEED to go to college these days. I just think it’s unfair for our kids to be held to such a higher scrutiny than we were. How many of us got into and thrived at great colleges with our “B” averages? Sigh…</p>
<p>Everything has gotten tougher.</p>
<p>Premeds used to be able to get into med school with lower GPAs and MCAT scores. </p>
<p>there’s a certain private school in Los Angeles that you could get accepted to by fogging a mirror when I was in high school,</p>
<p>Yup…getting into USC used to be an easy task.</p>
<p>@turtletime - you have touched on one of the great ironies of skyrocketing tuition. Applicants, especially those from “middle class” families, must pay a couple thousand dollars on application fees, test scores and other submittals to a large number of schools in hopes of getting a large enough FA package to earn a payback.</p>
<p>Certainly better odds than the lottery, but far more effort and frustration involved as well.</p>
<p>Grandparents are especially tough. My father and grandfather both went to Yale…my father getting in with fairly mediocre grades, at that. BUT, this was in the early 60s (wartime 40s for my grandfather, so quite a small pool of men stateside to attend!) , and schools like that <em>were</em> pretty open to “good enough” legacy white males. They were stunned and disappointed when I got my rejection letter in the late 80s. (I was secretly relieved, every other school on my list was a NESCAC rural school, a big university in New Haven wasn’t going to be for me) Now, my daughter is a sophomore and her 70 year old grandpa and 95 year old great-grandpa both want her to look into Yale, sigh. They REALLY aren’t going to get that even the common safeties of my generation are now reaches for even bright kids.</p>
<p>Until my 90 year old dad died, he kept talking about 5 cent loaves of bread. </p>
<p>Ya can’t teach an old dog new tricks.</p>
<p>I can’t really get irritated at my own parents/grandparents when they say “of course S or D will be accepted” at their alma mater. Nobody can understand the insanity of today’s college admissions unless they are living it. They would think I was the insane one if I tried to explain it to them.</p>
<p>I go with Smile and Nod.
A funny moment was when a (childless) friend emailed to ask me, “What was the name of that school you said your son is going to attend?”
I assumed she wanted to google it.</p>
<p>Actually…what drove ME crazy was that the grandparents said “grandchild will get accepted EVERYWHERE he applies” about only one set of grandchildren…and they were NOT my kids. But they felt compelled to say this I front of MY kids who were applying to much less competitive schools at the same time.</p>
<p>But I love the fact that I couldn’t get into my alma mater today; people think I’m smarter than I am. ;)</p>
<p>Two things that drive me crazy are </p>
<p>!: When adults make assumptions about kids based on which schools they are applying to. Don’t they know that you can APPLY anywhere? My son was stuck in a car with 5 kids and an adult driver. The driver asked where the boys were applying, and most boys named a few public universities. Another boy named some Ivies. The dad then droned on and on about how that boy must be the smartest one in the car, must be a genius, has a great future… (BTW the boy was not accepted at the Ivies)</p>
<ol>
<li> When parents use “we” when it ought to be “he” or “she”. “We’re applying to Harvard, but we have a few safeties as well”. “For our Eagle Scout project, we…” “We were up until midnight with that APUSH project.” This must be a recent phenomenon. I can’t imagine my mother confusing her life with mine!</li>
</ol>
<p>I have a college buddy with a very smart niece that is currently going to Michigan. </p>
<p>His mother is a crotchety old money, high falutin type that sneers the niece should have chosen a good school like Northwestern or Notre Dame and not a low brow state school school like Michigan.</p>
<p>I know this drives everyone in his family crazy.</p>
<p>ChiselCheeks: You should sit your college buddy’s mother down in front of the discussion about Michigan on the [thread=1562090]Those-looking-at-elite-schools-why-do-public-universities-have-such-a-bad-rep[/thread].</p>
<p>
No kidding! I have the opposite problem with my parents (or had, with my dad, God rest his soul.) My brother and I went to the midsize public regional university in our hometown. My folks, like probably 90 percent of the parents in our town, didn’t even consider sending us anywhere else. When S1 was looking, all I heard was “Why can’t he just go to Hometown U? You went there and got a good education.” Ironically, S1 did end up there but it was his choice - they offered a specialization in his major that he couldn’t get at any other in-state school. S2 is also interested but we’re trying to steer him toward a smaller, more structured LAC - he has too many friends at Hometown U and would be more inclined to party than study.
As for my in-laws, none of them except DH went to college and they think it’s like high school and you just go to the nearest one …</p>
<p>Some common ones on these forums:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>[name of school] is the answer to all queries looking for schools, even if [name of school] is clearly a poor match in terms of academic offerings or other characteristics specified by the poster asking the question.</p></li>
<li><p>Someone asks for suggestions of schools, but does not list cost constraints, or gives only vague hints like “need financial aid”. Often not aware that net price calculators exist (or in some cases seem unwilling to use them).</p></li>
<li><p>Assumption that URM means getting a huge advantage in admissions, when the reality at most schools is either none or a small (and hard to quantify from the outside) advantage in an opaque holistic process. Certainly not enough by itself to get a 3.0 HS GPA student into HYPetc.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Barfly - That’s a phenomenon called ‘The Royal We’. It is hard not to laugh inside when it’s used repetitively. I get the occasional slip because WE do visit colleges, and WE do talk about budgets, but I stay up while my son does his homework, he fills out applications and applies (even if I’m there with the credit card). Some speak in the Royal We from early elementary school and you just have to feel sorry for the kid. Involved parent, excellent asset. Parent that blurs the line between their goals and achievements and those of their child…just sad.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think she does the Internet.</p>
<p>Funny sitcom quality story: She has a winter condo in Florida that happened to be one mile from my brother’s Florida home at the time. My brother and his wife had a super nice home on a canal and had a pontoon boat at his dock in the backyard.</p>
<p>It just so happened one February my college buddy was in Florida visiting his mother while we we visiting my brother. My brother invited my buddy, his GF and mother on a pontoon dinner cruise with us.</p>
<p>My brother is married to a Tennessee woman with a southern accent. As we were all getting on the pontoon boat the mother whispered to her son much too loudly “Why are we taking the maid along?”</p>
<p>Now, ten years later my Buddy still jokes and asks how my older brother and the maid are doing…</p>