I really appreciated honeybee63’s post #218. This person expressed what I’m thinking but did it in a much kinder way than I would have.
I’ve felt a lot of judgement for many of the parents/students on CC lately. I do feel sorry for the students who are “devastated” by rejections when, realistically, they have many great alternatives. I’m not so empathetic to the parents. But then I thought about the number of times I’ve gotten carried away with my parenting (just not in a CC way). I’m thinking that if the culture in our high school/community would have leaned towards Ivy Mania, I probably would have joined the lunacy.
Here’s a link from Wendy Mogel that is worth viewing. It is humorous and wise:
A lot of colleges are blood sports these days, and it is not helpful to anyone.
The advantage of not going to MIT may be that a student gets the physics or engineering degree that he or she would not have gotten at MIT - as I sometimes point out, my exboyfriend, who was friends with a MIT ad-com and got in, ditched the lifelong dream of being a physicist, and has a BA; I got rejected from MIT and am an engineer.
Between the friends I made at my alma mater and the academic environment, being rejected from MIT was one of the best things to happen to me. My 17-year old self did not know that.
Tell your daughter she is luckier than she realizes. Tell her my kid was accepted and went to Harvard and it was the biggest mistake of her life. She hated it and did not fit in but could not transfer to another school because the big scholarships she had been offered at other schools were not available to her any more. Tell her several kids in her Harvard class committed suicide because of the pressure and loneliness. Tell her my daughter is still jobless 11 months after graduating. Her grades at Harvard were not good enough to get into graduate programs and she gets turned down for “regular” jobs because employers think a Harvard graduate will not stay in menial job. Tell your daughter this is a blessing in disguise.
Yknow. Yes, plainly nany people will be much happier in a less competitive and friendlier environment. My daughter just decided to go to our state university. She is bright, gifted programs all of her life, but i cringe at the thought of her being stressed out all of the time at a hyper competitive elite school. She will learn plenty at her state school for a very reasonably priced education, will be as competive or as non competitive as she chooses, and whether she ends up in the middle class or not will hopefully be happy with what she has and what she contributes to society. I see college as huge business and just another scam being perpetrated on the public. This nonsense that a child need go to elite or not so elite undergraduate schools at huge personal and financial cost to be successful in life is nonsense.
Yknow1107, I hope that you will be able to find some people and ideas on this website that will help your daughter; my family has found CC to be amazing source of support throughout the college experience.
She needs to know that she has your unconditional love and no matter where she ends up, if she is the hard worker and smart student that sounds like she is, that she will do great. It really doesn’t matter where you end up in school, is what you make of your time there that will matter in the end. I know how hard it must be to be rejected to some of her first choice schools, but let her know that it is not the end of the world. In the end it will all work out. I am sure that wherever she ends up that she will do great
Geez I feel your pain right now. Our college adviser is telling us that early admit rates skyrocketed this year, so there are less admits in the regular round for selective colleges, and that there are many more girls attending college, so girls can knock a few points off the published admit rate. I hope your child applied to a range of schools, reach, likely, and so on? Also public universities? My second daughter will apply next year, but for my elder daughter, now a freshman, it was so helpful to have gotten into a likely school early, so she could wait for the final round of acceptances with an offer already in hand. When she finally had her acceptances, she visited the schools that wanted her, during their special days for new admits. Every one of those schools looked absolutely great to us. Some had admit rates of 50-60%, but that is not what really matters once you enroll in a college, of course, it’s what goes on in the classroom and the quality of life on campus. Then she had to decide which to attend - and what a fun problem to have! So wherever your child eventually gets accepted, help put the rejections behind her by moving forward with exciting college visits, buy those t-shirts - even from the colleges she decides not to attend - and celebrate that she will be a college freshman next year, leaving home and moving on to the next phase of her life. All of those APs will help her place into really interesting courses. Also may I suggest that you protect her from all the well-meaning relatives and friends constantly inquiring where she applied and where she got in 9or didn’t get in). We would simply say, “She’s got some nice options to choose from, and we’ll keep you posted”, and move on. Good luck to you your daughter and you.
Rejection in any form hurts; all the more if the rejection happens after years of preparation and focus. So what to do?
Grieve: Being in the moment and grieving about a rejection is an important part of growing and developing into a multi-layered person capable of dealing with the vicissitudes of life. But the period of grieving should-be time bound for both child and parent, so that the grief does not does not become chronic. That is where parents have to be strong and set the tone.
Find the best remaining alternative: Live and fight another day. Use the opportunity to determine what your child’s real passions and interests are within the best alternative. Plan possible next steps that will enrich your child’s life be they internships or cross-disciplinary courses or volunteering or starting their own enterprise. In any event excellence in the chosen path will hold your child in good stead, and opportunities that are least expected will arise.
Don’t lose sight of the original goal/s: Rejection does not have to be terminal i.e. don’t leave any stone unturned i.e. be resilient and follow-through. For example one can always transfer to a preferred school from another school after a year/s, provided the skillsets and experiences continue to be of a high standard.
Be creative: Rejection is a signal from Life that one has to be creative and innovative. If a door is locked, look for one that is open. If no doors are open, look for a window. Or try looking for a new house. If not the US, why not Canada or the UK or some other exciting place. There are always open doors somewhere.
Maintain the work ethic and optimism: Keep the faith and good things will happen, when least expected.
For those who didn’t have the perfect application package, would like to hear SPECIFIC results from anyone who had weighted GPA’s in the 3.4-3.5 range from strong public high schools after taking a nice mix of AP and regular classes but with super scored SAT, ACT and/or SAT II results all below the averages who applied to small private liberal arts schools in the NE (NY, CT, PA, MA) with > 2,000 enrollment known to have relatively low acceptance rates. Even more specifically, would like to hear results from well rounded applicants WITHOUT an affirmative action hook, a legacy hook, a sports team hook, etc. If you fit this specific criteria, please indicate your application results - acceptances, rejections, wait lists as well as your stats. Did you apply EA, ED, or regular? Only interested if you did NOT qualify for aid which should have increased your chances for acceptance. Also note is you visited and/or interviwed prior to applying. Thanks!
I think parents of younger kids might be able to do something to minimize the rejections by researching early, on what is a best fit for your kids. What they really want to study? What are they naturally talented at? What seem to be their interests/passion…and help to find schools that will fit their needs better, instead of encouraging them to try the schools that are hardest to get in. Maybe I am strange, but my ideal college is not only one that will offer the good program that my children like to study, but also one that I think they can be in the top 25% of the graduates from there, if not magna cum. ( I know summa is a little hard for any school). They might get lucky if they try HYPS, but if we know they reject people like that, it is not worth the hurting of confidence. To me my kids’ confidence is precious, not something you want to easily take risk on. Parents should not put pressure on them for getting into elite colleges. Let’s listen to what they say. ( This is what I heard my kids say " Can you talk about something other than COLLEGE?" " I am not doing this for college, I’m doing this for myself." )
angel14: You should start a new thread with your question. Or look at the “Parents of 3.3-3.5 GPA” type threads.
phoenix: I could not agree more. It is great to see acceptances in the mailbox and for kids to feel wanted. I don’t see how anyone can be surprised by the outcome for their kids at “elite” schools given how competitive things have gotten. But this is the generation of “everyone gets a trophy,” coddled kids who have been given every advantage and told how wonderful and deserving they are since birth. So it’s a big letdown for many to not get what they want for the first time.
You have to keep things in perspective. At the top colleges, even valedictorians who have tons of ECs, play sports at a competitive level, make use of their summers, and so on get rejected simply because even who applies is extremely qualified to be accepted there. But the biggest thing I seem to be hearing is that what matters more than where you go to college is what you do there. Getting into a specific college means nothing if you don’t work hard and accomplish your goals there. On the other hand, if you get into a college which isn’t your top choice, you can still be successful if you work hard and prove yourself.
Still America is the ONLY country in the world, where you still have a chance to break through the glass ceiling and shine, despite all these adversities.
^^^So there is only one valid perspective? Or only one valid perspective to put forth in the essay? This type of responds to valid concerns leads to shutting down of dialogue and it certainly leads to those type of essay which will falsely amplify any and all ‘life circumstances’. Students with a different opinion will certainly be smart enough to hide their thoughts.
I think one lesson astute parents will take from this is that at elite institutions, applying ED strongly increases your chances of admission. It is mutually beneficial as it increases the schools’ yields and allows the students the ability to be accepted earlier as well as having a two or three times greater chance of acceptance. It is a filtering mechanism and a pushback against the Common App “apply to 20 schools and hope” syndrome. Who knows, we could see a paradigm shift in which most applicants at elite schools are accepted early and it’s up to the student to decide where to apply ED increasing their chances. When admission rates are in the low teens for many of these schools, it is one way to increase your odds…
To pick the right school to ED/EA is important. You have one option and it should be exercised most effectively. Applicants can back out of ED if financially it is not feasible, but at the same time the applicant may also be precluded from being admitted to other elite schools (especially Ivies) during RD.